The 25-year Bet About Technology

 

• Who  is Kevin Kelly? DETAILS!

Kevin Kelly was a well known writer, sources state “ best known for his expansive career as a founding executive editor of Wired magazine and for being a prolific author and artist”. Furthermore according to Who Is Kevin Kelly ? It also states “ Kevin has gone on to author numerous books, some of which focus on technology, while others explore topics such as ecology and the environment. His artwork has also been showcased in galleries around the world. In addition to his writing and artistic pursuits, Kevin is also committed to preserving endangered species through the All Species Foundation, a non-profit organization he founded in 1998”. With that a lot of Kevin Kelly works have been featured in big galleries. Alot of which focuses on themes of artificial intelligence, robotics, and new technology. 

Who is Patrick Sale? DETAILS! 

Sale worked for a leftist publication where he wrote and published a lot of different books. Alot of Patrick's Sales work talked about decentralization and the dangers that technology could potentially have on society. According to A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? he wrote a book titled “Rebels Against the Future”. It told the story of the 19th-century Luddites, a movement of workers opposed to the machinery of the Industrial Revolution. This then sparked alot of mixed emotions between Kevin and Sale. According to A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? it states “Kelly hated Sale’s book. His reaction went beyond mere disagreement; Sale’s thesis insulted his sense of the world. So he showed up at Sale’s door not just in search of a verbal brawl but with a plan to expose what he saw as the wrongheadedness of Sale’s ideas”.

• Describe the chief conflict between the two men.

 The chief conflict between the two was that they had two different viewpoints on how society would be/ look like in the future. Kevin Kelly argued that we will see improvements over time while Patrick believed that we would start to see a lot of things declining. 

• What was the bet they made? 

The bet that was quoted from the text from Kevin Kelly was  “I bet you $1,000 that in the year 2020, we’re not even close to the kind of disaster you describe,” he said. Patrick agreed to the bet because he figured “a thousand bucks would be worth much less in 2020 anyway”.

• How did the bet go in the three areas measured?

• Economic Collapse 

Sale had predicted that there will be economic challenges but it turned outto be a success of new currencies such as Bitcoin. Leaving Kelly to win in this argument.

• Global Environmental Disaster

Kelly envisioned there being a climate change, but Patrick argued that it was hard to dispute that we are at least ‘close to’ global environmental disaster”. Being that it was a disaster Patrick won that argument. 

• The War Between Rich and Poor

Sales argued that there will be a difference in how the money is disbursed in society and a decline, being that this was before the pandemic there were no sufficient conflicts causing this to happen. So to settle it they both were tied. 

 

• Do you agree with the verdict of the judge who settled the bet? Why or why not? 

 I feel as if the verdict of the judge who settled the bet was reasonable being that they took in consideration the three areas measured and weight each point of view and went off facts of what is actually going on within society and that kelly viewpoint on where in society would everything stand was a lot more accurate during the time. 

• What other areas SHOULD the bet have covered? If you were making a similar bet for the NEXT 25 years. What areas would you include for judgment?

The bet should have covered the different technology advancements over the years. Some areas I would include are technology advancements and “the war between the rich and poor” . I feel as if these are two major things that are really a big influence in society today reshaping the ideas that are being presented. 

• What changes do you think the next 25 years will bring? 

I think in the next 25 years we will start to see a lot of technology change with robots running a lot of jobs, flying cars, climate change, different healthcare problems and more viruses and disease.