Week 3

First I'll talk about the reading from Cornish. Wild cards are significant surprises/events that occur and have important consequences. These wild cards can dramatically impact the events that will follow as well as individuals feelings on the future. Wild cards can be positive or negative and can be personal or something that impacts the world. Examples would be loosing a job vs. inheriting money as well as Hurricane Katrina vs. a world peace agreement.

We all have expectations for the future and wild cards will certainly impact our expectations. For the most part, people think about the future in a personal manner - EX: when I graduated high school I already planned to finish college and go right into grad school (assuming I was admitted). But in this class we are learning to think about the future in general. Even when we talk in a larger scope we can still see how an invention or some future event could impact our lives.

Cornish mentions in the reading that wild cards can also be important for companies to look at. I think that wild cards are certainly something to consider but shouldn't drive the strategy and plans for your company since wild cards are exactly what they sound like - something with a low probability of happening or something that is unpredictable. It makes more sense to look at scenario/quadrant analysis in conjunction with wild cards.

The reading goes on to discuss major events such as the cold war, September 11th, and Pearl Harbor among others. Further, there is a discussion on future catastrophes as well as future benestrophes (positive things that would happen - like a happiness pill). The interesting thing is that there is more controversy on benestrophes than on catastrophes because not everyone agrees on what is a "good" thing - aka some people don't think that a happiness pill is a positive thing.

In the first reading from Brockman, Richard Dawkins is pondering if Moore's Law or something like it can be applied to DNA information technology. He decides to use money (taking into account inflation) as a benchmark for measuring growth. He has determined that the doubling time is 27 months (while Moore's law is 18 months). He dubs his discovery as "Son of Moore's Law" since Moore's law had a large influence on his discovery of this.

In the second reading from Brockman, Nancy Etcoff discusses mental health. She starts with the possibility that world nutrition has had an impact in the rise in cases (less Omega 3 fatty acids). There is also a growing concern that "psychiatric disorders will increase substantially across the globe". Psychiatric disorders are not caused by one thing, it is a combination of the environment and your genes. So this makes me think that if we can control our environments we might be able to reduce the likelihood of people developing psychiatric disorders - but then this gets into big brother stuff. We could control the plants we have in the area, the food that is offered, etc. But we can't control what happens at home and in each individuals personal life - its just taking it too far. Later the reading dives deeper into brain science and its impact on psychiatric disorders. Further she discusses Freudian theory vs. Darwinian medicine, the future of talk therapy, NASA wearables that signal different emotions, computers that can identify our feelings/emotions, and ultimately - will psychiatrists be needed if our clothing/computers can identify the exact medicine we need?