Between Growth and Degrowth
Can we rethink our economic assumptions to make a better world?
When I was a teenager I watched a LOT of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’ve revisited the show a few times since then; it still holds up, although its vision of the distant future has not aged very well.
According to this delightfully detailed Wikipedia page, the events of the series take place between the years 2364 and 2370. Many of the technological advances that the show’s creators thought would represent three centuries of technological progress are already dated today.
We have touchscreen computers and handheld devices that are in many ways more advanced than the tools that Picard and Riker used. Alexa and Google Assistant aren’t far off from the ship’s voice-activated computer; I’d imagine that AI technology will make such a thing possible in the very near future, 200 years ahead of schedule. On the other hand, technologies like the holodeck and interstellar travel seem very far off, if not impossible.
One of the things that seems most futuristic about the Star Trek universe is its economy. Whereas pretty much everything in 21st-century society is measured in money and the production and acquisition of stuff is considered by many of us to be the most important thing we can do, that’s not how it works in…
