The New Dark Ages: Open_Notes 1

21st Century: moving into a new dark ages - amplifying trends through design - optimism (architects, designers) - plans, intentions often with unintended consequence - technological interaction with human behaviour - high-tech mediaevalism - nation states weakening, partially supplanted by other forms of power - global institutions, organized crime networks, terrorist networks - moving centers of power - guild-corporate systems - regional-urban confederations forming - regional economics, city-states - information-age military used as a global-internationalized police force to protect city-states (economies, etc.) - nation-states becoming less and less central - democracy allows states to express both its strengths and weaknesses - technology and democracy will not make a peaceful world. -- [based on "The Coming Anarchy, The Ends of the Earth", author Robert D. Kaplan; CBC Futureworld, Apr.11.98 - 1994 Atlantic Monthly article]