August 3rd,
11:00 am to 1:00 pm
Crouch
End Broadway
(near
Hornsey Town Hall),
London
N8 9JJ
When
we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man
suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring
contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned
to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish,
and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and
sisters...” -
Martin Luther King
Scientific
and technological advances have been enormous. Thanks to
breakthroughs in computers and the internet, millions of people
around the globe routinely exchange live, video conversations with
one another. In medicine, replacing damaged or diseased parts of the
human body has become commonplace. In biology, scientists have mapped
the human genome and are well on their way to understanding the
structure of the brain. When it comes to transport, it is relatively
easy to jet around the world, while spacecraft are now being designed
to take tourists into orbit. New technology have dramatically
improved the acquisition of knowledge, the storage of information,
and dissemination of it at incredible high speed.
Yet
there is a glaring discrepancy between these scientific advances and
the social institutions that should ensure that they are used for the
benefit of humanity. Despite great progress in modern medicine, vast
numbers of people receive no medical treatment or, at best, inferior
medical care. The internet's ability to transmit knowledge, culture,
and understanding around the world is employed primarily to
distribute mindless, shallow entertainment and peddle commercial
products. The ravages of climate change are ignored and instead,
corporations roll out plans to further destroy the environment
through additional extraction and use of fossil fuel. Stimulating
consumer demand through the latest advertising techniques, capitalist
corporations churn out a vast number of quickly-discarded throw-away
gadgets whose manufacture fills the air, the water, and the soil with
dangerous contaminants. Drawing upon the science of robotics,
business is beginning the displacement of millions of workers,
condemning them to unemployment and poverty rather than celebrate
leisure and shorter working hours. While governments press into
service the latest scientific and technological knowledge to spy on
the public, as well as to produce new weapons and other high-tech
means of destroying millions of lives in war.
Capitalist
greed has stunted our imaginations. The real question is whether
people can muster the political will to reshape society to meet the
challenges of today and tomorrow.
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