"The Frontier is Everywhere" transcript

The following is the transcript from the video, "The Frontier is Everywhere".

We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little terraqueous globe as the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; are we to venture out into space?

By the time we are ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us; necessity will have changed us. We are... an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses; more confident, farseeing, capable and prudent. 

For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation, and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered, by the end of the next century, and the next millennium? 

Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system, and beyond, will be unified, by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the universe, come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross, before we found our way.

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David Brooks is the judge of the Sidney Prize, which looks at excellent essays and writings throughout the past year. In these two articles, he announces the winning essays:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/opinion/28brooks.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks

 

McKinsey has looked at the process of urbanisation currently ongoing, and has invited experts to give their views on it. 

http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/cities

 

Barry Schwartz looks at practical wisdom in our time. This could very well be another point in a transition/revolution in the way we think about the world and the place of humanity in it. 

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/ted-barry-schwa/

Comparisons between different countries

I want to compare the experiences of Denmark, The Netherlands, Finland, and Singapore.

I was reading a recent issue of Monocle, which included a soft power index. Small nations, such as Denmark, The Netherlands and Finland all rank ahead of Singapore, which I thought was rather curious. On Singapore, there was a comment "it's hard selling your soft power brand when people are not sure what it means to be Singaporean". 

Interesting enough, the 3 soft power power of these countries are facilitated by a strong design brand, and Denmark and The Netherlands used to have liberal immigration policies, only to have them tightened in the last few years, along with recent episodes of intolerant attitudes.

Thinking out loud.