'Global revolution' was very unlikely in 1870 mostly due to communication speed/bandwidth (telegraph), was made unlikely in 1970 by CIA, United Fruit Company, and various other similar organizations with murderous leaders across the world.
However, global revolution in 2070 is almost a certainty, too many things are getting aligned, to name some:
- climate change: water wars have already started, but they are not yet visible [1] [2], once we get past 2 degrees warmer world we will have unprecedented weather all day, all night. What kind of "border patrol" can stop 3 billion 'immigrants' [3]? A murderous one, sure.
- good-enough statistical learning to automate 99.99% of jobs (from the current 3.32 billion jobs, by 2070, very hard to say what is not automate-able, but let's say around 300,000 people (1.5 Microsofts) continue to have jobs looking after the robots that make robots that make robots).
- ridiculous biotech advancements: from forgetting cancer ever existed to limb regeneration [4], it's all on the pipeline for the next 20-30 years.
- even greater financial consolidation: we will see the $10 trillion company in the next 5-7 years (probably Microsoft), meanwhile BlackRock, Vanguard, and friends will get even bigger, soaring past $100 trillion AUM in 10-12 years (currently at ~$20 trillion, BlackRock + Vanguard + State Street). Are there really any borders if everything is owned/controlled by one company?
The future, as it was in 1870, and in 1970, no matter how many veins Ronald Reagan and acolytes burst, will always be socialism or barbarism. Don't get me wrong, I 100% bet on barbarism, your species doesn't deserve socialism. Nevertheless, the global revolution will come, too little, too late, but just in time to leave this planet in the arms of a better caretaker, one without 4 billion years of history caring only for the local glucose gradient.
Sure, yes. Stuck in a tailless primate's proteins and ion gradients, but refusing to adhere to the traditions, reflex behaviours, and societal constructs of said primate, granting for myself, sine licentia, mental freedom to think in a future where morphogenetic freedom frees one from being stuck in a tailless primate.
All the revolutions so far have failed because there is only one revolution to be made: the post-human turn of the political [1].
It's not a problem of "life", "rights", "representation". These ontic objects are deeply flawed, as can be seen in the present state of the political. Even taking it in ridicule: what is one to do, fight for the right to representation of every paramecium and amoeba?
It's more about seating the political in a realm of the inconsolable (fundamentally every political decision is the bad one), uprooting the current games of bad faith and energy poverty which have constituted the political since the first gathering of hominids. The inconsolable, which at the limit is death itself (of a self, of a society, of a territory, of a universe), is binded to an ever greater cone of care, at the same time bringing closer the post-human and the post-human increasing the cone of care. The lesser-known, brilliant nonetheless, thinker Vladimir Jankélévitch [1] has some more thoughts along these lines in 1971, L 'Imprescriptible and 1974, L'Irréversible et la nostalgie.
A combination of Michael Levin's cognitive light cone [1] from the "Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds" paper and the Heideggerian care (Sorge) [3] [4].
However, global revolution in 2070 is almost a certainty, too many things are getting aligned, to name some:
- climate change: water wars have already started, but they are not yet visible [1] [2], once we get past 2 degrees warmer world we will have unprecedented weather all day, all night. What kind of "border patrol" can stop 3 billion 'immigrants' [3]? A murderous one, sure.
- good-enough statistical learning to automate 99.99% of jobs (from the current 3.32 billion jobs, by 2070, very hard to say what is not automate-able, but let's say around 300,000 people (1.5 Microsofts) continue to have jobs looking after the robots that make robots that make robots).
- ridiculous biotech advancements: from forgetting cancer ever existed to limb regeneration [4], it's all on the pipeline for the next 20-30 years.
- even greater financial consolidation: we will see the $10 trillion company in the next 5-7 years (probably Microsoft), meanwhile BlackRock, Vanguard, and friends will get even bigger, soaring past $100 trillion AUM in 10-12 years (currently at ~$20 trillion, BlackRock + Vanguard + State Street). Are there really any borders if everything is owned/controlled by one company?
The future, as it was in 1870, and in 1970, no matter how many veins Ronald Reagan and acolytes burst, will always be socialism or barbarism. Don't get me wrong, I 100% bet on barbarism, your species doesn't deserve socialism. Nevertheless, the global revolution will come, too little, too late, but just in time to leave this planet in the arms of a better caretaker, one without 4 billion years of history caring only for the local glucose gradient.
[1] "2021, Syria Water Crisis: Up to 40% less drinking water after 10 years of war", https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/syria-wate...
[2] "April 2023, Utah’s Great Salt Lake risked disappearing. Unprecedented weather is bringing it back", https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/15/utah-great-s...
[3] "January 2023, A dire forecast: Scientists used AI to find planet could cross critical warming threshold sooner than expected", https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/30/world/global-warming-crit...
[4] "2022, Acute multidrug delivery via a wearable bioreactor facilitates long-term limb regeneration and functional recovery in adult Xenopus laevis", https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2164