New Taboos by John Shirley

a complete rethinking of not only economic probability but also the use of money.
    Money is purely conceptual, but we act as if it’s got a life of its own. We forget that it is a creation of humanity and it can be made to serve humanity as a whole. When that system is enabled there will never have to be another recession. The connectivity that put the Eurozone at risk from the Greek economic meltdown can also protect it—
if
we incorporate complexity theory and computer modeling. Or so we’re told by Len Fisher, a physicist at the University of Bristol. “Cascades of failure may be controlled by changing the nature and strength of the links between various parts of the networks,” says Fisher. I envision a computer that would have access to a pool of funds that it would use to prevent crises.
    But yes—there will be catastrophe between here and there. I believe that catastrophe will spur social transformation. We’ll have astounding technological advancement against a backdrop of grievous social inequity and quite possibly increasing barbarity,
for a period,
until we are forced by waves of crises to come to terms with the consequences of developing a civilization blindly. Wars, plagues, radical separation of privileges, famines due to climate change and other environmental consequences, will force humanity to accept Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth” concept as very real.
    In short, we will be forced by the dire situation we find ourselves in, to stop whining about world government. Only world government—one committed to human rights (including the rights of women, which are integral to population control) and environmental justice—can deal with these kinds of international crises. World government will not mean anyone gives up their culture, except the bits that reject human rights; it will not be a great gray conformity; there will still be at least as much national sovereignty, for most issues, as states in Europe have in the EU. And remember that the EU, a fuzzy foreshadowing of world government, is in a very early stage. It’s having problems, and that was inevitable—it’s still evolving! But it does have the right idea. Toward the end of the twenty-first century the world will move toward a framework of consensus on some basic rules regarding population growth, the environment, and access to technology. Empowering Third World people with education and technology will give them a step toward the resources and coping ability they’ll need to survive.
    I believe we’ll achieve a collective progressive consciousness as a result of the revelatory shocks we’ll endure in the next fifty years. We’ll learn we can’t treat Spaceship Earth as a party cruise ship.
    Thank you. Any questions?

“PRO IS FOR PROFESSIONAL”
    JOHN SHIRLEY INTERVIEWED BY TERRY BISSON
    You’re tough to pigeonhole, John. You are celebrated as a postmodernist in McCaffrey’s
Storming the Reality Studio,
but you are generally published as a genre writer. Is there a contradiction? Or is this a postmodernist disguise?
    I never felt like a postmodernist in the philosophical sense, but I can appreciate its forward-looking sensibility and its relativism. I believe in having a moral and ethical compass, but I’m down on dogmatism.
    I’m a genre writer partly because I make my
living
as a writer, and that’s where the market was for a guy like me when I started. Also, science fiction seemed to me to be in line with the surrealism I admired in art. The genre has its appeal—it provides a kind of literary computer program, where you can model alternative societies and various social futures, and see what might work and what might break down, and what the unintended consequences of trends might be. And it seemed to be a place for outsiders to find a role—and it was. Look,they even took Terry Bisson in! And, for example, Alice Sheldon