The separation of the economy from the state, and the full emergence of a non-governmental, non-commerical cultural-education “third sector” is the best possible future. You’re welcome to check out the flags and maps at my website.

Heck, if we can bring this to manifestation, the worlds of fiction will change too–in a similar way that the Federation-Klingon relationship changed to reflect the real world end of the Cold War. The Threefold Republic will bring social conditions which are even better than the Federation, with its uber-Scandinavian social democratic fusion of government, economy, and culture, however positive it is portrayed. The Threefold Republic is a whole step above even the Scandinavian Model, which is admirable in some regards, but which is stultified by a one-sided “Governmentalism” of the economic and cultural-education sectors. I hope that in our lifetime I and my colleagues will evoke at least one Threefold Republic in our world. Then, as our healing impulse expands, in the fictive world, we would see the real world mirrored in a “Threefold Federation of Planets.”

The idea of travelling to another star system is unlikely.

As for the fuddy duddy view of the future on Earth, it is the minds we all have that prevent such a future from existing. After all, human history lived a long time with out fossil fuel resources, and bare in mind that these are currently in decline.

Trek was a convient view of the future which a lot of us find it hard to stop dwelling on it as some sort of possible path.

There was a initiative to go to the moon by around about this time, by the previous American government, but it failed due to cost, and the lack of interest by political circles. Even the last man who stepped off the surface at Taurus Littrow moon valley has some sort of hubris about America’s lost space agenda. He’ll pretend he doesn’t, but deep down he wants to see American Astronauts go back and create a positive future, and relieve his name from the history books of being the last person to climb the ladder aboard Challenger and take off.

There certainly is plenty of room to criticize Star Trek’s vision of the future. For one thing, it is very sympathetic to the idea that technology will solve social problems. We know however, that we already have enough food to feed the world, for example, but people still go hungry. We could provide health care to everyone, but don’t. Technology that could make life easier, just facilitates the extraction of productivity from us.

Star Trek presumes a society where everyone is equal and nobody needs money, but we don’t see much of how that would work. We do however, see lots of military heirarchy. The Enterprise, the Federation’s starfleet, and every other species they encounter seems to have the same social structure, at least for exploring space. The one notable exception, the Borg, are completely equal but also murderous automatons.

I still love Star Trek. But my hope for the future is less about a United Federation of Planets, and more about small communities networked by mutual aid, to meet the needs of all people. And as romantic as the idea of exploring space may be, I hope we can rediscover a love and respect for this Earth we call home.

But, if you’re talking about the world from a social justice perspective, things are amazing there as well. Sure, we can bemoan about little things that we have yet to improve on… but, for pity’s sake… 50 years ago, women could barely leave the house or get an education. Today, it’s possible for women to work in any industry that they want and support themselves without having to rely on getting a husband to make ends meet. 50 years ago, it was scandalous to have an interracial marriage. Today, it’s celebrated that we are making gay marriage legal. The article mentions ‘torture’… as if the author even knows what torture is. Yeah, waterboarding and playing Justin Bieber on continuous loop is a horrible way to treat a prisoner. But, for Christ’s sake… torture used to mean ripping teeth out with rusty pliers and driving bamboo splinters under fingernails, or worse.

The author talks about us ‘not being able to afford health care’… when the idea of universal health care would have literally been laughable 50 years ago. The fact that we’re even having a discussion about it on a national level is leagues beyond anything that we could have conceived of in the past. And don’t even get me started on how corporations screwed over workers and polluted the environment 50 years ago.

Don’t compare where the world is to your ideals, when trying to determine whether we’re advancing or not. Compare it to where we’ve come from.

I think one of the greatest changes between the 1960s and today was that we are no longer believing that centralized institutions are going to come to our rescue. This is no longer a “mainframe” world. It’s a “web world.” Likewise, we are seeing from-the-ground-up groups working on changing the world. One world-changing app, one web site, one invention at a time.

I would like to encourage everyone who wishes to see that positive universe foreseen in Star Trek to join us at GlobalCommit.org. We have opportunities to organize through social media, to create applications using big data, and to help document and track the issues of our world today, and work to making it a better place in the future.