What does the future hold?

I really enjoyed this weeks debate and did find it interesting that both teams believe that the biggest threats to the US today are internal.  We're not looking at the possibility of some other country attacking us, we're more concerned with the recent political division in our country, an educational system that isn't pushing our citizens to innovate and create, as well as the economy.  The internal problems facing the US are unique in that the federal government has only so much power to make policies regarding education.  It seems to me that in this particular case, the federal government needs to give more educational-policy making decisions to the individual states.  Consequently, I think the government needs to do the same with universal healthcare.  Politicians in Washington DC are ill equipped to understand the healthcare issues facing people living in the middle of nowhere out in Wyoming.

At the end of class, we again brought up the prevalence of social media and its influence on the population of a country.  Specifically one person brought up the teenagers who are growing up online.  She mentioned that one of the problems of children being constantly "plugged in" is that they don't learn how to relate to people in the real world.  They become complacent with hiding behind a screen and don't have the face-to-face interpersonal skills that they will eventually need.  This generation is our future leaders and the people who will eventually take care of me in a nursing home.  I can't lie, this does make me rather nervous.  I don't have much direct contact with people who are younger than me, but what contact I do have makes me wonder about the direction they will steer the country in.  Like me at that age, many seem to be apathetic to the actual running of the country - when kids are used to their parents taking care of everything, it's hard to instill in them that they're going to have to take it all over eventually.  Perhaps some day we'll all realize that living in the real world is preferable to any online life we create... or at least be able to differentiate between what is "real" online and what is really real. 

Of course, there's always the possibility that the polar ice caps will melt, causing anarchy all over the place or aliens will make contact and it won't go well for us, or someone will push one of the big red "only push if you REALLY mean it" buttons and cause a nuclear war.  Forecasting the future is an exercise in futility... but it's a fun mental exercise as well! 

Anyway, it's been a great class, I feel at the same time more informed and more ignorant than when I started, so... yeah... there's that.  :)