Isaac Asimov's ideas should be made into a reality as soon as possible. As the years passed by, the world has been overweight with our population and continues to get fatter, which is simply terrible. We are supposed to have 9 billion people by 2050 if we don't have some sort of regulations with birth control. In some countries where population was starting to get out of control the government or people from other countries have attempted to take control. Examples are China, in that the government has limited each couple to 2 children (used to be one but has become more lenient). India is another example in that help groups from the United States has gone there to give the women sexual education. India is becoming the most populated place on earth with one death equalling almost 3 births. This cool graph I have found a while back shows very interesting statistics about India as well as the rest of the world-->http://www.breathingearth.net/
The only place that has given a good sense of direction with population, women, and education is Japan. But there is a down part to it, their population is actually declining. There is many old people there, mostly living in the country parts of Japan. The population is declining because women don't concentrate on marriage and having children, they concentrate more on education and work. Now, that is not a bad thing, not at all! Japan is also letting more older people (not necessarily old like 70 years old) have a take at education again, letting them pursue more into their area (again) or something new, giving them more opportunities. Japan leads in technology, education, and population control than all other counties in the world, including Europe and the North America. If Isaac wanted to see his ideal place in the 21st century, it would be in Japan - no racism, ageism, or sexism. But he would see the downside to his predictions, that there has to be some sort of equality in education and child birth. Women should get any education they would like, though some sort of child birth rate per woman should be put in place so we don't all die out if we all want to be smarter than the other (which we all strive to be at some point). That would be the only downside to his predictions.
Asimov's humor and anecdotes gets the best of me in his lecture. The way he can put something bad and make it seem trivial or funny makes this lecture much more interesting than what it looked like (a bunch of tiny words :)). And when he can explain something well enough so anyone without knowledge of what he was previously talking about can get it instantly. Asimov starts his lecture with a book to get the audience interested which (in my opinion) works. When explaining about the book he read when he was young called "The Man Who Awoke", he told the main idea of the story. A man who drank his own potion and went to sleep for 5000 years and upon waking up he sees the world is a terrible place. In fact so terrible that he desperately goes back to sleep for 5000 years to see if the world has gotten better. This then eventually leads to his main topic of the world and how it should look like in the future/his predictions. His humor in the lecture gives it a kick, excitement for the audience/reader to keep listening/reading. An example is when he is talking about World War II and the slogans used back then for it was "No more Munich's" but in the future he sees it as "No more 20th centuries" because it was such a bad world 'back then'.
Asimov's lecture shows much synoptic philosophy and critical analysis throughout. Synoptic philosophy is used in the example I have done above with his explanation of the book "The Man Who Awoke". He says: "And he got back to the vault just in time, slammed the door, and took another potion to see if anything new happened five thousand years later still.
That was the first of five stories, but that was the one I always remembered because, you know...they always say...used to say when I was a kid that science fiction was escape literature. They sneered at us. I mean, here are a bunch of rotten kids, usually with pimples on their faces. And with big glasses; especially those big glasses. And also they were snot-nosed kids too smart for their own good. Always going around getting high marks in class." This shows synoptic philosophy because he uses other sources to answer his question/make his predictions. It's almost like a substitute for a specialist, which is needed to answer his answer his answer on the whole, helping it though piece by piece. He uses critical analysis when he lumps racism, ageism, and sexism together to show that all those three together can lead to a pretty boring world. "And one more thing: If we have a world without racism, ageism, sexism, war...it's gonna be a pretty dull world. Here we have lived all through history with a certain amount of excitement and risk in the world, and it's sort of a shame to sort of sit around this careful cold world of the 21st century and thereafter, in which not only is everybody happy, but everyone's very cautious...." He concludes that without those and the boring world, that we should start a Moon colony and they can have their dark ages until the ones on our world teach them a better way and then the cycle begins again with going to a new world.
Overall Asimov's lecture was a very entertaining one. He predicted a better world than what we actually are, he had high standards for us which we as a whole did not meet. The world needs to meet slow down personally, stop the ball and then start to roll it slow again, because obviously, people may not like what they hear. But it will lead us in the right direction, and in Isaac's eyes it would be a good one.
