Matias Laporte

Ayer terminé de leer este libro de Scott Adams, creador de Dilbert, la tira cómica que supongo que conoce la mayoría de ustedes (y si no la conocen, debieran).  La idea del libro es hacer predicciones sobre el futuro, siempre plagadas de sarcasmo y humor, como es usual en sus tiras. Hace predicciones sobre los temas más variados: el envejecimiento, tecnología, vida en otros planetas, democracia y capitalismo, relaciones sexuales, trabajo, marketing, malos y buenos trabajos en el futuro, “cosas sociales”, y cosas que no van a cambiar (las aerolineas y las bicicletas).

Las predicciones (que son unas 65 en total), suelen ser formuladas en una frase o dos, luego de una amplia introducción “teórica” y explicación de cada una de ellas. Algunas son completamente delirantes, y otras parecen ser muy posibles (si es que ya no ocurrieron ;)).

En el resto del post hago algunos extractos (todos en inglés) del libro que me llamaron la atención… para que lo tengan presente, fue escrito en 1997.

En el capítulo “The Future Of Democracy And Capitalism”

THE RISE OF THE HAIRY REASONERS

Today, if you’re a stunned and confused citizen -and who isn’t- you have two choices regarding voting:

1. Make uninformed choices because it’s all too confusing.
2. Be a bad citizen.

I think everyone has a nagging feeling that democracy has some bugs, but there’s a complete vacuum of ideas about how to fix. […] I predict the vacuum will be filled by what I call the “Hairy Reasoners”.

In the future, voters will wish that some well-informed smart person would just tell them who and what to vote for. That way citizens won’t feel like their vote is a waste of time. I predict that this need will be filled with what I will call Hairy reasoners, so called because I imagine them as people with good reasoning skills and bad hair. (People with good reasoning skills tend to have bad hair. Nobody knows why.)

Prediction 26: In the future, voters will be so baffled that they’ll want smart people with bad hair to tell them what to do.

[…]

With the rise of Hairy Reasoners, democracies will experience a decade in which good judgment and informed opinions influence government. People will feel that their vote has regained its lost value. But after a few years of that nonsense, large companies will realize that it doesn’t take much money to bribe a Hairy Reasoner. Then we’ll see Hairy Reasoners wearing beer company shirts and explaining why it’s a good idea for every citizen to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. But it will be nice until then.

Creo que podemos cambiar tranquilamente “Hairy Reasoner” por “blogger” y queda bastante bien. Los bloggers están ocupando la difusión de la información que antes ocupaban los diarios, la televisión, la radio. Mucha gente prefiere hacerle caso a los bloggers que a otras personas, y no sólo en política, sino en muchos aspectos de la vida. Fíjense la cantidad de comentarios en blogs visitados (no en este :P) que le piden al creador del post ayuda con respecto a algún tema, le piden su opinión, etc. Y también están los bloggers que llevan puesta la camiseta de una compañía cervecera y explican por qué es buena idea fumar tres atados por día =).

En el capítulo “The Future Of  Gender Relations”

WOMEN IN CHARGE

Prediction 28: In the future, women will run the world in all democratic countries.

I base this prediction on two facts that cannot be disputed:

1. Women already control the world.
2. 2Who’s going to stop them?

Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I catually receive my mail there. We men like to think we’re in charge because most of the top jobs in business and government are held by men, but I have a shocking statistical insight for you men -THOSE ARE OTHER MEN.[…]

I have about as much in common with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company as I have with my cat.[…]

Someone might argue that men have access to the top jobs whereas women do not. There’s some truth to that, but the mathematical fact is, 99.99999999 percent of all men can’t get those top jobs, either. There aren’t enough of those jobs to go around. The rest of us men live in a wolrd that is ruled by women, as I will explain for those of you who hadn’t noticed.

What evidence do I have that women rule the world? Take a look at the world and ask yourself how it would be different if men were REALLY in charge. Look at the things that men want most, then check to see if the world is organized to provide those things or to limit them. Logically, if men made the rules, the world would be organized to provide them with the things they want most.

Men want sex. If men ruled the world, they could get sex anywhere, anytime. Restaurants would give you sex instead of breath mints on the way out. Gas stations would give sex with every fill-up. Banks would give sex to anyone who opened a checking account.

But it doesn’t work that way, at least not at my bank (having your own “personal banker” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.)

Instead, for the most part, sex is provided by women if they feel like it… which they usually don’t. If a heterosexual gay wants sex, he has to hold doors, buy flowers, act polite, lift heavy objects, kill spiders, pretend to be interested in boring things, and generally act like a complete wuss. Can anyone think men designed that system?

If men were smart enough to figure out what’s oing on, they might be tempted to use their superior size and strenght to dominate women. But women are too clever to let that happen. Thousands of years ago, women figured out they could disguise their preferences as “religion” and control gullible men that way. In one part of the world, I imagine the conversation went like this:

Husband: I’ll be back in an hour. I’m going to go covet my neighbor’s wife.

Wife: You can’t do that.

Husband: Why not?

Wife (thinking fast): Um… God said so. He’s an omnipotent being. If you don’t obey him you’ll burn in hell.

Husband: Whoa, that was a close one. Thanks for warning me… How about if I kill her husband first?

Wife: Ooh, bad news on that, too.

Prediction 29: In the future, religious groups will get mad at me, thus boosting my book sales.

Religion is only one of the ways women control men. It runs much deeper thant that. […]

Manners -> Courtship

Under our current system of courtship, men do most of the date-asking, and women get to squish men’s fragile egos like Fudgsicles on a Los Angeles freeway. I’m reasonably certain that men did not invent this system.

If  it were up to men, all women would be equipped with special hormonal monitors to tell men such vital information as when it’s a cry free time of the month and when arousal is highest. Then we’d know when it’s a good time for courting and when it’s a better idea to run some errands. This would be a huge time-saver for everyone, but obviously nobody consulted men about how courtship should work.

Qué se puede decir al respecto :P… no mucho jajajaja.

En el capítulo “Good And Bad Jobs Of The Future”

In the future, most people’s jobs will involve scrambling around like frightened chipmunks trying to find the next paycheck in an endless string of unrelated short-term jobs. But since “Frightened Chipmunk” doesn’t look very impressive on a business card, people willl cal themselves entrepreneurs, consultants, and independent contractors.

Web 2.0, HELLO?!

NEWS IN THE FUTURE

Prediction 52: In the future, everyone will be a news reporter.

People will have access to software that constantly combs the Internet for “small” news that is relevant to them. The software will learn to filter out reports from Induhviduals (nota: así llama a la gente estúpida :P) who constantly post incorrect information. You will still get misleading reports quite often, but that’s no different from today.[…]

This new model depends on people being willing to take the time to put information on the Net without the benefit of payment. Why will people do that? They will do it because that’s our most basic human nature:

People like to talk more than they like to listen.

That’s why our mouths are much bigger than the combined sizes of our ear holes. (I realize that statement makes no sense, yet it’s strangely compelling.)

It is not only unnecessary to pay people to tell you what they know, it’s almost impossible to stop them from doing it.

Nuevamente tenemos a los bloggers presentes en esta predicción =).

Otra cosa interesante del libro, es el último capítulo. Al empezar, el autor advierte que va a dejar de lado la seriedad (excepto por las tiras cómicas que intercala con el texto, algo que hace a lo largo de todo el libro), y nos explica su filosofía de vida, cómo ve el las cosas, cómo cree que las cosas se pueden ver desde muchos diferentes puntos de vista, pero sin “chocar” con lo que son en realidad. Nos intenta enseñar a ser más abiertos de mente y no tan estructurados, y es un capítulo que parece sacado de un libro de autoayuda (sin embargo, me rompió la cabeza… durante 5′, no me suele durar mucho lo que dicen los libros).

Si pueden conseguirlo de alguna manera, les recomiendo que lo lean. Es un gran libro, y en una librería virtual muy conocida de Argentina, está la versión a español a 22$, algo que me pareció muy barato.