OK. We’re solidly into the new year (2025). What to worry about? What to ponder? What to write about? I guess I’ll write about what I’m worried about and pondering. Spoilers: politics and climate change aren’t the biggest two.

In no particular order aside from convenience, here are some of the things I’m keeping in consideration in a year that I expect will be the most disruptive in my lifetime so far. And, yes, that includes 9/11 and the Internet Boom and Bust.

I’ll get two of the most popular meme topics out of the way.

Politics
Let’s get the dirty laundry out of the way. The US is not alone in experiencing weird shifts. I am as likely to get my news from the BBC and its European counterparts (DW, France 24), and CBC as I am from CNN. I hope to find good sources in other hemispheres. The world is going weird. Policies are shifting. Alliances are being questioned. There is a lack of leadership as power vacuums are created and new contenders maneuver to fill them. The current US President and his very open shadow government may accelerate the demise of an empire, but they have limited time to do it and do not have total authority regardless of what they think about it. Hope and cope and tune back in for an update in a little less than four years – unless the US Constitution is rewritten, abolished, or ignored.

Climate Change
The climate is changing. Nature didn’t wait for our debate. Deniers delayed the appropriate responses. Now, they get to debate with Nature. Instead of spending $1 for defense against disasters we will be spending at least $7 for recovery – and I suspect that number is low. Put a T behind those dollar signs if that helps put things in perspective. Put a 0 before the T and after the number, because we’re more likely to be dealing in the tens of trillions of dollars range for what’s about to impact us. 

In no particular order:

Social Injustice
The bad news is that because of the Internet we are now aware of social injustices around the world. The good news is that the bad news is less likely to be able to hide. And yet, the change from medieval thinking to global justice is measured in generations and centuries, not years. The US is still effectively resolving the Civil War (aka The War Between The States). The Middle East is the eternal poster child for “never forget”. And yet, a viral meme can change societal awarenesses in a few moments. The struggle is enormous, but it is people changing people, which means it is in our control.

Refugees
Pick your crisis and your worry. People are moving to find better lives, sometimes by choice, too frequently by necessity. People are walking thousands of miles and crossing several borders because that is still better than staying where they were. Fires and floods are eliminating regions, causing migrations to places that may already have issues from infrastructure to sustainability. The lack of a global response to refugee flight is proof that our society has yet to find common values, morals, and goals. Refugee flight is also proof that the need for solutions isn’t academic or merely a political argument. Millions of people are already moving. If they’re denied for too long and too harshly, they may enact solutions the non-refugees disagree with.

Eloi Oligarchs
Meanwhile, from people who have lost everything except for what they can carry, Oligarchs are proudly taking control, acting as if wealth equals intelligence, and accidentally displaying how ignorant they can be. If it wasn’t for luck, how many of them would be just like the rest of us? In this society, money does equal power, these people are addicted to power, and the rest of us are likely to have to deal with their whims then clean up their mess. Seen from the outside, they seem to be reaching unsustainable heights. When they crash back, we’ll be amongst the debris if we survive the shrapnel. A lesson from karate is to let those who are proud of their power beat themselves up. Their way of living is unhealthy, and that may be what brings them back into check.

Pandemic
The pandemic isn’t over. Also, pick your pandemic. Polio might be back? People resist vaccines because they aren’t pristine and perfect? Evidently, even calling something The Black Death is not enough to convince people to protect other people by fighting the bacteria and viruses rather than each other. At the start of the Covid epidemic, one set of researchers called it a ‘practice pandemic’. Covid is a pandemic, more virulent than the flu,  but not as virulent as bubonic plague; yet, it mutates and we can’t predict that it won’t become as dangerous, or more. In the meantime, conservative estimates place the death count at 7 million. Considering imperfect reporting, the total is estimated at 20 million, and it continues to kill, and too many continue to ignore it.

Epic Hack
A few lines of code and the system can crash. Have you been on a voluntary digital detox lately? Leave the phone and computer behind and realize how reliant we are on instant information. Doing business by paper isn’t practical anymore, yet mess up Google for a day and lives will be lost. Even a temporary collapse of Amazon would be a disaster to too many. And yet, we’ve already witnessed outages caused by slightly buggy updates. Ironically, with a big enough hack, the only way for the news to get around may be word-of-mouth in a global-sized game of post office. Chaos can ensue, and it probably will take less than most realize.

Currencies
Basic economies are having their assumptions challenged. The insurance industries are finding that their profit models can’t deal with climate change, political whims, and various disasters. Wars are getting expensive again. Conflicts are as likely to be sanctions instead of weapons. Russia may have gained a respite because of US politics (and they are probably linked), but its assault on Ukraine increasingly makes it look more like a hollow economy. Check back through history and see that military spending has gutted countries and shrunk their currencies. If a major country like the US suddenly lost the world’s confidence, then all currencies may find themselves in crisis. It will probably be survivable, but eliminating social nets and personal savings would be a historic disaster.

Satellites
Satellites are giving us good things. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. It is possible to have too many satellites. Satellites bump into satellites. Incredible coordinating efforts minimize the likelihood, but as more satellites are launched the probability of collision increases. Not all satellites are discarded in the atmosphere when they are no longer needed. Some stagger along, hopefully in graveyard orbits, but at least for now, there’s little management of that cemetery. And then came Starlink, a good idea that is so successful that we’ve accepted the negative impact for astronomers, and an idea so good that their thousands of satellites are being joined by other constellations of satellites. A particularly bad collision could cascade through, creating a cloud of debris that negates our advances in space. Very disruptive and requiring years or decades to clean up the mess.

But these are the big swingers that can change everything in ways we have trouble imagining:

AI
Artificial Intelligence is in everything! Great. I can’t find the Harry Potter quote, but it is a reminder that great does not always mean good. AI is great, but one of my worries is that much of the conversation is about AI as if it is an end point and that nothing can happen until then. Look at humans. Major mistakes can be made by people who think they are intelligent, great. Wars have been fought to counter such consequences. If AI develops autonomous intelligence, there is no reason why it will stop when it equals normal human intelligence or genius intelligence. Why should it stop? We may want it to, but our desires won’t have any power. An AI can emerge at computer speeds instead of human speeds. The possibility of a AI Digital Singularity is increasing, and can happen sooner than anything listed above. On the plus side, AI might also produce solutions to various crises far sooner than we humans would manage. On the icky side, only luck can predict what will happen if a sufficiently capable artificial intelligence gains sufficient control, whether it is intelligent or not.

Aliens (seriously)
Let me finish with something that sounds outlandish, and literally would be. The answer is never aliens, and yet, someday it will be. That day can be closer. We haven’t found them. They haven’t publicly contacted us. Maybe there’s no one else out there, in which it is a great waste of space. Have I hit the major tropes? In reality, within the last several years, our ability to see into the universe has dramatically improved. It may seem like we’ve seen it all, but I keep in mind that astronomers continue to oversubscribe telescope time because there’s so much that’s unseen. The grand photos are magnificent, and yet are frequently of a patch of sky smaller than a grain of rice held at arms’ length. It is foolish to assume that what we’ve seen is the same everywhere. And then, there’s the UFO (check your knee-jerk reaction) and the recent UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). The media continues to treat it with giggles and grins; yet the US Defense Department is finally recognizing that they can’t defend against them. Too many US pilots have seen them. The sensors pick them up, yet we can’t catch or get close to them. The common response is that they’d be from stars far away, yet they may also be a lifeform from here, Earth, but in some unexplored corner or depth or whatever that we’ve missed or overlooked or improperly dismissed. I suspect that if they exist they’d come in peace, if they have that concept. But, whether from here, out there, or some other dimension, we’re more likely to witness them now, and we are unprepared to deal with the disruption.

Conclusion
Well, that certainly feels like a core dump. Unpolished, yet maybe that’s the best way to chronicle and summarize my feelings and thoughts on one day in January 2025. Each topic has bookshelves devoted to it, I am sure. It is impossible to research all of them, but I see a danger in picking one and thinking and planning for only dealing with that one. Our world in now interconnected. Many of the issues are interconnected. Working within blinders can be counterproductive. Refugees are a political crisis, but they can be caused by a political crisis and create a climate crisis, and a pandemic, and may convince someone to hack the system in protest. 

Whew. I am glad it is a sunny day, though chilly. As one friend asked; “How do you keep all of this in your head at the same time?” I figure everyone is doing this, or something similar. Everyone has many things to keep in mind. Some people have three jobs, kids, health issues, and uncertain housing. My thoughts may be existential and academic, but there are thousands of homeowners trying to recover from fires and floods who know what really matters in their life: an overwhelming list of unmet necessities. I’ll be thankful relieving a bit of internal mental pressure by delivering this, then getting ready for a dance. We may have much to worry about, but while I’m here, I’ll dance.

PS One other consequence of thinking through so many things is my Exodus/Genesis science fiction series: Firewatcher and Fire Race. See? It does all come together.