"I have not allowed my disability to stop me doing most things. My motto is 'there are no boundaries'".
This week, we say farewell to Dr. Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds in scientific history.
Stephen Hawking was a brilliant man who spent a lifetime thinking about science and technology in the future of humanity.
Since his death on March 14th, countless videos and articles have come out about the incredible contributions he made to the sciences.
At times, he seemed to hold a dour view of our species in its present state often comparing human beings to monkeys and
pointing out greed in particular as a detrimental aspect of modern society.
Although Hawking valued his privacy and didn't speak often about politics,
he did occasionally share his fears about the future of human society.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread in 2015, he spoke about the dangers of unchecked capitalism and technology.
Hawking foresaw quite clearly the crossroads humanity is coming to, when it comes to technology and capitalism.
He later expanded on these ideas for a piece in The Guardian, writing:
Stephen Hawking is a man who thought in timescales of billions of years, so for him to say that
this is the most dangerous moment in human history is something that should give us all pause.
Here's a chilling vision of the future from a man who is world-renowned for his ability to analyze the patterns of reality and
extrapolate truths from the sheer complexity of it all.
Hawking can see the way that rapidly advancing technology and the ever-increasing gap
between rich and poor has us hurtling into a system of neo feudalism.
We, the working people of the world are being systematically replaced by robots and artificial intelligence programs
and if we're not careful, then we'll soon find ourselves completely at the mercy of these capitalists and
begging for whatever scraps they made aim to offer us.
This may seem like science fiction, but we see these processes occurring in real time.
Self-driving cars are close on the horizon.
For the first time in history, robots are being used to sew clothes together.
That's millions of jobs disappearing right before our eyes.
Artificial intelligence programs are taking jobs from journalists and designers and countless other white-collar fields
that were historically resilient to automation.
All of this automation and technology should be making life better for the working people. We should be living in more comfort with shorter work days.
But instead, the opposite is unfolding as poverty is on the rise and the rich just keep getting richer and richer.
This is the nature of capitalism, this is what these systems are designed to do.
Capitalism is driven by building profits for capitalists and that means robbing the fruits of our labor
from our hands and from our mouths and funneling into the pockets of a very small number of individuals.
Stephen Hawking was a man who knew the power of human creativity.
He wasn't just an expert on science and technology, he relied on it completely to share his ideas with the world.
Without his high-tech computer voice synthesis system and advanced medical treatments,
Hawking would have been voiceless, perhaps lifeless and he knew as much.
But he didn't want this kind of technology to be reserved only for elites and celebrities like himself.
Speaking to the New York Times in 2011, Hawking made a case for universal health care.
He cited the excellent medical attention he's received from the United Kingdom's socialized health care system.
Let's pause here and just think for a moment about the billions of people who don't have access to this kind of medical care
How many Stephen Hawking's have we lost a treatable diseases?
How many geniuses have been tossed away in the societal trash heap of poverty?
How many contributions to the sciences, to medicine and to the arts have been lost because so many people have never had a chance
to reach their full potential under the greed-fueled wastefulness of capitalism?
Stephen Hawking once said:
This can certainly be applied to the billionaires and capitalists of the world who have the illusion that
they have somehow earned the right to live in idle luxury as the masters and commanders of society.
They live under the illusion that they are the sole inheritors of the riches which we,
the working people of the world built up over centuries of toil and innovation.
It's past time for us to shatter this illusion and seize back the riches of industry and science for the benefit of all of humanity.
Stephen Hawking believed that we still have time.
Dr. Hawking sought earnestly to convince the elites of our world to practice humility and to limit their greed so that our world could have a chance to survive.
But can these elites be convinced and should we be placing the destiny of our world in their hands?
We can sit idly by and beg these billionaires who've seized so much power in this world to be humble and to stifle their greed.
But are they likely to listen?
Have they ever listened to the out cries of the poor and the oppressed and the suffering bulk of humanity?
Can we really expect these oligarchs to simply relinquish their power when they're so close to seizing complete and total domination over all of us?
As the gap between rich and poor opens ever wider and as technology continues to replace us in the workplace,
we are losing what power we have.
The window to leverage our position as workers is closing in around us.
Under capitalism, billionaires hold complete control over the development of robots and artificial intelligence programs and military and policing technology.
They own and operate and manipulate the social media platforms we use for so much of our human interaction and activity.
Their power is growing rapidly just as ours is diminishing day by day.
We must rise up and act quickly and decisively to end capitalism and for this to happen,
we, the working people of the world must unite.
Goodbye, Dr. Hawking.
Thanks in large part to your inspiration, those of us still trapped here on Earth will try to keep reaching for those stars.
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Thanks for watching.
