Giftedness and Talent in the 21st Century

the Life Trajectories of the Gifted and Talented
from runaway technology always loom on the horizon (Ravetz, 2010; Tonn &
Stiefel, 2012). For example, the unprecedented prosperity generated by the digital
revolution, termed the second machine age by Brynjolfsson and McAffee (2014),
is flowing into the hands of a few while the wages of the many are stagnating and
unemployment is growing. These harmful effects can derive from accidental misuse
of new technology, unanticipated implications of the application of new technology,
or unethical, exploitative applications by bright but unscrupulous individuals and
groups.
Farther out on the time horizon a more devastating problem might arise from
unpredictable developments in artificial intelligence. According to Bostrom (2014),
humanity lacks sufficient long-range vision to guide the development of potentially
powerful artificial intelligence innovations toward the betterment of future lives.
Instead, short-range profit seeking drives artificial intelligence developments
and future advances in this area could spin out of control as increasingly clever
artificial minds, unguided by ethics, outpace the development of our own cognition.
Consequently, rapid advances in new technologies potentially represent both macroopportunities
and macroproblems.
Examples of Macroproblems
Resource depletion. The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico foreshadowed another
pressing macroproblem – a looming shortage of resources such as hydrocarbons,
minerals, fresh water, and arable land (see Daly & Farley, 2010; Friedrichs, 2013;
Klare, 2012; Prior, Giurco, Mudd, Mason, & Behrisch, 2012; Rockström et al.,
2014). Klare (2012) illustrated ways in which these shortages are encouraging
extraction industries to take ever-bigger risks such as deep-water drilling and mining
in dangerous regions because easily accessible resources are disappearing quickly.
In the case of oil and gas extraction, the shortages are encouraging a frenzied chase
for “unconventional hydrocarbons” such as those found in the tar sands of Western
Canada and the difficult-to-release natural gas deposits that are being accessed
through hydraulic fracturing. These extractive processes are far more damaging
to the environment than conventional oil and natural gas extraction, and those
processes were dirty enough. Consequently, the energy industry is causing far more
devastating environmental damage than ever before, and this damage includes the
rapid acceleration of climate change (see the next macroproblem).
The potential for dangerous international conflicts over territory and resources
also is rising due to the shortages. For example, nations are saber rattling and
building up their military capacities in anticipation of conflicts over oil and gas
resources in Southeast Asian waters and in the Arctic Ocean, which is being made
more accessible to drilling due to climate change. In addition, wealthy nations such
as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are buying up enormous tracts of
arable land in third-world countries in order to ensure their own food supplies at the
expense of the impoverished populations in those nations. International tensions are
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