I called 2023 a "Low Key Terrible Year". 2024 seems to be the opposite- it wasn't low key. Instead, it was the year we opened up the floodgates and realized how bad things were.
Everyone in the US is focussed on the Presidential election of 2024. My own $0.11 is that both parties tried very hard to lose this election, and the Democrats were better at that. So we end up with Donald Trump, the sequel. I contend that the US is strong enough to survive bad politicians and bad Presidents, and we were getting a bad President no matter what.
And it's not just the election- monopolies are gaining too much power, the debt continues to spiral out of control, we still have wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Palestine. South Korea is having an existential crisis. A CEO for United Health Care was gunned down, and some people are cheering his murderer. To say that there are problems is understating things.
But we're acknowledging it. There's a reason so many incumbent parties (not just the US, but the UK, South Korea, France, Japan, India) lost power in the elections in 2024. People are not happy with the status quo. They say they first step to fixing the problem is acknowledging that the problem exists. In 2024, the World shouted that there was a problem. 2025 starts the long process of trying to make things better. Will the replacements be any better? *shrug*.
I look to science and tech to improve the world, and I admit- AI confuses me. It seemingly costs a fortune both in money and energy needs, and in theory the end result is a world where thousands of people not only lose their current jobs, but cannot find replacement jobs. I don't see how this makes things better. But other technologies- in medicine, in energy- give me hope for the future.
I would say this- 2024 was the year we put a spotlight on the problems. It's ugly and it's necessary. The next step is trying to fix the problems.
