Mon 28 Jan 2008
Big ol’ What If premise: let’s presume that some affliction — say, a viral pandemic — dooms every human on the planet to permanent blindness within a few months of the spread of the affliction. The complete failure of every human eyeball on the planet, accurately predicted but unstoppable.
Could civilization effectively brace itself for the loss of sight? How would we prepare? What would we have to give up?
Posted by Josh Millard4 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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I don’t know if we could prepare, but I’m pretty sure we’d cope. We already have all the mass-media in place (internet-braille translators, radio, braille versions of books), but would we be that interested in what happens two towns over anymore? Our view of the world would contract significantly with the drop in vehicular transportation. I’d say we’d all go back to small city states, with only a few intrepid Marco Polos venturing outside their own home towns.
Things we’d lose: television, movies, intercontinental travel, daylight working hours, fashion (except tactile, maybe), and optometrists would commit mass suicide.
Ooo… interesting. I think all our resources would go to: food production and distribution, mass transportation, and working on technology to help us “see” through sonar-esque technology/education. Have you ever heard of this kid? I think we’d adapt to be able to “see” through clicks.
But think about the logistics involved with food. I suppose once you get all the ingredients (and pesticides, seeds, etc.) labeled with braille it wouldn’t be so bad.
No amount of bracing would be sufficient. How could farmers grow the corn without the fertilizer which they couldn’t get because there are no drivers, which is no big deal, because there isn’t enough fuel, since there is no merchant marine fleet to bring the fuel….
Jose Saramago’s novel Blindness is written with this exact premise – people begin to spontaneously go blind. In the novel blindness is obviously a metaphor, but (without wanting to give anything away) his prognosis for humanity is none too cheery, and things rapidly head towards a Hobbesian dystopia. It’s an excellent book, if you can get past his stylistic quirks and you have an appetite for allegory. (Day of the Triffids also used the basic premise of humanity going mostly blind, but it’s not really a book I’d recommend.)
I agree that gathering food, producing energy, etc, would have to be vastly reworked in a completely blind world, and it seems very likely that a lot of people would die until the human population reached a vastly lower carrying capacity based on a vastly diminished industrial agricultural capability. After that stabilized, though, I don’t think there’s anything that would prevent the remaining blind humans from dominating the earth once again with our big brains.