“We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because
they do not pay a dividend.” — John Maynard Keynes, 1933 “Let’s
build a smarter planet.” This is IBM’s inspirational slogan,
intoned as a benediction at the end of their 2010
advertisements. They do not say, “Let’s make a smarter
adaptation to our planet Earth, out of which we were created and
by which we are sustained.” It is the planet that is
insufficiently smart, not its evolutionary prize-winning, big-
brained, star tenant. What makes IBM think that the planet is
dumb? Well, obviously the mentally challenged Earth does not
know how to keep on accommodating our continual economic growth,
so we must redesign it with that remedial instruction in mind.
For example, our growth requires fossil fuels, but when we burn
a lot of them the resulting atmospheric CO2 slows down the
radiation of heat back to outer space, heating up the stupid
planet and causing dumb climate change. It would be easier to
radiate heat energy out and make more thermal room for