Extrapolation

Why do so many people have the ability/desire to forecast the future of things to a certain point, like convergence of communications technologies, and then fail to take it all the way, to really ask the pertinent question, which is where it is ALL going? It's like they see an always connected future as a place where people are still individuals but can message each other, talk, and get information instantly. They stop there. They don't start thinking that the concept of individualism might fade altogether, as human intelligences become the neurons in a larger consciousness a level up the chain. Maybe they do think this way and just don't find it profitable to talk about, being such a foreign concept or something that is still a ways off. I don't know. Certainly there are people who extrapolate a given topic of discourse to its logical conclusion, but the vast majority, even those supposedly expert at predicting the future, at conjuring up speculative fiction, at developing innovation, don't think this way or don't meaningfully dwell on it. Why not? How can otherwise intelligent people who work so hard to think outside our current situations and visualize where we might be headed then stop at some finite point in that future and be unable or unwilling to go further? It boggles my mind. I can't help but take everything to the bitter end. Like James Dean said, "It's all I ever do."