Hopefully not. For us to have not either improved ourselves beyond the human by then or have been replaced by our creations implies extreme stagnation ( probably under a worldwide tyranny ), or the collapse of civilization to such an extent that it never recovers.
Possibly, depending on how you define “city” ( would a space habitat count ? A computing node full of virtualized people ? ). For any number of purposes it makes sense to concentrate resources and habitations. If not, it’s probably either because humanity has fallen too far or because the whole planet’s been built over so there’s just one “city”. Or something more exotic, like there being nothing but one vast Mind, in which case there’s no city because there’s only one individual on the planet.
I expect the future will be one of space colonies spreading throughout the universe, quite possibly ones that don’t really care if they are near stars or not. Rather than reaching other stars by travelling at relativistic speeds, they’ll simply spread slowly, from asteroid to comet outward into interstellar space. Essentially, over the millennia I expect that space itself will be colonized rather than planets, by vast numbers of colonies spreading throughout the universe from “oasis” to “oasis”.
Quite possibly; although we might find ourselves talking to some tiny subsystem while the main mind takes little or no notice of us.
Or otherwise wrecked; quite possibly. It’s one of the reasons I consider colonizing space such a good idea. It’s a lot harder to destroy millions or billions of habitats spread across light years than it is to kill one planet.
Nah, the hominids are much older than that currently, and we haven’t been wiped off the earth yet. Planet-killer asteroids aren’t as rare as we’d like, perhaps, but they’re not that common. 20K years isn’t really all that long; and there’s probably only a couple hundred year window from now where we wouldn’t be able to “resolve” a strike beforehand, assuming even lethargic technological progress.
There will be a few scattered here and there, hunting and gathering.
No. The distances and energy costs involved are just too vast.
Like Baked Alaska made in the microwave.
Essentially, yes. We’ve used up all the easy resources, so once this civilization falls (however that comes about), no others will be able to rise to the same level. This is about as good as it gets.
The optimist in me would like to agree with Der Trihs but unfortunately my cynical and non optimistic side is winning today and I have to go with - we will either be long extinct with little or no record that we ever existed or as described inNumber’s post.
This book by Stephen Baxter, gives a very optimistic appraisal of what we could achieve. Unfortunately I suspect that human nature dictates that self annihilation is the way we will go.
I’d also like to agree with Der Thris but fear number is closer to the mark. I don’t think the earth will be a radioactive desert–though it could be, due to nuclear war or asteroid strike–but I think we’re living in a golden age due to easy energy. We’re already seeing it start to end.
-will wear medieval-style clothing (hoods and cloaks)
-we will have morachical governments (emperors and kings)
-we will live with weird-looking quasi-humans (like Yoda)
-we will have vast numbers of domsestic animals
-the armed forces will consist of cloned humans , white plastic armor, which is no good against 1920’s-style deathrays
-extremely good-looking and extremely ugly humans will be the norm (plastic surgery will have been forgotten)
I KNOW this because i’ve seen STAR WARS!
Personally, I think an agricultural society without a lot of current-style ‘high’ tech, existing in a somewhat-impoverished and warmer world is likely. We will be the subjects of legends.
And pirates! Don’t forget the pirates!
Um… that was “Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away”…
I suspect we will be around in 2 million years, let alone 20,000.
I can’t tell you much about what our lives will be like. We may hit a stable configuration. Remember, the last 10,000 have been an anomaly, characterized by rapid change at an increasingly accelerating pace. The long span before 10,000 years ago were not so characterized. We may plateau out technologically. We find a social system that works really well for us.
2 million years is not an unusual stretch for a solidly established species to hang around.
True, but it is interesting to speculate. My current feeling is that given the world situation as it is we are probably likely to undergo extinction or massive species reduction in my lifetime. Followed by a general drop in living standards and technology.
IMHO there’s not a chance in hell we won’t have wiped ourselves out long before 20,000 years are up. In fact 2,000 years is mighty optimistic, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s 200 years. We’ve just got too many efficient ways of fucking things up nowadays.
There have been stupid and violent humans for as long as there have been humans, but for most of human history their ability to destory has been too limited by technology for them to have much impact. Extrapolate current weapons technology by a few decades, add an increasing population, cook gently in an increasingly warm climate, and spice things up with politicians and religious leaders fomenting hatred, and you have the perfect recipe for a new Stone Age, if not a complete extinction.
