How do you think humanity will develop politically, economically, technologically, religiously, socially, and so on over the next several decades and centuries?
Not only can I summarize my views on the topic within a single post, they are so concise and pithy I’ve used a special text editor to shrink them to the size of a single period within the view of your page: .
There. Now that can be the last content-filled post of the thread, perhaps we can use the rest to discuss whether my views should be praised or reviled.
.? :mad: Oh, what nonsense! Surely :!
Kept as pets by our simian over-lords.
I’ll play. We will develop one world changing technology over the next century. Automation. At some point a robot will be able to build a house or pick oranges. When that happens our economy will transform itself overnight.
I have no idea what the results will be. That is all.
We will continue the march towards liberalism, though as usual we’ll continue to stumble now and then.
I heard about a project called something like “Long Time” that encourages the thinking and planning in very long term basis, in tens of thousands of years. A bit of interwebs research should come up with a clock that they use on their website that has 5 digits for the year, to anticipate the turn of the year 9999 to 10000 and beyond. It’s a legit project.
In general, technology that can solve a lot of humanity’s problems is advancing way beyond anyone’s expectations but the damage we are inflicting to our environment is even more drastic, wide ranging and irreversible.
All the hope we have starts from not voting for conservatives of all kinds, in all countries and in all political systems, whose common interest is mass death and destruction for immediate profit.
Yoga will become far more popular.
I think that, absent the usual stuff (nuclear war, global warming, etc.) there is a crisis looming in the not terribly distant future … sometime in the next 50-100 years. That’s because advances in robotics, automation and AI that are proceeding along very nicely right now are going to make 95-99 percent of the human race completely unnecessary, in the sense that they will not be needed to raise food, manufacture manufactured goods, or distribute said goods.
This trend, coupled with the worldwide phenomenon of the control of land and wealth being concentrated in a very small proportion of the population is going to lead to some serious issues. The wealthy simply will not need the vast bulk of the population to maintain their wealthy lifestyles. They will not be hiring people to work in their factories (making ANYTHING, we’re not talking buggy whips vs. cars here, we are talking robotic hands vs. human hands). They will not be hiring people to work on their farms … once again, automated. What we now think of as normal employment figures will be reversed … five percent of the work force, if that much, will be EMPLOYED, and that will be normal.
Mass starvation, huge political unrest … all sorts of potential for nastiness here. Totally unnecessary, as the robotic technology can easily make enough to feed, house and entertain everyone, but … what motive will the wealthy have for sharing their wealth. If there’s one subgroup of any population that is not into sharing, it’s the wealthy. They often got that way by vigorously not sharing things that they probably should have shared. Most likely, they will be content to see the vast majority of people in the world die off.
If we can get past that choke point without blowing everybody up … I am very doubtful about that … and no OTHER disasters (supervolcanoes creating nuclear winters, famine induced by global warming fuelled climate change, nukes, etc.) then the future for the human race could be very,very rosy indeed, with enough to let all live, and live very comfortably. But we looking at a hell of a road to get there.
Something to do with the Singularity.
I think we will go further into individualism, decentralization, social liberalism, secularism and as far as poverty we may eventually enter a post scarcity world due to advances in manufacturing. Of course I am basing that off what I think has happened up to this point, and that that trend will continue.
I really can’t see any reason we’d move in the opposite direction. More centralization of power (media, political, economic), becoming more socially conservative, more religious or more in poverty.
I think there will be a lot more decentralization and empowerment of the individual in the coming decades. Communications and media has been decentralized recently, and advances in things like energy or manufacturing will remove the massive capital and infrastructure investments necessary to produce those. Solar panels and fab labs could let people live off the grid more. I have read in books like ‘the genie in the machine’ that advances in computing will allow individuals to become better amateur inventors. I think there will be more empowerment of the individual in all areas coming up, and I think that tends to cause social liberalism too.
Who knows what effect our environmental damage will have on our lives though. I’m sure it’ll reduce our standard of living and quality of life, but it won’t kill the species. I think that as we develop more technology we become better at surviving threats to our species. Even if something kills 99% of the human race, that still leaves 70 million humans to carry on the species. I don’t think it is really possible for our species to die off from threats like famine or disease anymore. We can lose millions and probably billions, but they couldn’t kill all of us anymore.
Of course we might grow more religious. Vast social changes disturb a lot of people – they need something to cling to.
The people best suited to be politicians will be smart enough not to run
Those who collect money will continue to do so from those that earn money.
Things will be invented to make our lives easier, and as a result we will end up working harder.
The more we map the universe the fewer places God will find to hide in.
Our society will be be worse than it ever was, and it will continue to be this way until the end of time.
More of the same. With flying cars.
Since as long ago as 40,000 years there has been a conflict between the human population and the human standard of living. More people leads to more scarcity. This leads to some kind of technological advance. This leads to more plenty. This leads to more people. And so the cycle continues.
Until 40,000 years ago humans were dependent on hunting large, slow moving animals that could be dangerous, but could also be killed using fairly primitive weapons. When these prey animals declined in number, so did the number of human hunters, giving the prey animals the opportunity to increase in number.
Beginning about 40,000 years ago our ancestors developed better weapons, such as the spear thrower which greatly increased the range of the spear. This was followed by the bow and arrow, which may have been invented about 15,000 years ago. Dogs were domesticated about this time. They made hunting even more efficient.
Better weapons enabled our ancestors to exterminate the large, slow moving animals in much of the world, while hunting smaller, faster animals, like dear. When these became scarce, agriculture developed. When wood became scarce, coal was used.
Nevertheless, we should not expect technological advances to be the automatic result of population growth. Whenever the human population has outpaced the food supply the result has been disease epidemics, war and famine. Slightly longer than three thousand years ago this seems to have happened in the Near East, and in what is now Greece and Turkey. The result was a significant decline in the human population, and in the plastic arts. The Hittite and Mycenaean civilizations collapsed. The Greeks forgot how to use the Linear B writing method they had devised. The civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon went into decline.
Because epidemics reduce the human population without destroying buildings, the Bubonic Plague in Europe was followed by a higher standard of living. Because there were fewer people, there was more of everything good to go around.
Currently, the birth rate is declining, but it is not declining fast enough. Computer technology is as much a curse as a blessing, because it reduces the economic value of many job skills. I expect global warming to continue, and to have a very harmful effect on the climate.
For the next several hundred years I do not expect the Second Coming of Christ. I do expect the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: pestilence, war, and famine will result in death on a massive scale.
Liberalism depends on generosity. This depends on an economy of abundance which I do not predict for the future.
If the 1960s had been a period of economic decline, rather than broad based economic growth, I doubt the civil rights legislation would have been signed.
Energy resources are going to screw us hard at some point in the next few centuries. Our increasing dependence upon technology and mechanised industry and travel will make this doubly painful.
It won’t happen suddenly, and maybe we will dig ourselves out by developing sufficient alternatives, or maybe we won’t (Necessity is indeed the mother of invention, but it’s not guaranteed always to give birth). Maybe we will consume ourselves back to a minimally-industrial society, but that won’t be a comfy ride, if it happens.
I see poodle skirts returning.
Hats will again become a standard part of the clothing style in “Western” countries.
Quoth Lobohan:
I predict we’ll develop approximately one world-changing technology every year or two for the next century, just like we always have, and I also predict that we won’t have any clue of what they will be before they happen, that being what makes them world-changing.
Disco will make a comeback around 2080 or so.