# The Future... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 24, 2009, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879 "2009-06-24T21:28:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EvilHamsterOnCrack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@EvilHamsterOnCrack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilHamsterOnCrack)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2009, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/1 "2009-06-24T21:28:35Z")
I have a problem… I just can’t get over how technology/culture can possibly progress from here. I know it will, and I know it’s completely unpredictable, but still. I’m sure people were saying this 20+ years ago, and here we are with the internet and smartphones and etc., but still. I just can’t imagine 1000 years from now! What the hell will humanity be doing, assuming we haven’t been destroyed by then. I now completely get why people throughout time have thought the apocalypse was right around the corner, as I just can’t imagine humanity being around that much longer, at least not without the innovation rate slowing considerably. Think of the difference between 1000 years ago and today, and then the fact that our rate of innovation has been exponential and not slowing down at all. There isn’t so much more we can do, is there? What’s left, outside of exploring our frontiers? Just more and more computing, more integration, I get that, but there’s gonna have to be at least a few more “revolutions” (industrial, atomic, digital, etc.). Any ideas what they’ll be? in I can’t wait to grow old just to see what humanity can accomplish in my lifetime, even though I can’t help but think of the future far beyond that… ---
**Author:** ![picker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/picker/32/13969_2.png) [@picker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picker)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2009, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/2 "2009-06-24T22:01:40Z")
Flying cars. Jumpsuits. Jetpacks. TV Dinners! ---
**Author:** ![nivlac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3bc359/32.png) [@nivlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nivlac)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2009, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/3 "2009-06-24T22:09:46Z")
[Quantum computers!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer) And as a consequence, [holodecks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck) and other inventions we cannot even imagine. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/4 "2009-06-24T22:24:50Z")
3D printing also could change our lives. Sort of a poor mans replicator. Evolution is easy to predict revolution is not. Cold nuclear fusion might be pretty nifty too. We get that working so many things are possible ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/5 "2009-06-24T23:14:29Z")
> [@EvilHamsterOnCrack](#): > > What’s left, outside of exploring our frontiers? Faster, cheaper, and more realistic porn would be my bet. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2009, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/6 "2009-06-24T23:22:10Z")
1,000 years is pretty far out. Was there any chance that someone in 1009 could predict the Internet? (Airplanes, sure.) Isn’t there a Clarke’s Law that those predicting in the short term will overestimate what can be done but those predicting in the long term will underestimate it? I’m betting that long before then we will have total control over our genetics. DNA from a fertilized egg can be quickly examined and repaired before development begins. I assume we’ll understand the basic constituents of the universe by then, but what we do with it depends on what we find. We’ll have at least a complete simulation of the brain, one good enough so that each person will be able to load their personalities into it. Given that, I don’t see why anyone has to die. I’m probably being conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Rysdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7cd45c/32.png) [@Rysdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysdad)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/7 "2009-06-25T00:09:21Z")
Everything you think, do, or say will be in the pill that you took today. Seriously, though, I think that there will be cures for cancer, birth defects, and cilantro. ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/8 "2009-06-25T01:13:58Z")
This thread will pop up when you Super-Google yourself, and you’ll be amazed at how naïve you were. (And to Future **Randy Seltzer** : Helloooooooo from the World of Yesterday!) ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/9 "2009-06-25T02:07:10Z")
Time travel comes along in a few years. Trust me. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/10 "2009-06-25T02:08:25Z")
Artificial Intelligence Autonomous robots Bioengineering Cybernetics (augmenting both intelligence and physical capabilities) Digital ‘paper’ Electric cars Energy weapons Fabricated 3d parts (including human organs) Genetic engineering Holographic imagery Interplanetary space travel Nanotechnology Renewable energy That’s just off the top of my head. And doesn’t even include stuff where we don’t understand the physics yet. No flying cars though. There is a concept of a “technological singularity”, ususally in reference to AI. The idea is once we develop AI slightly smarter than human intelligence, it can create another AI even more intelligent and so on and so on. At that point we can’t even imagine how society might advance or in what form. I don’t think we will create a race of supercomputer Cylon Terminator Matrices or anything like that. But imagine a world in a thousand years where we can manipulate entire DNA, build organs from scratch, map the brain to computers, and build AIs. “Humans” as we understand ourselves today may no longer exist. We might evolve into some sort of weird biological / technological cybernetic hybrid that might not even be recognizable as human. ---
**Author:** ![Casserole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b77776/32.png) [@Casserole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Casserole)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-future/500879/11 "2009-06-25T02:12:38Z")
There was a nice wikipedia article I once read - the title of which I can’t recall at this moment, which posited this theory: Assuming the relative “innovation” of human-kind is a plottable curve, one might say “exponential”, there will exist a point, an asymptote, if you will, where human innovation will occur so quickly that the universe will implode on itself. I predict many physiological advances in the next several hundred years. I look forward to the day I can type up an informal essay from start to finish without having to stop and think about exactly what I’m saying, because it’s all perfectly parsed and footnoted. Wait… what am I saying, “type up”… of course, in the future, our thoughts will be rendered into complete works of literary art, on command. EDIT: Yes! “Technological singularity” was the term!