That’s not how radiation mutations work and 1000 years is too soon to evolve into something beyond recognition.
Hmmm…I wonder if my decendents will be Morlocks or Eloi
No, humans a 1000 years hense will have the same problems we have now - crime, war, pollution, famine, socioeconomic and ethnic tensions, etc, etc. They will just be different from the ones we have now.
My vision is the future will be laden with technological advancement at the expense of societal evolution. A veiled dystopia with very distinct classism, where society has degraded into a parastic relationship between the haves (those with corporate/government ties) and have-nots (the working class), who will each live in very separate and distinct communities of relative abundance and scarcity, yet will work together in a single environment. The global economy will have long since receded from the West and returned to the East. North America will be an afterthought on the global spectrum, resigned to a similar helpless economic position as many countries in Europe that simply don’t have the infrastructure or economy to be viable or relevant in a global “megacorp” economy. Asian countries will have a stranglehold on the future due to what I’m sure will be a continued trend in the deemphasis of human labor laws. Education will probably maintain a foothold in Europe and the Middle East as America slides into rapid decline. The notions of freedom and independence will still be touted by government, which itself will be controlled by the influences of corporate economy. War will be an archaic notion, as trade contracts and treaties will serve to benefit the governments of the future more than conflict because they will all have long since sold out to industry; resigned pawns put in place to give their respective populations the illusion of how good they really have it, rather like Wallace Breen’s position as the messianic administrator of the Citadel in Half-Life 2. We’ll be told how lucky we are to have it as good as we do regardless of the scarcity of resources and our quality of life, and that we’re on the brink of the next big milestone in human evolution, promised wonderful things and new revelations of existence in the Fourth Millenium … and a lot of people will believe it because we will be more controlled by megacorp media than we could possibly imagine. The appetites for independence, spiritualism, and personal advancement will be pacified and silenced by incredible entertainment mediums we can only now fathom, built by the megacorps of tomorrow to cater to any vice imaginable. We won’t have to interact because we will have virtual artificial intelligences to communicate with, special machinery (androids?) to indulge our sexual needs with, and vast interactive fictional worlds to lose ourselves in that make today’s books, games, shows and movies look like Pong by comparison. People will few reasons to leave their homes (or communal tenements), and if they do, the government will want to know why …
In summation: equal parts Orwell’s Oceania, Huxley’s London, Half-Life 2’s City 17, Demolition Man’s sanitized “San Angeles”, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and Bradbury’s short story “The Pedestrian”.
The guy 2nd from end on right looks like Hitler :eek:
I posted a comment on the story’s site that apparently they decided not to keep or just haven’t approved yet- the story gets the Eloi & Morlocks wrong- the Eloi were the attractive but childlike devolved descendants of the wealthy leisure class while the Morlocks were the gnomish cunning devolved descendants of the industrious laboring class. The Eloi themselves were not highly intelligent and wealthy. They were the cattle of the Morlocks.
Why does everyone think America is going to slide into some rapid decline because many overpopulated Asian countries are enjoying a speculative bubble?
A thousand years from now there will be no way to predict what the political map will look like. The United States and China might simply be geographical locations - mere voting districts in a world government. Maybe we will have closer ties to the global corporation we work for than the geopolitical region we reside in. I see a bit of that now, with consultants and whatnot traveling to various countries and cities.
If anything, the trend is towards greater globalization, not less. As the boundaries between countries disappear, national ties will become less and less relevant.
I would throw in some Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell as well.
Probably because America reminds me of the Roman Empire, and that fell about a thousand years ago (give or take a few centuries) despite being one of vastest empires the world’s ever known.
I was thinking of GITS as well; it makes sense with my mentions of megacorporations and all. 
If I recall correctly, the Roman Empire collapsed because it spread itself too thin, and different parts of it began to feel disconnected from the whole. With today’s instantaneous global communication, such a thing isn’t as inevitable as it was back then. Still, it’s impossible to say either way.
I imagine the world work the same way it always has. The technology will be utterly bewildering, but the basic day-to-day cycle will be get up, do your job, go home and sleep, just as it was 1000 years ago. Other than that it’s impossible to predict what kinds of things people will occupy themselves with 1000 years from now.
Yeah, all true, but what’s with the fallback being repeated by several about the notion of instant international communication and globalization being the tie that binds the countries of the future together? Rome may have fallen because it was spread too thin, but some would say the U.S. is also spread too thin today as well. It’s also been suggested the Romans poisoned themselves with the water from their own aqueducts. Point is, I don’t think Rome fell for any one reason, and I don’t think America will fall for any one reason, but every superpower throughout history has always grown too big for its britches. I’m sure the superpower of a thousand years from now won’t be anything that exists today, much like the United States didn’t exist a thousand years prior, but even assuming we all had a constant connection to the four corners of the earth, so what? The only thing that’ll keep the gates of communication open in the future will be money and resources anyway, and I don’t think the United States will have either of them in a few centuries. We’re already in massive international debt unlike we’ve ever seen, and we can’t even keep some of the most basic jobs here because labor will always be cheaper where people are numerous, desperate, and yes, even expendable.
I think it will be a bit like The Matrix. Computer simulations will be so compelling and interface directly to your brain so that nothing in real life can compare. People will be a bunch of vegetables if they have a human body at all, perhaps human bodies will be in zoos or museums.
What will happen when robotics are truly perfected, & those nasty, smelly, dirty, disobedient, rebellious Masses are no longer needed?
Killing is not new, to the People With Power™.
anamnesis’s Future may prove to be Pollyanna, at that.
I basically agree although I am more optimistic than you. I’d think most people will live something like the Amish do today, just with the knowledge we’ve learned helping out more. Electricity will still be around but it will be a precious resource used only for necessary applications. And we can recycle materials we’ve already mined and processed. I’d expect to see small, highly advanced enclaves near renewable energy sources (e.g. geothermal, hydro/ocean wave, wind where appropriate) where further research continues. I’d hope that these opulent citizens would still have something like the internet to communicate with other such hubs and that a satellite system of sorts will still be operating. It’s just that the vast majority of humanity (3-4 billion?) won’t be able to take advantage of any of this.
I agree again, which pains me because the thought of humanity living forever by colonizing the stars is appealing. Of course, the idea of an all consuming race eating up every resource until they have to all hibernate in sleeping pods to reduce energy use is disturbing, so maybe it’s all good in the end.
Actually, I disagree on one point. If we could find a way to catch some space rocks we could find more copper or gold than we’ve mined in all of human history. Certainly that would be of some interest.
I don’t think you can extrapolate 1000 years out from current events. Do you think 200 years ago, Britain would have imagined that one of their colonies would become the most powerful nation on Earth (and outsource many of it’s job to another former Brittish colony)?
No, and that’s why I suggested that the superpower of a thousand years hence will probably be as unlikely and unpredictable as the United States might have been a thousand years prior (in post #50). I’m not extrapolating by suggesting that history repeats itself. No superpower has ever stood the test of time, although it’s no mystery that several have lasted a lot longer than the United States.
There will be virtually no more metal-based manufacture – everything will be grown, everything will be a form of living tissue.
Humans will be immortal if they want to be, but not necessarily even recognizeable as humans – we will change bodies and forms as easily as hairstyles. There will be fish-like humans living in the sea and blimp-like humans floating overhead.
There will actually be someone interviewing prospective new parents, asking, “Feet or pods?” 
Well, I’ll go for the utopia.
In one thousand years, nanotechnology means that we’ll be able to fabricate virtually anything you’d want from any organic material. Fusion will mean that we’ll have the energy needed to make it. AI and advanced robotics mean that we don’t even have to do the labor ourselves.
Material, energy, labor. All virtually for free. Oh, and genetic engineering and advance science means that we’ll all be nearly perfect physical specimens who live for at *least *a full century. Sure, some of this stuff won’t come soon enough to help with some nasty stuff coming down the pike (lack of resources, global warming, wars, new diseases). And they’ll be wars as the people that have it try to keep it out of the hands of the people who don’t. But, short of a planet-killer asteroid, I don’t see humanity being completely wiped out, or modern civilization destroyed. And people will learn sooner or later that having stuff for free means that there’s no downside to sharing (or else they’ll wipe out those that don’t have free stuff utterly).
So, what will this civilization look like? Well, I think the amount of people who actually need to work to support this (which means overseeing the computers as well as doing a few tasks still beyond them) will shrink to roughly the same proportion of the population as farmers are now. Most of the rest of us will be artists or entertainers of some type, or scientists. Space exploration will still seem stunted compared to some science fiction, but they’ll definitely be a lot of effort put into it by this point. Partially because it’s the logical extension of human ambition now that terrestrial problems have been put to rest, and partially because the only thing that’s at all scarce on earth will be space itself.
I don’t know which geographic region or language will be dominant. Does it matter? There’s no such thing as material scarcity anymore.
I started a thread pretty much like this a while ago. Might be informative.
Have you seen this thing called facebook and myspace?
I think that technology is going to develop quite a bit of self-sustaining technology. Parts that perform self-maintenance, Homes that are self powered, computers that run on electricity or heat exchange or some other un-thought of technology. I think we are going to develop quite a bit of alternative energy sources that work on a small scale. Because of this small scale thing, communities will be smaller and closer knit. Humans will be mostly true cyborgs with enhancements being pretty normal and those that hold out an oddity like today’s Amish people.
There is a lot of innovation right now that is very amazing, such as concrete that can absorb C02, concrete that is better at reflecting light, etc. Long before civilization is destroyed by global warming (don’t see it happening anyway), there will be great leaps in innovation that will make us realize that we can entirely reverse it.
Nuclear war is possible, but Civilization will develop in the southern hemisphere where it is unlikely any major attacks will occur. Humans are highly adaptable, and the seeds of innovation are a hard thing to halt the maturation of.