With the exception of describing inevitable doomsday (anything from a huge meteor to a "judgement day") how do see the future?
Where most/all people have a decent understanding of the Universe - from QM and GR to Dual Booting your Laptop. Where people no longer identify people based on race, and all assumptions made with race, but on what a person actually is, and judge them fairly in a worldly context, rather than an isolated one. A place where Science and Mathematics are both as easy to learn and accessible as History, Literature. Where people are happy and outgoing, but not happy based on other peoples measurement of happy, and not a place where outgoing necessarily means overly social/involved. A place where Science news competes for headlines and news times across the world with sports and politics. A place where Hubski has subhubs so I can call them subhubs, and not have to search a tag to find posts like this one. The last one I hold more dear than the others, though.
I'm going to eat the liver and onions I have cooking. That's the immediate future, anyway. Really, I'm waiting for theadvancedapes to respond here.
My vision of the future: Exponential modelling of the entire human past indicates that time and space within our species is shrinking and will continue to shrink, and will be driven by another shift in our mode of living, this century (Hanson, 2008). Mode of living for our genus:
Hunting and gathering: 2 million years ago - 10,000 years ago
Agriculture: 10,000 years ago - 250 years ago
Industrial: 250 years ago - present Although there is important overlap and diffusion of these modes, the emergent mode always dominates our species existence. For more: http://www.theadvancedapes.com/theratchet/2012/12/19/economi... The consequence of these transitions for the future is that the next emergent mode should happen this century and should diffuse almost instantaneously. This next mode is likely to be caused/driven by non-biological intelligence. On a meta-system level what appears to be happening to our species is analogous to the transition from single-celled life to multi-celled life (Heylighen, 2007). Single celled life began in a very simple form with very simply internal structure. Over time as they began interacting more and more (and depending more and more) on other cells. As a consequence they needed to adapt more complex internal structures to improve communication, specialize function, and combat invaders (viruses). Over time single-cells interactions became denser and more interconnected, leading to the development of cells that fused and replicated together - creating multii-cellular structures. Our species throughout history has followed an analogous path. From the development of complex civilizations our internal structures for dealing with communication, function, and invaders has continued to improve. In the future our species should continue to merge, continue to reduce space-time within our species to the point that it is negligible. We will create a global brain based on future enhanced artificial brains and an improved future internet system (and/or cloud system) (Heylighen, 2008). Within this system information will not only be transmitted and downloaded instantaneously, but also understood by all beings instantly as well (Kurzweil, 2012). The next step (start of the 22nd century) will likely be how quickly we can explode into the Universe. If the speed of light remains a barrier than this explosion may be slow (although there are still other ways to get around the speed of light barrier). If the speed of light proves to be easily breakable or we devise some way to get around the barrier very easily, then this spread into the Universe will be very, very quick. In the long-term future I think there are an endless sea of possibilities (e.g., Goertzel, 2007). We could spread throughout the Universe, infusing our intelligence into anything we come across. We could discover other Universes, or create our own Universes. What the global brain becomes I don't know yet. What the future mode changes bring I don't know yet. Will we be a part of this? Most likely a continuation of what you are now will be a part of this. In the mean time you should expect life overall for our entire species to get better in measurable standard of living terms. This means increased material goods, affordability of housing, access to health care and education, political and religious freedom, as well as decreased class disparity, poverty rate, infant mortality, and hours of work required to purchase necessities. Also, expect life expectancy to continue doubling exponentially (plan your life accordingly) (i.e., life expectancy in the developed world is between 70-80 FOR PEOPLE BORN IN THE 1930s! Life expectancy for people born in the 1980s-2000s will likely be 160 which means we will be ageing slower than technology progresses, meaning our life span will essentially be indefinite.). Many aspects of these trends have already become obvious to many different prominent thinkers today (e.g., Ridley 2010, Pinker, 2011; Kurzweil, 2012). Let me be clear. This does not mean that bad things won't happen in the future. This does not mean war will not exist, violence won't happen, people won't die, there won't be new and challenging obstacles, there won't be poverty, hunger, etc. You could also still die. Just not likely from ageing or age-related complications. What I mean is that all of these things follow knowable and predictable trends on the species level. These are the trends. Example: The average person in Britian in 1800 had to work 6 hours for 1 hour of candle light. The average person in Britain today has to work half a second for 1 hour of electric light (Ridley, 2010). I could give a number of similar examples. Those are some of my thoughts. Here are my References: Goertzel, B. 2007. Human-level artificial general intelligence and the possibility of a technological singularity: A reaction to Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near, and McDermott’s critique of Kurzweil. Artificial Intelligence, 171: 1161-1173. Hanson, R. 2008. Economics of the singularity. IEEE Spectrum, 37-42. Heylighen, F. 2007. The global superorganism: An evolutionary-cybernetic model of the emerging network society. Social Evolution & History, 6: 57-117. Heylighen, F. 2008. Chapter 13 Accelerating socio-technological evolution: From ephemeralization and stigmergy to the Global Brain. In Modelski, G., Devezas, T. & Thompson, W.R. Globalization As Evolutionary Process. New York: Routledge. Kurzweil, R. 2012. How To Create A Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. New York: Penguin Group. Pinker, 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature. New York: Penguin Books. Ridley, 2010. The Rational Optimist. New York: Harper.
My vision of the future is one in which the people hold the past in contempt.
The other comments currently here have pretty lofty (and I'd argue unrealistic) hopes for the future. I don't see any of those things happening. Let's be more realistic. Thing will stay generally the same. We'll be more tolerant of race and sexuality, but there will still be a ghost of those old feelings left behind - something everyone knows is there but can't exactly pinpoint. Societal pressures remain the same, but it's harder than it was before. With the push to get everyone into college, college isn't special anymore. A high school degree doesn't mean anything anymore, and a college degree doesn't get you much either. People specialize at a younger age because each field has become so expansive that it's impossible to give people a general knowledge about anything.
Natural fuel reserves start depleting. America, after years of burying its head in the sand, begins to invest heavily in alternative energies, but it's too little too late. Crippled by the lack of green energy, it falls from the mantle as the world's superpower as countries that had invested in green energy earlier such as Germany rise. America, in a desperate attempt to keep its industries going, beings more aggressive military actions to secure more fuel, alienating other countries.
People still remain the same though. They'll still squabble about small things. They'll still struggle with their own lives, the center of their own stories, knowing yet not comprehending how everyone is in the same place they are.
Poverty, hunger, violence - they all still exist. Everyone wants to live comfortably, and so they take more than their fair share of resources, just like they do today.
I always worry about what will happen when virtual reality (currently; 'games') become just as realistic as real life and more enjoyable. What will the world be like when people would rather be in virtual reality than actual reality? Aside from that, I realise that at some point we will all have the same skin colour, brought on very gradually by interracial couples. I guess this would mean an end to racism, though I'm sure we would find another way to hate each other. Perhaps it will become about class more than anything.
A major reorganization of power comes about. The United States' position as the world's driving political and economic force is diminishing as China, India, and Brazil gain prominence. In China this growth comes with some degree of political upheaval. The growth of a wealthy middle class leads to the liberalization, and eventual democratization of the nation. Power also gets redistributed on an individual level - with better access to education and information, people now have a lot more social mobility and effective influence in their governments. Investments in science, technology, and space exploration come not from governments, but wealthy individuals and businesses. The first colony on Mars is a multinational effort backed by Google, Microsoft, Virgin, Ford, Coca-Cola, and other big-wigs. Computing power becomes exponentially cheaper and ubiquitous. Robots take over almost all labour and manufacturing jobs, causing unemployment and depression for a while. However, social changes are also taking place - birth rates stop increasing, and begin to turn downwards by 2075. Genetic modification is available to everyone, improving quality of life around the globe. Everything isn't perfect, however. Tensions in the Middle-East rise between Israel and Iran. The US, at this point decides to back away because of domestic pressures. Nuclear missiles are exchanged for the first time in over half a century - Tehran and Tel-Aviv are destroyed. Shocked, the international community intervenes immediately (not nuclear), with the US occupying Israel, and Russia Iran. However, instead of a East/West Germany-esque scenario, the world powers decide to work together to diffuse the situation. By the end of the century, humanity is fewer in number, smarter, and healthier. We occupy the land and oceans of Earth, as well as colonies on the Moon, Mars, and on the moons of Jupiter. Edit: I just remembered reading this last week, you may enjoy it - http://www.dni.gov/index.php/about/organization/national-int...
nitpicking here but technically speaking nuclear missles have never been "exchanged"