How Do You See The Future?

[crimsoncero]

When we look back at the past, we can see how the human race developed and changed it's ways of life and culture through the years. From gathering and hunting for food, then agriculture and today mass production; from small groups to autarkic villages, to cities and metropolises; and so on.

How do you think the human race will advance in the future on such subjects?

 

[Dusty]

I have a pretty negative view of the future, but it is essentially the idea of the Fermi Paradox.

I personally don't believe in any form of alien life existing beyond life on Earth, but the Fermi paradox puts forward an interesting idea. It proposes that the reason that for no alien life existing is that there is a filtration system that lifeforms must evolve past in order to survive. Many species might evolve, but at some point there is a barrier that keeps life forms from existing on a complex level. There are several filters Fermi proposes, but the most interesting that I believe is something actually relevant to us is that there is a sort of filter ahead of us, something which could wipe humanity out.

Think about it, last time the earth had world war, about seventy years ago, two weapons of mass destruction were dropped wiping out two entire cities. At that time, one nation had access to nuclear weapons. Now, may more nations have weapons of mass destruction on both sides of any conflict. US and Russia definitely do, most greater European nations do as well. Iran might have one, and people are pretty sure Israel has one too. North Korea is trying their best, and will likely have one in the next ten years. Taking all that into consideration, isnt it only a matter of time?

Perhaps my view is absurdly negative and I'm just a cynic. With technology constantly increasing, perhaps we as a race can overcome that. But there is still an issue of flawed human nature using advanced technology to hurt people.

 

[Arylett Charnoa]

I think the future will be a generally better place for us all. Not perfect or a utopia, but neither the dystopia it's typically pictured as. Technology is used for as many beautiful things as it is ugly, and whilst I have a generally negative view of intelligence of the majority of humanity, I have confidence in those leading in these innovations. Whilst people are stupid and capable of truly evil acts, humanity's will to live is too powerful for us to die off. It is a powerful instinct in all living things, and will be particularly potent in a sentient and intelligent species. If something destroys us, it won't be ourselves, but something that is beyond our control. I cannot predict that though.

In the future, we'll probably have healthier foods that can be more easily obtained. I'm already seeing healthier alternatives popping up more and more on the shelves of stores, becoming cheaper. We will also learn how to use the internet more properly, and become more mature and intelligent in our discussions as the average age of people utilizing discussion sites increases. Of course, as I said, the negative and stupid will never leave. It will be there in abundance, but our minds will continue to evolve and better understand our technologies the more we spend time with them. We're only in the frontier of a lot of this stuff.

Other than that, it's too vast for me to say. I'm just open to all sorts of possibilities. What could be is such a wondrous thing to speculate. Sure do wish I could live longer to see it all.

 

[Jetfire]

I see it as challenging and exciting. We have so much to learn and the future looking more promising everyday.

 

[gimmepie]

I see the future as a place of extremes in a sense. We're pushing important sciences like genetics, chemistry, engineering and physics to new levels faster than ever at the moment. We're setting ourselves to go faster, travel further, learn more and to develop not only a far greater understanding of the universe we live in but ways to manipulate our environment and bodies to cure diseases and deal with famine and drought.

On the same note though, weapons of war are always developing alongside all these positive advancements. The world is becoming more and more divided despite the internet bringing us closer together. We need to do something about this sad, hate-filled world before we can allow ourselves to push technology too far forward because for every new advancement that could take humanity to the next step there's someone ready to abuse it to suit their own agenda. Humanity needs to make more of an effort to stand united or the future may be quite bleak.

Then there's the environment, can we save it (or rather ourselves?). The climate is changing and violent and dangerous weather events are becoming more wide spread and more common. Hurricanes stronger than Katrina are appearing all together in the same ocean, cyclones and flooding routinely ruin the Australian coast and that's just one weather event of many that can cause us harm. The climate is changing and it's becoming more extreme and it's going to take all of our human ingenuity to survive the oncoming changes because as much as it pains me to say it we aren't at a point of "fixing" the environment anymore we're at a point of minimising the damage done as much as we can before our home wipes us out.

So yes, I see the future as a land of extremes. We'll make all kinds of medical and scientific progress. Diseases will be cures, we'll land people on Mars and we'll learn more and more about how the universe works at both cosmic and quantum scales. We'll learn to alter genetics to create more sturdy and abundant food sources and remedy problems once thought unfixable. But we'll do so in a world filled with distrust and hate where the weather is constantly trying to wipe us away unless we make some significant changes in the present.

 

[Lunaris Adamantine]

At the moment, I think things are going in a positive direction, but over the next hundred years or so I imagine things will probably get pretty harsh.

Currently, I think there are too many conflicts going on in the world. There is too much separation between nations and cultures, and I believe that will all ultimately lead to a nasty period of destruction. The constant conflicts in the Middle East, terrorists like ISIS and the Taliban, and North Korea's agenda to create a whole mess of nukes, just to name a few. All these things can't easily lead to a good conclusion without a few explosions, which we've already seen a lot of, unfortunately.

The long term, though? After the conflicts are eventually resolved, I imagine around 500 years from now things will be pretty peaceful on Earth. I like to think we will be running on one hundred percent renewable energy by then. Carbon emissions had better be a thing of the past in the 2500's. It wouldn't make sense if it were still a problem by this point. I'm certain the whole world will be more united at this point, as well. People will be more accepting of others differences. I don't think things will ever be perfect, but acts of terrorism, mass shooting and the like, should be less than 1 percent of their frequency today. Even smaller crimes should also be dropped, hopefully because people have no need to, but also because advanced technologies will help to prevent them.

At this point we will probably have technology available for everyone on the world to thrive, and will likely have a pretty decent colony on Mars as well. It would be at this point that we would likely be in the middle stages of Terra-forming the red planet into something more green. It would at least be another couple thousand years for the atmosphere to develop into something a bit more livable, but it certainly would be on it's way there.

What I would love to see the most in the future, though, is how advanced everyday technology would become. Transportation would be fast, safe, and amazing. Sports would be revolutionized, like NASCAR would become NASPACESHIP, there would be a 3 dimensional flying version of Soccer. (Just realized that's basically Blitzball without water), and who knows what sort of crazy new sports they would invent. Video games would be no different from actually being there yourself. (Except you won't die, of course) Just thinking about all this makes me wish I were born 500 years later.

I really don't know what to expect beyond that, though. Just a general idea that we will start to expand across the Galaxy. I'm pretty confident there is other life out there for us to find. Intelligent or not, I'd want to meet whatever kind of aliens that are out there. Too bad I won't be there to do that, though.

 

[Orx of Twinleaf]

Not to joggle the same thing that has been said by everyone else, but I'm afraid I, too, must look at the state of weaponry and the possibilities of war.

Now, as it stands, the world could still go either way on this, but the next big step for humanity as a whole is in expanding off of Earth, as toddling around down here for too many more centuries will see us gnashing at each other out of boredom even if we haven't done some horrid thing to cut our own resource lines.

There are two scenarios for how we would move into the stars, assuming adequate technological commitment in that direction in the coming years, which is damn near necessary if the earlier scenario is to be avoided. The first scenario is one in which the several major nations start and maintain separate spacial colonization programs. In my mind, this would be the less desirable outcome, because if several nations begin colonization, there will always be disconnect and competition between humans from different areas, and it would only be a matter of time until a) the nations lash at each other back on Earth over some minor tipping point involving the lesser nations, cutting off or else impairing supply to the colonies and crippling the spacial advance for a good long time, or b) the colonies either attack one another over some territorial dispute or else attempt to rebel from their mothering countries, stirring discontent to the point of a) happening or otherwise encouraging the mothering country to either cut supply to the colony or waste money and resources in ferrying suppression forces to it. These things are a sad inevitability in the context, I fear, as any spacial zone would be territory to lap up and horde, as countries are akin to starving dogs, willing to work together to hunt prey, but also ready to leap upon a weak member and consume them to the bone.

The perhaps more optimistic possibility would have the world uniting under a single government before launching outward. Ever notice how, a lot of the time in sci fi, a lot of spacefaring races have central governments on their homeworlds? Sure, they still identify from different regions, but only very rarely will you have two factions from the same planet as opposite one another as China and the United States both participating in galactic affairs. Such races as that are usually relegated to their own systems or planets because they can't get along with themselves enough to launch a space colony. Now, the problem with this is that, let's be honest, it's not going to happen peacefully. A united government would only be able to be put into place via military means (a la "rule the world"), which would ravage the planet and necessitate space colonization. What's worse is that a rebel faction is inevitable in such a situation and that would only lead to serious war down the line and discontent besides.

All in all, I don't see the future being too easy to sit through. A whole lot of wanting something to happen and dreading the consequences of anything happening at all. On the bright side, maybe we'll get more sophisticated AIs. So, like, there's that.

 

[Esper]

War and weapons aside, I think the future is a dicey place if things continue as they are. Lots of divisions among people, lots of competition for resources and not a lot of cooperation. People are going to be fighting for fewer and fewer rewards as we go on if things don't change. Lots of us are not looking at the future or considering how our actions today will affect the world years from now.

Of course I think humanity has tremendous potential and that it is within our current ability to solve most of the world problems if we could put ego and greed and national pride aside. If we could do that I think it would be pretty easy relatively speaking for us to live long, healthy lives, to learn a lot more about the universe and even do that living-on-other-planets thing. But I don't see it happening, or happening in a sustainable way, through the current political and economic models we're using now. I don't think capitalism is going to survive (in its current form anyway) 100 years from now because people will either rebel and knock down the system, or the system will have to adapt and change to take into consideration that it can't continue to grow forever on a world with finite resources.

 

[crimsoncero]

Contrary to what many of you said, I think that there aren't so many divisions among us, at least not as much as in older times. There is also less crime and innovations in science and medicine push us forward faster and faster. What I think that happened in the last decades, which may have caused this belief, is that the world became connected much better. Today you can talk, watch, and have a conversion with someone who is far far away in a matter of seconds. This conflict - between being so connected as a global society, but being divided by things like countries, ethnics, religion and many more - causes us to think we have became much divided.

Yes, there are weapons of mass destruction today, but if you look through the pages of history, there are many events of annihilation and destruction on a scale which may seem small to us today, but at the past was immense. Wars and weapons will always be a problem, and after we find a solution for one of the weapons or one of the wars, another one will pop up, such is the way of life.

In the future, as I see it, we will continue marching towards a global community, there will be groups of extremists that will resist this change, very much like today. As people around the world will start to make deeper and deeper connections, religion and nations will start to dim.

There might be another great war, in fact, there is a pattern in history of such wars, but as it's always been, humanity will rise stronger, and more intelligent.
I think the future will be interesting, for one can never know how things will be depicted in eons past, maybe things we will think are good and beneficial will turn out to be destructive for generations far ahead.​

 

[Midnight shadow]

The future, a dangerous and terrifying thing to think about. Advances in Astrology have shown us 2 things:

1. Earth is the only inhabitable planet within our reach right now. Earth has a very unique balance of temperature and atmosphere that allows sustainable life to exist. No other known planet has this right now.

2. Earth will not stay inhabitable forever. Our Sun is expanding and as a result we are being drawn closer to it, meaning the Earth will get hotter and hotter. Eventually it will reach a temperature that will be unable to sustain life. At that point we will have to find a new planet to inhabit.

So regardless of what we do, eventually we will have to leave the Earth, that is unless the Sun implodes which it could do at any time. Hopefully by then we will have increased our range far enough to discover a new inhabitable planet. In the shorter term, I see 3 possible outcomes for the human race:

1. We destroy ourselves. War is getting more dangerous and a nuclear world war could break out at any point. Would be survive such a war?
2. We destroy the Earth. Either through nuclear war or just our own destructive expansion, the Earth cannot sustain us in our current form.
3. The Earth destroys us. As Gimmepie said, natural disasters are becoming stronger and more common, as if Mother Earth (or God if you are the religious type) is turning on the human race, looking to wipe us out.

The future truly is bleak when you think about it.