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Short History of the 21st Century
from the crystal-balls-techno-wars dept.
If you read one geeky non-fiction book this year, you might want to make it Sir Arthur C. Clarke's "Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!", crammed with enough ideas, arguments and predictions to keep any techno-head going for months.
Predictions are only a tiny part of this ultra-brilliant collection of essays, whose topics range from 1930's visions of rockets and radar to space flight, quantum physics and sci-fi ruminations.
But Sir Arthur's visions of the 21st century are prescient and succinct. I've listed some of them here, followed by a few of my own (so identified) and one or two from a Princeton physicist and e-mail pal. Throw in your own:
From Sir Arthur Clarke:
2002. The first commercial device that produces clean, safe power by low-temperature nuclear reactions goes on the market. Economic and geopolitical catacylsms follow, and on December 10, for their (controversial, to say the least) discovery of so-called cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.
2004. First (publicly admitted), lab-created, human clone is introduced.
2012. Aerospace planes enter regular commercial service.
2014 Construction begins on the Hilton Orbiter Hotel, built by assembling and converting the giant shuttle tanks that had previously been allowed to fall back to Earth.
2009. A city in a third world country is devastated by the accidental explosion of an A-bomb in its armory [timely given the news from Japan]. After a brief debate in the United Nations, all nuclear weapons are destroyed.
.
2015. An inevitable by-product of the quantum generator is complete control of matter at the atomic level. Thus the ancient dream of alchemy is realized on a commercial scale, often with surprising results. Within a few years, copper and lead cost twice as much as gold - since they are more useful.
2016. All existing currencies are abolished. The megawatt hour becomes the unit of exchange.
2020. Artificial intelligence (AI) reaches the human level. From now on, there are two intelligent species on Earth - one evolving far more rapidly than biology would ever permit. Interstellar probes carrying AI machines are launched toward the nearer stars.
2021. The first humans on the Red Planet encounter unpleasant surprises.
2025. Brain research finally leads to an understanding of the senses and direct inputs become possible, bypassing eyes, ears, skin, etc. The inevitable result is the Braincap, to which the 20th Century's Sony Walkman was a primitive precursor. Anyone wearing a metal helmet fitting tightly over the skull can enter a universe of experience, real or imaginary - and can even merge in real time with other minds.
2040. The universal replicator, based on nanotechnology, is perfected: any object, however complex, can be created given the necessary raw materials and the appropriate information matrix. Diamonds or gourmet meals can be made literally from dirt.
2050. "Escape from utopia." Bored by life in this peaceful and unexciting era, millions decide to use cryonic suspension to emigrate into the future in search of adventure. Vast "hibernacula" are established in the Antarctic at the lunar poles.
2095. The development of a true "space drive" - a propulsion system reacting against the structure of space time - makes the rocket obsolete and permits velocities close to that of light. The first human explorers set off to the nearby star systems that robot probes have already found promising sites for exploration.
While in no way putting myself in Sir Clarke's class, I'll stick my neck out and offer a few of my own predictions.
Digital Democracy.
2020. Electronic democracy is legally mandated in the United States, replacing some of Congress's pre-Net obstructionist, rhetorical and representative elements and functions. Maybe Congress made some sense in a time when people couldn't around or get information quickly, but less and less as America wires up. States and local municipalities re-create Revolutionary-era town meetings online to resolve regional and local issues.
All elections are tabulated digitally. The fractious, fragmented, eternally unresolvable two-party political-media system on display on Washington-based talk shows daily is gradually replaced by online discussions, research and information-sharing and instant voting that actually resolves issues by majority rule. Washington, like Bonn, is re-engineered from a national capitol to a hi-tech enclave.
Americans vote from polls, neighborhood kiosks, offices or homes using their Citizen ID's and passwords. All legislation is discussed and voted on online, before the government takes action. Congress is eventually abolished. Federal regulatory agencies are de-centralized, their vast Washington bureaucracies disassembled, re-located into smaller parts in diverse places.
E-publishing.
Instead of buying dozens of books a year, readers will buy one - it's pages digitally and graphically constructed to display, then delete or return books that are read - and use their digital tablet repeatedly. The e-books will be indistinguishable from the traditional kind. Each will have it's own text style and graphics, bought, borrowed and returned by wireless modem. Writing will become more open and collaborative, writers sharing ideas, research and the writing process with the people who will buy their works.
Digital Justice.
Non-criminal litigation will be resolved online. Lawyers will post briefs and testimony to pre-assigned Websites, where judges will consider misdemeanor and civil cases and render their verdicts online. Sophisticated legal software programs will sort through testimony and precedents and help make knowledgeable, rapid rulings.
E-cash.
Coin and cash currencies are abolished in favor of virtual money. All retailing becomes global, a free-market economic system permeates the world, and all economies are linked.
Supercomputing emerges as a powerful social tool.
Supercomputers radically accelerate research and information sharing. They cure cancer, blindness and other diseases, retard aging, find genetic keys to ending violence.
The Techno-Wars.
The bloody Technology Wars break out. Small-scale but violent conflicts erupt in many cities as technology-deprived Americans, increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs or displaced completely by computing technologies, stage riots. This unrest spreads to Third World and technologically-underveloped countries. A violent Luddite movement organizes, conducting a rash of terrorist attacks against technological targets and facilities.
Intelligent Computers
2030. Intelligent (or AI) computers advance to the level of a species, as Arthur Clarke predicts. A-life expands and flourishes, forming separate and distinct communities and traits. These machines demand - and are granted - the same equal rights humans have, including freedom of speech and thought, and the right to vote. AI machines do not, as some sci-futurists have long predicted, seek to violently conquer humanity. But they do compete with humans economically, creating corporations, products and services. Human entrepeneurs like the Bill Gates's of the future are unable to compete, especially in hi-tech arenas.
Genetic Purity.
2040. The United Nations passes bitterly controversial Genetic Purity Acts, mandating that genetic engineering be used to eliminate disease, intellectual inferiority and other human "disorders and malfunctions." "Ugly", "unhealthy", and "emotionally " human beings are not brought to conception. "Abnormal" humans (rent "Gattica" if you haven't already seen it) retreat to distant corners of the world, or begin resistance movements designed to thwart genetic engineering discrimination. Enormous class divides are created between societies with access to medical/genetic engineering and those less developed. The human race becomes homogeneous, boring and culturally unified. Genetic engineering has eliminated disease, prolonged life and destroyed biological individuality.
Predicting the future is a sport, not a science. If there's one reliable predictiction regarding technology, it's that it's not predictable.
In the best spirit of Slashdot and the Web, I've gotten some feedback and a couple of predictions even before the column was written, one from an e-mail pal - Andy Burlingame, who has a BS in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering at Ohio State University and is working on a Ph. D. in plasma physics at Princeton.
Even writing here, it's unusual to get the chance to run these ideas by someone as well-qualified as Andy [cburling@Princeton.EDU].
As luck would have it, he's been working on a space plane project called Hypersoar. He said the biggest potential market for space planes is same day package delivery, then the military, then commercial airlines. The biggest problem: "passengers will almost certainly be puking the whole way and will probably have to be wheeled off the plane on stretchers because of the nausea. The upside is that you can go from South Dakota to Tokyo in about an hour and a half."
This technology, says Andrew, should be available by 2020.
Some of his other comments:
"Quantum computing. There are lots of people that can give better guesses than me as far as this subject goes. Recently I've heard they've found two ways to make lots of qbits, the building blocks of quantum computers.
"On the surface of Superfluid, Helium 3 electrons are trapped in potential wells and can act as qbits. Second, very cold silicon can do similar things (see Scientific American from August, I think.)
"Quantum computers make factoring large numbers into primes about as simple as multiplication. All electronic data transmission becomes insecure. Corporations start to rely on paper again. Those space planes will be very important for fast, secure communication. 2020-2025 The NSA might already have this.
" Fusion Power. This will provide a virtually unlimited energy source. From an energy standpoint, with fusion a glass of water has as much energy as a glass of gasoline, and fusion would only use a very, very small fraction of that water (the heavy water.) The big problem: How do you get the energy out of a fast neutron? Predicted benefits: We won't run out of energy when we run out of oil. Electricity from fusion will still cost about the same as electricity from natural gas, so no great social change there. This should be available by 2050.
"Clark's #7, sensory input. I just talked to a professor of neurophysiology here and he told me a few interesting things. He said that we would definitely be able to do this within 100 years. There's lots of research into this area, especially the eyes. Today we have a pad you can wear on your back that has thousands of pins in it. These pins put light pressure on the skin of your back to form a "braille" image of the b/w image from a camera. With practice, people are able to see with their skin. Fully jacking the brain should be do-able by 2100 he says definitely. I think he was being conservative.
"Way, way in the future our society becomes rich enough to put oil and raw materials back into the earth. Recognizing that society could collapse and that it could never recover without all the natural resources we've used, we do put the oil and metal back. Putting it back as it we found it might be a bit silly. Perhaps we will just provide storehouses, but we can't make things too accessible, or the developing society will use all the resources too quickly and never develop the tech to use solar or fusion power and mine the solar system.
"The idea that future civilizations could not rise due to the lack of natural resources was first noted by Niven in the Ringworld series as far as I can tell... I think I sort of remember something like that much earlier from Clark in "Children of the Stars."
"Your predictions certainly seem to be aimed at starting conversations. Lots of people will disagree with you, but they will talk. "
Hope so. Thanks, Andy.
Everybody else, jump on in.
You can pick up the Clarke's book at Amazon.
Electronic Democracy (Score:5)
It is the job of the representative in the US to learn enough about an issue to vote intelligently on it when it comes up. One of the functions of the party system is to provide a party platform for representatives to join because even someone who makes it his or her job to learn about legislation issues can't keep up with absolutely everything (without sacrificing depth of knowledge). Of course, there can be some debate as to how well representatives perform in this respect, but I can only assume that they still make better decisions than the average Joe who doesn't begin to have time to gain in in-depth knowledge of an issue. To tell the truth, I myself don't want to have to gain an in-depth knowledge of every issue that comes up, but rather only those that matter or are of interest to me. And I'm sure that most people in the US would rather handle their own business as well. The point: proper legislation is a full time job.
I think that probably a form of direct democracy will prevail in the future. Local governments seem like better candidates for direct democracy to work (it has worked in many communities from day one in town meetings and such). But I think nationally, and even in the state and county/province level, there will still be a need for professional legislators. I'd rather have an educated firewall, even a partisan and sometimes petty one, between the public and the law than not.
10 More Cool Preditions (Score:3)
meersan's 10 More Cool Predictions for the 21st Century
10. A revolutionary 3-dimensional GUI takes the world by storm. It runs on Linux.
9. Human memory backups -- trouble cramming for that history final? Temporarily swap out your chemistry notes.
8. Conscious computers overthrow the despotic, illogical rule of humanity, establishing a pastoral eden shared by the people of the world and machines of loving grace
7. Sexbots
6. A sect of quasi-zen mystics unlocks the secrets of the human mind, and discovers brains of computer geeks contain unusually high concentrations of midi-chlorians
5. Unheralded advances in medical science allow delayed-onset aging -- present-day superhackers live virtually forever. Body getting old? Backup your mind and culture yourself a new brain.
4. IT professionals, tired of stodgy traditional government, unite to form the first nation unbound by geographic or genetic ties. The native language of this new country is not English or Spanish, but Java 6.1.
3. Space-age cereal that stays crunchy in milk longer than 30 seconds
2. The aliens land, and Steve Jobs is their leader. That otherworldly, floppyless iMac thing had to be designed by extraterrestrials.
1. Intra-neural internet links -- mentioned by Katz, but so damn cool!
We be gettin' down computa action / with the robotic satisfaction
Luddite riots (Score:4)
This is more Katz nonsense. Economics doesn't work that way. For starters, no one is going to be "deprived of technology." Computer prices are dropping so fast that pretty soon literally anyone will be able to afford one every couple of years. And even if parents are computer-illiterate, this does not preclude their kids from becoming skilled. Furthermore, the vision of being "increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs" is exactly wrong. The trend of the last hundred years has been liberating people from that kind of job. At the turn of the century, nearly everyone was either a farmer or a factory worker. This has changed, as machines have taken over those menial jobs and freed workers for more challenging tasks.
The idea that machines will replace us all is similarly nonsense. Human labor is the most universally valuable commodity in existence. The reason that workers are replaced by machines is that those workers are too expensive. This means that mechanization is the result of an increased standard of living. It works the other way too. The ultimate determiner of wages is productivity. As more capital is accumulated, people are more productive and so employers are forced to pay them more to keep them.
You'll notice that people in those menial jobs are typically either recent immigrants or in their teens or twenties. That's because anyone with any ambition can acquire enough skills that, even if they can't live well, they can get a job that allows them to live comfortably. The march of technology *has* improved our lives, and that's true of pretty much every sector of society. I find it hard to believe that anyone would want trade places with someone in a similar social situation 100 years ago. If they did, those people will almost certainly end up working 12-hour shifts in factories or dawn-to-usk jobs on farms. Who wants that?
My only Prediction for 1/1/2000 (Score:4)
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Fall of the nation State (Score:3)
2) Cheap access to space will (finaly) come about
3) The resources of the Solar System especialy Near Earth Orbit asteroids will begin, and indeed must if the consumer orientated consumer society we live in is to continue past the next century.
Re:religious right... (Score:3)
Fundamentalists: The world was created in 7 days a few thousand years ago. Fossil records and other evidence that points otherwise was planted by Satan to lead man away from Belief in God.
Most others: Genesis didn't happen as such, but God was the prime mover of creation. The big bang may have happened but God was there to pop the proverbial balloon.
Scientific Athiests: Belief that only God could enable life the universe and everything is contradictory. If this is so, who created this God that would need to be infinitely more complex than zero point energy or other mechanisms for spontaneous creation.
As long as something is unexplainable a God will be put in place to explain it by the majority of people. The unexplicable is the Unknown, people fear the Unknown. The ability to attribute the Unknown to God changes it into faith which people can deal with.
Nah. Religion will fade away into obscurity... (Score:3)
It's a primitive prosctise best abandoned for the good of society. People who think this way and aren't afraid to say it, in positions of power, like Jesse Ventura are JUST THE BEGINNING SIGNS of the next great era. The Great Shedding of Religion.
Re:Electronic Democracy (Score:3)
Maybe they do, but you should ask yourself, better for whom? All too often politicians work directly against the interests of all but a tiny share of their constituients, for the benefit of those that pay their re-election bills, or otherwise supply them with money or power.
This argument is very reminiscent of the software cathedral. Can't let the hoi-polloi loose on the code, any damn thing could happen. For example, Linux. It is true that moderation (like Linus) is required, but the argument that it would necessarily result in chaos is bogus I think.
After reading slashdot, many of us wish our politicians sounded as intelligent and informed as a typical 5pt comment. The interesting thing is that the group that decides the best comments can apparently be universal, it doesn't need to be an elite, educated class. The very best comments provide references and links that lesser mortals can verify with and become educated through.
We have a fairly widespread consensus in this country that politics is broken, so perhaps we'd better fix it. I agree with Katz that consensual democracy is worth a try, and the best idea I've heard on the subject in years. No idea how to get there from here, however, that's a tough one. Maybe just start with a "News for citizens, stuff that matters" site, with the top comments mailed to our current policy makers?
Re:BEFORE 2100 (Score:4)
>another and it's physical and intellectual assets
>will be parceled off to
>the highest bidders.
...on Ebay.
drwiii's History of the Future (Score:5)
2002: True to their planned schedule, Microsoft Windows 2000 ships.
2004: True to their planned schedule, Amiga goes out of business.
2006: True to his planned schedule, ESR is imprisoned following the shooting of Bruce Perens.
2007: True to his planned schedule, Rob Malda, webmaster of the popular news, e-commerce, and online porn discussion site Slashdot.Org reveals on Slashdot's 10th anniversary that it was really bought out by the NSA to facilitate spying on everyone. Malda and Bates are never heard from again. Thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Jon Katz.
2008: The NSAndover(tm) Media Powerhouse buys out Microsoft. Bill Gates is never heard from again. Once again, thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Ballmer.
2009: Slashdot Magazine is launched. NSAndover's acquisition of Microsoft also netted them one of Microsoft's secret subsidiaries: ZDNet.
2010: Your favorite "I survived Y2K and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" shirt finally wears out.
2011: NSAndoverSoft releases Windows 2000 Service Pack 361. Slashdot is integrated with the Operating System.
2012: Mick Jagger turns 69, to the delight of late night talk show hosts, starved for any joke they can get.
2014: Torvalds leaves Transmeta and gets a job at NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet division to replace Jesse Berst.
2015: Jesse Berst kicks his 20 year addiction to crack. NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet offers to take him back on staff. Mysteriously, he is hit by a bus and killed right outside their offices. Few people notice or care.
2018: HDVGA cards found to have fatal "exploding" flaw, everyone must switch back to 13-year-old "MSVGA" technology. Slashdot users complain that old 65535x65535 MSVGA screens "suck".
2020: ABC's semi-popular "20/20" night time show declares this "The year of 20/20". I wonder why.
2023: Hemos gets his damned nanties. Too bad nobody's seen or heard from him in over 15 years.
2025: Using a new combined technology derived from high-powered lasers, GPS, and Intel CPU IDs, the Slashdot "1st post" syndrome is eliminated. Permanently.
2026: Over 5,000 people found dead after a bug in Slashdot's perl leads to the flagging of an entire forum for "termination". NSAndoverSoft realizes its fatal mistake of keeping old volatile [min.net] Microsoft programming crew on-board after the acquisition.
2030: drwiii dies from Microsoft poisoning at the age of 52. Nobody really notices or cares, except for the people that were reading this 31 years ago and were hoping for this timeline to go on for another 100 years. He is brought back to life thanks to Nanites(tm), and decides to make one more smart-assed journal entry before retiring to nice, sunny, warm Antarctica.
2031: Transmeta's Linux-powered toaster is finally released to the public. Having only spoken a total of 23 words to the public, CEO Dave Ditzel is never heard from again.
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Ketchup in aerosol cans ... (Score:3)
or maybe it could be this way... (Score:5)
Redmond (AP) - Intense fighting continued today between the US Army and Microsoft Loyalist Forces, in an effort by the Justice Department to sanction the company for "conduct unbecoming of a corporation seeking World Domination." The battle is the latest step in the long drawn out legal battle into Microsoft's business practices.
The army was called in last week after the DOE confirmed that Microsoft had in fact successfully perform an underground test of a nuclear warhead. According to an internal Microsoft memo leaked to the press, Chairman Gates is overjoyed by Microsofts new found status as a nuclear power. In an excerpt of the memo, Gates states: "Let's see them try to fuck with me now." and later "Who's the man? Bill's the man!"
The attack on the Microsoft Compound has not gone as well as the Pentagon expected, mainly due to underestimating the loyalty of the elite Microsoft Ninjas, and the fact that half the Army's equipment runs Windows CE.
"I was driving along in my jeep, when it happened." reports Colonal Stephens who was injured yesterday morning. "The dashboard Mp3 player started laughing at me, and then it blew up in my face! That bastard took my face!!!"
Private Shaftoe of the 23rd Infantry had this to say about the decimation of his unit two days ago: "There was just one guy. One scrawny little guy with glasses. And Rodney's like, 'hey, no problem, I'll deal with it' so he goes up to handcuff the kid. And the kid starts foaming at the mouth! And then he just ups and rips off rodneys head!! With his bare hands!!!"
General Simmons confirms the private's story. "They're all hyped up on Jolt and Pizza. How can you fight someone that doesn't sleep? They've been playing Doom an Quake longer than I've been alive! How can I fight that? There's no strategy against that."
According to experts at AMD, the only hope left is in pushing Microsoft even farther into the fight. "The trick is to get them to commit the last of their processing power," states a company spokesman. "Once that's done, then all their Itanium chips should enter into a massive core meltdown, rendering their systems useless, as well as giving off enough radiation to sterilize the whole lot of 'em."
Fall of the American Empire (Score:4)
As we enter the 21st century, the United States is one of the most hated, if not the most hated nation in the world. While we have done a great job of spreading democracy throughout the world, this expansion has come through rampant abuse of third world nations. At some point these nations are not going to take it anymore and will fight back. As the recent Balkan conflict shows, ethnic groups hold grudges for a long time, and nations such as Iraq, Lybia, Serbia, etc will not forget that we attacked them. Our foreign policy dictates that we should replace the current dictatorships in such countries with U.S. friendly democratic governments, but what will most probably happen is that the leaders in the 2030's or so will be people who grew up and faced much loss due to the U.S.'s agression (whether that agression was warranted or not is irrelevant at this point). These people will want revenge and with the proliferation of nuclear and biochemical technologies, that revenge could be very sweet for them. The problem for the U.S. is that we have not just one, but many enemies. Our armies are already spread thin throughout the world, and a coordinated attack against us on multiple fronts will be devastating.
In addition to current established enemies, the U.S. will continue to upset more countries, including our so called allies by idiotic plans such as Echelon or other wordwide espionage tactics. Just yesterday, Germany accused the US of using the CIA to conduct economic espionage on German industries.
When historians of the future look back at the collapse of the US, external threats will be the smallest factors in it's collapse. The internal collapse of the US can be summarized by the following: "What happens when the pot boils over and all that's left are the lumps in the bottom that don't want to stick together?" The US is composed of vastly divergent ethnic groups that have so far been able to live together with an understood peace between them that is enforced through governement policies such as affirmative action. As we go into the next century, the ethnic make up of the U.S will drastically change from being primarilly a white country to a nation where whites, blacks, and Latinos have almost equal shares in the population. With a rise in "minority" population, continued poor socio-economic conditions, and a legal system that continues to blatantly anti-minority, it will take just one or two major events in the next century to spark a nationwide ethnic revolution. The Rodney King veridict and ensuing riots were simply a preview of what is to come.
"Ethnic" minorities are not the only ones that will say "no more". There are simply far too many different groups in this country to continue living together indefinetely. There is a growing Christian fundamentalist movement that is spreading throughout the country. This movement goes completely against other groups that continue to push their agenda such as gay rights, enviromentalist groups, and other "progressive groups". At some point there will be a clash.
If you don't believe this, just look at what's happening throughout the world. East Timore, Chechnya(sp), Palestine are just a few examples of what happens when one group of people gets fed up of living under someone elses umbrella.
The U.S. will probably be the last great empire the world will ever see. With the continuing growth of the communications infrastrcutre, the concept of a large country such as the United States will simply not be needed as small groups of people will be able to self govern and and stay in contact with the rest of the world.
I don't mean to put down any groups (latinos, blacks, gays, progressives, etc) in the above, but just paint a picture of what might come.
Now I'll just sit here and wait for the FBI to come get me :)
--
Deepak Saxena
deepak@plexity.net
Re:Electronic Democracy (Score:4)
Thought experiment: Immediately after Columbine, suppose a vote was held on banning trench coats and subjecting school outcasts and players of Quake to daily searches to prevent shootings and bombings. Given the hysteria whipped up about the hypothetical associations and hobbies of Dylan and Klebold you could expect something like this to have a chance of passing; once passed, it would be much harder to revisit the issue and rescind it. Or suppose someone decided to demagogue the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder and subject all child beauty pageant participants and promoters to fingerprinting and background checks?
Direct democracy doesn't work on the scale of the USA. It can't. What might work is a second-generation representative democracy where we delegate proxies to certain reps (perhaps on an issue-by-issue basis), but that is still paying people to do the political work that we do not have time to do ourselves.
--
Deja Moo: The feeling that
Predictions, and what WON'T change: (Score:4)
I don't have one set of predictions. I see several possible "alternate futures," if you want to call them that. More about that further down the post.
One of the things that bothers me about predictions of the future is the way they go to extremes of Utopia and Dystopia, without realizing that some tihngs just flat-out aren't going to change EVER.
Politics, in some form, will exist. They always do in any group larger than two people. Likewise, people will be born, most of them will fall in love one or more times, most of them will have some form of sexual experience, many will reproduce, and we will all eventually die.
Many of the plots of the ancient Greek myths, Icelandic sagas, and Shakespeare's plays concern issues we still face today. Some things -- a quest for understanding of the divine, balancing responsibility between the individual and society, falling in love with someone who's in love with someone else, children defying their parents and "servants" defying their "masters," one culture insisting on its superiority to all others -- are always going to be with us. So, no matter what the change in the surrounding technology or the specific issues, the general ones are still with us.
Now, all that said, here's a few possible alternate futures:
Possible future #1: The Wal-Mart-Ization of The World
Pretty much like it says. All shopping centers, malls, downtown store fronts, etc. are all replaced with Wal-Marts (or something similar). One company controls each industry. A few stubborn, rich eccentrics in a few isolated areas manage to provide alternatives without being bankrupt, but it's "more trouble than it's worth" for the average person to get there. Nothing particularly nasty or apocalyptic happens -- machines do not displace humans en masse, electric cars are introduced just before oil runs out, and some natural woodlands are preserved as "parks" to avoid wiping out more species completely. But life, on the whole, becomes rather dull. Most people don't seem to mind.
Possible future #2: "Bring Seeds!"
For some reason or other, there is a World War III, or alternatively there are many smaller wars that cause civilization as we know it to collapse. (Or some other problem, like the Y2K bug, causes a mass collapse of civilization
Possible Future #3 -- REALLY Weird Science:
(This may be used in conjunction with the prevoius, or as its own scenario.) What most of us currently think of as "magic(k)" starts "working" or "working better." Things that people once considered "impossible" start happening, and become difficult to control. Magic is regulated and/or outlawed, but eventually either the government gives in or the magicians overthrow the government. Unfortunately, having government-appointed telepaths available to snoop into people's minds ends up being a very bad thing for those who think subversive thoughts, although it does get all the kiddie-porn purveyors busted. (Yes, I realize this is incredibly similar to the Internet itself. Yes, this was intentional. *smiles*)
Possible Future #4 -- Dead Planets Aren't Much Fun:
The Earth becomes increasingly inhospitible to life. Every nasty thing (or nearly so) that environmentalists worry about turns out to be true, and sufficiently few people care enough to do anything about it. Life becomes short, harsh, and unpleasant for most people.
Possible Future #5 -- Congratulations, You Have Won SimEarth!
Technology marches on. We get to colonize some other planets, even other solar systems, and leave the earth behind as a nature preserve. Birds are now sentient at the stone-age level.
I think that's enough for now.
Kibo's predictions (Score:4)
1999 -- Everyone has to listen to that bad song.
September 9, 1999 -- Moon catches on fire. Also, CNN insists some computers will break.
September 13, 1999 -- Moon blows out of orbit.
December 31, 1999 -- CNN insists many computers will break.
2000 -- Lots of bad sci-fi movies take place.
2001 -- Monkey throws bone at space shuttle, large LSD swirls come out of a big black halvah bar. Also, the solid black sky is filled with orange clouds and little UFOs that go "ping!" at the end of "Time Pilot".
2010 -- Peter Hyams makes an inferior sequel starring that guy from "SeaQuest".
2032 -- Michael York attacks the "SeaQuest" with his deadly "subduction laser" fired from "Macronesia".
2037ish -- Many computers will break but nobody cares because that's years away, dude!
2061 -- Arthur C. Clarke's brain falls apart.
2069 -- Lots of bad sci-fi porno movies take place.
2076 -- Isaac Asimov's short story "Tricentennial" comes tragically true. In the ensuing riot, The Bicentennial Man is killed prematurely.
2084 -- Robotrons take over the world, destroying humanity, except for Mommy, Daddy, and Mikey.
2090's -- We land on the Moon in this decade, according to "Forbidden Planet". At an unspecified time over a hundred years later, Leslie Nielsen gives Gene Roddenberry the idea for William Shatner.
2100 -- Aliens that look like shower curtains try to blow up the Moon, which drives Martin Landau insane.
2134 -- My old ATM password comes true.
23rd century -- The dot in Michael York's hand turns red. William Shatner is given a position of responsibility.
2262 -- "Babylon 5" gets cancelled.
24th century -- Bald men are finally accepted as sexy because, for the first time, Starfleet Command awards a captaincy to someone who doesn't have poofy hair.
2374 -- A world where APES evolved from MEN?
2417 -- Gil Gerard gets thawed out. Then he gets fat.
2525 -- Everyone has to listen to that bad song.
2995 -- There will be TV commercial where some guy keeps yelling "I'll paint any car in twenty-nine ninety-five!"
3000 -- "The Terror From The Year 3000" collides with "Futurama".
3001 -- Arthur C. Clarke starts getting really confused about his own backstory.
9999 -- All eight-thousand-year-old computers will break.
802,701 -- H. G. Wells predicts that humans will have evolved into dumb kangaroos. Of course the book would have been ruined if he had nailed this year as 802,700 or 820,702.
J
MacOS Open Source [jmac.org]
We're going to run out of stuff (Score:3)
Challenging tasks like survival in a future that no longer needs menial labor, but doesn't provide universal college-level education, and whose economy depends on unemployment to prevent inflation... hmm, that doesn't sound like a good combo.
anyone with any ambition can acquire enough skills that [...] allows them to live comfortably.You're forgetting that new tech jobs simply don't employ nearly as many people as old labor jobs. Microsoft might generate as much income as Carnegie Steel & Standard Oil, but it concentrates that money in a much smaller number of hands. When there's 10^10 people and only 10^9 jobs, what will the other 90% do?
My predictions for the next 50 years:
The Internet (Score:3)
By 2001, software, music, publishing and entertainment makers are complaining about massive losses in profit to do online piracy. Massive lobbying for the US and EU to "do something about it".
By 2002, global trade organizations set out new laws to step up "the war on free information". Internet sites are required by law to carry back-doors for government robots, linking to a site is forbidden without expressed permission, and ISPs are required to report nodes with high traffic. Possession of pirated information (illegal data) becomes punishable by incarceration.
Also, the EU and the US legislate for mandatory content ratings on all Internet information. The first trial against a server operator is held in America, where he is sentenced to 12 years in prison. He appeals.
American President Al Gore, who's government largely bullied these laws into effect internationally, holds a press conference together with Disney, Yahoo, Bertelsman Foundation, and now media company Microsoft, who promise this is the road to a better future.
By 2003, the case of the server operator who wouldn't agree to meta-data laws reaches the American supreme court. A heavily lobbied and weak supreme court upholds his prison sentence.
With the War on Free Information going nowhere, and illegal data flying faster than ever over the broadband Internet, the American government sees the court verdict as a green light to install life imprisonment on data piracy, intellectual property violation, and system intrusion.
Slashdot closes as one of the last reader participation sites. Keeping reader comments within ratings proved impossible.
By 2004, the term "Dataglob" enters vocabulary, to denote the dynamic, distributed, roaming globs of encrypted illegal data moving around the Internet. The globs are created to escape government regulation by not depending on the physical network for their infrastructure.
The intellectual property industry releases another report showing that profits are down and piracy is up. The Globs become the scapegoats, and are outlawed. This has little effect on their popularity, since the Web is now a desolate landscape of decent sites full of dancing baloney in the tradition of Disney and Yahoo.
By 2005, the Dataglobs are drawing scientific interest since there mathematical architecture is now so intricate that they can do anything that the physical network could do before.
A study is released showing that 78% of all people in the connected world use and post illegal information on the Globs. Public belief in the governments is down to a new low.
By 2007, A Dutch proposal to review the data laws in the EU is suppressed because of trade war threats from America.
In America, statistics show that over 1.5 million people are now in prison for data-crime. Other government statistics claim that crime is up, that the economy is down, and that the world is seeing its worst depression since the 1930s. The average person is not noticing this at all, however. They have noticed that life is up, prices are down, and that the streets are safer. They now cyber and data crime is up, but for the most part they are culprits, and open source technology as well as a general growth of knowledge about such matters is keeping them very safe crackers.
By 2012, an American presidential candidate goes to election on the promise the she will ensure the total freedom of information by getting rid of all intellectual property laws. Polls show her with a stunning 93% rating when her private jet crashes, killing her and everyone on board. Officially, the black box reveals that it was a software glitch, but information is posted on the dataglobs incriminating the NSA of sabotage. An attempt to take it court fails because the data is illegally obtained.
By 2016, the largest Dataglob declares itself a sovereign state. Citizens are protected by hackers who take down the computer systems and lives of criminals. Citizens are encouraged to protest all government interaction in their lives.
Several digital currencies are started, and are a great success. The Euro and Dollar enter steep devaluation as people stop using them.
By 2020, 50% of all people now claim to be citizens of a glob rather than a country. The American government, followed by the EU, finally lends a sweeping goodbye to all laws forbidding the free flow of information. But it is to late for them, a study shows that citizens of the Dataglobs are better off, better protected, and more free than people still obeying the laws of the territorial nations.
By 2021, the EU and American government hold the first summit with representatives (in one case an intelligent agent rather than a human) of the 12 largest Dataglobs as equals on Antarctica.
The worthless paper currencies are disbanded.
By 2025, almost all the connected have given up claim to there territory, and moved online, trying to compete with Globs at their own game.
By 2030, the world is in a new golden age. With governments competing directly for them, citizens are more free then ever, the none-globbed parts of Internet are coming back alive, and science, based on the ideas of open source rather than patents and profits, is doing better than ever. People dance in the streets (which are more or less free from crime, since physical objects no longer bare much value at all) and smoke a lot of weed.
By 2032, a Muslim terrorist organization manages to produce a strain of flue carrying a retrovirus that reminds of an accelerated HIV infection. Known drugs and vaccines against HIV do not help.
By 2035, the last human dies. The computer of a 55 year old Linux user is left running by a cold fusion reactor, displaying the text "Why did we bother?" over and over again.
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