Future, well defined.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

This is an attempt to put a very solid definition to the look of the world 1 century from now, as a result of (the most influential factor) technology, and incidentally, culture. By knowledge of . . .

*The technology we are fully capable of today, but are still in a long process of development.

*Assuming that humanity will continue its general production as with the past 4 millennia.

REMOTE COMPUTER AS THE NORM AND NECESSITY

Public computers will shift from all stationary manner into all remote manner. The computer will take on the same role in legal society as does your Picture ID or your Debit Card. Many activities will be mandatory to hold a computer in order to accomplish. Social life will be devastatingly difficult without these devices.

As such, gas stations and corner stores will serve as maintenance and replacement stations for these computers.

Written signs will start to disappear, and be replaced by remote signalling devices.

Your mobile device will be used in replacement of every button or switch you press today. They will turn on lights, open doors, plan destinations (the layout and activities, not just the journey there), and will keep you in constant sync with others wishing to contact you.

Any non-realtime communication is obsolete. EVERYONE in the first world EVERYWHERE will be immediately aware when you send out a message and they are one of the candidate recipients.

This device will serve as your wallet, your remote control, your computer, your keys, etc.

AUTONOMOUS ROBOTICS

Although the idea of “concsious” robots is still off the mark, there is no doubt that robots very soon will be something of household butlers- cleaning devices, fetching items, even repairing and solving. It will be uncommon for a first world household to be without one or two. Common life will be continuously engaged interacting with one autonomous robot either remotely or in person.

ELEVATOR TO SPACE

A thick strip of nanotubes will physically guide a shuttle from ground to space and back. The cost of energy for the trip will be comparable to a car ride. Every major city will have this kind of spaceport. A common way of global travel will be from elevator to satellite to elevator.

MEDICAL MONITOR

Part of what will be made mandatory by insurance companies and certain regions, each person will be monitored for medical emergency and medical status implying serious problem. Heart rate, breathing, stress levels, etc.- this data will all be fed to local collectors and immediate responses will range from a signal warning you about the immediate problem, or a rescue team arriving. This will also have upper and lower class implications. There will be many circumstances where a somewhat urgent issue will be allocated but will not be tended to.

What are some important implications?

*Communication will be instant and cheap. Activity will not be.

Although communications technology is rapidly growing, the cost of information doesn’t work in the same manner as other technologies. Highly sophisticated communication will not require a lot of energy, but physically doing things about what you learn will be costly in energy. This gap between knowing and doing will continue to increase from the gap we see today in regards to the feeling of apathy and helplessness. It will probably be a standard psychological factor with its own names and field study. People will be forced to come to terms with a prospect that they will be witness to a lot of terrible things and incapable of doing much of anything useful about it, only to trust that other agencies are performing their best.

*Life will not be filled with menial tasks. But the human will struggle for the scientiffic elite.

Your bed sheets, and dishes, and many other utilities will be commonly taken care of. Your job and academics will occupy the majority of your time. Actual tasks will seem quite menial even when you are not quite aware of their purpose. (Your pocket computer alerts: “Put item X into slot B, and return to station Z”) However, there will be a common demand for workers to understand the principals behind their work. Careers everywhere will rely on comprehensive knowledge of technology or biology. (The two are really the same, one is just evolutionary).

What life will be like in more literal examples . . .

*The “dinner table” will increase in cultural importance.

This is a time when your hands are busy with eating and aren’t very apt for using devices. This will be the small opportunity for sociability rather than working on private projects.

*Job placement will be more streamlined.

The idea of hunting for a job or for school will dwindle and each individual will moreso have angencies to rely upon which assess skills, appropriate ideal education, move to work, discuss options, and so on. Heavy labour will not be common, but consistent work ethic will become priority.

THE FUTURE MUCH FARTHER OFF

Spacefare, and human augmentation.

While human beings will for a time serve a very useful and important role in maintaining infrastructure, changes will soon become necessary. Genetic manipulation and cybernetic implants will begin to take a larger necessity for humans to keep up with their technology. Humanity augmented will keep the pace, but those insistant on their natural evolutionary design will fall behind.

This will be the large ultimatum of the “Type 1” civilization, which Michio Kaku describes. A Stellar civilization. There is no guarantee that there would be replicators and warp travel and telleporter beams. But the ventures of common life will most certainly be associated with space and asteroids. Evolution is fit for development on a single asteroid, not for stellar life.

2

I disagree with your predictions, not solely based on their fanciful nature, but because society is not monolithic, and will likely never be.

Many will likely resist most of the changes you posit, if nothing else based on the desire to remain connected in what they might consider a “natural” way.

3

Despite my confidence, my views are certainly speculative. I have sources I failed to introduce in order to back this up better.

I am indeed claiming that society becomes more monolithic as time progresses.

I want to see deviations from this prediction, from others that believe otherwise.

But I do insist that those deviations should have content.

There are a great deal of billboard posts I see rejecting this basis for believing. Rejecting that basis for predicting.

Give us content. Give us a real prediction. Tell us what you think will happen, rather than only what you not believe. I refuse to contend that society at large is just strictly unpredictable and we gain nothing by trying to make those predictions.

4

I wish. I really do.

I see the Masque of the Red Death played out in reality as the rich move into defended conclaves and increasingly are only telepresent outside of them. I see paranoia over disease leading to hermetically sealed lifestyles and ultra-conservatism.

I see social warfare between the demographics of the longevity-addicted, propertied old and the unemployed and dispossessed youth. Father and son at each other’s throats. Both of them right, a Homerian tragedy.

I see world technology co-opted soley by logistics and energy production, rather than looking outward, to space, it will spiral ever inward to feed the mouths and cure the sick and extend the lives of the old.

Everyone, save the absolute super-rich, will become effectively poor. As populations increase, everyone’s share at the table of life will become meaner by default. We see this already, drive through England and see the number of derilict or 'museum’ed aristocratic houses. The rich of today are not a patch on the rich of yesteryear, at least for pure unadulterated conspicuous consumption. The pleasures and freedoms of tomorrow will be mean and petty compared to even the relatively curtailed and enforcedly safety-conscious freedoms of today.

I see children increasingly shepherded from earlier and earlier ages down one career path or another - an educational caste-system - as niches become more and more specialised. I see jobs becoming family possessions as much as houses, passed down from one generation to the next.

Of course, one child per family. And all the loneliness and social ineptness this brings.

A prosthetic Earth, scraped clean of competitors. Organic technology and toward the end, re-engineered humans, hive minds, workers, queens and drones.

Unless of course, prior to this, human life loses its sanctity before it loses its rationality.

5

TR,

That’s an extremely far-fetched and pessimistic view.

I believe the common sci-fi views of the future are more-or-less fanciful and dismissive of the possibility and potential for the efforts of many to keep things natural and humanistic.

6

Capability, development, assumption, humanity, production … future.

7

I think humanity would be much better off to specify a scientiffic elite which pursues technology, on the basis that the marvelous invention are a shame to ignore.

But the majority of humanity would certainly be better off to live rather tribal, naturalistic.

Sadly, I think we’re too obsessed. Everyone feels an inferiority complex in their lack of technology. It’s regarded as youthful, intelligent, powerful. You only get it by spending your money points in the game of life. And it stands to potentially gain you many more money points.

My projections are ham-handed, without any rigour toward understanding the common trends. But if this naturalist majority is the realistic possibility, that’s the one I want.

8

Isn’t it already?

What’s stopping you? Desire? Every direction can be the best one if it actually is.

9

Damn, there isn’t a 'rueful smile in the face of naivéty" smilie in the selection available.

So, Abu, are you convinced man’s better nature will somehow be elicited by disaster and each will turn and embrace his fellow man…?

10

(Until the food & water run low… :wink: )

11

RU said it better than I could.

12

Discussions about the future are about as stable as castles built of sand around the seashore.

They are inevitably going to fail.

And if humans take charge of all existence revealing everything that exists where shall we derive wonder, mystery and enchantment out of life when everything becomes known?

Will we not devalue existence by our constant re-valuation of it?

13

Y’know - I think, on the whole, I’d take a can of spam and a diet-coke™ over all the mystery and wonder in the world, if I were hungry enough. Hell, if I couldn’t get spam, I’d even chew on a hippy.

14

You’d better load up on spam when you get to England. How much of that will the airlines let you carry in your luggage? :smiley:

Equilibrium,

It is easy to say that we should focus on the experience of now, since past and future are illusion, but contingency suggests that most would like to know where their next meal is coming from. We all carry some notion of the future. Your laptop… you must remember to plug it into the charger before the battery is depleted. That is planning for a future necessity. You have projected sufficient income to pay for internet service, or you wouldn’t be here. Contingency always involves projection into the future…

15

No. Today, everyone wants to be the scientiffic elite. Indigenous tribes are a very rare find. Modern tribes like the Hopi try to return to this manner of living, but with large population issues and what I think is a government resentment toward anyone not “with the program,” these lifestyles are constantly struggling to continue their ways. Aboriginal reserves might have a chance, but they’re too hooked on the world’s addictions (by choice or by force, you decide). Also, the competitive attitudes of modern scientiffic elite leaves their motives too dubious to trust.

Actually- not much time away from work, as I’d prefer not living in homeless shelters where you’re zombified from lack of sleep.

16

Perhaps. I merely believe the present and experience of the now is more important than anything.

The best set plans can even come crumbling down. I just think more energy should be put into present reality for how shall we speak of the future if we live not in the present but instead lay around idle dreaming the futuristic unknown?