100 Years from Now

[Mythsaje]

I will admit I am an optimist. I think humanity has it within it to reverse the most dangerous trends of its advancement. I believe this to the core of my being, though I cannot say why this is so.

Thus this essay will touch not on what might go wrong, but what might go right--though it may also be argued that even the wonders I believe are coming will have their dark sides. And I accept that this is truth. I have an occasional inability to make decisions because I can see not only the good, but the bad in every decision put before me.

I must weigh and analyze everything. It is who I am.

100 Years from Now--we will have conquered matter. We will be able to render even the most toxic substance completely inert. It will be possible to actually turn deadly poisons into food, should we wish to do so. There will be nothing that we cannot transmute, by simple molecular engineering. One thing will be able to become another. Lead to gold? Sure. But why bother? Gold will be as common as sand, assuming that it remains a substance worthy of desire.

100 Years from Now--we will be rendered immune to all known diseases. No virus or bacteria will be able to breach the walls of our defenses. Our symbiotes will supplement and support our white blood cells, and nothing that does not belong within us shall be able to survive long enough to do us harm.

100 Years from Now--we will have homes other than this Earth. There may be humans walking on worlds circling other stars. We will live on stations within this solar system, utilizing spin to create artificial gravity--if we have not yet mastered true gravity itself--and we will use the raw materials of other worlds, asteroids, and comets to restore the Earth to something approaching its former glory.

100 Years from Now--Humans will live twice as long, stronger, healthier, and with much greater potential to learn more of the secrets of the universe.

100 Years from Now--we will have lifted up our younger siblings, created other sentient creatures out of some of the others with which we share our home world. We will have talking dogs, and apes that share our burdens. We will have the opportunity to make other races in our own image.

100 Years from Now--we will have the capacity to feed all people, to house all people, and to make certain no human being, or no younger sentient, lacks anything it needs to thrive. We will have discovered new, clean, renewable sources of energy, and we will finally see the potential our species has possessed since it first climbed down from the trees and used its first tool.


Or, conversely, we shall all be dead and nothing we have done will mean a damn thing in the scheme of things.

As I said...I'm betting on the former.

[Swamp Rat]

1. I'm betting on the latter.

I'm feeling a bit pessimistic at the moment. x(

[NEOBuckeye]

2. I think 100 years from now

If we could visit the world then, we would not recognize it. It would probably appear to be a utopia by our present standards. But to the people of that time, I'm sure it will probably seem much more "ho-hum" than impressive. They won't have the problems that we do today, but they certainly will have different ones, and their definition of what is better and what is worse will surely be different from ours.

[Porcupine]

3. Still waiting for my flying car..............

Seriously, we havent' been able to recognize that the true wealth of this planet is it's biodiversity. There is plenty of rock, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen out in space. But there is no replacement for the smallest of soil fungi that weave together our soil.

We acknowledged the loss of the Yangtze river dolphin this week. I doubt there will be a wild gorrilla alive in 20 years. We ignore signs that we are damaging the most basic items of environmental security.

Humans are fatally short sighted; we will barely survive 100 years if at all.

[Mythsaje]

4. Flying cars are such a stupid idea...lol

I remember thinking that they'd be cool twenty years ago...until I got to thinking. Your auto breaks down now, you pull to the side of the road. If your flying car breaks down...look out below! Seriously bad juju.

Extinctions are regrettable. Horribly so. But they have happened without our involvement before, and will certainly happen again whether we're here or not.

As far as the soil goes? Within twenty years we'll be able to manufacture bio-organisms to order.

[piedmont]

7. agree and disagree

"But there is no replacement for the smallest of soil fungi that weave together our soil. "
As a mycologist, I can definitly endorse that statement!



"Humans are fatally short sighted; we will barely survive 100 years if at all."

For some reason I'm a little more optimistic.

[StrongbadTehAwesome]

5. You haven't read much older sci-fi, have you?

According to anything written 1940-1960, we would have:

1: colonized the moon and the rest of the solar system
2: have completely self-cleaning homes
3: have flying cars

all before the year 2000.


Now, it's almost 2007 and the closest we've got is the Roomba. :) I'd like to hang out with a talking Labrador, but I'm betting that we'll steer a middle course away from utter disaster AND vast utopic progress.

[Mythsaje]

6. Their timetable was off...

They didn't say HOW we'd do all those things, just that it would happen.

I think we now have a much better idea as to HOW we'd do it.

[NEOBuckeye]

8. The established order must die first

Too many have interests in maintaining the status quo. When those interests pass away, we'll have room again to grow and reach new horizons. The time for this is probably much sooner than most people would think.

[Mythsaje]

9. I believe we are on the verge of some rather spectacular

breakthroughs. They're going to shock people, and turn some institutions upside-down and inside-out. Just like the internet changed our whole perception of media, there are things on the horizon that will do the same to other sacred cows...so to speak.

A lot of the people at the top, particularly in this country, are so hostile to science that they're not able to really understand what's coming, or the fact that these things may well happen whether or not the U.S. has anything to do with them. The most astounding breakthroughs will most likely happen elsewhere. I'm willing to bet China is doing things many people cannot imagine, simply because there is nothing that will stop them. What we call morality, or ethics, will have very little effect on their work. It will be done because it CAN be done.

Nanotechnology is right around the corner. I was discussing this with a friend of my wife's a few years back and he said we were perhaps fifty years from any major breakthroughs because we have no means of programming machines that small. Yet, in the past few years, we've discovered a couple of different methods that may make it possible. We can genetically program viruses and bacteria to work with building blocks on that scale. Plus we can create molecules that are, themselves, recording devices for information. Both of these things change the equation drastically.

Some of what we will see is going to scare the hell out of us. And some of it is going to induce true states of awe and amazement.

I think the world is going to change dramatically and, chances are, we're going to be left behind to some extent. At least until this anti-science brigade loses its influence and power.

[Selatius]

10. I think we will muddle through, with some tremendous progress and horrific tragedies.

I don't think transmutation is possible on a wide scale due to financial costs, but it could be physically possible. It will only be affordable to rich people, though.

I think we'll be immune to bacteria and viruses due to nanobot technology. Nanobots could be programmed to recognize and attack foreign objects circulating in the blood. What stops the spread of this panacea for all harmful diseases is, again, cost. If you're too poor to afford an injection of nannites, tough luck. The poor in the third world would be vulnerable of missing out.

We won't make it past Mars in 100 years or not much further than mars or even other star systems; I don't think technology is moving fast enough for such a timeframe. We could have a firm grasp on the moon, though, due to advances in propulsion technology.

A second age of imperialism dawns where world powers wage war over colonial rights on the Moon, Mars and resource rights found on that, Mars, and the mineral and ore rich asteroid belt. Nations will attack space colonies of other rivals and attack orbital space colonies. People will be killed in tremendous numbers the technology of war was simply so much more advanced, and so much more deadly than in previous centuries.

True, humans will live longer due to advances in medicine, but again, the poor would be at risk of being left behind, and it's likely some were left behind.

Not sure about animal breeding though. It probably will be technologically possible though, including human cloning. I find the idea of chimeras, animals made from combining several other animals, abhorrent though.

We probably will have the ability to feed everyone, but as I keep bringing up, the poorest would be most vulnerable from being left out for lack of affordability, human greed being what it is.

That's how I generally view the future reading your responses. There's always somebody there to ruin and damage and render things less than what they could have been in the name of greed and the lust for power.

Space colonies:



Warships in space:





New propulsion systems:

[Mythsaje]

11. If private enterprise ends up in space,

which it will most likely do, we'll see a lot of competition to come up with the most cost-effective way to go the farthest distance and return. There may end up being SEVERAL different propulsion methods being used by several different groups out there. I just did some research on the whole thing and found some rather intriguing ideas being floated around.

A hundred years could well see us spread throughout the solar system, primarily in artificial habitats on various moons and asteroids. We have to keep in mind that if we can get up there and start constructing craft that don't need to make planetfall on Earth, we can avoid the fuel expenditure involved in attaining escape velocity. With the possiblity of using nuclear engines, light sails, and even ion drives, this really expands the range of our possible exploration within the solar system.

Some new math looks promising with regards to possible FTL technology. It's probably at least twenty five to fifty years from any kind of actual application, even in prototype, but a lot of people are looking at it pretty seriously.

On the nanotech side...I'm not sure that's a genie they can keep bottled up, as much as they'd like to.

[Selatius]

12. I added in some pictures in the previous post, btw.

I found pictures of hypothetical plasma drives and ion drive engines.

[NV1962]

13. Here's a plan to move ahead:

http://securingamerica.com/vision

[chknltl]

14. 100 years from now folks will still be wondering....

...how the peoples of the last remaining superpower could have elected a President that did not know how much a Brazillion is.

[shadowknows69]

15. I want to live in your world Myth

Do you take immigrants from pessimist land?