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Your Thoughts on the Future
#15
Twenty years ago, I would had described a scifi paradise. But we're almost a quarter of a century in, it's only 81 years away. People born now, people living now, will still be up and about in 2100. A few assymethrical wars and economic ups and downs later, my guesses are far more mundane.

Here are my bets:

The quest for a high lifespan is over. Now it's all about the healthspan. Fighting the decay of an old body will be high in priority around the mid-century.

Full-body cyborgs will still be uncommon by then, but I expect the first around 2050. Better than nothing, but a far cry from what me and GITS wanted.

We will have a a moon base or two, maybe a Lunar beanstalk or two and a small spaceship factory using Lunar mines towards Martian bases. HOPE-like Missions would had been done by the mid-century; but if there's no life out there, expect little human presence. Asteroid Mining would be an oddity. Basically, hopefully, there's a lot of 'functional prototype' stuff out there; stuff done to confirm that it could be done; but there's little demand to actually mass-produce the prototypes: like the lunar beanstalks or ISRO factory. The main human presence will be on Mars, but only around 100-1,000 individuals in various bases all due to geopolitical grandstanding between the great powers then....

Which would still be the same powers as now. Arabia, Africa, and Brazil might soar into a place by then, but India, Europe, Russia, and Japan will barely have a manned presence in Space. Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Mexico and Australia might be surprise purveyors of the stars and have a lot of regional influence. The EU has a good chance of being federalized by then. The USA, PRC, Russia, and UK would still be tossing their weight around.

I'm not a climate doomer; and not because I believe some technological wonder will save our asses; just that we're too damn stubborn to do any drastic change and that while we will basically be cooking MENA and India out of existence and most of the subtropics will be sub-desert and the Arctic will be free of ice; most of civilization will have adjusted. We're so stubborn we'll keep up the charade of normalcy until we literally can't; and expect a lot of 'Arcologies and AC save the developing world' to pop up. But I doubt there's going to be any major geopolitical shakeup this century. A few years ago I would had prattled on and on about the collapse of the world into petty statelets but eh. People aren't damned enough anymore to redraw the map in any major way.

I'm not that much of a stockholder in AI, either, or even further automatization. For being in an Alpha++ city, by the gods does it suck half the time and barely works the other half. I can see a lot more efficiency and information sharing and people actually giving a damn about services and infrastructure, undoubtedly helped by more advanced computing, but nothing revolutionary there, either. We'll pass singularity prophecies with alarming regularity.
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Messages In This Thread
Your Thoughts on the Future - by Banelord - 03-25-2019, 10:16 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Drashner1 - 03-25-2019, 11:21 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by rom65536 - 04-21-2019, 04:36 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Noclevername - 05-14-2019, 01:01 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by rom65536 - 04-21-2019, 09:09 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Drashner1 - 04-21-2019, 12:31 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by stevebowers - 04-21-2019, 10:16 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Noclevername - 05-15-2019, 04:41 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Noclevername - 05-16-2019, 08:51 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Drashner1 - 05-17-2019, 12:48 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Noclevername - 05-17-2019, 06:00 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by radtech497 - 09-29-2019, 06:55 PM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by stevebowers - 05-29-2019, 06:34 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Noclevername - 05-29-2019, 08:26 AM
RE: Your Thoughts on the Future - by Eshanas - 09-26-2019, 10:43 AM

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