The Future (realistically now)

What do you 4channers see for the future?  Realistically now, taking into account all the current trends, projecting it out say, 100 years?  I'm talking technological (as far as you're able, I know that's a tough one), social, political, ETC...

My take:

We'll either be extremely egalatarian or extremely "feudal" for lack of a better word.  The technology will either be used to further the average person, or to further individuals...  A balance between capitalism and socialism will probably be possible, I mean, it's the system we have right now so I can't say for certain if we'll be unable to maintain it... I'd have said it was impossible to be the way we are now if I lived in the year 1700...

I see technology further degrading  the value of human labor.  Most people will sit at home all day, or will spend their time in clubs, leading to a huge "leisure" class, supplied with a stipend from the government.  All people in productive jobs will be there almost entirely of their own free will, and they will still be able to run a capitalistic endeavor even though the system will be largely socialist (by taking in profits ultimately from the stipends of this leisure class).  All health care ETC... with either be free or very affordable, not neccesarily by government intervention.  People will live basically forever.

Mental illness will be a HUGE problem.  Almost everyone will use a huge part of their time either going to therapy or taking certain remedies (drugs, nanotech brain re-wiring) for depression and all the other illnesses that have sprung up in the modern era.   People will be very ignorant of things, never needing to know anything to survive.  Anti-obesity measures will be something that will be instilled almost at birth.

An alternate view, as science begins to unravel the workings of the human brain and body, the value of human life will be much reduced. The nightmare scenarios that have been presented before of vast clone armies of socipathic killers controlled by a government, the human race "consolidated" or turned into a group of single minded hive workers by some sort of brain rewiring, or even the population of the human race reduced by an extreme in favor of machines that serve only world governments.  There will be no rights for anyone, because we will be reduced to the mere substance that makes up our bodies, to be manipulated as "higher" intelligences deem worthy.  In other words, the Schozophrenics are correct.

Technologically, I see nanotech beoming the norm.  Houses with walls that can turn any color or even become transparent (quantum dots) will be standard, as well as the ability to manipulate nature on a vast scale.  Expect people to be levelling mountain ranges or filling the ocean to make way for things more profitable, such as residential areas ETC.  Global warming will be defeated, and we'll turn the earth into a real "space ship" perfectly attuned and balance for our life.  Weather will be controlled, those morning rains you enjoy will be a thing of the past unless they become trendy.  Basically, science fiction is made realistic through this.    Nano machines will probably permeate everything, and skilled hackers might even be able to do things like they did in the anime Full Metal Alchemist, reforming substance however they want by instructing the machines.

Space travel will be normal, almost something easy to do, and I believe more adventurous people will bulid themselves a ship and just take off, to set up shop elsewhere in the solare system.  Hundreads of communities will dot the space scape, some as small as a single family, some as large as huge cities, all self-contained, all full of billions of nano-machines taking care of everything.   The temperament that made people travel the oceans centuries ago will hopefully not be completely bred out of the human race.

Scientific progress will most likely stall unless computer brain machines are invented.  When people reach this level of comfort, what point is there in pushing it?  

Some of this wasn't particularly original, but I believe the ideas are possible.  What are your thoughts /newpol/?

2get

Is this tl;dr?

Your ideas are too 'neat.' Too absolutist. Sure, there will be people who enter catonic state to escape reality. Sure, there will be corporations who fuck up the environment. Sure, there will be huge amounts of fucked up people. What else is new?

To learn about the future take a gander at the past. What was the future like 50 years ago? They imagined jetpacks and cures. Things haven't gotten better, they've just gotten more complex and there are more luxuries separating the poor from the rich, like medicine and technology. I think the comic Transmetropolitan draws an extremely realistic view of the future, or what the future will eventually look like. More war, more people, more diseases, more sub-cultures, more capitalism.

These are always truths, the world just tries to keep up with them. We won't all have a foreign totalarian leader, not a world war that burns the planet- just more of what we have now. Our future rulers are today's distractions. Rule by capitalism, political corruption, and prejudice against new things. Just another century.

Well, I see history as just one fiasco after another; I agree that the opening post's idea of the future was too neat, but I think >4 is too optimistic.  We may have a bunch of really stupid shit that happens, we might have a world war, we might have a huge problem with human rights.  The future doesn't progress in a regular and predictable way, it moves in fits and starts.  Incredible awesome things might happen, but more likely thousands of people will get killed meaninglessly in worthless wars, people will starve when some transport system fails, and some drug or social problem will fuck things up.

We've come far, but only by taking five steps forward for every four back.

China will probably become the next world power, but they won't want any huge war with the US; they'll just build an empire like we did during the 1900s, and europe and japan (and us too) will bitch and whine ineffectually.  Barring some big snafu, they'll eventually recede like every other empire.  They will probably have some far reaching influence on space travel forever after, just like the romans and the english before them.  That's as far out on a limb as I'll go.

Anyone else?

You're can't simply brush the impact of technology aside with some campy statement like "They imagined flying cars in the 50s!" We may not reach the state of technology described above anytime soon, but we're hypothetically imagining the situation when it does happen. The rate at which technology advances will have great impact on humanity.

And besides, If Moore's law is accurate to a degree, it's only a (short) matter of time.
And I’m fucking scared as I am excited.
I just can’t tell if the benefits out weigh the negatives. Unfortunately, we’re probably at the point of no return already.

The degradation of human worth as technology importance increases reminds me of Heidegger, though his proposed solutions are just dumb.
And it makes me wonder if we’ve already at the point of Brave New World Hedonism and 1984 Orwellian Societies.

Oh, mentioning Moore’s law probably entails mentioning stuff about the Singularity, where eventually we will create a ‘greater than human intelligence’, either artificial computer processing power or increasing human cognition through nano-nerual technology. That’s probably as far as we can get to a future we can predict.

I concur with >>4, provided we don't nuke ourselves off first.

mentioning Moore’s law probably entails mentioning stuff about the Singularity

FYI, we're having major problems keeping the common interpretation of Moore's Law true. Look up active power and passive power in relation to power density. If that's too complicated, look at the problems Intel had moving to 90nm process. It seems like it's time to go parallel, but that just increases the macro (read: room) cooling needed, and many problems aren't amenable to parallelization.

Then there's the physical limits of computation, due to thermodynamics: http://www.media.mit.edu/physics/publications/papers/96.isj.ent.pdf

In short, the Singularity bunch are fuckwits who know just enough to be dangerous (or stupid). Ignore them.

Debating the validly of Moore’s law is admitting-ly beyond me. I think there been more than enough article out falsifying it. But does this mean there’s a literal “STOP” sign to technological advancement in computers? Or are you just saying that believing advancement is exponential is a stupid in itself?

It makes me think though, does the whole input energy/output energy entropy physical limit problem also plague the brain? And what about achieving singularity (greater than present human cognition) through neurology/ nanomachines? Eh, I’m no science expert.

And, more importantly, dangerous how?

Well, beyond that. I guess there are debatable futures:

1.    Singularity- feasibility is put to question
2.    Negative Utopia.
3.    The notion of progress/change is illusory. Things have been or are more or less the same.
4.    We nuke ourselves

>>8
The brain operates on the molecular level.  We're talking processors that operate on the subatomic level, so no, I doubt that the same problems affect the brain.

>>6
Well, one thing to consider is innovations that probably nobody except someone who spent all his time trying to come up with something that nobody ever thought of could have possibly come up with.  The internet basically hit everyone over the side of the head; I believe nanotech is the next internet.  I think that getting huge amounts of efficiency out of for example, solar collectors, isn't that big a leap once we figure out how to use atoms at the subatmomic level.  Then, with nearly limitless free energy, and a system that can make almost anything from the very tiniest levels up, what will we do?

So long as we don't wipe ourselves out....eventually we'll come up with something better than ourselves, either semi-robotic or genetic or whatnot. They won't necessarily wipe us out or make us totally subservient, but rather let us coexist in the way that we try to let all wildlife coexist today, since at that point technology is likely to end most scarcity problems(ending ALL scarcity problems would be stretching things a bit). And the eventual result is that that leads to more questioning of original purpose, now that we all have nothing, or very little to do, except get more. It won't be the lack of scarcity, but the progression to a point where we can make living beings that are as "good" as we want them to be, that will trigger this reaction. 

Prior to that, we'll lead a pleasant but "trapped" existence. This is already the situation(largely) for the developed economies of the world. People work, and they work hard, but we keep having to move up the ladder to work requiring more of our intellectual capacity, or else we stagnate(this happened to socialist western Europe when the unions became very strong and started holding back productivity gains to preserve jobs). The ability to automate some of that, like low-level service jobs, is seen today or just over the horizon. But it'll keep happening, until the career choices are whittled down to something like:

artist, athlete, programmer, mechanic, academic, entrepeneur(or advisor thereof)

because so many other things will be administered by machines.

>>8
But does this mean there’s a literal “STOP” sign to technological advancement in computers?

No, we'll keep advancing, but I it won't be exponential. What lies beyond Moore's Law? I don't know. Maybe more elegant algorithms and numerical recipes. Maybe we'll stop having assholes who say, "Get a faster machine", and instead they'll stop writing shit code out of apathy and laziness. Maybe more unorthodox forms of massive parallelism, like DNA computation, or the bizarre world of quantum computers and qubits will come save us. Optical computers? Highly unlikely, but not impossible.

What I can say is we're hitting a stone wall with current methods. We may eventually have exponential trends again, but not until some budding technologies have had a few decades to catch up with the distance we've pushed transistors. We're probably very close to an era where we'll only have linear, or maybe polynomial, increases in computing power. That's all.

There is also another major problem: it's not just computing power that's been increasing exponentially, data has also increasing exponentially. Unfortunately, the algorithms that you'll need to sift through the data are usually polynomial or higher. So even if you could keep processors increasing exponentially indefinitely, at some point time complexity combined with exponential increase in data will kick the living shit out of us. Some communities, like computational biology, already have problems here.

And, more importantly, dangerous how?

Well, not dangerous, just stupid. I should have been clearer.

I don't think we'll make computer brain machines...  We want to stay the top species, right?  We'll make AI, but only equip it to be smart enough to carry out the task it's programmed to; nofarm robot will be saying "I think therefore I am" like in the matrix universe.

>>13
That is the sort of thinking that will keep humans from really progressing. We don't need to be the top species if we can make something better. A computer that can make a better computer is what we will eventually need to keep technology improving in the future. What we humans alone can do is miniscule compared to what we humans can create to work along side of us.

Spoiler: AIDS get. Most of Africa dies.

Cockmongler becomes supreme dictator of humanity, using an army of psychopaths indoctrinated from birth to control everyone and everything, his image becomes as frequent on billboards across the world as /b/.

Human genes are crossed with those of animals and new breeds of furry hmuans with animal like heads come into being and create a pornography industry which cockmongler later makes mandatory.

The water supply is drugged making everyone homosexual and extremely depressed, music from old times is banned and the radios blurt out emo-music constantly. Cutting and dressing like goths becomes accepted as a part of puberty.

Cock mongler declares the white race to be evil and forces all bix noods to diversify white women's children.

The future is figuring out how the pyramids got built.

we will all die

Captain Crunch will be made real as a robot.  he will then sail the seas searching for the crunchiest crunch.

The real Captain Crunch knows the value of 2600Hz.

wrong, china will rule the world and we will all have to submit to their chinky ways, then a revolution will start, and we'll either kill ourselves or kill so many people civilization will start anew

>>8
Vingean Singularity is an impossibility. You cannot create something that can surpass your own intellectual ability. The Apocalyptic vision of the "human era ending" is fairly rediculous notion, which also discredits Singularity. We will most likely have a two-class society in which the intelligent will control the intellectually inferior, yet the inferior will outnumber the intelligent. The inferior revolt, and find themselves being led by yet another wily, more superior figure. A look into our past? to an extent, yes

Not that I disagree with the rest of your post, >>22, but I doubt that making a superiour intelligence is impossible.

How would you do it? The same way we do everything now: delegate specific parts of the design to people specializing in that part. So you'd have an army of specialized engineers coordinated by a few working on the overarching structure.

One persons designing an entire nuclear submarine is impossible too, but we have them anyway.

There will be many negroes in prison

everything here said thus far is in the realm of fantasy..

"You cannot create something that can surpass your own intellectual ability."

You cannot prove something without facts to back it up.

"We will most likely have a two-class society in which the intelligent will control the intellectually inferior, yet the inferior will outnumber the intelligent. The inferior revolt, and find themselves being led by yet another wily, more superior figure. A look into our past? to an extent, yes"

Yeah yeah.. Another way of looking at it is that the intelligent always have an advantage over the stupid and rise to the top and if the current system of government is ruled by idiots then it's only a matter of time until it is replaced.

What we can do is have a democracy and permit no one to be above the law and live in opulaent splendour as we do now. Oh yeah, we are better off than we are before. People in trailer parks and the ghetto are as wealthy, much more healthy and work less than most of the middle classes before the industrial revolution.

Time to grow up and take a look at reality instead of the random stupid crap you anonymous 13 year olds keep coming up with.

Time to grow up and take a look at reality instead of the random stupid crap you anonymous 13 year olds keep coming up with.

What fine argumentation you have there, good sir!

>>25
What are you seeing that's fantasy good buddy?

I mean, nanotech is the new wildcard; you have no idea what we can do with it, and all the stuff you say sounds like fantast ISN'T if you know how the stuff works (and what has already been done).

Where are my flying cars?  I was promised flying cars.  I don't see any flying cars.  Where are they? 

Where?  Where?  WHERE?

And Rosie the Robot?

>>29
The Moller Skycar. They've already been made. Go buy one.

>>29
They were projecting that based on what had already been developed; they never considered the practical stuff before they spread that propaganda.  Also, you have to admit, that was a very optimistic era, and this one is a much more cynical era.

We have already built nanocars with working wheels, microgears with teeth that actually mesh (though there's no way they can tell if they can turn it yet).  We can build stuff on the molecular level already; soon we'll be able to figure out how to make machines that small that can do some sort of task...  Maybe alchemy is out there, something that the molecules might not be able to do, but there are incredible implications for computers, manufacturing, almost everything we have. 

But how wil all these glorious things enhance my sexual experience? That is paramount. It is what really drives the world. In other words, will men someday have mutiple orgasms?

bugger off.

>>28
"I mean, nanotech is the new wildcard; you have no idea what we can do with it, and all the stuff you say sounds like fantast ISN'T if you know how the stuff works (and what has already been done)."

What you've seen isn't nanotech... It's called miniaturization and has been going on since the 20s. Show me velcro with spines 1000 molecules thick and I will say we are looking at the beginnings of nanotech. Otherwise shut the fuck up and get the fuck out.

Just because lasers in star wars can destroy planets doesn't mean lasers in real life can be as powerful.

nanotech is a buzz word. It is used to make some asshole appear to know shit. The multiple orgasms for men sounds more intriguing.

thread peaked at 12

your sexlife peaked at 12:)

>>36
study it

We will stay essentially the same, but others will regress, making us superior.


ps
>>24 agreed
oh, and 40GET

We'll have flying cars!

Nooooo fyoo-chaaa for yoooou

Seriously, the only way you know about linear time is through definitional knowledge. You define "the present," then you have "the future." This being so, why ask this meaningless question?

Sex Pistols is smarter.

>>42
For god's sake, don't play the axiom game.

The axiom in this arguement assumes time/space to be a priori.
The cognition on time/space is seperate from time/space itself.

In fact, The topic has nothing to do with Metaphysics.
And really, Nihilist-Absurdist-Daoist bullshit like this gets us  fucking nowhere.

<Sex Pistols

who cares?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Oh, sorry, I dozed off there.

Unbreaking the board.