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Where will humanity be in 500 years?
- Thread starter thenexus6
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I think the "everything will be just fine" attitude is human nature. Unfortunately. It's what keeps any real change from happening. I don't know why anyone would assume the world will band together and get us colonizing space while earth is suffering mass floodings, droughts, big cities being swallowed up by the sea and so on. People aren't going to stop saying "why spend money on space when we have problems on earth".
epicnemesis
Member
Either not exclusively on Earth or dead.
Orbis Tabula
Member
I plan to still be here, reading NeoGAF. Just, rich and immortal and robotic instead of what I am now.
JJDinomite
Banned
Eh.
If we don't fire any more nukes we should be fine.
If we don't fire any more nukes we should be fine.
But we do real change all the time. From technology to human rights. Slavery is outlawed everywhere, we've been to the moon, we've achieved quantum teleportation and women can vote in most nations. Children now have instant access to the entire body of human knowledge and we're slowly weaning off fossil fuels.
hydragonwarrior
Member
Look on the bright side.
memes r eternul
hydragonwarrior
Member
But to be brutally honest, if we can't save our environment (including our arable land and useable water) with the kind of technology and communication we possess, then humanity deserves to perish.
d00d3n
Member
Nope, the Age of Fire must end. Frampt is a loser.
itchy. tasty
Member
It will be a time where magic is more powerful than science, and only those who control the magic, control destiny.
Good thing there are a lot of people out there who actively work to change the way we live for the better. Instead of playing halo and lamenting the fact that they haven't been born in the future.
Maybe OP should wake up because we're living in the future.
Sectorseven
Member
In a human zoo for all the robot children to enjoy.
Cabbagehead
Member
not alive on earth
0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34.55
Banned
Riposte
Member
It's a bunch of trash people are saying to sound smart. They probably don't realize it took like 30,000 years for the unintelligent dinosaurs to die off after a fucking asteroid hit the earth and that's a low estimate.
burntchomsky
Member
Anybody else read Cormac McCarthy's The Road? Pretty sure he literally believes that this is where we will be.
I guess that if I had to give my own answer, I would say: either much better off than we are now or much worse off. The rate we are currently plundering natural resources is not sustainable and something will have to change.
I guess that if I had to give my own answer, I would say: either much better off than we are now or much worse off. The rate we are currently plundering natural resources is not sustainable and something will have to change.
Drillbreak
Banned
I dunno. 500 is too big a number to properly estimate INO.
how depressing would it be if humanity really did become extinct within the next 500 years?
so much hope, so much promise. but we couldn't stop fighting among ourselves. we couldn't put aside petty differences. we couldn't stop engaging in stone age type conflicts (land, border disputes, etc). very few wanted to unify and expand our reach into the stars...most were content to just gossip about celebrities and argue over political outcomes.
modern humanity would have only been around for just a nanosecond on a geological time scale. just another failed product of biological evolution, yet one that had so much promise.
so much hope, so much promise. but we couldn't stop fighting among ourselves. we couldn't put aside petty differences. we couldn't stop engaging in stone age type conflicts (land, border disputes, etc). very few wanted to unify and expand our reach into the stars...most were content to just gossip about celebrities and argue over political outcomes.
modern humanity would have only been around for just a nanosecond on a geological time scale. just another failed product of biological evolution, yet one that had so much promise.
There's absolutely no way to know, but I'd guess that we'll have cybernetic enhancements out the wazoo, so sophisticated and subtle that they probably won't be visible. We'll likely have no need for most consumer technology.
I expect that we'll be living in some kind of post-capitalist society, but I have no idea what that society will be. Probably something incredibly individualistic.
I expect that we'll be living in some kind of post-capitalist society, but I have no idea what that society will be. Probably something incredibly individualistic.
Not that much to be proud of honestly. Outlawing slavery and giving women the right to vote is like the first baby step towards ending racism and creating gender equality. Still a long way to go. We went to the moon but then.. nothing. We're slowly weaning off fossil fuels.. too slowly. Technology could save us but we suck at using technology to do 'good'. And I can't see that changing. There won't suddenly be a point where all countires band together and pour their resources into space exploration or ending the reliance on fossil fuels.
Dinosaurs weren't actively destroying the earth and eachother during that time.
Space travel, crafting new wonders that would make our descendants seem as godlike and strange to us as we would surely seem to our distant ancestors, but people still panicked that the end of the world is neigh because I don't think humanity will ever just accept that we're not going anywhere till the lights go out (though perhaps this is the reason why that is true.)
TheGreatDirector
Banned
I'm betting on space colonies set up around the earth. The moon will be partially colonized while we begin colonization of Mars and possibly other planetary bodies.
One thing I've thought about is cybernetics. If we develop limbs or extremities that function better than our biological ones - and if implementation is painless (let's pretend we've mastered surgery in 500 years) - will this be the inverse of the current Internet fad of protesting against things like circumcision?
Basically my question is, body mods that are 100% positive and improve the lives of the people using them - will we be opposed to taking that 'choice' away from the child, or will we just accept this as our 'evolved' human form, incorporating technology?
A side discussion would be the fact that we'll have figured out gene modification for superbabies so humans will probably have fewer defects, and more universally positive traits.
Example:
We develop cybernetic ears that are preferably implemented at birth, but require us to scoop out the normal biological ear and most of its connecting parts. The new ear has volume and sensitivity controls, as well as a having external ear peripherals for fashion or whatever. Getting this later in life means your brain takes far longer to map to it or its painful or you are just simply deprived of having better hearing until you're 18 or whatever age of consent there is. Thoughts?
Basically my question is, body mods that are 100% positive and improve the lives of the people using them - will we be opposed to taking that 'choice' away from the child, or will we just accept this as our 'evolved' human form, incorporating technology?
A side discussion would be the fact that we'll have figured out gene modification for superbabies so humans will probably have fewer defects, and more universally positive traits.
Example:
We develop cybernetic ears that are preferably implemented at birth, but require us to scoop out the normal biological ear and most of its connecting parts. The new ear has volume and sensitivity controls, as well as a having external ear peripherals for fashion or whatever. Getting this later in life means your brain takes far longer to map to it or its painful or you are just simply deprived of having better hearing until you're 18 or whatever age of consent there is. Thoughts?
This sounds pretty ignorant to be honest.
hobblygobbly
Member
Hopefully amongst the stars.
I dunno, but one possibility is that humanity in 500 years might consider us extinct. That is, due to progress in genetics, A.I, cybernetics, and who knows what else, they might classify themselves as quite different than the humanity of the past. So current humanity might end in the history books as one of those dead humanoid species of the past, when the time of the truly future human comes. Who knows if that being would even use the word human or humanity. And such being could be much different from us, than we have been from humans going back to thousands of years. So it makes sense to me that like we classify Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, future humanity might classify itself differently.
rokkerkory
Member
Fighting the flood
Pilgrimzero
Member
I'm betting Dystopian future.
Rich companies own and run everything, people are wage slaves living for company script for the company store until they die. Kids learn company propaganda in the company schools.
Commoners who aren't apart of the system die in the street and barely anyone cares.
Basically the rich/poor gap will expand until the real rulers are CEOs and not elected representatives.
You see it happening even now as half the US wants to put CEOs into the White house instead of people who did public work. "Better to run it like a company".
Rich companies own and run everything, people are wage slaves living for company script for the company store until they die. Kids learn company propaganda in the company schools.
Commoners who aren't apart of the system die in the street and barely anyone cares.
Basically the rich/poor gap will expand until the real rulers are CEOs and not elected representatives.
You see it happening even now as half the US wants to put CEOs into the White house instead of people who did public work. "Better to run it like a company".
Pilgrimzero
Member
This is not a movie, it's a documentary about the future. Everyone should watch it.
Given the rate at which technology is advancing I think we could very easily be living as a multi-planetary species with strong super intelligence and possibly be immortal by the end of this century. 500 years from now means we could see the end to war, continuous missions to Mars to colonize and terraform it, full on bionic humans and fully capable general robotics.
Basically if we don't annihilate ourselves, the advent of strong AI will bring about a renaissance.
Basically if we don't annihilate ourselves, the advent of strong AI will bring about a renaissance.
500 years is a whole freaking lot of time.
500 years ago we had just started moving out of the middle ages. In Europe, the Black Death had absolutely decimated the populace. America and Gutenberg's movable type (~1492) was the hot new thing, the Renaissance was just about to come into being, Luther & Co spread their "heretical" interpretations of God's word and wrenched the Bible away from the Christian elite that had locked it behind a not-quite-dead language and general illiteracy (~1517). A first great wave of colonianism and expansionism started, trading and spreading death, sickness and destruction - but also knowledge, plants and animals. Gallileo challenged the geocentric worldview (1600) and thus started whittling away at some seriously fundamental beliefs of man. A scant three generations later (1687) Newton was hit by the proverbial apple. And from there, everything continued accelerating as time went on.
Basically, we went from illiterate beet farmers and tribal Indians to barista-worshipping youtube celebs and IT consultants in these scant 500 years. The progress between those extremes is beyond the scope of imagination of either of these groups.
I'd say we'll be sure to have quite a few crises affecting us in the coming five centuries. War, a resurgence of germs and pests that gained immunity from their treatments, beginning feedback loops from our unsustainable and senseless consumption of resources, the slow beginnings of the true upper limit of resource availability like e.g. oil, hard shortages in trace metals and other incredibly important materials, clean drinking water woes - the list is basically endless, and not everything can be magicked away with science and effort.
Depending on how harshly these issues will affect us we might come out at the end as a changed people, alien and terrifying to our current selves. Technology and science will have advanced so much that it will probably appear like magic to the people of today. Moral and societal mechanisms and rules may no longer apply or harshly clash with our values today, governments and social structures will have adapted to the new restraints and conditions, particularly if we manage to gain a foothold on other planets which will rattle humanity at its' core once again.
To put it short. I dare not predict how we turn out. Five centuries is just too much. I'd already have difficulties with a scant hundred years. A beet farmer cannot dream up something like the atomic bomb or the internet due to the fundamental changes in basically everything to make them happen. It's genuinely unfathomable. I just hope we turn out well.
Gonna read The Forever War now.
500 years ago we had just started moving out of the middle ages. In Europe, the Black Death had absolutely decimated the populace. America and Gutenberg's movable type (~1492) was the hot new thing, the Renaissance was just about to come into being, Luther & Co spread their "heretical" interpretations of God's word and wrenched the Bible away from the Christian elite that had locked it behind a not-quite-dead language and general illiteracy (~1517). A first great wave of colonianism and expansionism started, trading and spreading death, sickness and destruction - but also knowledge, plants and animals. Gallileo challenged the geocentric worldview (1600) and thus started whittling away at some seriously fundamental beliefs of man. A scant three generations later (1687) Newton was hit by the proverbial apple. And from there, everything continued accelerating as time went on.
Basically, we went from illiterate beet farmers and tribal Indians to barista-worshipping youtube celebs and IT consultants in these scant 500 years. The progress between those extremes is beyond the scope of imagination of either of these groups.
I'd say we'll be sure to have quite a few crises affecting us in the coming five centuries. War, a resurgence of germs and pests that gained immunity from their treatments, beginning feedback loops from our unsustainable and senseless consumption of resources, the slow beginnings of the true upper limit of resource availability like e.g. oil, hard shortages in trace metals and other incredibly important materials, clean drinking water woes - the list is basically endless, and not everything can be magicked away with science and effort.
Depending on how harshly these issues will affect us we might come out at the end as a changed people, alien and terrifying to our current selves. Technology and science will have advanced so much that it will probably appear like magic to the people of today. Moral and societal mechanisms and rules may no longer apply or harshly clash with our values today, governments and social structures will have adapted to the new restraints and conditions, particularly if we manage to gain a foothold on other planets which will rattle humanity at its' core once again.
To put it short. I dare not predict how we turn out. Five centuries is just too much. I'd already have difficulties with a scant hundred years. A beet farmer cannot dream up something like the atomic bomb or the internet due to the fundamental changes in basically everything to make them happen. It's genuinely unfathomable. I just hope we turn out well.
Gonna read The Forever War now.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Human space travel is unrealistic and most journeys will not be roundtrips. We'll learn a lot from probes, satellites, etc. though.
On good old Earth 1, peoples' means of interaction and types of jobs will be different, but their day-to-day lives will be quite similar to what they have always been.
On good old Earth 1, peoples' means of interaction and types of jobs will be different, but their day-to-day lives will be quite similar to what they have always been.
I think this is a good guess.
Edit: I do think we'll have at least one colony on the moon or Mars though. It won't be big, just a small thing for experiments like what we do with Antarctica.
I feel like we might live in a society without any democracy or active legislation, because a group of AI governors us for what may very well be our own good. Because computers presumably have no needs or wants, there would be no corruption or self-interest, allowing us to live peacefully and explore the extent of our own talents and abilities.
TheStruggler
Report me for trolling ND/TLoU2 threads
I just came from the hillbilly fight thread after watching that and how the child was acting as well I say not long
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
I don't think we'll all be dead or anything. I can't speculate about general culture given the changes that I've seen within my own lifetime. Obviously we'll be enormously interconnected and I think our current concepts around the limits of wireless communication and mobile computing will be blown out of the water.
I don't think we'll be outside of the solar system to any significant degree. I think our instruments here will become increasingly more sensitive to the point where we can resolve extrasolar planetary bodies with more accuracy, including accurate, detailed atmospheric properties, but I do not think that we're going to go beyond the real limitations of moving mass at any significant speed to make interstellar travel beyond generation ships practical, and I do think that very few people will be interested given the very obvious lack of economics around sponsoring such exploration. It's hard enough getting people to agree to ROI of 5 years much less an ROI of 5 generations. I do think we will, however, vastly improve our abilities to exploit resources inside our own solar system.
I doubt we'll be "beyond war" or beyond a class-based system. I do not think we will have another world war. I do think that cyberwars will become quite common, though, and that the current cyber-arms race will continue until the point where information is so pervasive that there are either no economics to stealing proprietary information or until there is so much information that an analytical engine cannot make heads or tails of it. Given what I know about the state of analytics, I really doubt that the latter will ever be the case. I do think, however, that reducing the economics to the point where costs outweigh benefits to any attacker is the only way forward, though the investment to do that will be very difficult to justify until there is a serious breach of operations technology to the point that it actually hinders the economic and governmental operations of a world power and strict cybersecurity standards are codified along with harsh, extranational penalties. I think that these sorts of controls will put cybercriminality out of the hands of amateurs and simple criminals and into the realm of state sponsorship or true organized crime that have the resources to invest in expensive tools and dedicated distributed computing methods, which is already happening.
I imagine robotics will be far more pervasive and near autonomous to the point where class based limits will mostly apply to how much you still have to do for yourself and aesthetics, sort of like it does with cars or other appliances. I do not think we'll attain true AI to the point of "living machines" or anything like that. I do not think that androids will win out over purpose-based appliances, because I think that the aesthetics of creating Robojeeves will be considered ultrapremium compared to just having a kitchenaid that will prepare meals and a Roomba that will get you a beer. I also think that robosex will continue to be considered creepy as shit.
I think we'll still have generations of kids that think their parents don't get it and parents who think their kids are stupid.
I don't think we'll be outside of the solar system to any significant degree. I think our instruments here will become increasingly more sensitive to the point where we can resolve extrasolar planetary bodies with more accuracy, including accurate, detailed atmospheric properties, but I do not think that we're going to go beyond the real limitations of moving mass at any significant speed to make interstellar travel beyond generation ships practical, and I do think that very few people will be interested given the very obvious lack of economics around sponsoring such exploration. It's hard enough getting people to agree to ROI of 5 years much less an ROI of 5 generations. I do think we will, however, vastly improve our abilities to exploit resources inside our own solar system.
I doubt we'll be "beyond war" or beyond a class-based system. I do not think we will have another world war. I do think that cyberwars will become quite common, though, and that the current cyber-arms race will continue until the point where information is so pervasive that there are either no economics to stealing proprietary information or until there is so much information that an analytical engine cannot make heads or tails of it. Given what I know about the state of analytics, I really doubt that the latter will ever be the case. I do think, however, that reducing the economics to the point where costs outweigh benefits to any attacker is the only way forward, though the investment to do that will be very difficult to justify until there is a serious breach of operations technology to the point that it actually hinders the economic and governmental operations of a world power and strict cybersecurity standards are codified along with harsh, extranational penalties. I think that these sorts of controls will put cybercriminality out of the hands of amateurs and simple criminals and into the realm of state sponsorship or true organized crime that have the resources to invest in expensive tools and dedicated distributed computing methods, which is already happening.
I imagine robotics will be far more pervasive and near autonomous to the point where class based limits will mostly apply to how much you still have to do for yourself and aesthetics, sort of like it does with cars or other appliances. I do not think we'll attain true AI to the point of "living machines" or anything like that. I do not think that androids will win out over purpose-based appliances, because I think that the aesthetics of creating Robojeeves will be considered ultrapremium compared to just having a kitchenaid that will prepare meals and a Roomba that will get you a beer. I also think that robosex will continue to be considered creepy as shit.
I think we'll still have generations of kids that think their parents don't get it and parents who think their kids are stupid.
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