The Year 2512
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The Year 2512
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Re: The Year 2512
#2Seems inconsistent to bring up nanotech, etc., yet keep climate hell as a fixed background. Of course attempted fixes will run into issues, small or catastrophic, but they're bound to exist.
Re: The Year 2512
#3Five hundred years out is an awfully far distance into the future. I could see most of this happening in 200 years, or probably less.
One of the problems with making predictions like this is that technology begins to compound and affect itself in weird ways - a book I have discusses how once you have proper mind-machine interfaces and can copy a person at will, one of the most efficient ways to travel becomes transmitting yourself at light-speed and getting a new body once your persona has been downloaded at your destination, rather than traveling in a physical body. This is something I had never considered before encountering it in that book, as much as it is a logical step from cybernetic brains and being able to back yourself up.
Similarly, racism, sexism and language issues being to disappear as you approach a higher level of computer integration. Racism and sexism become quaint ideas when most people can change to a body of the opposite sex whenever they want, and skin color becomes a matter of aesthetic choice. You might end up with wholly different types of racism (or perhaps species-ism) due to deliberate genetic changes to adapt to different environments resulting in wildly different types of humans, or due to experiments to bring certain species to human levels of intelligence (apes, dolphins, octopi?)
I find it interesting that he would have geopolitical boundaries exist at all. The idea of nations may well be an outdated one a couple hundred years hence. As we continue to improve our abilities to manufacture and grow things on ever smaller and more controlled scales, there may come a point where we no longer need massive structures of human organization like nations, corporations, etc. On the flip side, these things could become more ingrained and efficient such that we approach hive-like efficiency/societal structure (group minds etc.)
I suppose I find most of these speculations rather tame. I think that things will change a lot faster, and in a lot bigger ways, than described here.
Re: The Year 2512
#4Five hundred years out is an awfully far distance into the future. I could see most of this happening in 200 years, or probably less. One of the problems with making predictions like this is that technology begins to compound and affect itself in weird ways - a book I have discusses how once you have proper mind-machine interfaces and can copy a person at will, one of the most efficient ways to travel becomes transmi…
[deleted]
Re: The Year 2512
#5Five hundred years out is an awfully far distance into the future. I could see most of this happening in 200 years, or probably less. One of the problems with making predictions like this is that technology begins to compound and affect itself in weird ways - a book I have discusses how once you have proper mind-machine interfaces and can copy a person at will, one of the most efficient ways to travel becomes transmi…
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
--Niels Bohr
Re: The Year 2512
#6I think one of the only things we can be reasonably certain about is energy. Many or even most of the changes Charlie listed would require changing much of the technology deployed on our planet (except of course those changes that are more or less inevitable, like rising sea levels). Changing any of the hardware in our world on a large scale requires massive amounts of energy, and energy follows rules that don't change at all over a 500 year timescale.
Fusion seems to be inevitable. I can't say I agree with people who say it'll never be competitive with other energy sources. All that has to be done is to solve the engineering hurdles required to make fusion scalable, and perhaps to add the capability to use fusion reactions that make use of a greater variety of elements. (And yes, those are huge challenges, but we're talking 500 years of advanced engineering operating on something that already works in a simple prototype system.) Once that has been achieved, fusion power can outperform >any< other terrestrial energy source (except perhaps fission), as a matter of physics. I imagine the economics of that will fall into place once that massive supply of energy is made potentially accessible, since there will undoubtedly be demand for titanic amounts of cheap and reliable energy.
Re: The Year 2512
#7Five hundred years out is an awfully far distance into the future. I could see most of this happening in 200 years, or probably less. One of the problems with making predictions like this is that technology begins to compound and affect itself in weird ways - a book I have discusses how once you have proper mind-machine interfaces and can copy a person at will, one of the most efficient ways to travel becomes transmi…
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." --Niels Bohr
Well... I predicted this exact quote to show up in this thread within its first hour -- seems like got the hang of it, then!
Re: The Year 2512
#8That's what I call fun Saturday reading . . .
"GM mangroves that can grow in salinated intertidal zones and synthesize gasoline, shipping it out via their root networks, is one option."
That one sentence overloaded my system with a visual day-dream about the potential for our future - the way it's written evokes that famous Bladerunner line:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. . ."
A few dozen words in both quotes that evoke such richness. Beautiful work.
Re: The Year 2512
#9[deleted]
Re: The Year 2512
#10Speaking from the UK I take issue with his: "the English speaking world was a few million barbarians occupying a handful of damp islands on the outer fringes of Europe". We may then have been limited in extent and geography as this suggests,but we were supporting the three oldest universities in the world, excepting Bologna,and had a general education system that was about to produce Shakespeare and which had already produced Chaucer many others of his quality.
These brusque assumptions about the past tend to reduce my faith in this analysis of the future.