Future history of the world?

[Space cat]

I've been watching Andrew Marr's History of the World. For the benefit of those who haven't, here's a very brief rundown:

1) In the beginning, life was a risky business. We had to contend with cold, famine, drought, disease, predators, etc, etc. Then --

2) Civilization began, except that it wasn't all that civil. The new danger came from psychopathic tyrants who killed anybody that got in their way - and you could count yourself lucky if you died quickly! Was that better than ending up as a lion's dinner? Maybe; maybe not.

3) The next episode hasn't been broadcast yet but the preview suggests that the tyrannical despot was pushed out by the religious bigot. History tells us that you were likely to be stoned or burnt at the stake for breaking some apparently petty little rule. On the other hand, as long as you obeyed all the rules, you were reasonably safe. That's surely an improvement.

4) Leaving the series aside now, it seems to me that, here in our corner of the planet, the days of rule by bigot are pretty well finished. You can choose your religion and obey the rules that come with it but you don't have to. That's got to be yet another improvement.

Here in Europe at least, we've made ourselves safe from the forces of nature (well most of the time anyway), replaced tyrants with elected governments and told the religious bigots where they can stuff their petty rules. So the question is, have we finally cracked it?

Imagine that the year is 3000 AD and you're a historian looking back at life in twenty first century Europe. Would you say that we'd 'cracked it'? Probably not. So, what would you look at and say something like "Poor s*ds - but they didn't know any better?"

PS: Not war. That's too obvious.

 

[sooey]

The obvious one is the huge inequality between the rich and the poor.
I don't know the solution, and I expect it to get worse rather than better.

 

[joe-90]

The earth is a pot of finite resources. The more people we have on the planet then smaller our personal share becomes. Therefore, it is obvious that as our population rises - then we will all become poorer.

There are people alive today that were born before Wilbur and Orville did their thing on Kittyhawk Sands.

We've come much too far and much too quickly. What we should have done is limit our world population to a billion - and lived in the garden of Eden forever.


It'll all end in tears - billions of them.

 

[sooey]

Advances in medical science is another obvious one, I would expect them to have found cures for most things by then, so things which are a death sentence now will hopefully be routinely cured.

 

[calorific]

One would have hoped that they'd have cracked socialism properly by then and thus look back at the crackpot capitalism system we have now with amazement and pity.

I also hope that they look back with incredulity at the way we hold high up on a pedestal the tiny number of people whose main skill is kicking a ball around an enclosed field

 

[Norcon]

During our rape and pillage of this planet we have seen fit to murder, rape and kill each other over an abundance of resources and populations have swelled.

When the resources dwindle, combined with an over populated planet then war, famine and conflict on an unprecendented scale will occur.
It will make past conflicts look like an afternoon tea party.
This notion of us living happily ever after as some big tribe because we have come so far already is all rather quaint.
Greed continues unabated!

Edit.
History books in 3000AD might be titled, "The Resource Wars" , "Conflict Composers of the 21st Century" (bliar might get a mention) "The 5 Billion Wipeout", "Why Hitler Got it Right", The Genghis Ghan of the Modern Age" etc etc.

 

[wotan]

Our demise will be brought about by our own apparent misguided success, there is far too much reliance on computer driven technology, we are losing the ability to do things for ourselves. Digital photography electronic books bank accounts all accessed by computers and therefor ephemeral, what mess would we all be in if the computing system as a whole should ever fail, or become so corrupted that it no longer worked? No more satellite navigation or GPS, We would all run around like headless chickens, how do you prove you have money in the bank? how would we communicate?
We need to retain the old skills that are fast disappearing.

Wotan

 

[peterperfection]

The obvious one is the huge inequality between the rich and the poor.
I don't know the solution, and I expect it to get worse rather than better.

PLUMBERS CANT HELP BEING RICH !!

 

[EddieM]

life was a risky business. We had to contend with cold, famine, drought, disease, predators, etc, etc. Then --

 

[sooey]

Anyway, us sci fi nuts would hope that in a thousand years time we'll have discoverd the "faster than light inertialess drive" and will have infested half the galaxy.

 

[EddieM]

Anyway, us sci fi nuts would hope that in a thousand years time we'll have discoverd the "faster than light inertialess drive" and will have infested half the galaxy.

Not a cat in hells chance.

 

[sooey]

yer don't say.

 

[Space cat]

The obvious one is the huge inequality between the rich and the poor.
I don't know the solution, and I expect it to get worse rather than better.

I think you're probably right. On the other hand, the definition of 'poor' is likely to change beyond recognition. It's been said that if you went back to Victorian times and told them that, in their not so distant future, the poorest people would also be the fattest, they'd never be able to work out how. Go back a little further and you come to a period when the richest people were, in many ways, no better off than the poorest: Children taken away to be cared for by nannies (some of whom might have been monsters by our standards). Women left at home bored out of their skulls. Men hardly ever at home - which begs the question of where the children came from in the first place! In the last hundred years, the poor have become rich. They just haven't noticed - and I don't expect that to change very much.

What we should have done is limit our world population to a billion -

And even that might be too many. So the question is, will we achieve such a reduction in the next thousand years? It's not impossible to achieve a gradually population reduction although this won't help:

I would expect them to have found cures for most things by then, so things which are a death sentence now will hopefully be routinely cured.

Agreed. I would go further and suggest that spare parts grown from cells could, in theory, make death obsolete. At the very least you could expect to live until your luck ran out. On the other hand, that might be sooner than expected --

When the resources dwindle, combined with an over populated planet then war, famine and conflict on an unprecendented scale will occur.

Some movie directors have foreseen the same future: Judge Dredd, Mad Max, Waterworld. During my student days I got into a debate about the population explosion and suggested that those of us who knew where babies came from might have to build fortifications around our food supply to keep the starving idiots out. I got some stick for that statement but it's essentially true. I'd like to think there's a better way.

-- there is far too much reliance on computer driven technology, we are losing the ability to do things for ourselves.

I must admit, I hadn't thought of that. What it boils down to is inadequate education and that has been happening. I've worked in factories where it was company policy to give people only as much information as they needed to do their immediate job - and it's not unknown for perfectly good job applicants to be rejected because they know too much already. We also seem to have produced a whole generation that thinks all it needs to do is win Big Brother! If you're thinking about your own ability to get by if technology goes t*ts up all around you, try this test: Your computer has just suffered a catastrophic breakdown (it fell out of the window) and you have no access to another - and hence no access to the internet. Could you (a) build yourself a new computer and (b) get it all up and running again the way it was before. Unless you're meticulous about backups (which most of us aren't) it's not as simple as it sounds.

Anyway, us sci fi nuts would hope that in a thousand years time we'll have discoverd the "faster than light inertialess drive" and will have infested half the galaxy.

Once again, the movie directors are ahead of you. Some of them are clearly of the opinion that we'll simply export the worst aspects of our species: Total Recall and Firefly come to mind. I'd like to think we could do better than that but I might be wrong. For a start, I would suggest that the scum will always be with us. It'll be how we deal with them that makes the difference.

 

[sooey]

Eat them. Soylent not so green.

 

[wobs]

The more people we have on the planet then smaller our personal share becomes. Therefore, it is obvious that as our population rises - then we will all become poorer.

And yet the opposite has been shown to be true.

What we should have done is limit our world population to a billion - and lived in the garden of Eden forever.

A very Malthusian attitude, which completely ignores a whole host of factors, such as: education, urbanisation, contraception, ingenuity, economics.