Doc. Josh Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 I was pondering today, What will the world look like in 20-50-100-200-500-1000 years. I look back at medevil times and wonder they couldnt have seen what was before them. And even the 1900s people couldnt have imagined all the stuff we have now. What are some possibilitys of todays tomorrow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michel123456 Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 The subtitle is awkward. In 50 years, tomorrow will look like tomorrow. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoseph Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 (edited) There a lot of things we can predict about "tomorrow" by using simple laws like Moore's law (http://en.wikipedia....i/Moore%27s_law). Using these ideas we can guess how powerful our computers will be and what they will be capable of simulating. You can use population laws and economic laws to predict whether we'll be able to afford things like robots in every house, or contrastly, food to eat. Anyway there are a lot of different opinions and perspectives and predictions and really, everyone has there own idea of what the future will be like and none of them can be proven right or wrong. There could even be things that we don't anticipate (meeting aliens, wireless electricity, antigravity) which could distort the picture a lot. So really we know quite a lot and yet nothing at all. The actual subject is called futurology, you can read a lot about it here: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Futurology and all over the web. There are even some magazines purely based on the subject which you should check out: Scientific American, New Scientist, Popular Science, and probably many more. Hope this helps you in some way Edited May 5, 2011 by Yoseph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michel123456 Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 (edited) I'd like to point out that 1900s people knew a lot of things. They knew electricity, telephones, engines, cars, airplanes, even spaceships (although not accurately). Jules Verne wrote about space travel in 1864. In his Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Novel, the submarine was powered & lighted with electricity. They had steel and concrete buildings,elevators, railways. Charles Babbage died in 1871, missing technology for 100 years, but the idea of computers existed already. They didn't know about penicillin (1928) but they knew about Relativity. They didn't knew about some little details like the Internet, Miss Levinsky and World War I and II. These kinds of details we will miss too when guessing about the future. --------------------------------------------------- I remember one of our lecturer explaining what will remain of our civilisation in 2000 years: he said almost nothing: concrete will have become dust, steel will dissapear, paper burned. No museum will resist, nor any monument. The only remains will be the highways, because of the large scale landscape deformation, and some ceramics and stones. Edited May 6, 2011 by michel123456 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemur Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 I think technology evolves in the direction of increasing simplicity. Grids of wires are currently being out-moded by radio-transmission mobile phones and hopefully solar power. Local economics is rational because shipping things around unnecessarily is like having two economies (production AND distribution) to do the work of one. Since all the buzz about "the dawn of the information age" has faded along with dot-com stock booms and Y2K virus panics, it's easy to forget that digital communications still holds enormous potential for decentralization and empowerment of decentralized production centers. The problem, currently imo, is that "localism" and "green economics" has become thought of as a "change" from a previous economic system, which it's not. Whenever economies encounter new technologies, they evolve to incorporate the use of those technologies to maximum efficiency. It's hard to imagine that a few centuries ago, tailors burnt down the house of competitors who dared to employ sewing machines because they thought that this would make traditional hand-sewing obsolete and put them out of business. Existing business/industries may fight to maintain some level of market control and techno-cultural romanticism, but gradually I believe that MUCH more efficient and energy-conservative ways of living will evolve - along with growing cultural freedom and interconnection in "the global village(s)." The biggest social-cultural horizon I see coming that will also face the most resistance is the potential for individuals globally to diversify in terms of ethnicity, language, and culture. Because this has been associated with cultural leveling and homogenization, which is in turn associated with "Americanization" and "globalization," which are misconstrued as narrow and limiting of possibilities instead of multiplying them. Once popular discourse shifts focus from anglo-conformity to the cultural-diversification possible within multicultural republics, I think you will start seeing a lot more economically responsible/constructive migration and a renaissance of decentralized cultural dynamism. Maybe I'm just seeing hope because the face of anti-globalist terrorism is up for succession at this moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwagen Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 I want robots, and lots of them. Asimo is the coolest thing I have EVER seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemur Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 I want robots, and lots of them. Asimo is the coolest thing I have EVER seen. Does it ever occur to you how many robots are currently serving us without us thinking about them as robots? ATMs are automated bank tellers, for example, but they just don't have robotic arms and heads smiling and counting out bills with robotic fingers licked by a robotic tongue for traction. What about soda machines. Do you want a robot with a cooler using its arms to open the cooler and pull out a can of soda before taking your money? Traffic lights: do you want a robot holding one of those stop-signs used on construction sites? Photo-booths: do you want a robot telling you to "say cheese?" Washing machine: do you want a robot hand-washing your clothes? Machines are all just robots without identifiable human form. They still automate tasks and serve humans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwagen Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 Let me rephrase then; Give me intelligent, humanoid robots! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemur Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 Let me rephrase then; Give me intelligent, humanoid robots! I'd settle for intelligent, humanoid humans - but they'll never have as good a warranty as robots will, probably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoseph Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 The question is, will all these new things we are inventing to help people individually help the world as a whole? What happens when we have robots which can do everything faster and more efficiently than humans without stopping. I personally see a very dark future ahead, what happens when we find cures/vaccines for HIV, Malaria and Cancer? The world will be completely full of hungry humans who have no use or purpose... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemur Posted May 7, 2011 Share Posted May 7, 2011 The question is, will all these new things we are inventing to help people individually help the world as a whole? What happens when we have robots which can do everything faster and more efficiently than humans without stopping. I personally see a very dark future ahead, what happens when we find cures/vaccines for HIV, Malaria and Cancer? The world will be completely full of hungry humans who have no use or purpose... The purpose of humans is to maximize goodness and freedom for themselves and others. This means they will eventually have to start caring that maximum hunger-reduction takes place, although that is not the primary concern in the current global economy. It doesn't make sense to worry about cures for disease resulting in more hungry mouths because there's no reason death-by-disease should be a solution for global hunger. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
immortal Posted May 7, 2011 Share Posted May 7, 2011 (edited) I personally see a very dark future ahead, what happens when we find cures/vaccines for HIV, Malaria and Cancer? The world will be completely full of hungry humans who have no use or purpose... No problem, we will have enough genetically modified crops (GM food) to feed the whole world and we can introduce new gene products(protiens) into their diet in those cultures which lack these metabolites, for example- vitamin A etc . It is absurd to have a pessimistic view on medical cures just because the world will end up in more hungry humans. I'm an optimist. According to Michio, the author of the book, 'Physics of the Impossible' , technologies like Teleportation, invisible cloaking devices, ray guns, perfect lens which might help us to look at DNA and protien molecules just through a microscope with out requiring any chemical action on them should be available with in a decade or so. The future looks bright in these areas. IMO they have to be inevitably appear with in a decade 'cause the technology is so promising. Isolating Quantum computers from the environment to avoid decoherence and time travel are considered to be much harder to happen in the near future. Not to forget bio synthethic trees planted in and around our houses and on streets to have a pollution free environment. Nano-robots which can replace erythrocytes would help us to provide oxygen and you could stay inside waters for more than 15min. The problem with nano-robots is that we have to find an effective way to establish communication between other nano-robots. Edited May 7, 2011 by savithru Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yoseph Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 The purpose of humans is to maximize goodness and freedom for themselves and others. If that is the purpose of humans, I don't see it being fulfilled. The freedom belongs to the rich which use the poor to fund this freedom. I think that the more people living in this corrupt system in place, the more power the people at the top will have and the more corruption will occur. Humans are capable of a lot, but there are reasons why we don't see some of this breakthrough technology, and it's not because it doesn't work or wouldn't benefit people. Take ideas like everlasting lightbulbs, technologys like these would mean that poor people had less things to waste their money on to fund the rich people. I don't think it's our intelligence that is limiting our technological developments, just the corruption in the system. I agree that allowing diseases to kill people shouldn't be a cure for global hunger, I just don't see our new technologys coming into place in time. The population is growing very fast, and movements in science and technology are relatively slow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemur Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 If that is the purpose of humans, I don't see it being fulfilled. The freedom belongs to the rich which use the poor to fund this freedom. I think that the more people living in this corrupt system in place, the more power the people at the top will have and the more corruption will occur. Humans are capable of a lot, but there are reasons why we don't see some of this breakthrough technology, and it's not because it doesn't work or wouldn't benefit people. Take ideas like everlasting lightbulbs, technologys like these would mean that poor people had less things to waste their money on to fund the rich people. I don't think it's our intelligence that is limiting our technological developments, just the corruption in the system. I agree that allowing diseases to kill people shouldn't be a cure for global hunger, I just don't see our new technologys coming into place in time. The population is growing very fast, and movements in science and technology are relatively slow. True, but I still wouldn't say that corruption and manipulation or domination and exploitation are the purpose of humans. It's just that humans have the power to do whatever they can to pursue whatever they want, which is actually because of how much freedom they have. I think you could say that as freedom grows, the potential for abusing it grows, and as more abuse takes place, the potential to learn from mistakes and suffering grows as a result and this leads to (at least some) people embracing the pursuit and maximization of goodness for themselves and others. But I agree that it is an uphill struggle - though perhaps a rewarding one where progress is always made to some extent in various ways. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
random Posted May 9, 2011 Share Posted May 9, 2011 I'd settle for smoking hot female robots with off and on switches and never ending libido. Sounds like a reasonable future to me, or mandatory female viagra doses would work too! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemur Posted May 9, 2011 Share Posted May 9, 2011 I'd settle for smoking hot female robots with off and on switches and never ending libido. Sounds like a reasonable future to me, or mandatory female viagra doses would work too! Is this a tribute to female reproduction for mother's day? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michel123456 Posted May 9, 2011 Share Posted May 9, 2011 I'd settle for smoking hot female robots with off and on switches and never ending libido. Sounds like a reasonable future to me, or mandatory female viagra doses would work too! You must know the erotic comic strips "Click" (Il Giocco, Le Declic) from Milo Manara. The link is not suitable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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