What is the future going to be like? Will it be like StarTrek? Peaceful, perfect, and hot green alien babes. Or will it be more like Blade Runner. Dark, mysterious, loud and dangerous.

I believe that the future will be like Babylon 5. Politics and currency will still be important, alien civilizations will have problems with us. The governmen is still going to have problems and wars will still be normal.

Originally posted by CounslerCoffee
us.

I believe that the future will be like Babylon 5. Politics and currency will still be important, alien civilizations will have problems with us. The governmen is still going to have problems and wars will still be normal.

Sans aliens you've just described modern, present world.

Yes, I did. The main question is what will it be like. B5? StarTrek? StarWars? Im asking which series you think it would be like.

Like I side, it's going to be like Babylon 5. It's the most realistic picture of the future that Ive seen outside of Blade Runner.

Am I the only one that thinks Blade Runner looks like modern day NYC?

Originally posted by CounslerCoffee
Am I the only one that thinks Blade Runner looks like modern day NYC?

Nope, it certainly does. I hated babylon 5 and avoided it like the plague so i don't know much of it's political ventures or it's adherence to reality in terms of it's story presentation. I would like Star Trek's inventions to be part of our future (no more shitty public transportation.....warp me Scotty).

I hope to god it doesn't resemble Star Wars. There are enough followers of this fantsy...no need t oexpand that into reality. Also the future being a vision of a Hollywood filmmaker isn't a very tempting notion.

I vote both- stark trek and blade runner, possibly even on the same planet. It partly depends upon the technbology. if we have near omnipotech like in star trek, then, assuming we dont kill each other first, it'll be fairly impressive and possibly a bit dull. (something ot be discussed on the Iain M banks thread i think)
Blade runner, well, if i rememebr correctly the ecosystem was knackered anyhow, which we dont want to happen, but theres a moderate chance that will, and as for human equivalent androids, thats possible.

Actually, come to think of it, what youve got to tease out are political/ economic/ social changes, as well as technological ones. the problem is that they interact.

S for babylon five, ive not bothered getting into it. i foudn oen website where the owner slagged off star trek, in fact I think its the one with the actual whats wrong with star trek rant. He then wrote an addendum saying that Babylon five solved most of the problems in star trek.

I think itll be alittle like babylon five, and alittle like star trek. Assuming we get warp drive like stuff, the rest of the potential technology is possible (nanotech, fancy genetics etc) such that life will be less currency based, we will have few physical needs left to be satisfied, but, there will still be arguments about politics etc.

There isn't going to be a future for humans. Internal strife is going to tear the human race and Earth apart until there is nothing left of either. Based on the evidence gathered so far by SETI, I would guess that this happens to many, if not all forms of intelligent life. They kill themselves. Sure, technology will progress, possibly past our own extended lifetimes, but I doubt we'll ever get much farther than our own Solar System.

Mad Max......

YOu pessimist, pollux. What have you been doing recently thats gotten you so down?

Which particular evidence from SETI? You mean the increasing signals of radio, tv ended by abrupt nuclear signatures?

Nothing's gotten me down. I'm as chilled out as ever.

Which particular evidence from SETI? You mean the increasing signals of radio, tv ended by abrupt nuclear signatures?

No, I mean the total lack of artificial radio signals whatsoever. If there was a show nearby, we missed it. Any evidence of nearby alien civilizations is likely cold and floating around in orbit of their planet, the radio signals and flashes of light from the nuclear holocausts are quite far beyond Earth by now.

I see the future
The future is orange...

But really at the way we're going it most likely that we'll blow ourselves up before we work out cold fusion and all those other gadgets that hollywood has promissed us.

I think that we'll end up like Logan's run, the last few people on earth living in an orgy of technolgical plesure for an alloted time as not to consume too many resources.
Or i could have had one to many before i came home who knows.

All we can safely say about SETI is that there is no civ near enough to us, producing radio waves, within like what, 30 light years? Thats hardly much of the galaxy. They might all use fibre optics now, or be waaayy beyond that. Or indeed teh signal attentuation might be quite hideous when your talking about 3,000 light years.

We've been sending signals out for almost a hundred years (or more?). That means that, taking into account the weakness of earlier signals and the time it would take to actually figure out what to send back, we've covered I would say more like forty light years. And while I'm not the man with enough resources to confirm this, I bet that covers a great deal of stars, even if it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the whole galaxy. One planet is enough to serve as a fractal for the rest of the universe, like the top of a mountain looking exactly the same as the entire mountain itself.

"One planet is enough to serve as a fractal for the rest of the universe, like the top of a mountain looking exactly the same as the entire mountain itself."

WEeeellllll, maybe youd better ask in the atronomy and cosmology forum. But essentially, its also that I think the nearest treally sun like star is 2 light years away. We'll have to wait for the results of the latest planet finding searches, but basically there doesnt seem so much chance that there are conditions fo life to get going out there in every star system. Which is a whole kettle of fish different from you saying that hteyve killed themselves. It could be that FTL isnt possible, in which case it would take them like 20,000 years to get very far.

The future is going to be like in the book "Jennifer Government", big companys will dissolve governments in thier lust for profit and we will all be thier brainwashed consumer slaves, cause basicly the guys in marketing are THAT evil. also... lets hope the internet turns out like in Tad Williams's "Otherland"

The future is a reflection of the past mixed with the visions of tomorrow.

Whatever the future is like, it won't be the way we imagine it;

no prediction of the future I have ever heard of was accurate to any great degree.
Which gives us the freedom to speculate wildly...

some wild speculations here-
_________________
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

In a discover article I read while ago, one guy did indeed predict the internet about twenty or thirty years ago. He's still around, although he's pretty old, and he predicts that at least for the near future, our homes will start to become more sensitive to our hormones. If we come hom and we feel sad, the lights might dim, and our favorite comedy would automatically turn on the tele, get the picture?

Pollux, look up the fermi paradox.

Actually, yopu too gutherie.

Anyone arguing about alien radio should be familiar with it.

A mix of Blade Runner, Aliens and Babylon 5.

I think the world will go to shit (more so) and people will have more freedoms in some areas but less in others. You know that the human race will decline, it's never going to b as perfect as Star Trek. It's going to be like Aliens and Babylon 5 because of the politics involved. Always relying on money vs people to get stuff done. Theirs going to be a value on everyones head.

Does anyone know if star trek is supposed to represent a natuiral evolution towards communism on a wide scale, but still with capitolistic elements? It seems like star trek is a big welfare state. I remember a character saying that nobody was hungry anymore, and everyone was sheltered.

Though, if it were true to the definition, it wouldnt have a military, but the entire galazy has to be communist for that to work, not just individual worlds ;) (Our definition - the whole world or none of the world) Maybe it's the russian form carried through? That show was first filmed at the height of the cold war, eh? With a whole world to dick around with, there would be no famine, eh?

I suspect the peaceful future depicted in star trek would require one vital piece of technology from the show to come about: replicators. With those there would indeed be no more hunger or inequality as far as material goodies goes. The flaw with the star trek concept as a possible future is human nature.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist but I believe theres ALWAYS going to be people who want power, and thats something a replicator cant make them. At this stage in history, I'm leaning towards the whole humanity wiping itself out scenario, but if we can manage not to blow ourselves up, I see a world with a much smaller population and less densely populated cities, huge metropoli (metropolis's?? lol ) just dont seem to be conducive to peace or compassion.

As for the guy who predicted the internet, im pretty sure it was asimov ( was either him or a.c clarke ), whichever one it was also predicted satelites before they became a reality along with a variety of other stuff. Our local paper had a list in it just before ( mighta been just after ) NYE 1999 with his thoughts on the future. I'll see if I can find the list somewhere and post it, was an interesting read.