American Society in 20 years

apendrapew said:
I agree in believing that in 20 years, people will be living far too long, but I doubt we'll have immortality in 20 years.
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Immortality? No such thing really.

All I predicted was that natural death will be conquered.

Disease, famine, traumatic injury, and all other forms of incidental death aren't going anywhere.


However, that isn't going to stop the phenomenal over-population of the earth that will ensue.

I wonder how many will die, how much of the ruin each of us will contribute?

Perhaps Xev would relate this to her upcoming Abrahamic Holacaust... :bugeye:.


I don't really know; nobody does. I'm just making my own quick global prognosis.
 
apendrapew said:
Couldn't find it anywhere. What is Wetware?
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oh, it's a slang word in cyberpunk and geek networld for body inplants that tinker with human body preformance (in short)
 
I think that given sufficient scientifical advance overpopulation on Earth could result in the full colonisation and terraforming of Mars (I'm not talking about decades here)
 
Avatar said:
oh, it's a slang word in cyberpunk and geek networld for body inplants that tinker with human body preformance (in short)
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Definitely 'in short'...

Look, or better yet, look.

The mind of the machine, the body suspended in time, organs exchanged, thought computed, genes manipulated, DNA samples abducted by aliens: the terrain between science and speculation, fraught with the possibility of technological and perhaps even evolutionary transformations...

~Editorial Reviews, Theory Out of Bounds~



Check this out.

In the twenty-first century, a network society is emerging. Fragmented, visually saturated, characterized by rapid technological change and constant social upheavals, it is dizzying, excessive, and sometimes surreal.

...

Connected is made up of a series of mini-essays-on cyberpunk, hip-hop, film noir, Web surfing, greed, electronic surveillance, pervasive multimedia, psychedelic drugs, artificial intelligence, evolutionary psychology, and the architecture of Frank Gehry, among other topics. Shaviro argues that our strange new world is increasingly being transformed in ways, and by devices, that seem to come out of the pages of science fiction, even while the world itself is becoming a futuristic landscape. The result is that science fiction provides the most useful social theory, the only form that manages to be as radical as reality itself.
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Editorial Reviews, Connected


Some may disagree, but, as I see it, much of what the 'wetware' genre offers is going to be reality in the not so distant future.




EDIT:

I'm in not in the best of moods, but I do have an art history text book on hand...

In case you don't know who Frank Gehry is, which isn't something I'd expect of healthy person, he was this fellow, a prolific and innovative architect of the post-modernist school, responsible for the California Aerospace and the Fredrick R. Weisman Museums.
You'd probably recognize the latter of the two for its prominent and multi-faceted steel facade.
His works are typically dynamic and bizarre.


Critic Paul Goldberger had this to say about him in 1989:

His buildings are powerful essays in geometric form and materials, and from an aesthetic standpoint they are among the most profound and brilliant works of architecture of our time.
 
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You are right to say immortality is impossible; the eventual death ofthe universe will make certain of that.
It is also true to say that increasing life span will cause population problems; if you decrease the death rate without decreasing the birth rate the population goes up; it is simple math.

Terraforming Mars does not turn out to be the best option to alleviate the problem of overpopulation; it would take many times as much energy to terraform Mars as it would to convert the vast inhabitable surface of Earth into a temperate paradise, with ten or even hundreds of billions of people eating artificially produced food.

Really; it would be very, very very energy intensive to terraform Mars, and if we used that energy on Earth, we could end world poverty and allow ten times the current population to live in luxury.
But this would also eliminate the natural biosphere of the Earth;
not recommended.

Population pressure can only be controlled by managing the birth rate; emigration to other worlds can never occur fast enough to make a difference.
------------
SF worldbuilding at
www.orionsarm.com
 
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oh, terraforming was meant in a long time scale. for the starters people could live in biosphere domes. with sufficient genetic engineering of some bacteria and algea and polluing of the Mar's atmoshpherea terraformation could take place mostly using natural processes. but of course we could make deserts on earth inhabitable with a lot less effort
 
If America exists in 20 years, it will be coping from long periods of civil and world wars. Don't worry about the population growth, billions will be dead by then, from war, famine and disease. Keep watching the news, it's only a handful of years, before you will realise what I just told you :)
 
I pretty much agree, crazymikey, but the alternative might not be doom and gloom. Perhaps some other form of socializing will exist by then and maybe, it will far surpass present conditions as far as being able to further humanity's options rather than appear to curtail them. Ever see the book, "Utopia or Oblivion" by Buckminster Fuller? http://www.hearingvoices.com/bucky/fuller7.html
 
Mr Chips, alternatives do exist, but for those alternatives to be enforced, it requires people to take action today. Anyway, Im sure this dark cloud has a silver lining too, maybe not for us, but for the future race on this planet. The sad part is; not for us.
 
Nano technology will begin the change; first, it could change us into self repairing, computerised man-machines and from that, we will develop actual organic machines with limited intelligence, for work, but no capacity to think for themseves. Eventually we will fuse the 2 technologies and create androids that will differ only very slightly from 'humans'. I could see this developing over the next 50 years or so.
 
have you seen the Animatrix yet, Tablariddim?

I agree with those saying that nanotechnology is going to be the enabling technology for a lot of this. If we can truly exploit the power of nanotechnology, we could colonize space, not even necessarily other planets. We could build something akin to a death star. Therefore, we wouldn't have to fight over resources so much.

I think a lot of wars happen because of our need for elbow room. I think nanotechnology could help us in that sense. So screw all you pessimists!
 
Mr. Chips said:
Ever see the book, "Utopia or Oblivion" by Buckminster Fuller? http://www.hearingvoices.com/bucky/fuller7.html
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Wow!

R. Buckminster Fuller, for whom the fullerene was named, architect responsible for the Biosphere, was also an author.

That's very interesting; I had no idea.


I find this comment rather odd, though:

"Fuller equates exploding Earth's atoms for energy with 'burning your house down to stay warm.'"



EDIT:


crazymikey said:
If America exists in 20 years, it will be coping from long periods of civil and world wars. Don't worry about the population growth, billions will be dead by then, from war, famine and disease.
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Modern humanity has coped with those problems very admirably for ages now.

What circumstance do you anticipate will amplify them sufficiently to lead to more doom and disaster than we now experience?


Additionally, I'm willing to accept the prospect of the US involving itself in silly and deadly foreign wars... but civil ones?

I'm sorry, but that's highly unlikely. The US government is not a unitary system repressing a number of dissenting provinces or a disillusioned minority, the groups typically responsible for civil war. The US government is the success story of dual federalism, and its operations are smooth and uncontested.
The Courts are the authority to which all turn, and they having proven one of the most responsible judiciaries on the planet, all seems to go well.

I really can't conceive of a situation that could lead to a new American civil war, and, truthfully, I think you're all horn and no engine.



apendrapew said:
have you seen the Animatrix yet...
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Is that any good?
 
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what will happen is the rest of the world besides the arab states will gain long life and become tree hugging hippies.. dont squish that bug you are sooo specieest "racest but for diffent animals" to the point that you fart you get a law suit aginst you... then the arabs will kill us all because they dont have problems with killing bugs or trees or people... they want to live in the 1200'
s so back to the stone ages unless they figure out that you cant be ruled by people that say they are talking to god to control you and have leaders that are good leaders because they help people not control them... but one way or another the rest of the world is going to have to fight arabs one way or another I think really I will just come down to they outnumber us is what will happen...
 
Hello!

I'm from Croatia.I'm 21 and study biology.
When I start to think about world in near future, I imagine new tehnologies instantly.. My friend physicist says that there was no revolutioanry discovery in the field of physics for 25-30 years. Due to my imagination and futuristic dreams I often think of gravitation free machines, different kinds of energy fields, humans with cybernetic implants, mindreaders, and whole palette of wonderful technically and spitirually advanced people. However, I think that our survival rate will mostly depend on figuring out the ways of nature, to adept quickly to the drastic changes in the enviroument.

It is definitely not a bright future as I see it, literally..

Sorry for my bad English...
 
I guess it depends on how much emphasis we put on getting into Space. I reckon that in the next 20 years we'll have started colonies on Mars. That alone will change the whole outlook of the Human race (at least until it's overtaken by other news). However, no matter whether people soon put aside news of a Martian colony onto the back-burner of their minds, the fact will remain that Humanity will have taken the first of many steps beyond its cradle. About time too.
 
Canute, all those stories about primitive people living under better conditions than us are nonsense. First of all, it would be like living with your extended family forever... who wants that? Second, most of those tribes spent hours a day discussing and arguing things like should we search for another waterhole, though the studies don't record it as so, that is basically work.

As for technology, I embrace the advances of technology but part of me says that it is advancing too fast. Logically, the faster the better but man...
 
Aye, it is no picknick.
BBC TRIBE
Information

Explorer Bruce Parry embarks on a real adventure as he spends a month living with each of the six remotest tribes in the world.

From the poisonous and sometimes fatal rebirthing initiations practised by the Babongo people of Gabon, to the fierce fighting displays of the Suri in Ethiopia\'s Omo Valley; from taking dinner with a cannibal in Papua New Guinea to having a sharpened bone put through his nose, Bruce shares lives and customs increasingly threatened and gives a voice to those the corporate, capitalist world is too swift to ignore.
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http://www.mvgroup.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6846&hl=tribe
(there be torrents)
 
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