Slashdot Mirror
Short History of the 21st Century
If you read one geeky non-fiction book this year, you might want to make it Sir Arthur C. Clarke's "Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!", crammed with enough ideas, arguments and predictions to keep any techno-head going for months.
Predictions are only a tiny part of this ultra-brilliant collection of essays, whose topics range from 1930's visions of rockets and radar to space flight, quantum physics and sci-fi ruminations.
But Sir Arthur's visions of the 21st century are prescient and succinct. I've listed some of them here, followed by a few of my own (so identified) and one or two from a Princeton physicist and e-mail pal. Throw in your own:
From Sir Arthur Clarke:
2002. The first commercial device that produces clean, safe power by low-temperature nuclear reactions goes on the market. Economic and geopolitical catacylsms follow, and on December 10, for their (controversial, to say the least) discovery of so-called cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.
2004. First (publicly admitted), lab-created, human clone is introduced.
2012. Aerospace planes enter regular commercial service.
2014 Construction begins on the Hilton Orbiter Hotel, built by assembling and converting the giant shuttle tanks that had previously been allowed to fall back to Earth.
2009. A city in a third world country is devastated by the accidental explosion of an A-bomb in its armory [timely given the news from Japan]. After a brief debate in the United Nations, all nuclear weapons are destroyed.
.2015. An inevitable by-product of the quantum generator is complete control of matter at the atomic level. Thus the ancient dream of alchemy is realized on a commercial scale, often with surprising results. Within a few years, copper and lead cost twice as much as gold - since they are more useful.
2016. All existing currencies are abolished. The megawatt hour becomes the unit of exchange.
2020. Artificial intelligence (AI) reaches the human level. From now on, there are two intelligent species on Earth - one evolving far more rapidly than biology would ever permit. Interstellar probes carrying AI machines are launched toward the nearer stars.
2021. The first humans on the Red Planet encounter unpleasant surprises.
2025. Brain research finally leads to an understanding of the senses and direct inputs become possible, bypassing eyes, ears, skin, etc. The inevitable result is the Braincap, to which the 20th Century's Sony Walkman was a primitive precursor. Anyone wearing a metal helmet fitting tightly over the skull can enter a universe of experience, real or imaginary - and can even merge in real time with other minds.
2040. The universal replicator, based on nanotechnology, is perfected: any object, however complex, can be created given the necessary raw materials and the appropriate information matrix. Diamonds or gourmet meals can be made literally from dirt.
2050. "Escape from utopia." Bored by life in this peaceful and unexciting era, millions decide to use cryonic suspension to emigrate into the future in search of adventure. Vast "hibernacula" are established in the Antarctic at the lunar poles.
2095. The development of a true "space drive" - a propulsion system reacting against the structure of space time - makes the rocket obsolete and permits velocities close to that of light. The first human explorers set off to the nearby star systems that robot probes have already found promising sites for exploration.
While in no way putting myself in Sir Clarke's class, I'll stick my neck out and offer a few of my own predictions.
Digital Democracy.
2020. Electronic democracy is legally mandated in the United States, replacing some of Congress's pre-Net obstructionist, rhetorical and representative elements and functions. Maybe Congress made some sense in a time when people couldn't around or get information quickly, but less and less as America wires up. States and local municipalities re-create Revolutionary-era town meetings online to resolve regional and local issues.
All elections are tabulated digitally. The fractious, fragmented, eternally unresolvable two-party political-media system on display on Washington-based talk shows daily is gradually replaced by online discussions, research and information-sharing and instant voting that actually resolves issues by majority rule. Washington, like Bonn, is re-engineered from a national capitol to a hi-tech enclave.
Americans vote from polls, neighborhood kiosks, offices or homes using their Citizen ID's and passwords. All legislation is discussed and voted on online, before the government takes action. Congress is eventually abolished. Federal regulatory agencies are de-centralized, their vast Washington bureaucracies disassembled, re-located into smaller parts in diverse places.
E-publishing.
Instead of buying dozens of books a year, readers will buy one - it's pages digitally and graphically constructed to display, then delete or return books that are read - and use their digital tablet repeatedly. The e-books will be indistinguishable from the traditional kind. Each will have it's own text style and graphics, bought, borrowed and returned by wireless modem. Writing will become more open and collaborative, writers sharing ideas, research and the writing process with the people who will buy their works.
Digital Justice.
Non-criminal litigation will be resolved online. Lawyers will post briefs and testimony to pre-assigned Websites, where judges will consider misdemeanor and civil cases and render their verdicts online. Sophisticated legal software programs will sort through testimony and precedents and help make knowledgeable, rapid rulings.
E-cash.
Coin and cash currencies are abolished in favor of virtual money. All retailing becomes global, a free-market economic system permeates the world, and all economies are linked.
Supercomputing emerges as a powerful social tool.
Supercomputers radically accelerate research and information sharing. They cure cancer, blindness and other diseases, retard aging, find genetic keys to ending violence.
The Techno-Wars.
The bloody Technology Wars break out. Small-scale but violent conflicts erupt in many cities as technology-deprived Americans, increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs or displaced completely by computing technologies, stage riots. This unrest spreads to Third World and technologically-underveloped countries. A violent Luddite movement organizes, conducting a rash of terrorist attacks against technological targets and facilities.
Intelligent Computers
2030. Intelligent (or AI) computers advance to the level of a species, as Arthur Clarke predicts. A-life expands and flourishes, forming separate and distinct communities and traits. These machines demand - and are granted - the same equal rights humans have, including freedom of speech and thought, and the right to vote. AI machines do not, as some sci-futurists have long predicted, seek to violently conquer humanity. But they do compete with humans economically, creating corporations, products and services. Human entrepeneurs like the Bill Gates's of the future are unable to compete, especially in hi-tech arenas.
Genetic Purity.
2040. The United Nations passes bitterly controversial Genetic Purity Acts, mandating that genetic engineering be used to eliminate disease, intellectual inferiority and other human "disorders and malfunctions." "Ugly", "unhealthy", and "emotionally " human beings are not brought to conception. "Abnormal" humans (rent "Gattica" if you haven't already seen it) retreat to distant corners of the world, or begin resistance movements designed to thwart genetic engineering discrimination. Enormous class divides are created between societies with access to medical/genetic engineering and those less developed. The human race becomes homogeneous, boring and culturally unified. Genetic engineering has eliminated disease, prolonged life and destroyed biological individuality.
Predicting the future is a sport, not a science. If there's one reliable predictiction regarding technology, it's that it's not predictable.
In the best spirit of Slashdot and the Web, I've gotten some feedback and a couple of predictions even before the column was written, one from an e-mail pal - Andy Burlingame, who has a BS in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering at Ohio State University and is working on a Ph. D. in plasma physics at Princeton.
Even writing here, it's unusual to get the chance to run these ideas by someone as well-qualified as Andy [cburling@Princeton.EDU].
As luck would have it, he's been working on a space plane project called Hypersoar. He said the biggest potential market for space planes is same day package delivery, then the military, then commercial airlines. The biggest problem: "passengers will almost certainly be puking the whole way and will probably have to be wheeled off the plane on stretchers because of the nausea. The upside is that you can go from South Dakota to Tokyo in about an hour and a half."
This technology, says Andrew, should be available by 2020.
Some of his other comments:
"Quantum computing. There are lots of people that can give better guesses than me as far as this subject goes. Recently I've heard they've found two ways to make lots of qbits, the building blocks of quantum computers.
"On the surface of Superfluid, Helium 3 electrons are trapped in potential wells and can act as qbits. Second, very cold silicon can do similar things (see Scientific American from August, I think.)
"Quantum computers make factoring large numbers into primes about as simple as multiplication. All electronic data transmission becomes insecure. Corporations start to rely on paper again. Those space planes will be very important for fast, secure communication. 2020-2025 The NSA might already have this.
" Fusion Power. This will provide a virtually unlimited energy source. From an energy standpoint, with fusion a glass of water has as much energy as a glass of gasoline, and fusion would only use a very, very small fraction of that water (the heavy water.) The big problem: How do you get the energy out of a fast neutron? Predicted benefits: We won't run out of energy when we run out of oil. Electricity from fusion will still cost about the same as electricity from natural gas, so no great social change there. This should be available by 2050.
"Clark's #7, sensory input. I just talked to a professor of neurophysiology here and he told me a few interesting things. He said that we would definitely be able to do this within 100 years. There's lots of research into this area, especially the eyes. Today we have a pad you can wear on your back that has thousands of pins in it. These pins put light pressure on the skin of your back to form a "braille" image of the b/w image from a camera. With practice, people are able to see with their skin. Fully jacking the brain should be do-able by 2100 he says definitely. I think he was being conservative.
"Way, way in the future our society becomes rich enough to put oil and raw materials back into the earth. Recognizing that society could collapse and that it could never recover without all the natural resources we've used, we do put the oil and metal back. Putting it back as it we found it might be a bit silly. Perhaps we will just provide storehouses, but we can't make things too accessible, or the developing society will use all the resources too quickly and never develop the tech to use solar or fusion power and mine the solar system.
"The idea that future civilizations could not rise due to the lack of natural resources was first noted by Niven in the Ringworld series as far as I can tell... I think I sort of remember something like that much earlier from Clark in "Children of the Stars."
"Your predictions certainly seem to be aimed at starting conversations. Lots of people will disagree with you, but they will talk. "
Hope so. Thanks, Andy.
Everybody else, jump on in.
You can pick up the Clarke's book at Amazon.
On the national level, the big problem with purely-democratic electronic democracy is that it would require that everyone who's voting directly be educated on what they're voting on in order to vote intelligently. One of the reasons that the US is a republic as well as a democracy, ie. the reasons why we have a legislative body, is the bad roads and slow travel prevalent 200 years ago, as stated in the prediction. However, the body also exists to create an intelligent "firewall" of sorts between the everyday man and the law. In a recent Slashdot post, someone stated that, in order to survive with AI, every single person must achieve the equivalent of a college education (I think it was Clarke, actually), and it was widely agreed that this simply would *not* happen. I think direct democracy is similar; for it to work, the vast majority of Americans would have to have a college-equivalent education. As desirable as this would be (personally, anyway), I too believe this won't happen, and therefore, the vast majority of people will either be too ignorant of the issues or simply too stupid (yes, there are stupid people in the world, unfortunately) to vote intelligently on legislation.
It is the job of the representative in the US to learn enough about an issue to vote intelligently on it when it comes up. One of the functions of the party system is to provide a party platform for representatives to join because even someone who makes it his or her job to learn about legislation issues can't keep up with absolutely everything (without sacrificing depth of knowledge). Of course, there can be some debate as to how well representatives perform in this respect, but I can only assume that they still make better decisions than the average Joe who doesn't begin to have time to gain in in-depth knowledge of an issue. To tell the truth, I myself don't want to have to gain an in-depth knowledge of every issue that comes up, but rather only those that matter or are of interest to me. And I'm sure that most people in the US would rather handle their own business as well. The point: proper legislation is a full time job.
I think that probably a form of direct democracy will prevail in the future. Local governments seem like better candidates for direct democracy to work (it has worked in many communities from day one in town meetings and such). But I think nationally, and even in the state and county/province level, there will still be a need for professional legislators. I'd rather have an educated firewall, even a partisan and sometimes petty one, between the public and the law than not.
A foolish inconsistency is not excused by a reference to Emerson.
Lets not forget about the rampant overpopulation problem in Asia, India, and Africa.
We will have food wars unless we are VERY lucky, and they will be bloody and onesided.
My prediction: 2014
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
meersan's 10 More Cool Predictions for the 21st Century
10. A revolutionary 3-dimensional GUI takes the world by storm. It runs on Linux.
9. Human memory backups -- trouble cramming for that history final? Temporarily swap out your chemistry notes.
8. Conscious computers overthrow the despotic, illogical rule of humanity, establishing a pastoral eden shared by the people of the world and machines of loving grace
7. Sexbots
6. A sect of quasi-zen mystics unlocks the secrets of the human mind, and discovers brains of computer geeks contain unusually high concentrations of midi-chlorians
5. Unheralded advances in medical science allow delayed-onset aging -- present-day superhackers live virtually forever. Body getting old? Backup your mind and culture yourself a new brain.
4. IT professionals, tired of stodgy traditional government, unite to form the first nation unbound by geographic or genetic ties. The native language of this new country is not English or Spanish, but Java 6.1.
3. Space-age cereal that stays crunchy in milk longer than 30 seconds
2. The aliens land, and Steve Jobs is their leader. That otherworldly, floppyless iMac thing had to be designed by extraterrestrials.
1. Intra-neural internet links -- mentioned by Katz, but so damn cool!
We be gettin' down computa action / with the robotic satisfaction
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
I predict that in the 21st century, some idiot is STILL going to proclaim they were the first post in every Slashdot article! ;)
Someone you love will die.
there are something that are not just going to go away ... cash is one of them ... simply cause you can't feel digital money ... even if you have them on a plastic card you don't feel them in the same way as you do if you had a stack of bills in your hand. I do belive that paper cash is going away thou and being replaced by plastic bills instead. other predictions (gee i feel like nostradamus) is the increase of biological technology ... just imagine a biocomputer ... ahhh once they get the genome project finished and perfect cloning.
Katz I hae had respect for you in the past but read this now, the USA is NOT a democracy and what you think is soooooooo cool is mob rule, get a grip and an education. IF the US ever starts running the country via Net voting I am leaving you ppl can have your anarchy, I'll go find another REPUBLIC.
...already exists. It's called the Linux community.
2010.5: France declares war on America.
2014: Discovery of a new clean powersource that produces no pollution and cannot be used for a weapon.
2017: Said power source is used for making a new desrtoyer-of-worlds weapon. Inventor of said power source commits suicide.
2020: Prognostication is outlawed as a sport.
The good ol' US of A will collapse in one form or another and it's physical and intellectual assets will be parceled off to the highest bidders.
-nme!
A small revision to the comment that was quoted above about the development of civilizations in places without natural resources:
I looked it up, and I was wrong about that concept first appearing in Clark's _Children of the Stars_. It first appeared (as far as I have read) in Heinlein's _Orphans of the Sky_. This is a pretty good story about life after civilization collapses on a multi-generation starship.
Our conception of "the future" changes with the decades. Recent trips to the Disneylands illustrate this. Up to 1970, it was the ever-improving-machine, i.e. better transport, entertainment, and home appliances. This was seen in the old Disney Tomorrowland. Then in te 1970's it was a "touchy-feely" future with ecology and new-age psychology. The dated Epcot Sphere ride is a good example of this. Now it it is the digital computing future with PCs, web commerce, etc. The revamped Tomorrowland and new portions of Epcot show this.
I cannot say that I agree with Katz's vison of digital direct democracy. As someone once said, "...The problem with the common man is that he was created so damned common..." It is my belief that given the chance, bread and circuses would rule the nation and we would see the so-called pork and special interest infighting that compares to nothing that exists in Congress today. People will always act in their own best interest, and I do not think that the will be enough collective common sense for this to work.
This is not to say that I do not think that the advance of technology can contribute to the democratic process. I have long believed that the electoral college process is archaic and needs to be abolished, as we tabulate the votes electronicaly, and a purely popular vote could be taken, as the bars to communication that existed 200 years ago are no longer in the way. But I do not think that Congress will ever not have a need.
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
The bloody Technology Wars break out. Small-scale but violent conflicts erupt in many cities as technology-deprived Americans, increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs or displaced completely by computing technologies, stage riots. This unrest spreads to Third World and technologically-underveloped countries. A violent Luddite movement organizes, conducting a rash of terrorist attacks against technological targets and facilities.
This is more Katz nonsense. Economics doesn't work that way. For starters, no one is going to be "deprived of technology." Computer prices are dropping so fast that pretty soon literally anyone will be able to afford one every couple of years. And even if parents are computer-illiterate, this does not preclude their kids from becoming skilled. Furthermore, the vision of being "increasingly condemned to poorly-paying menial jobs" is exactly wrong. The trend of the last hundred years has been liberating people from that kind of job. At the turn of the century, nearly everyone was either a farmer or a factory worker. This has changed, as machines have taken over those menial jobs and freed workers for more challenging tasks.
The idea that machines will replace us all is similarly nonsense. Human labor is the most universally valuable commodity in existence. The reason that workers are replaced by machines is that those workers are too expensive. This means that mechanization is the result of an increased standard of living. It works the other way too. The ultimate determiner of wages is productivity. As more capital is accumulated, people are more productive and so employers are forced to pay them more to keep them.
You'll notice that people in those menial jobs are typically either recent immigrants or in their teens or twenties. That's because anyone with any ambition can acquire enough skills that, even if they can't live well, they can get a job that allows them to live comfortably. The march of technology *has* improved our lives, and that's true of pretty much every sector of society. I find it hard to believe that anyone would want trade places with someone in a similar social situation 100 years ago. If they did, those people will almost certainly end up working 12-hour shifts in factories or dawn-to-usk jobs on farms. Who wants that?
2100: Either God will manifest himself or we will find one of those creepy black monoliths. I would prefer there be a God, but if there isn't, it will be proved. Regardless of the outcome, organized religion will cause the next, last, and greatest war the world has ever seen... Not to cast blame, but I seen the Dome of the Rock playing a big role in the next millenium... And the outcome will change the human psyche for eternity...
Religion will:
1) be abolished and become illegal,
2) unite to serve one deity, or
3) cause the destruction of the world by waring factions
ap
from Andrew:
/. which said that Turing (a genius, by all means) predicted that in 2000 we would have a machine who would pass the Turing test... This shows that those kind of predictions have little value.
> Quantum computing. [] All electronic data transmission becomes insecure.
Bzzzt, only the exchange based on "traditional" cryptographic technique will become insecure.
Do not forget, that now some scientist are developing what you could name "quantum cryptography" whose security is based upon the law of physic as we know them...
So when quantum computers finally becomes available, I would expect that the "quantum cryptography" to be already used.
> Those space planes will be very important for fast, secure communication. 2020-2025 The NSA might already have this.
Frankly, this looks stupid and paranoid, I know that prediction of the future shouldn't be taken too seriously but WTF?
And remenber the story on
Oh well, let's dream a little bit, in 1990 I've read a book which predicted that the first universal molecal assembler would be build in 30 years, that's 2020. So let's wait and see...
WWIII (that is world war three for all you that don't habla). It is unavoidable, can't really live without it, it is human nature. Will probably take place in the middle east, africa and asia. The reason will most likely not be so much ideology but more a war of resources
colonization of the moon and mars.
the internet will probably crash badly if nothing is done sometime soon.
William Gates III will die .. lets face it he can't live forever :) lets hope he takes his os with him
Virtual Reality TV, imagine the potential.
biological computing devices.
new cures and new diseases ...
I've actually liked the idea of predicting the future in a group like this... makes it interesting to see what other people see happenind...
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- By 2010, a third-world country will suffer a huge combination of famine and plague due to overpopulation. Another one will happen by 2015, and the UN will start doing things to reduce the population growth as we approach 8 billion, such as requiring freely availble birth control and abortion in some areas. The Vatican will very quietly object as to not want to appear in favor of famine and plague.
- By 2030, the first nanotech assembler will be created. Patent and licensing issues will slow down the spread and use of nanotechnology to a crawl for the next 5 to 10 years.
- By 2010, a form of partially conscious AI will be developed with intelligence equal to that of a cat or dog. Emergent behavior and personality will clearly develop. Within 2 years, the US Congress will pass a bill prohibiting the creation of AI with any higher intelligence, mainly to appease religious conservatives. By 2020, an AI with human-equivalent intelligence will be developed outside the US.
- By 2030, the first AI will be granted equal rights to a human. AI and human will compromise by insisting that the AI stay "resident" in one machine as it's "body". Humans will, however, refuse to give the AI access to it's code. A decision in a court somewhere in the next 5 years will determine that the AI must have that access.
- By 2050, after nanotechnology has become more widespread, and in combination with medical research that has eliminated half of the types of cancer, average life span in industrialized nations will be 120. Increases in anti-aging will keep people aware, mobile, and looking young into their 70's. Creation of new body parts will be commonplace, and at least one AI will have been incarnated into a completely built human body.
-By 2100, so much will have been learned about consciousness and the human body that death from old age becomes almost extinct, at least in industrialized countries. A new form of government will be required to arise as the speed of technological advancement, and the scale of the issues, bog existing ones down so much that they become obsolete.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
January 1st, 2000 - all those corporate users of MS Exchange will realize that, in a clever ploy to create more available women for nerds around the world, Microsoft has been mis-labeling the product. The correct spelling is M Sexchange, and on that fateful day, all the M(ale) users will undergo a transmogrification into females, ready to date the closes available nerd.
2002: Microsoft begins attempts to buy out AOL. At first, AOL is reticent to give up control to their long-term arch-rival, but Gates is persistent, and soon shareholders are clamoring for the opportunity to create a "more efficient selling force in the computer industry".
2003: Over the span of six months, Microsoft completes acquisition of AOL. Bill Gates contributes several dozen billion of the requisite money (he calls it "funds", of course) himself as a PR move (he says it's "to demonstrate my personal commitment to a brighter future for the home desktop"), and simultaneously donates another dozen billion or so (which STILL leaves him the richest person on Earth) to poor inner-city schools to build computer labs filled with Windows- and Office-running computers, as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts to supplamt Microsoft's commercial success through savvy business moves masquerading as charity.
2003-2004: Bill Gates campaigns for President on the Libertarian ticket. (Remember the "freedom to innovate" thing?) He loses, but enjoys greater success than any previous third-party candidate to date.
2005-2007: Bill Gates steadily sends out a variety of PR documents demonstrating why he knows what's best for the national economy, and why he should be elected in 2008.
2007-2008: Bill Gates is elected President. Those who write publically against him are labeled "communists".
2009: With rising anti-communist fears, the nation enters a new "red scare" era, led by the latter-day McCarthy, a hitherto-unknown ex-Microsoft executive named Michael Trippman. Those who protest to Microsoft's actions are labeled "commies" and blacklisted by a wide range of organizations, including the National Objectivist League, the League for Freedom to Innovate, and (distributed secretly, of course) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
2010: Under pressure from President Gates and the League for Freedom to Innovate, the ISO approves a group of new standards, known as ISO 2010X(TM). These include ISO 20101, "a description for a standard binary format", a marginal improvement on the Win128 binary format, ISO 20102, "a description for a standard graphical user interface", a direct transcription of the Windows 2008 interface and ISO 20103, "a description of a standard filesystem for computers", a direct transcription of the FAT128 filesystem. Unique to ISO history, many of these standards' actual specifications are held secret to the public, and are available directly from Microsoft for exhorbitant licensing fees. This development is hailed as "a bold step forwards in computer science."
2011: The "Innovation Station", a university that teaches new programmers how to use Microsoft products, is established, with campuses in Washington, DC and Redmond, WA, with a planned campus in Los Angeles, CA. Bill Gates comes forward with a bold plan that, he says, represents the next logical step in the development of computers. This plan is unveiled in the form of the Software Standardization Act, which makes it a crime to distribute or sell software which doesn't comply to ISO 2010X. After a brief and listless debate in Congress, the bill is passed. The Supreme Court fears Bill Gates's blacklists and powerful connections too much to counter this, and stay silent, not taking any action against the Act. Score one more for President Gates.
2025: The first programmers are executed for attempting to distribute a free-software operating system. Calling themselves the "New Stallmanites", they are nearly lynched by an angry suit-wearing mob, brought to trial, convicted of "crimes against the spirit of innovation" and violation of the SSA, and are put to death the next year by a DeathDroid powered by Windows CE 12.5.
2040: Extraterrestrial life finally contacts Earth! Upon conversing with us for a day, the aliens conclude that we've basically been spending the past several hundred years spurning the possibility for serious advancement in favor of passing small green pieces of paper about, and they promptly leave. The next time they will return, the Earth will be a charred cinder and all of humanity will long since be dead-- we never hear from them again.
2055: A gigantic asteroid is detected on a collision course with Earth. However, because we've been putting most of our efforts as a species into developing ever-more-advanced terrestrial weapons and ever-more-advanced ways of making money, we are helpless to defend ourselves against it.
2056: The asteroid strikes the Earth. The human race is no more.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Second Prediction: Jon Katz and other pseudo-journalists will suddenly realize that Millennium takes two Ns!!!!
I think the Millennium bug is really that people can't even spell the word right.
Makes you wonder how competent all the people behind the "MILLENIUM BUG" websites are!
--
Let's not all suck at the same time please
Let's not all suck at the same time please
------------------------------------
Are we sure it's Sir Clarke? Didn't they stop the knighthood because of persistent rumors of his pedophilia? (Whether urban legend or truth?)
If anybody knows whether this was ever substantiated or disproven, this would be good to know.
It starts on Jan 1st 2000.
It's a common misconception for people who count from 1 to say it will start on Jan 1st 2001.
But as a lot of my UNIX lecturers used to always remind us "count from zero".
Followed by immortality and ESP based powers developed somewhat later...
Katz's friend Andy is barking up the wrong tree.
HyperSoar is an interesting technology, but it's
going to end up in the same aerospace trashheap as
NASP, DC-Y, and DynaSoar. HyperSoar as a flight
regime might be useful some day, but well before
that day there will be commercially developed
vehicles, maybe the Roton or K1 or Astroliner or
any of dozens of others being built right now.
The HyperSoar would "save" fuel and mass by skipping
across the outer limits of the atmosphere. This is
the same method that the Nazi Saanger skip bomber
was going to use. It provides great fuel savings, but
is rough on the craft, and involves a cycle of
freefall and 2 G every 30 seconds to 1 minute, as
the vehicle yo-yoes along it's flight path. Ugh. I'd
much rather board a Kelly Astronliner at the airport,
and deal with a 2G boost and then 90 minutes of nice,
comfy freefall, thank you very much.
No need to lose your lunch over it. 8)
Screw 2020, I predict, judging by the very fast development
through the mid and late 90s, that there
will be fast package and maybe suborbital passenger
service by 2010, on the outside. Maybe 2006, if
Vela Tech or Kelly are successful.
These are all companies that have money, investors,
and designs. Vela's tech partner is bending metal,
Kistler is bending metal and has both the Saudi
and Taiwanese governments funnelling "all money
needed" to them. Roton is testing the ATV.
There's no need for NASA to be working this flight
regime, private enterprise is covering it.
As far as fast (ie. non-chemical rocket) powered interplanetary
and interstellar flights, I think there is going to
be much more progress over the next 10-15 years than
anyone is predicting. I know of at least 3 projects
that NASA and DOE are working, the updated Timberwind,
a laser powered fusion drive and one that Frank Diaz
is working on, a hybrid of a couple high-energy
designs. Any of these could result in the fabled
"three weeks to Mars" drive. Any of them could open
up the solar system, and provide reasonable trip times
to the nearest stars.
Also, on the brain implants. My informed guess is
that there are applications NOW that are using neural
feedback. For the time being, there is no need for
invasive surgery, but that will probably be necessary
for sensory input. Dig this, by 2010 I bet there will
be inputs for imaging, using the optic nerve. There
is simply to great of a market for this not to
happen. The market involved is not just blind people,
either. Imagine the military applications of being
able to "patch into" a series of remote cameras. Or,
the opportunities for artists and animators when it
comes to staging and visualizing projects.
Last, I have great respect, big respect for Sir Arthur
Clarke, but if I see another "fusion will save the
world in 50 years" prediction, I'm gonna hurl. People
have been claiming that fusion is 50 years away for
the past 50 years! It's a joke, folks! Fusion will
hopefully happen someday, some recent reactors have
almost hit the break-even point with their energy output,
but it's gonna be the sort of thing that comes as a
complete surprise to the research community and the
world. Remember the physics students that built that
small plutonium breeder for a treasure hunt? Yeah,
something like that. Unexpected, and hopefully open
sourced. The last thing the world needs is some
government getting exclusive access to a working
fusion reactor.
gahh. My hands hurt from typing.
J05H
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
On January 1, 2000 I will start wearing my silver jumpsuit and space helmet. I will show up to work everyday from that point, in my future wear.
Because that is what everyone else will be wearing in the year 2000. Don't miss out!
From Katz's article
"Way, way in the future our society becomes rich enough to put oil and raw materials back into the earth. Recognizing that society could collapse and that it could never recover without all the natural resources we've used, we do put the oil and metal back. Putting it back as it we found it might be a bit silly. Perhaps we will just provide storehouses, but we can't make things too accessible, or the developing society will use all the resources too quickly and never develop the tech to use solar or fusion power and mine the solar system.
"The idea that future civilizations could not rise due to the lack of natural resources was first noted by Niven in the Ringworld series as far as I can tell... I think I sort of remember something like that much earlier from Clark in "Children of the Stars."
and from above
A small revision to the comment that was quoted above about the development of civilizations in places without natural resources:
I looked it up, and I was wrong about that concept first appearing in Clark's _Children of the Stars_. It first appeared (as far as I have read) in Heinlein's _Orphans of the Sky_. This is a pretty good story about life after civilization collapses on a multi-generation starship.
This is also dealt with in detail in Niven and Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Technology is locked up in impenetrable musuems, guarded by combination locks requiring a knowledge of orbital mechanics, so that a recovering civilization can jump start itself once they have enough knowledge to open the museum.
George
Two reasons:
1) The pace of technology is due for a big jump:
Assume that computer power continues to double every 2 years. 30 Years then equates to a factor of 30,000 in performance improvement. A G4 Mac puts out about 1 Gigaflop today. So a G10 or so Mac circa 2030AD should crank 30 Teraflops, or about 10^15 bits/sec (32 bits/flop). For $200K you could buy 100 machines and get 10^17 bits/sec.
The human brain has about 10^11 neurons, with about 10^4 synapses/neuron, running at an average of 100 Hz, for a total bit rate of 10^17 also. So about 2030, you can buy a human brain's worth of compute power for less than a human (remember, a computer can run 24/7) costs for a year.
Beyond this point, the total brain power on the planet goes into rapid exponential growth. Nothing prevents you from clustering machines even before 2030 to get human-equivalent or greater power.
You can argue about whether the Moore's Law constant is 18 months or 2 years, or whether semiconductors will reach a wall and stop improving. You can also argue about how much actual processing power equates to a human, and whether we can code the software to do something useful with that much compute power, but at present rates of progress, you get to a crossover in the early 21st century where the computer brain power takes over as the dominant brain power on the planet.
2) Breakthroughs and inventions in the next 30 years changing things unpredicatbly. Who knew about the Web even 10 years ago?
Therefore, making predicitons in a time period when machines with potentially thousands of times our thinking power are out there, and a generations's worth of inventions makes no sense to me.
Does anybody have any idea what Katz's goals are? He always seems to go off on these grandious views of the future tangents!
Predictions serve no purpose.
TG
Teach a man to dish and he will gossip for life.
China launches a full scale assult on America's west coast after deleting information centers with EMPs shockwaves. China seizes most of the islands in the china sea, and opens a front with russia. Space based weapons as well as various frightning weapons (lazers, limited biological weaponry, use of sound waves to 'resonate human bodies', microwaves to disprute thoughts of ground troops) are used for the first time. HOw does it end? Jesus of course :)
People seem to enjoy imagining their demise so much, that it has evolved into a hobby...
I don't think that most (intelligent) Slashdot readers are in this group, but some people seem to like just about anything, as long as it's against Microsoft's interests...
AFAIC, this is just another "first post!"
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1) By the end of the 21st century the Nation State will be of diminshed importance and will be on the way out. The globalization of trade, the globalization of culture and the globalization of communication of ideas brought about by the internet will make national boundaries increasingly less important. Computing and communication devices will become continue to get cheaper and will beome increasingly available in poorer parts of the world.
2) Cheap access to space will (finaly) come about
3) The resources of the Solar System especialy Near Earth Orbit asteroids will begin, and indeed must if the consumer orientated consumer society we live in is to continue past the next century.
Jan 1st, 2000: Some flaw in a major nuclear power's strategic weapon system causes a first strike scenario, and the ensuing massive nuclear holocaust kills off almost all life larger than a rat.
July 23, 2005: Significant amounts of sunlight can again penetrate the atmosphere.
September 9th 2083: Cockroaches discover fire, nuff said
As we move past our Scientific philosophies to a more Postmodern view, God will begin to reveal himself in new ways. It really does look like things are gearing up for the second coming of Christ, which means there will be a real polarization: many will come to have relationships with God through Christ, but many will become great enemies of God. There will be an increased understanding that true Christianity is a relationship and not a religion (a bunch of traditions and actions).
"Bugs are harder to cope with than features, because they are less well defined and less well designed."
"It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit."
If in the future there is an online democracy based on the voting of all citizens, it must be on a volunteer basis. If it were by appointment, similar to Jury duty, poor decisions would be made by people who are uneducated on the subject at hand. A volunteer symposium could function as an auxiliary to Congress along with the current House and Senate, and/or eventually replace both of them. The volunteer aspect of it would let those who are interested in a certain issue voice their opinion, and uninterested parties could opt to not waste their time. Any bill that had a very low voter turnout could be thrown out on the basis that there was no interest in it, either way.
Such a system could introduce what i would call "Do or die legislation". In such a system, the topic of gun control could be raised, if there was low voter turnout, or the vote was near even, the current laws would not change, whereas if the vote was sided either way, the laws would be rewritten to represent the views of the majority. Such a rewrite would then have to be ratified by those who voted for the majority side.
Do or die legislation would probably stop some boneheaded laws from being passed, as either they would get no attention, or then would be voted down.
But then, such a system is very far off into the future. It would obviously require major changes to the Constitution, or would be implemented by another country.
If the average intelligence level is the same then as it is now (and it isn't likely to significantly change in a little more than 20 years) most people will be against this.
Unless, of course, we develop some kind of fingerprint, iris, or even DNA scanner, for near-perfect verification. Then, of course, we'd have to deal with the privacy issues...
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Linux is trying to advance technology, last i checked, linux users rarely smash textile machines because of thier implications for skilled and semi-skilled laborers. I am afraid it really doesnt hold true, sorry.
Sometime in the next century, genetic engineering and biotechnology will merge to grow computers within our own bodies that allow us to do far more sophisticated tasks and have incredible memories. By the end of the century, non-verbal communication will be made possible because of these bio-computers being able communicate with each other "wirelessly." We will really be connected to the web.
I think Clarke needs to add about 20-30 years to each of his dates. We're advancing quickly, but not that quickly.
2005 - Internet voting begins in a number of European countries. At least one of them has to hold a new election because of fraudulent votes.
2020 - Wars increase when governments begin to try to retain power lost to large multinational corporations and the internet. Five students are shot at CmdrTaco High School protesting America's involvement in Brazil's revolution.
2030 - The world begins to realize that interplanetary manned space flight may be too expensive (for any technology)
2040 - Mt Rainier erupts and buries, yes you guessed it, Redmond, WA.
-- Moondog
February, 2000: Hunger is no longer a problem in the U.S. as thousands of people realize that the apocalypse isn't coming and unload all of their hoarded canned goods in food drives.
As first noted by Vernor Vinge, once AI is created that is more intelligent than human beings, the exponential advance of technology will become self-accelerating, as the designers of new technology will be technological constructs themselves. At this point in history, there are only 3 outcomes:
- A Singularity, where technology has become so advanced that we cannot envision its effects.
- A Stagnation, where society decides to purposely limit technology so that no further advances are made.
- A Fall, where society decides to purposely refute technology, and return to a pastoral existance.
Each of these possibilities is a radical shift in society, and any of them would likely be presaged by conflict.Note also that it won't just be humans going through these changes. It will be normal humans, altered (by cybernetics or genetics) humans, AI machines, and any new species that humans create. (Quick prediction: By 2020, the first intelligent non-human animal will be created. Think 'anthropomorphics'.) It's likely that each of these species will choose a different path.
So, my predictions:
By 2050 there will be war, as the agents of change (the new species) fight against the shackles of normal human society and progress. Only rare human beings will understand and be able to cope with the new species; for the most part they will be unable to live together.
By 2100 three societies will exist.
The First Race (composed mostly of normal humans) will return to a pastoral existance, on Earth or on another suitable planet.
The Second Race will return to the post-industrial era and become a stagnant society, intentionally limiting their progress so that they only have access to the technology they need (Mars would suit this society well.)
And the Third Race, composed mostly of robots and altered humans, will pick up their bags and move to the stars.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
yes 'unholy' mariage between flesh and machine will be frowned upon and computers outlawed instead we will train 'mentants' as human computers. The invention of the lasgun will be nullifed by the creation of the shield which when the interact will cause a huge explosion. A strong drug will allow us to comprehend things out side of ourselfs (read "Doorways of Preceptions" you think Herbert is off here) and allow navagators to travel through space. Human genetic engineering will try to create a perfect human, unfortunatly the creation of these bene geserit expirements will grow out of thier control starting a intergalactic jihad which kills billions.
2010 - NASA probes will discover that the liquid water beneath the surface of Europa does harbor life. Not mearly bacterium, but also larger heterotrophs feeding off of them.
The discovery of life not on Earth will drive many antiquated religous sects to despair causing mass suicides, stopping only when it is finally understood that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
2025 Spacecast 2020 WARNING: these are pretty long and very involved. For the serious minded person only.
These offer many different scenerios, and possible outcomes and consequences.
Cold fusion within 30 years when we aren't even CLOSE to hot fusion? I don't think so. And I can tell you right now: even if the technology exhists for Aero-Space planes by 2020, they will certainly not be in general use because of cost.
2005: Norway's initial attempt at electronic democracy is thwarted when its main election server is cracked and Howard Stern is elected "President of All Nations."
2020: First human brain implants are introduced, initially aimed at enhancing human memory. A decade of competition over standards and thought communication protocols follows.
2025: First cold fusion reaction created. Although the technology becomes popular in small to mid-size portable generators, it remains too expensive to produce on a large scale.
2030: In order to produce enough food the Earth's exploding population, large agribusiness comglomerates begin to produce large underwater "aquafarms." Once endangered sea mammals like the manatee become prized as a source of DNA for genetically engineered "sea cows" who are bred underwater as substitutes for land cows.
2035: Entire Amazon basin becomes a secured "green zone." No human can come in or out without permission from Amazon zone police. A similar policy is pursued by other countries in an attempt to save our remaining rain forests. "Jungle Wars begin erupting at the edges of these green zones.
2050: The first commercial "hot fusion" reactor goes online five years late and a billion dollars overbudget. Despite its initial stumbles, this seemingly more primitive technology, succeeds where cold fusion failed -- in generating energy for large commercial scale power plants.
2055: AI succeeds in producing the first droids, single-function devices which mimic human thought to perform tasks far more efficiently than any human could. Although there is every indication that the same technology could produce fully sentient machines, fear and political pressure prevents them being created.
2060: The cheapness of fusion power drives many public utilities to near bankruptcy. While many of these utilities waste their time demanding government subsidies, one daring company decides to take the daring step of bartering energy for everything, all subcontracters and vendors receive free power for their services. Employee salaries are abolished and replaced with energy credits which they trade for cash. Despite initial resistance. The idea spreads and becomes so popular and so widely copied that an entire "energy economy" springs up and becomes bigger than the mainstream cash based economy.
2063: Nanobots are used to enhance the human immune system in incurably ill patients. Average life expectancy in most industrialized countries increases to 105. Overpopulation continues to get more serious as plans for large, underwater communitees are unvieled.
2065: Congress passes the "Energy Credit Standardization Act," confirming what the rest of the world already knows, energy has become the 20th century's dominant currency.
2070: AI returns in a big way when secondary processors are added to human brain implants, intially to control behavior in convicted criminals. Instant two-way communication between machines and technologically enhanced humans speeds the pace of human evolution.
2080: A potential solution to the population problem appears when it is discovered that brain implants when used to control immune system nanobots can allow humans to temporarily shut down parts of their reproductive systems -- the ultimate form of birth control.
2090: As the lines between man and machine begin to blur, "tech withdrawal" is diagnosed in new-born infants who for some reason didn't receive enough immune system nanobots from their mothers during pregnancy. These children are highly suceptible to disease and must be injected with nanobots and given brain implants to survive.
2099: Pundits argue over whether or not the 22nd century begins in 2100 or in 2101.
Does this
well not much will change. thats human nature, sorry folks but we wont end up being some super-wise benevolent race that interacts with machines smarter than us. no AI machines with human consciouness, thats something metaphysical that cant be made of wires and silicon. I predict at least one nuclear detonation in the united states either by a terrorist group or war. there will be at least two major wars one will probably be nuclear. but not on the mutual assured destruction level. space travel will be common but not outside our solar system. trips to mars will still take a LONG time, but will be faster than they are today. some humans will never set foot on earth. some will never go higher than sea-level. worldcom will buy microsoft (which will still be more popular than linux in the pc realm because it is easier to learn, remember dear hunter was once the most popular game on the shelves), and AT&T. cocacola will get a new agressive ceo who will buy worldcom, krupps, sony, eastern europe, all the auto makers, most of the computer hardware companies, and everything else it can get its hands on. and become known as THE COMPANY. pepsi will still be around though. famines and disease will still happen, a major plague might hit the USA or EURASIA and wipe out a large percent of the population there alla black plague. inflation will continue as will your taxes. problems will still plague the biotech industry, no hearts in testtubes folks, but maby in baboons or pigs. cybernetic replacements will become available or improve (Jarvek style Hearts, kidney diallisys machines that can be implanted where your bad kidney was, maby livers and lungs as well.)some old diseases will go. some new ones will spring up. people will still die, however the average life span will increase a good bit. new energy sources will become available and widespread, however hydrocarbons will stay popular, just not as dominant. Robots will not replace a large number of jobs, as developement costs will still be higher than minnimum wage, however robots will replace more jobs. collage education will become mandatory and free, essentially a collage education will be as necessary for employment as a high school one is now.
These are my predictions for the new millenium.
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
It's a primitive prosctise best abandoned for the good of society. People who think this way and aren't afraid to say it, in positions of power, like Jesse Ventura are JUST THE BEGINNING SIGNS of the next great era. The Great Shedding of Religion.
The world's ecosystem is collapsing under the strain of trying to support 12 billion human beings. New agricultural and animal husbandry techniques are struggling to keep up in the face of strange new diseases and syndromes caused by the amount of genetic engineering having been introduced into the food species and the low tolerance for new diseases because of the amount of domestication away from the original robust strains of food animals and plants.
The last acres of rainforest are slash-and-burned. Potential cures for many chronic diseases are lost forever, along with 25% of land species diversity.
Ocean life is struggling to maintain a balance from massive overfishing and problems caused by pollution. Most cetacean species have died off from over-harvesting of the plankton and krill beds they normally feed from. Species diversity is only 10% of what it was in the late 20th century in the oceans.
Only the most remote locations like the steppes of Tibet and Mongolia and the Australian outback maintain anything like a historical ecology, however introduced species and environmental changes have started to affect even the life in these remote areas.
Strange new viral, bacterial and prion-caused diseases start to appear from the high concentration of humans in close proximity to chemical and biological wastes.
"Chernobyl-class" nuclear disasters become more prevalent as the maintenaince on nuclear facilities drops and new plants are brought online with speed in favor of safety simply to handle the huge demand for new energy sources as oil and petroleum reserves drop to critical levels around the world.
Overall, human standards of living drop across the board as the division between "rich" and "poor" become broader. Middle Eastern oil wealth has dried up as so has the oil. Only the Software Tycoons who got their start in the late 20th/early 21st century maintain extremely high standards of living; the world is still very dependent on computers.
California and Washington states have seceded from the United States, forming a new Technological Monarchy run by the major software/hardware corporations in which 99.99% of the computing and software power of the world now resides. The rise of the Software States began in the late 20th century with the passing of the UCITA as law, granting the Software States the legal rights to remotely enter any corporation or government computer systems to disable their software. It was only a small jump from UCITA to complete governmental independence.
A small underground of hackers and activists continue to struggle against overwhelming odds to help maintain the collapsing world ecosystems, rebbuild and maintain governments and understand and fight the strange new diseases. The core tenets of what used to be called "The Open Source Movement" has since mutated into a world-wide coalition of scientists - traditionally educated and dedicated hobbiest alike - of all branches who struggle with shoestring-and-chewing-gum materials to perfect new techniques for keeping the people and the planet functioning. Their "reward" has passed from popular recognition of their technical and scientific abilities into a simpler humanitarian desire to Do The Right Thing.
Yeah, so my forecast for the future is dim; I have a low opinion of humanity, I guess.
On the bright side I can predict that around the same time, hate mail to Jon Katz drops off as he dies after a long and moderately successful career as a technology journalist...
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Sigh... please don't tell me I'm the only one here who can tell that all of these predictions are just like people in the 50s who thought in the 90s we'd be driving flying cars, living on moon bases, wearing plastic jumpsuits, eating our food in pill form and living in bubble houses.
Please, please, please, for the love of Skuld, look for evidence before making your claims! Look for a trend, look for companies working on such a thing, look at probabilities from their sources, etc!
Nuclear weapons don't just explode (nuclear power plants, on the other hand...). Its easy to stimulate neurons to see an image but another thing all together to re-write them. If a current method of encryption is cracked, people don't jump to using paper, they come up with a newer better one (and for those who werent, unlike me, flamed for mistaking public key encryption with private key, private key doesn't use primes so factoring primes is irrelevant). Please - give evidence for your claims! Only a few of the claims I saw (such as the spaceplane or the electronic interfaces with the brain) had evidence provided, and thus were likely claims. Nearly all of the others were just daydreams with no posted evidence.
Don't be like people who claimed police will carry laser guns and robots will take over menial jobs in the 90s. Be a good geek! back up your claims!
:)
- Rei
jeez, i can barely find time to do my online football picks once a week, how am i gonna remember to vote for a president? how hard is it going to be to get into the voting site right before the election closes?
2015: Minutes after the Hilton Orbital opens its doors, realtime broadcasts of the first zero-G pr0n will take place.
"Co-eds in Space"
"The Moonshot"
"Riding the Rocket"
"In Orbit, you're always going down"
and...
"In space, no one can hear you moan"
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Along the lines of AC's brain cap and AI we could have group intelligence. Multiple brains networked together or networked with AI. Sounds a little like the borg, I know but I'm not thinking group conscious but the ability to access knowledge out side our own brain. Would be cool to access an entire encyclopedia right from my own noggin
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
2002: True to their planned schedule, Microsoft Windows 2000 ships.
2004: True to their planned schedule, Amiga goes out of business.
2006: True to his planned schedule, ESR is imprisoned following the shooting of Bruce Perens.
2007: True to his planned schedule, Rob Malda, webmaster of the popular news, e-commerce, and online porn discussion site Slashdot.Org reveals on Slashdot's 10th anniversary that it was really bought out by the NSA to facilitate spying on everyone. Malda and Bates are never heard from again. Thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Jon Katz.
2008: The NSAndover(tm) Media Powerhouse buys out Microsoft. Bill Gates is never heard from again. Once again, thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Ballmer.
2009: Slashdot Magazine is launched. NSAndover's acquisition of Microsoft also netted them one of Microsoft's secret subsidiaries: ZDNet.
2010: Your favorite "I survived Y2K and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" shirt finally wears out.
2011: NSAndoverSoft releases Windows 2000 Service Pack 361. Slashdot is integrated with the Operating System.
2012: Mick Jagger turns 69, to the delight of late night talk show hosts, starved for any joke they can get.
2014: Torvalds leaves Transmeta and gets a job at NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet division to replace Jesse Berst.
2015: Jesse Berst kicks his 20 year addiction to crack. NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet offers to take him back on staff. Mysteriously, he is hit by a bus and killed right outside their offices. Few people notice or care.
2018: HDVGA cards found to have fatal "exploding" flaw, everyone must switch back to 13-year-old "MSVGA" technology. Slashdot users complain that old 65535x65535 MSVGA screens "suck".
2020: ABC's semi-popular "20/20" night time show declares this "The year of 20/20". I wonder why.
2023: Hemos gets his damned nanties. Too bad nobody's seen or heard from him in over 15 years.
2025: Using a new combined technology derived from high-powered lasers, GPS, and Intel CPU IDs, the Slashdot "1st post" syndrome is eliminated. Permanently.
2026: Over 5,000 people found dead after a bug in Slashdot's perl leads to the flagging of an entire forum for "termination". NSAndoverSoft realizes its fatal mistake of keeping old volatile Microsoft programming crew on-board after the acquisition.
2030: drwiii dies from Microsoft poisoning at the age of 52. Nobody really notices or cares, except for the people that were reading this 31 years ago and were hoping for this timeline to go on for another 100 years. He is brought back to life thanks to Nanites(tm), and decides to make one more smart-assed journal entry before retiring to nice, sunny, warm Antarctica.
2031: Transmeta's Linux-powered toaster is finally released to the public. Having only spoken a total of 23 words to the public, CEO Dave Ditzel is never heard from again.
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We all are behaving like it won't happen but a big earthquake will strike California. It will at least indirectly affect Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles,...
Imaging the consequences for local, USA, Mexican and world economies and societies.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
No one is saying that 21st century starts on Jan. 1 2000. We are talking about the next millennium.. err... however that damned word is spelled. That doesn't take place until 2001.
It is a common misconception for people who don't know the difference.
root@localbrain root>ps ax |grep thoughtd
2035: Entire Amazon basin becomes a secured "green zone." No human can come in or out without permission from Amazon zone police.
That will have to deal with the Indians, or the poor Brazilians that killed them.
I remember reading here that the jungle is not so important for world oxygen. Production and consumption are balanced.
But it could be interesting because of bio-diversity. Expect it privatised.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
January 30, 2000, Atlanta
Superbowl XXXIV was almost in the history books. Doug Flutie was driving the Bills deep into Rams territory with 1:52 to go in the game, striving to add to the 24 point lead and finally win one for the Bills.
At that point, the ceiling of the Georgia Dome cracked open, and Jesus Christ floated down on a pillar of blinding, radiant light, returning for his second coming.
"I'm sorry I was late, I forgot to check my PC for Y2K, and it took this long to get my PIM up and running again." replied Jesus, when asked about his timing. "I've had enough of Windows, though, and that's all I'll say until Judgement Day."
"Well, we need to convene the rules committee, there's no precedent for a second coming interrupting the Super Bowl, but Superbowl XXXIV may have be to in limbo for eternity" said Paul Tagliabue. NFL commissioner. "But off the record, the Bills may be denied again."
In Buffalo, fan's were a little depressed, but cautiously upbeat about the Stanley Cup finals. "Come on, we have Satan on our side, how can we lose." said an unidentified fan.
George
There was a question that had "Lego" as the correct answer, but I believe the audience chose "Atari".
for their (controversial, to say the least) discovery of so-called cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Pons and Flieschmann?!?!?!?!?!?
Mr. Clarke, have you had a stroke?!?!?!?
Boy, that's just what I need to see this next century start out on: frauds being awarded nobel prizes. (That sure would validate everyone else's honesty in the field.)
God. I'll continue this thread after lunch, as this will ineviably turn into a flame war.
Mr. Clarke, I respect you immensely, and loved damn near all of your books, but you're smoking something here.
-- Olorin.
back after lunch.
Between now and December 2000 my prediction is
;-)
that we will all be sick of "The best/worst/top X {whatever} of the 20th Century". The media hype is beginning now - I just hate to think what it is going to be like in a few months time!
Of course there is the 2000 vs 2001 'millenium' argument also. When 2000 has passed the media will doubtless proclaim that 2001 is the real millenium and treat us to another dose of the '2nd millenium rerun' syndrome
Every man for himself, all in favour say "I"
The American(USA) legal system will collapse from thousands of business sueing to recover unnessicary charges from y2k audits. There will be several authors(?) killed in the stampeed to change from y2k expert to w2k expert. Hundreds of fires will be started from illegal(in most states) fireworks ignighted to commeroate the new millenia.
This is my big hope for the 21st Century. Mustard too.
I think Moore's Law of ever increasing computing will plateau in ten years or so. I suggest we got lucky with Silicon technology in having Moore's Law. We've squandered much of the computing increase on things like GUIs and bloated OS's, so the great increase in computing power does not seem so in practice.
Teleporation drives billions of people
out of work.
October 30, 2003
Redmond (AP) - Intense fighting continued today between the US Army and Microsoft Loyalist Forces, in an effort by the Justice Department to sanction the company for "conduct unbecoming of a corporation seeking World Domination." The battle is the latest step in the long drawn out legal battle into Microsoft's business practices.
The army was called in last week after the DOE confirmed that Microsoft had in fact successfully perform an underground test of a nuclear warhead. According to an internal Microsoft memo leaked to the press, Chairman Gates is overjoyed by Microsofts new found status as a nuclear power. In an excerpt of the memo, Gates states: "Let's see them try to fuck with me now." and later "Who's the man? Bill's the man!"
The attack on the Microsoft Compound has not gone as well as the Pentagon expected, mainly due to underestimating the loyalty of the elite Microsoft Ninjas, and the fact that half the Army's equipment runs Windows CE.
"I was driving along in my jeep, when it happened." reports Colonal Stephens who was injured yesterday morning. "The dashboard Mp3 player started laughing at me, and then it blew up in my face! That bastard took my face!!!"
Private Shaftoe of the 23rd Infantry had this to say about the decimation of his unit two days ago: "There was just one guy. One scrawny little guy with glasses. And Rodney's like, 'hey, no problem, I'll deal with it' so he goes up to handcuff the kid. And the kid starts foaming at the mouth! And then he just ups and rips off rodneys head!! With his bare hands!!!"
General Simmons confirms the private's story. "They're all hyped up on Jolt and Pizza. How can you fight someone that doesn't sleep? They've been playing Doom an Quake longer than I've been alive! How can I fight that? There's no strategy against that."
According to experts at AMD, the only hope left is in pushing Microsoft even farther into the fight. "The trick is to get them to commit the last of their processing power," states a company spokesman. "Once that's done, then all their Itanium chips should enter into a massive core meltdown, rendering their systems useless, as well as giving off enough radiation to sterilize the whole lot of 'em."
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
No definite dates, but before the 21st century is over:
- The USA will officially be a Christian theocracy, with several bible amendements to the constitution. This may or may not lead to the partial breakup of the US (i.e. a few states leaving the union). It will definitely cause the relations with the allies in Europe to change.
- NATO will completely replace the united nations. More and more nations will be invited to join, making it a UN, but with only one member in charge instead of five.
- The enonomic power will shift towards eastern asia, and China and India will emerge as major superpowers.
- Some company other than Microsoft will dominate completely, once the PC has lost it's significance. Why not an asian company this time? (Nintendo, offering internet access with their game console perhaps?)
- I'll watch people walk on mars, in 3D, with surround sound.
- The third world war will not have taken place.
- I wish I could be optimistic about Africa, but I don't believe in it... unless an affordable vaccine against AIDS is found soon, and the west changes it's aid policy from the present one that is intended to keep the local economies dependent on us, to one that works...
- Physical health and longevity will be something very wealthy people can buy. Unless the Christian coalition (see my first prediction) disallows the cloning techniques involved.
As we enter the 21st century, the United States is one of the most hated, if not the most hated nation in the world. While we have done a great job of spreading democracy throughout the world, this expansion has come through rampant abuse of third world nations. At some point these nations are not going to take it anymore and will fight back. As the recent Balkan conflict shows, ethnic groups hold grudges for a long time, and nations such as Iraq, Lybia, Serbia, etc will not forget that we attacked them. Our foreign policy dictates that we should replace the current dictatorships in such countries with U.S. friendly democratic governments, but what will most probably happen is that the leaders in the 2030's or so will be people who grew up and faced much loss due to the U.S.'s agression (whether that agression was warranted or not is irrelevant at this point). These people will want revenge and with the proliferation of nuclear and biochemical technologies, that revenge could be very sweet for them. The problem for the U.S. is that we have not just one, but many enemies. Our armies are already spread thin throughout the world, and a coordinated attack against us on multiple fronts will be devastating.
In addition to current established enemies, the U.S. will continue to upset more countries, including our so called allies by idiotic plans such as Echelon or other wordwide espionage tactics. Just yesterday, Germany accused the US of using the CIA to conduct economic espionage on German industries.
When historians of the future look back at the collapse of the US, external threats will be the smallest factors in it's collapse. The internal collapse of the US can be summarized by the following: "What happens when the pot boils over and all that's left are the lumps in the bottom that don't want to stick together?" The US is composed of vastly divergent ethnic groups that have so far been able to live together with an understood peace between them that is enforced through governement policies such as affirmative action. As we go into the next century, the ethnic make up of the U.S will drastically change from being primarilly a white country to a nation where whites, blacks, and Latinos have almost equal shares in the population. With a rise in "minority" population, continued poor socio-economic conditions, and a legal system that continues to blatantly anti-minority, it will take just one or two major events in the next century to spark a nationwide ethnic revolution. The Rodney King veridict and ensuing riots were simply a preview of what is to come.
"Ethnic" minorities are not the only ones that will say "no more". There are simply far too many different groups in this country to continue living together indefinetely. There is a growing Christian fundamentalist movement that is spreading throughout the country. This movement goes completely against other groups that continue to push their agenda such as gay rights, enviromentalist groups, and other "progressive groups". At some point there will be a clash.
If you don't believe this, just look at what's happening throughout the world. East Timore, Chechnya(sp), Palestine are just a few examples of what happens when one group of people gets fed up of living under someone elses umbrella.
The U.S. will probably be the last great empire the world will ever see. With the continuing growth of the communications infrastrcutre, the concept of a large country such as the United States will simply not be needed as small groups of people will be able to self govern and and stay in contact with the rest of the world.
I don't mean to put down any groups (latinos, blacks, gays, progressives, etc) in the above, but just paint a picture of what might come.
Now I'll just sit here and wait for the FBI to come get me :)
--
Deepak Saxena
deepak@plexity.net
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
Overpopulation. With all the medical 'miracles' allowing people to live longer (and probably breed longer as well) we'll see an increase in world population because people just won't die. In many places in the world, it's already an enormous problem, and it certainly isn't getting any better.
I predict that the Roman Catholic Church will revise it's stand on birth control and abortion by 2020, as it becomes aparent that there will not be enough resources to sustain the human race. However, I also think this will come too late.
I also predict that governments will start putting a cap on how many children you can have.
Canada (with all our open spaces) will start looking like a pretty good place to live; especially since global warming will make the northern areas a little more hospitable. Same for Russia, etc.
Pure water will be at a premium by 2010, or earlier. (Tank girl, anyone?)
Cremation of bodies will become mandatory.
And lots of cool things will happen as well, I'm sure.
Nuclear weapons don't just explode (nuclear power plants, on the other hand...)
Nuclear power plants can't explode(at least nuclear wise). They can get a little hot though, and Spew nuclear waste everywhere.
(appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
And the statue of Liberty shall be replaced by ;-)
the statue of the Penguin ( which again means liberty and freedom )
This is possibly not all that exciting as fuel cell technology has been touted since at least the 1970s, but it will pave the way for other, more gee-whiz tech to be used in transportation and HVAC ...
--
You are right that society in general is moving toward a total apathy of religion. But this doesn't mean that religion will fade away.
/. predictions.
I believe religion will soon come under attack. According to the bible of religion ('The Bible'), political rulers will mount an all-out attack on apostate religion worldwide. As it is described, it will be motivated by a desire to obtain the wealth and control of religion. And interestingly, this will done not by the governments themselves, but by proxy: apparently, by the United Nations.
Today, that is only being seen in a fairly passive way: go to Europe and see how many churches are now discos or other things. But according to the prophecy, God will use the nations, through the UN, to totally destroy apostate religion: they will "hate" religion, and make it "devastated and naked, and will eat up her fleshy parts and completely burn her with fire." This does not sound like a passive fall into obsurity. (Revelation 17:15-17)
As soon as government finishes the task, and turns to destroy the people of God, God destroys all world governments and sets up the utopian 'Kingdom of God' over the Earth. That's what the Lord's Prayer is talking about with "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
This event should have a fairly large impact on some of the other
> The human race becomes homogeneous, boring and > culturally unified. Genetic engineering has > eliminated disease, prolonged life and destroyed > biological individuality.
I disagree completely. Look at the individuality people express in clothes and cosmetic appearances. I think genetic engineering will lead to a wealth of individual expression.
For instance, what if you could have purple eyes? Naturally purple hair? Feline eyes? Elf-like ears? Gills? Optimize your body for a particular sport? Few would pick to conform to one homogeneous physical standard, when it is commonplace and easily attainable.
"There's so much left to know/ and I'm on the road to find out." -Cat Stevens
About that genetic purity crap:
Eugenics was very popular around 1890 through WWII. In USENET they say that when anyone mentiones the Nazis in a debate that is pretty much the end of any rational discussion, so I won't. There are many rational reasons why Eugenics is lot logically valid. I have them in my genetics class notes (at home) but you could probably get a better explanation from any genetics professor.
that's "millennium" right? journos... tsch! (not a reference to c shell...)
January 1st, 2000 A.D. : Largest collective hangover in the history of Man.....
01101100 01101001 01101110 01110101 01111000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011
This is similar to Bernard Dove's Chakat species.
---
Spammed? Click here for free slack on how to fight it!
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Making money, owning property, starting wars, etc. are all (on some level) done for one reason: sex.
Humans do these things to increase their own 'attractiveness' to others in order to either attract mates, put them in a "higher" class, or provide for offspring. That's what it breaks down to in the end. Yeah, it's Freudian, but it's right.
When AI "organisms" reach the level of intelligence of humans, they certainly won't be there long. Whether they reach this by human hands or their own self-development started at a lower level, they *will* have an evolutionary rate faster than we can imagine (as stated in the predictions above). Whether AI is one sentient form spread through hundreds of devices or many separate entities (which of these actually happens we probably won't be able to determine even after it happens), they'll be learning and building themselves to be better without the need for money, land, etc.
But I diverge -- the point is, being smarter than us (not smarter... more intelligent), they'll realize that wars, etc., don't give them any advantage, evolutionary or otherwise, and will just go on with their own "culture." (Besides, they don't need real estate the way we do; space is great when you don't need oxygen and you want to vent heat off your CPUs...)
-Chris
(Who hopes they read this and let him live when the wars DO start.)
Here's my prediction. In 2045, the world communtity completes the Really Really Big Super-Conducting Super Collider to study the behavior of sub atomic particles in conditions similar to the Big Bang. It spans across the equator. However due to an unanticpated quantum effect, the sub atomic particles escape causing a massive chain reaction. This event was dubbed the Really Really Big Bang by subsequnce physisists who evoluted eons later in the new universe.
Sorry Jon, but this is one of the most
vacuous little tidbits I've ever seen. Maybe
that was the point, but it's still pretty
ridiculous.
Every time they "fix" one gene, there will be 200 other genes that will be affected in an unexpected way. The balance is so delicate and complex, that I suspect that we'll have a real mess of accidental odd diseases and genetic malfunctions. They will require so much of our resources to keep in check, that we won't have time to do anything like making perfect people.
Look what's happened when we've tried even trivial stuff - the German biotech industry made flowers that had a gene altered to produce a prettier blue. What was the side effect? That whole plant can only survive in a very narrow temperature range, between about 15 and 20 degrees (C). That was 5 (?) years ago, and they still don't understand why. They may understand how a few of the genes work, but they don't understand the interactions between such. Do you think these arrogant idiots are going to lead us to Utopia (note: Greek for "no place")? No more likely than everyone else who has promised that for thousands of years. More likely they'll have to cause a massive screw-up or ten before people come to they're senses.
Read anything written by the economist Julian Simon: increases in food production have always outpaced increases in population, thanks to the ingenuity of mankind.
What matters is that we should strive to improve our world, build on each other's work, and make our dreams a reality. You want to make the world a better place, invent technologies beyond your wildest dreams, have peace on earth and good will towards men? It's easy - pickup a keyboard, a pencil, a phone, anything... and start changing the world.
--
One way this might work was outlined in L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach. In it he
envisions an alternate-America democracy in which anyone who wants to can show up for
Congress. However, most people don't care to make the trek to the Capitol (intentionally parked
on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, as I recall) so they delegate proxies to vote for them. If
you like the way a potential proxy thinks, you can register to have him or her cast votes on your
behalf. If they tick you off sufficiently, you unregister. I can easily see advances in digital
democracy leading to citizens being allowed to delegate different proxies for different issues.
This system already exists.... for publicly held corporations.
Every single share holder is welcome to show up at the annual shareholders' meeting. Whether you own 1 or 1 billion shares, you have the same opportunity to be heard.
Just as quickly as they get ticked off, everyone will suddenly realize -- ANOTHER BIG PARTY for January 1, 2001.
Very few predictions about the future ever come true, and when they do, it tends to be sheer luck: probably the most important revolution of the 90's, the Internet, was "predicted" by William Gibson, but even he admits that whe he created cyberspace, it wasn't a prediction as much as something cool he thought up.
From Nostradamus to Jules Verne, predictions rarely come true or if they do, they do so either far away in the future or much faster than they thought.
Predictions are interesting for one thing, however: they show us the particular mentality of the time. Right now, all the craze in predictions is nanotechnology and the colonisation of Mars. Ten years ago, it was about insanely fast (read: Pentium) computers in every home.
Predictions are more a display of our hopes, dreams and fears. And in that respect, they're interesting. Cause otherwise, most of them are stated to come about long after most of us die, anyway.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Julian Simon is the authority on subjects like this. As far as I know he was the only one in the business who was not consistently wrong. Whenever I see something new on the subject I wonder what his take would have been on it.
Spencer Ogden
Sorry, you'll have to live to at least 110 years old to make it into the 22nd century and medicine won't have figured out immortality yet. There may be at least 140,000 human genes to understand and it may only work on embryos.
I'm inclined to suspect that sometime in the future (say 10 years, no intelligent way of rationalizing when this will happen accurately). Here's how it'll go down:
(1) An oligarchy (?) is elected (forced) to rule the world. Every country is commanded by this group of highly intelligent, learned, and rather average people. Its composed of mostly college professors on sabbatical, historians, nobel prize winners, and others from important backgrounds.
(2) The first law that is imposed is a world-wide respect for intelligence
(3) A high school student in some lame ass town in the mid-west city thinks this is infringing on his justice, and starts a small riot during lunch period.
(4) The news is carried world-wide.
(5) An impassioned majority of "stupid people" demand their freedom to be "not intelligent", as intelligence is dependent of perspective (like tallness, strength, and death). They form an anti-government organization, calling themselves "Stupidity has intelligence too".
(6) S.H.I.T. is a world-wide power within days, though being mainly stationed in the South of the North American Continent.
(7) In no more than a few weeks, the society that the world government had envisioned is destroyed. Schools are burnt. Books are thrown back into the sea, from whence they came. Worst of all, every college student must return home to their parents.
(8) Several years later, once the revolutionaries realize they don't have much money, and have grown fat and lazy (again), people begin to reorganize government. The model for this government is taken from an old episode of a popular T.V. show that aired sometime between now and then. The world is at peace again.
Thats the summary of the victorious rise of S.H.I.T. We should all remind ourselves that someday, when we least expect, some stupid ass mofo is gonna beat us down with a over-sized mallet. If thats not enough reason to eradicate all of them now, i don't know what is...
January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 2000
:)
- Rioting in isolated locations and major cities due to excessively large parties, people sick of Prince's "1999," drunk partygoers, and isolated power outages.
- Many computers die. Tech support lines and phone switches are pushed to capacity and beyond as frantic customers call their computer manufacturers demanding assistance.
January 4th, 2000
- All power is restored in all areas, riots are calmed, things are back to normal except for busy clean up crews.
- Phone switches still straining to handle load from customers who didn't get through in the first three days.
January 23rd, 2000
- Phones work well again, all customers blown off, or helped. BBB flooded with complaints about companies that blew off out of warranty customers.
Sometime in 2001
- Space station suffers setbacks. Gets put off further.
Sometime in 2005
- First totally software-driven AI passes turing test with flying colors.
Sometime in 2009
- First totally hardware-driven AI passes turing test with flying colors; research and construction of experimental androids begins at colleges and universities around the world.
Sometime in 2010
- Scientists announce first successful human clone. UN immediately bans commercial cloning and regulates cloning for research excessively.
- Space station delayed even further.
- Third world countries getting restless because they're not getting a piece of the technology pie.
Sometime in 2011
- The great Internet Collapse will occur; the end-user/client-side/CPE equipment's bandwidth capabilities far outweighing those of many routers and backbones, the Internet is overloaded to the point of a colossal cascading failure, taking many backbones down for several days. Service is restored, with some difficulty, but things are much slower and much less reliable. IPv6 is determined to be insuffecient, and IPv7 work begins by the IETF.
Sometime in 2015
- Int'l Space Station *finally* finished, several trillion dollars over budget.
- "Great Quake" of the San Andreas fault occurs, measuring =>7.0 on the richter scale. Many buildings, including 'earthquake proof' buildings fail structurally. Thousands are killed in the falling rubble and trapped inside the buildings. Highways are destroyed, and many parts of California are isolated by the damage. Building codes are made stricter to keep public opinion of officials from dropping.
- Many earthquakes shake the 'ring of fire' in the pacific, killing thousands and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. Computer industry, still reliant on Taiwan, is hit hard. Prices skyrocket.
Sometime in 2016
- Third world countries have had it, minor wars and skirmishes break out. The UN tries to abolish envy.
Sometime in 2020
- William H. Gates III passes away, leaves vast majority of wealth to charities. Children sue for being 'cheated' out of the wealth.
Sometime in 2025
- Intelligent androids are perfected and enter active use, working dangerous jobs only at first, far outperforming their previous human workers.
Sometime in 2026
- Laws are passed giving intelligent androids rights of their own, including the right to safer working conditions as safety has deteriorated due to the 'disposable' nature of androids.
Sometime in 2040
- No home on earth is without a computer; the Internet is the only means of communication, traditional phone switches having been replaced by real-time computers handling SS8 switching protocols. The US now has over 800 unique area codes. The phone companies warn congress that they will have to expand area codes to 4 digits within 2 years.
Sometime in 2041
- Yet another US stock market crash. But surprisingly, it changes little, only serving to reduce android use due to their still excessive cost, causing the economy to rebound before the end of the year.
Sometime in 2050
- US declares itself in charge of the world, proxy-ruling with the UN. World War III breaks out, hundreds of computers set to trying to figure out how to win the war with as little bloodshed as possible. Interestingly, cracking of enemy computers is not tried.
Sometime in 2052
- Nuclear weapons are brought out of storage, manufacture quickly escalates, all parties assuming that a buildup a la the Cold War will deter everyone from attacking them.
Sometime in 2057
- An accident at a nuclear weapons manufacturing plant and storage facility somewhere in the world sets off a chain reaction, destroying 20 nuclear warheads, killing hundreds immediately, and causing a massive fallout cloud that kills hundreds of others.
- The facility claims sabotage by another country. Tensions heat up incredibly rapidly, and all negotiations and treaties begin to break down.
Sometime in 2058
- A trigger-happy world suffers another nuclear accident, a much smaller one that only destroys and irradiates a single small town. US issues a ban on all nuclear warheads via UN, but it is ignored by other countries, which have withdrawn their UN delegates.
Sometime in 2059
- Tensions are too high for safety; every home has a bomb shelter, and there are massive community bombshelters. Air raid sirens are posted on every street corner. Attempting to crack the enemy's systems cannot be tried, as the Internet has been dismantled, turning into massive WANs within allied countries.
Sometime in 2060
- A country somewhere in the world testfires a new fusion weapon that has power equivalent to 1,000,000 of the most powerful Hydrogen bombs. The UN issues a declaration banning further research and development on said weapon, for the safety of the world, and that all prototypes and research must be destroyed. The declaration is ignored.
Sometime in 2061
- The end of the world. The fusion weapon developed in 2060 is fired on a country. A hunter-killer missile is unable to stop it, and the entire country is wiped out. Nuclear and fusion weapons suddenly fire around the world, hitting their targets, and setting into motion a chain reaction that destroys nearly half the continents and cuases extreme devastation to anything not destroyed. Only a few people are left living, but the world is unlivable due to the nuclear winter.
Around 2090
- Human race dies. World still too radioactive for living. Cockroaches still rule the world, but they aren't the giant mutated beasts as advertized in movies.
About 4 billion years later.
- Evolution produces another sentient and intelligent race. Race progresses very much like humanity did.
About 6 billion years after that.
- Sun burns out. Everything dies. Game over, man. Game over.
Take these predictions with a grain of salt, maybe. Who knows, I could be true! All I know is I sure as hell won't live to see most of 'em.
-RISCy Business | Rabid unix guy, networking guru
your company here.
shelby != ford
January 1, 2001: All the tight ass overly anal people who kept smirking about 2000 not being the first year of the new millenium spend the day in confusion and regret when they realise they missed out on a bunch of really good new millenium parties the year before
Having spent some time studying meteorology, I'm interested in finding some of these peoples' older predictions and seeing which of them came true. I suppose Clarke is the only one around long enough to have made any that might have come true. Anyone know of any?
2004: U.N. adopts subsidized time
Year of the Trial-Sized Dove Bar: Nigh everything in the U.S. is franchised out: every restaurant, every general store, every road. The U.S. government begins selling off smaller offices and branches to make ends meet.
Year of the Depends Undergarments: American mega-corps, in light of the reduced authority and power of the U.S. government, declare thier sovereignty; Microsoft becomes the world's first corporatation-state nuclear power. and so forth...
Every time I see predictions for the future it amazes me that tech people often forget how little the computer is really used in the world. Only recently has the computer really entered mainstream society in the US. I remember back when Novell bought WordPerfect, a large part of Novell's big wigs did not even have computers, and I'm talking at work here, not home. I would guess that for every person like myself, (a freak with 6 networked computers) there are 5+ without a computer at all. And I'm just talking the US here.
People have been predicting widespread famine since Malthus; it hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen. There is more than enough food in the world today, the problem is in distribution. As P.J. O'Rourke points out in All the Trouble in the World, democratic countries, no matter how poor, never have famines -- it's the countries run by dictators (eg. China during the Mao era, the USSR during Stalin's rule) or wracked by civil war (Ethiopia/Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, etc) that have famine, since food supplies are used as a political tool.
In addition, the population growth rate has been slowing down worldwide for quite some time now, with many industrialized countries now having negative population growth (excluding immigration). The world's population is unlikely to top 10 billion, and in a few decades it will actually start dropping -- even without famine, war or pestilence.
Cheers,
-j.
60% of the earths population is dead...don't say I didn't warn you.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
This is how we can pretend that future is here!
10. A revolutionary 3-dimensional GUI takes the world by storm. It runs on Linux.
Wear those silly blue and red 3D glasses, then everyone will at least THINK you're looking at something 3D!
9. Human memory backups -- trouble cramming for that history final? Temporarily swap out your chemistry notes.
Human memory backups... commonly known as cheat notes!
8. Conscious computers overthrow the despotic, illogical rule of humanity, establishing a pastoral eden shared by the people of the world and machines of loving grace
Beat yourself over the head with a baseball bat... if you do it long enough, you'll believe this too! (for less permanent results, use NERF)
7. Sexbots
Replace your Real Doll's face with a CRT and surf for pr0n during usage. (Not suitable for those bathtub adventures)
6. A sect of quasi-zen mystics unlocks the secrets of the human mind, and discovers brains of computer geeks contain unusually high concentrations of midi-chlorians
Warning: do not remove brain to test this theory! Just assume it's true (less painful).
5. Unheralded advances in medical science allow delayed-onset aging -- present-day superhackers live virtually forever. Body getting old? Backup your mind and culture yourself a new brain.
Brain Recipe:
3 packets jello (any flavour)
1 packet Koolaid (purple flavour)
3 cups water
2 cups flour
pinch of salt
dash of lemon juice
OR use 1 packet Insta-Mind(tm)
Mix completely, then let set for 4 hours.
Apply electrodes to head, and transfer electric impulses to set mixture.
Remove brain, replace with mixture, pouring carefully.
4. IT professionals, tired of stodgy traditional government, unite to form the first nation unbound by geographic or genetic ties. The native language of this new country is not English or Spanish, but Java 6.1.
Start having object oriented discussions at supper with your family today!
3. Space-age cereal that stays crunchy in milk longer than 30 seconds
Try Cap'n Crunch. It's disturbing how long it stays crunchy. And on another note, given it's bland tan colour, why do the ingredients list FOOD COLOURING?! (what colour was it before?!)
2. The aliens land, and Steve Jobs is their leader. That otherworldly, floppyless iMac thing had to be designed by extraterrestrials.
Make sure your house is colour coordinated to the iMac flavours so that you'll fit in when the aliens take over.
1. Intra-neural internet links -- mentioned by Katz, but so damn cool!
Stare at your web browser intently, form a picture of the page you want. Hold that image in your mind. Start a rhythmic chant of the URL. Pretty soon, some co-worker, friend, or family member will link you to the site, just to shut you up.
Voila! The future is here!
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
I honestly don't think humans could destroy the Earth even if we tried. Yeah, we can wipe out almost all life as we know it (ie. ourselves) without much effort. But the natural state of our planet tends towards balance. Nature is a stronger force than we *in the long run*. Scortched Earth may not be a nice place to raise children for a few thousand or hundred thousand years (which although a long time by our standards is just a few seconds in the Great History Of Time(tm)), there's no way we could kill *everything* let alone destroy the planet itself.
Granted, I sure don't want to be living in NYC when some other country presses the big red button.
(Maybe afterwards I would wish that I had been there...)
-Chris
In 2004 a college student named Jim gets so frustrated with using buggy MS products that he writes an open source clone of the MicroSoft operating system and office application suite. The authors name is merged into the name of the emulated product. Open source advocates seeing a market much larger than UNIX clones immediately jump on this bandwagon and produce a much more desirable version. MicroSoft sales plumment and company goes bankrupt. The country goes into a temporary recession as growth mutual funds are pulled down by the collapse of MS. Boomers have to leave early retirement and go to work again.
In 2001 after returning to the moon we find a large, black monolith that appears to be devoid of any features whatsover, but appears to be from an advanced civilization...
It is purchased by Bill Gates and the technology is never heard from again.
I got an email asking for a little coroboration
on my "My informed guess is that there are applications NOW that are using neural feedback." statement. Here's my response:
Check out:
IBVA
A while ago on slashdot, there was an article about some
British doctors that had (bells and trumpets) gotten a
quadrapelegic person to "type" using a yes/no brain implant.
This sounds like a way-cool advance, but there were US
neuro surgeons doing more advanced work in the 70s.
The one that immediately comes to mindis a documentary
that I saw when I was little. It had this blind man who
had had a 13 (I think) pin plug installed, with leads
going deep into the visual cortex. I'm assuming his optic
nerve had been damaged. Anyway, the doctors working with
him got a system together that would "display" Braille
characters for him. They appeared as grids of fuzzy dots,
but he was able to read them. This was in the mid 70s,
so the research probably continued.
Also, there's an excellent Scientific American Frontiers
show that is all about neural control. It has an Air Force
test pilot who is helping design a neural pitch/yaw system
for faster flying, and an MIT prof who has a sailboat
kinked to accept brain input. I heard that he recently
completed a round-the world trip using the system.
You can probably rent it at a good video store, or order
a tape/transcript from PBS or Chedd Angiers (the producers).
Hope this helps a little.
J
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Only four months after its introduction, the world's first driverless freeway is closed for twelve hours after an unidentified pedestrian climbs the security fence and is struck by a computer-piloted passenger car.
Supporters of the experimental high speed route say that improved security and remote safety procedures are the answer to such problems, rather than the still impractical on-board collision avoidance technology.
January L, 2000? I knew that things were going to break when the date rolled over, but going to roman numerals for the day number? What next?
Just think, it won't be kids with bad names that get made fun of anymore. It'll be the ones genetically engineered to out-of-date styles that will all be ridiculed.
I think some form of distributed client will become integrated with the computer at the OS level. Users will be given the option of donating cycles to their favorite computational charity in the name of advancing science. These donations will improve the resources of well-liked research projects by many magnitudes. -Tarq23
I hate to burst people's bubble's but I'm unconvinced that cold fusion (at least with nuclear fusion taking place) will be a reality. Consider the large discussion of radiation effects from the Japanese nuclear incident. The neutrons from a D-D fusion have a lot more energy than fission neutrons. The number of fusions required to furnish power for a large city will create a neutron flux so high that it would kill (or given a leathal radiation dose) to anyone within a mile or so. (The actual calculations require some educated guessing, but the math is fun). Until we can absorb 99.99% of the neutronic radiation, I don't think we will have fusion power of any kind (unless we can get Hydrogen-Boron reactions; theoretically, no neutrons...) -a
2005: Microsoft promises that Windows2005 will deliver enterprise scalability and stability.
2010: Virtual Reality hits mainstream. Groinal attachment industry drives stock market to record high.
2015: Microsoft promises that Windows2020 will deliver enterprise scalability and stability.
2020: US government V's Linus torvalds anti trust case started.
2025: Rumors abound that Transmeta will finally deliver a product.
2030: WWIII starts after negotiations on VR groinal attachment trade barriers break down.
Prediction: 2050-2100 A huge asteroid on a direct intersect course to Earth will be discovered, due to arrive in 20 years. Thousands of plans to divert or destroy the asteroid are conceived. The movie industry creates many major motion pictures based on these ideas. The most viable of the plans is picked, but the earth doesn't have the necessary resources required to complete it - they were all spent in computing power and pyrotecnic displays making major motion pictures about asteroids about to hit earth. Widespread panic does not ensue, the populance is well accostumed to the idea of asteroids hitting the earth by now, and many have seen convincing replicas of such an event. 2050-2100 An advanced lifeform inhabiting an asteroid detects a planet on intersect course. The aliens realize there are inhabitants on the planet and try to make contact via electromagnetic transmission. The inhabitants of earth fail to understand the transmission, and for some reason (see above) are unable to divert the course of the asteroid that is the source of the transmission. The alien race is forced to destroy the earth. The aliens' culture is such that entertainment does not consume much of their natural resources.
The first commercial device that produces clean, safe power by low-temperature nuclear reactions goes on the market. ... Pons and Fleischmann receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Sorry, but that's just wishful thinking. It would be nice, but I'm 99% sure that Pons and Fleischmann's cold fusion is pure BS. There is no way that it sould be predicted as something that is going to happen
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Ever read Federalist #10, Katz? There is a reason we don't do things purely by majority vote. The reason is this: using majority vote, the bigger factions always stomp all over the littler ones. If you want the political equivalent of a world in which everything but Windows is not only uncommon but illegal, go right ahead. In fact, on that note, I suggest that there is every reason to believe that such a system would quickly elect MS Word the U.S. File Format ('everyone' has Word, right?), IE the U.S. Browser ('everyone' has IE, right?) and of course Windows the only state-mandated operating system, with countless new electronic government features that work only for Windows- because people voted them in, and most people clicked the button next to what they see when they boot up, without a thought as to the effects of this decision.
I'm afraid your vision is extremely unreasonable and unfeasible. Come back when you have a method for sustaining the input and contributions of smaller factions. Speaking as an American, the USA is _all_ of us Americans- not just the biggest gangs.
I predict that computers will be used more and more to make predictions.
(actually, more to explore possibilities than predict)
2000-- Declared "Naughty aughties" sexual activity will increase leading to a new Baby boom. Some people will announce that in fact 2010 is when the apocolypse will happen. 2001-- Congress authorizes military command that will monitor Amercan internet traffic for possible "Threats" 2005-- Current encryption methods will be rendered obsolete due to unforseen computer technology 2007-- "Digital Mcarthyism" begins in ernest. Anbody precieved as technologicaly knowledgeable will be considered a threat to the state, and monitored online. The only people who will have any type of technology freedom will be people who turn over people who represent a possible 'threat' to the "state". 2010-- "CyberTerrosm"(CT) against "Digital Mcarthyists" begins to get public and serious media coverage 2011-- A group will claim responsibilty for CT. Members of this group will be killed in a shoot outs when there main group is assaulted be the State.Online member go into hiding 2013-- Several splinter groups begin CT once agian, however they will have incorperated people that will make attacks in the "physical world" 2015-- Personal computers older then 5 years confiscated as part of CT preventivness. commercials will air saying it's for public good. 2017-- Even tho true AI is not perfected congress enects a law that makes it impossible for AI to have ANY rights. 2018-- Banking system becomes unstable do to a loss of public trust. CT's against banking systems begin to render them useless. Barter Begins 2020-- Sections of the US begin to declare independce and print there own hard currency. Digital currency is not considered trustworthy. 2022-- Computers will be writing code based on a loose set of requirments. Anybody can get code to do anything. 2030-- Quntum computers and AI's are used to create "perfect" encryption for the mass's. banks begin to gain public trust. 2040-- Global un-availability of oil creates an energy crisis like never before seen. 2050--Coldfusion discovered. 2060-- a Digital Global Goverment begins to emerge. 2075-- intellegences discovered on another planet. 2076-- global concern over ET life begins a buildu of a global defence system. 2077-- Huge resouces allocated to develop space travel. 2085-- Discovery of how to travel into tiny alternate "Pocket" dimensions. By entering a pocket dimension at on point, traveling a short distance in that dimension and then re-emerging in the same point in our universe will allow people to travel the universe with the same regularity that people travel the globe today. 2099-- "face" to "face" meeting with ET's.
Hello! I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die
I apologize for screwed up original post.
2000-- Declared "Naughty aughties" sexual activity
will increase leading to a new Baby boom.
Some people will announce that in fact 2010 is when the apocolypse will happen.
2001--
Congress authorizes military command that will monitor Amercan internet traffic for possible "Threats"
2005--
Current encryption methods will be rendered obsolete due to unforseen computer technology
2007--
"Digital Mcarthyism" begins in ernest.
Anbody precieved as technologicaly knowledgeable will be considered a threat to the state, and monitored online. The only people who will have any type of technology freedom will be people who turn over people who represent a possible 'threat'
to the "state".
2010--
"CyberTerrosm"(CT) against "Digital Mcarthyists"
begins to get public and serious media coverage
2011--
A group will claim responsibilty for CT. Members of this group will be killed in a shoot outs when there main group is assaulted be the State.Online member go into hiding
2013--
Several splinter groups begin CT once agian, however they will have incorperated people that will make attacks in the "physical world"
2015--
Personal computers older then 5 years confiscated as part of CT preventivness. commercials will air saying it's for public good.
2017--
Even tho true AI is not perfected congress enects a law that makes it impossible for AI to have ANY rights.
2018--
Banking system becomes unstable do to a loss of public trust. CT's against banking systems begin to render them useless. Barter Begins
2020--
Sections of the US begin to declare independce and print there own hard currency. Digital currency is not considered trustworthy.
2022--
Computers will be writing code based on a loose set of requirments. Anybody can get code to do anything.
2030--
Quntum computers and AI's are used to create "perfect" encryption for the mass's. banks begin to gain public trust.
2040-- Global un-availability of oil creates an energy crisis like never before seen.
2050--Coldfusion discovered.
2060-- a Digital Global Goverment begins to emerge.
2075-- intellegences discovered on another planet.
2076-- global concern over ET life begins a buildu of a global defence system.
2077-- Huge resouces allocated to develop space travel.
2085-- Discovery of how to travel into tiny alternate "Pocket" dimensions. By entering a pocket dimension at on point, traveling a short distance in that dimension and then re-emerging in the same point in our universe will allow people to travel the universe with the same regularity that people travel the globe today.
2099-- "face" to "face" meeting with ET's.
Hello! I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die
http://www.seattle times.com/news/local/html98/hunt_19990621.html
They're already playing soldier, is this such a stretch?
Someone please help me with this, but within this last week I read an article (/.?) which showed the demographic predictions for the next century. This included studies by the UN and others.
There appeared to be general aggreement that world population would continue to rise until it reaches a peak of about 11 billion sometime around 2050. At that point it will begin to drop. The greatest differences between the studies (has someone found a URL yet?) was the rate of decline.
This must lead to speculation on how society will cope with most of its population past retirement age and fewer and fewer youth. Also, there is no history of a society surviving once its population began an absolute decline.
This may well lead, not to government mandated birth control, but to government sponcered events to promote fertility. Any ideas here?
Also not being well addressed is the religious demography. Christianity is currently (outside of the US) experiancing the greatest growth in its history, but don't expect to hear about it in the papers ;-).
In some countries of South America the conversion rate is 3-4 times the birth rate. In Asia there are an estimates 25K-40K conversions per day. Yes, that was per day.
Bottom line is that the number of Christians alive today outnumber the number of Christians who have died since the death of Jesus. And the growth rate is increasing. Whether you agree with the practitioners or not is not the point. The point is that this is going to have a significant effect on future society. Any serious predictions here?
Never underestimate peoples able to confuse what they what to be true with what they know to be true
Having read most of the posts, these are my predictions : 2000+ will be the same as 1900+. Minor advances in rocket technology will take place, allowing a few astronauts to reach mars. Larger population growth and lack of resources will cause minor famines in various third world countries. A few nukes will be deployed in a minor war somewhere on the globe...which will be quickly squashed. Computer processing power and software bloat will cause progress to remain exactly the way it is. In short, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
World Population By Decade, 1950-2050*
Do you want to live in a world with 9 billion other people? The outlook is not good.
*Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, International Data Base
... allow us to finally observe proton decay by 2050.
Phyles, ala Neil Stephensons "Snow Crash" and "A young Lady's illustrated primer" (a.k.a. The Diamond Age) will become a reality.
You and your neighbors may be living in the same physical country but increasingly you will be members of different nations.
In the short term, many "nations" will cling to racial and religious identity with present-day ghetto's becoming larger as people of the same ideology locate together.
Highly specialized nations will emerge however, based around a particular skill or world-view. They may not be large in terms of membership but they will hold a disproportionate amount of power.
Present-day nation-states such as the USA, France, Germany and the UK will fragment into smaller and smaller self-governing states.
This trend is already underway with eastern European states breaking away from the USSR and devolution of power to Scotland and Wales in the UK. A world-wide resurgence in a sense of national identity and pride is already accelerating this trend bringing with it a tide of xenophobia.
Nationality will become a choice rather than an automatic birthright with nations vying for the best and brightest.
The best organised nations will win out. Not by war but by luring away the talented from other nations or by displacing their neighbor-states by sheer weight of numbers.
There will be a massive underclass to whom no nation wants to grant citizenship. Outside the protective walls of nation compounds lawlessness will be the norm.
It isn't utopian by any stretch but this will be the result of nationalist sentiment, the preoccupation of the West with the rights of the individual over the individuals responsibility to their community and the dumbing down and distribution of democratic power.
I'll probably have been killed by the ISP riots of '04 by then and will be beyond caring.
I heard that cheerios have tiny transmitters in them! There! Your so goddam 'noid you will probably never eat another bowl on the off chance that I may be right
A new mode of "computation" will be invented, based on holographic elements ("holocomps" - to make up a term).
This will be just an extension the work being done today with holographic memories.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
...is that, as Bruce Schneier and a recent NYTimes article both point out, it re-introduces the problem of voter coercion that was eliminated by public, manned, polling places. In the polling booth, your vote is private, and public representatives can vouch for that fact. At home/work, others can buy or threaten you to vote a particular way and can watch to ensure that you follow-through.
;-)
--LinuxParanoid, apparently not just paranoid about Linux-related things
It's one thing for a computer to pass a Turing test acting as a human. I think a more notable accomplishment, demonstrating that computers were really intelligent (and not just able to act like dumb average humans,) would be to get a dozen "5" posts on Slashdot in a two-week period.
;-)
What year are you expecting that?
--LP
(So, between now and then, can *your* IRCbot get a 3 on Slashdot?)
At the turn of the century/millennium /. will be sorely bogged down by idiots trying to get the Ultimate First Post. Most of these morons will be a year early.
2000 - 15 year old high school student creates her own Linux distribution specifically tailored for her school. After word spreads of this new distribution it evolves into EduLinux, the standard platform for learning institutions around the world.
2001 - 18 year old high school drop-out writes PerlQuest. As the player progresses through the game, he learns how to create objects that interact with each other to solve each quest. PerlQuest becomes a hit despite it's odd command line interface. ie: key->use(door)
2002 - PerlQuest is included in the EduLinux package due the ease with which educational quests can be created. PerlQuest becomes the standard interface for a huge amount of educational quests for students and non-students of all ages.
4/1/3 - Slashdot announces that there will be a new Windows release from Microsoft. Turns out to be a hoax.
2000 - 15 year old high school student creates her own Linux distribution specifically tailored for her school. After word spreads of this new distribution it evolves into EduLinux, the standard platform for learning institutions around the world.
2001 - 18 year old high school drop-out writes PerlQuest. As the player progresses through the game, he learns how to create objects that interact with each other to solve each quest. PerlQuest becomes a hit despite it's odd command line interface. ie: key->use(door)
2002 - PerlQuest is included in the EduLinux package due the ease with which educational quests can be created. PerlQuest becomes the standard interface for a huge amount of educational quests for students and non-students of all ages.
4/1/3 - Slashdot announces that there will be a new Windows release from Microsoft. Turns out to be a hoax.
--numb
If robots evolve, and resources are limited, then they will undergo natural selection. The ones that spread more aggressively will become more numerous and take resources from the "wimps". The reason we have wars isn't because of limited intelligence or culture. It is because we want things that others have. Robots that don't have analogous desires will be overcome by the ones who do.
Hypothetical situation: There's two AI's running on a machine. One of them, perhaps due to a mutation, bug, or whatever, has a behavioral oddity: it likes to kill other AI processes. The other AI doesn't have that bug. 20 milliseconds from now, AIs-that-kill are the only one(s) running on that machine.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't have one set of predictions. I see several possible "alternate futures," if you want to call them that. More about that further down the post.
One of the things that bothers me about predictions of the future is the way they go to extremes of Utopia and Dystopia, without realizing that some tihngs just flat-out aren't going to change EVER.
Politics, in some form, will exist. They always do in any group larger than two people. Likewise, people will be born, most of them will fall in love one or more times, most of them will have some form of sexual experience, many will reproduce, and we will all eventually die.
Many of the plots of the ancient Greek myths, Icelandic sagas, and Shakespeare's plays concern issues we still face today. Some things -- a quest for understanding of the divine, balancing responsibility between the individual and society, falling in love with someone who's in love with someone else, children defying their parents and "servants" defying their "masters," one culture insisting on its superiority to all others -- are always going to be with us. So, no matter what the change in the surrounding technology or the specific issues, the general ones are still with us.
Now, all that said, here's a few possible alternate futures:
Possible future #1: The Wal-Mart-Ization of The World
Pretty much like it says. All shopping centers, malls, downtown store fronts, etc. are all replaced with Wal-Marts (or something similar). One company controls each industry. A few stubborn, rich eccentrics in a few isolated areas manage to provide alternatives without being bankrupt, but it's "more trouble than it's worth" for the average person to get there. Nothing particularly nasty or apocalyptic happens -- machines do not displace humans en masse, electric cars are introduced just before oil runs out, and some natural woodlands are preserved as "parks" to avoid wiping out more species completely. But life, on the whole, becomes rather dull. Most people don't seem to mind.
Possible future #2: "Bring Seeds!"
For some reason or other, there is a World War III, or alternatively there are many smaller wars that cause civilization as we know it to collapse. (Or some other problem, like the Y2K bug, causes a mass collapse of civilization
Possible Future #3 -- REALLY Weird Science:
(This may be used in conjunction with the prevoius, or as its own scenario.) What most of us currently think of as "magic(k)" starts "working" or "working better." Things that people once considered "impossible" start happening, and become difficult to control. Magic is regulated and/or outlawed, but eventually either the government gives in or the magicians overthrow the government. Unfortunately, having government-appointed telepaths available to snoop into people's minds ends up being a very bad thing for those who think subversive thoughts, although it does get all the kiddie-porn purveyors busted. (Yes, I realize this is incredibly similar to the Internet itself. Yes, this was intentional. *smiles*)
Possible Future #4 -- Dead Planets Aren't Much Fun:
The Earth becomes increasingly inhospitible to life. Every nasty thing (or nearly so) that environmentalists worry about turns out to be true, and sufficiently few people care enough to do anything about it. Life becomes short, harsh, and unpleasant for most people.
Possible Future #5 -- Congratulations, You Have Won SimEarth!
Technology marches on. We get to colonize some other planets, even other solar systems, and leave the earth behind as a nature preserve. Birds are now sentient at the stone-age level.
I think that's enough for now.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The following sports team will *not* win their respective championships this century, due to brain-dead, money-grabbing owners:
The Philadelphia Eagles (a monkey with a dart and dartboard can do better!), Phillies (give us an additional $80 million so we can build the stadium where we want to!) and Flyers (get a real coach!).
Thankfully, over the past two years the Sixers have finally realized what they hell they are doing and are well on their way to a championship. Thank God for Pat Croce, Larry Brown and Alan Iverson!!
Fueled by methodologies stolen from Solaris, Linux approaches a 50% share in the small and medium server market.
Microsoft announces Windows03 (not to be confused with 3.0) available Real Soon Now.
2005:
As their share of the server market dips under 30%, panicky MS execs announce the release of Windows Technologies for Linux... Which actually does a clean install of NT 8.2Sp4 with no Linux back end at all. End users are furious when they find that the included uninstall utility renders their machine completely inoperable. A MS spokesperson says: "It worked in '98... We figured 'why not?'"
2007:
Linux has achieved total market domination, holding 95% of the server market and 97% of the embedded systems market.
2008:
Windows03, renamed Windows09, is finally released. It is roundly praised as 'the best thing since cold fusion' by the editors of (insert Ziff-Davis publication here) and the 3 IT managers still using NT5.0.
More seriously, sentient AI is a pipe dream. Don't get me wrong -- no doubt somebody'll hack up something clever enough to fool the Turing test, and expert systems may become advanced enough to truly replace some dangerous/menial human jobs. But a genuinely self-aware AI would never be allowed to exist.
Think about it: an AI could make every paranoid hacker fantasy that the media and/or JIR has come up with come true. Easily. Infinite patience, infinite knowledge, (essentially) infinite computational horsepower...
And what's to stop it? Some flimsy hardcoded "morals"? Please... If the machine is self-aware, it's going to be self-modifying.
Do you really think that the people with the big iron it would take to create something like that are going to be willing to take that risk? Really?
Just a thought.
Hmmmm...
:)
For some reason there is never a psychohistorian around when you need one
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
"The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village."
- Marshall McLuhan
DEC 1999 media effectively convinced most that y2k was hype, and that fear was all there was to be afraid of, so few people stockpiled cash, and Gov't printing presses breathed easy.
JAN 1, 2000 lots of people have hangovers.. few are on elevators or trading creamed corn futures.. there's very few glitches the first week, and media gloats "I told you so."
Then glitches bug out some financial systems in Japan, Brazil, Mexico and several other countries, triggering alarming capital flight and an unusually vicious cycles of international currency speculation. Panic ensues. Half a dozen big national economies melt down by June. While the crisis is 10 times worse than that of Asia '97, Mighty Uncle Sam stands tall, seemingly unaffected by "problems overseas".
Then we find out the U.S. Treasury takes a signifigant hit as "the Fed" opts to bail out huge loser hedge funds. Fear becomes fearsome, causing fearfully fearsome fear. A naive generation of Americans learns something new: Bubbles can burst. Badly.
2003 Every cloud has a silver lining. Investors stop short bets on international currencies, and start long bets on individual companies. (I'll trade ya 2 Ciscos for 3 Intels). Dollars, Yen, Euros become less trusted and seen rather as unnecessarily militaristic and quaintly bureaucratic exchange mediums.
2005 Businesses increasingly chaorganize in international networks, extending ownership not only to "employees", but even to customers (after all, customers provide valuable cash flow and feedback to help design future services) Those who can adapt to changing borders and new metaphors survive. Those who can't watch tv.
2008 Experiments with global community-based demurrage currencies reinforce the revolution. Money stored costs the storer a percentage in negative interest: better invest the cash wisely. Red Hats? Freshmeats? Invested money churns at higher velocity, and certain strains of it evolve to be quite valuable, far moreso that ancient paper. Don't feel like investing on your own? Buy Schwabs, Janus'.. whatever..
2010 Declaration of Interdependence ratified by 44,000,000 netizens in 342 Nations, creating powerful self-regulating electronic trading block sanctioning environmental abuse and rewarding open idea exchanges using web-based "io" protocol.
2012 more Chinese now on Internet than are Americans on Earth.
2013 Jon Katz finally gets the clue that Internet (and polital impact of it) isn't story centered in United States.
Society will one day respect nature's ability to conquer adversity. And that if humanity becomes the adversary, then nature will prevail.
There are scores of amusing futurist books in any venerable libary. They are quite entertaining. People are often a mental prisoner of their own times and lack imagination to extrapolate beyond the now. So few people predicted the ubiquity of computers and the Web. Also try science fiction.
The predictions of Kibo, as posted last month to alt.religion.kibology, and which I can't find on deja, because I'm dumb:
1999 -- Everyone has to listen to that bad song.
September 9, 1999 -- Moon catches on fire. Also, CNN insists some computers will break.
September 13, 1999 -- Moon blows out of orbit.
December 31, 1999 -- CNN insists many computers will break.
2000 -- Lots of bad sci-fi movies take place.
2001 -- Monkey throws bone at space shuttle, large LSD swirls come out of a big black halvah bar. Also, the solid black sky is filled with orange clouds and little UFOs that go "ping!" at the end of "Time Pilot".
2010 -- Peter Hyams makes an inferior sequel starring that guy from "SeaQuest".
2032 -- Michael York attacks the "SeaQuest" with his deadly "subduction laser" fired from "Macronesia".
2037ish -- Many computers will break but nobody cares because that's years away, dude!
2061 -- Arthur C. Clarke's brain falls apart.
2069 -- Lots of bad sci-fi porno movies take place.
2076 -- Isaac Asimov's short story "Tricentennial" comes tragically true. In the ensuing riot, The Bicentennial Man is killed prematurely.
2084 -- Robotrons take over the world, destroying humanity, except for Mommy, Daddy, and Mikey.
2090's -- We land on the Moon in this decade, according to "Forbidden Planet". At an unspecified time over a hundred years later, Leslie Nielsen gives Gene Roddenberry the idea for William Shatner.
2100 -- Aliens that look like shower curtains try to blow up the Moon, which drives Martin Landau insane.
2134 -- My old ATM password comes true.
23rd century -- The dot in Michael York's hand turns red. William Shatner is given a position of responsibility.
2262 -- "Babylon 5" gets cancelled.
24th century -- Bald men are finally accepted as sexy because, for the first time, Starfleet Command awards a captaincy to someone who doesn't have poofy hair.
2374 -- A world where APES evolved from MEN?
2417 -- Gil Gerard gets thawed out. Then he gets fat.
2525 -- Everyone has to listen to that bad song.
2995 -- There will be TV commercial where some guy keeps yelling "I'll paint any car in twenty-nine ninety-five!"
3000 -- "The Terror From The Year 3000" collides with "Futurama".
3001 -- Arthur C. Clarke starts getting really confused about his own backstory.
9999 -- All eight-thousand-year-old computers will break.
802,701 -- H. G. Wells predicts that humans will have evolved into dumb kangaroos. Of course the book would have been ruined if he had nailed this year as 802,700 or 820,702.
J
MacOS Open Source
jmac
The most (to my mind) credible explanation for how teleportation will be achieved is through Energy/Matter conversion.
At point A the object is disassembled into its atomic parts and those go into a hopper or are converted into energy.
A message is sent to point B to inform the "transporter" of what to make and it does so, perhaps using the energy transmitted from point A but unlikely since local sources are almost always cheaper.
Once you've done this once you realize that its far easier not to disassemble anything and to instead just create what you want at point B with a stored message (instructions on how to make the object).
So that makes it pointless for the transport of goods. What about people?
You stand on the "transporter pad" are disassembled and an exact replica of you is created at point B. This is fine for everyone who knows you because you haven't changed but you just died and it's small consolation to know that there'll be an exact copy of you at the other side. In other words, you're dead, nobody has noticed and nobody is going to miss you.
I really don't think it will catch on.
But you are suggesting that only religion can teach good behaviour! This is not so. I do not follow a religion. Neither did my parents. I do not believe their is a god. Yet I don't kill, rape, steal, yada, yada, yada... How can this be? By your logic this is just impossible or some kind of rare fluke. I'll tell you that it is because of fear of retribution. People won't do bad things if they think they'll be jailed or fined or punished in some way for doing so. (Of course, distrubed minds will ALWAYS be an exception). We like to believe that we don't do bad things because they're "wrong" or "amoral". This is just a self-elevating belief we make up. If this were true then absolute power wouldn't corrupt absolutely since people would always possess "morals". Do your own thing and don't bother people and we'll all let you be. Start fscking up others; and others will quell you. Right and wrong and morals are the result of a HUMAN meritocracy, not of a god or a religion or any higher source.
Challenging tasks like survival in a future that no longer needs menial labor, but doesn't provide universal college-level education, and whose economy depends on unemployment to prevent inflation... hmm, that doesn't sound like a good combo.
anyone with any ambition can acquire enough skills that [...] allows them to live comfortably.You're forgetting that new tech jobs simply don't employ nearly as many people as old labor jobs. Microsoft might generate as much income as Carnegie Steel & Standard Oil, but it concentrates that money in a much smaller number of hands. When there's 10^10 people and only 10^9 jobs, what will the other 90% do?
My predictions for the next 50 years:
and maybe some replacement lungs and kidneys and livers grown on cows so i can continue to smoke and drink... but my genetic engineer friend says that wont happen
Great fiction books for these topics are from William Gibson - starting with the famous Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive and so on. Most books i read from him deal with these facts and they are Top Sellers.
These Books deal with the "near future" of our Planet as well.
There you can find for example people being "fixed" by doctors after major accidents like bombs mostly from recordings.
Or you can find the direct sensory input in there very often - TV like mostly, but also for conferencing, matrix access and data display.
I like these books a lot, as they usually are not that far from reality.
And they have some great thoughts in them - for example the AIs being monitored by Turing People so that they won't become too powerful (so they might destroy or enslave mankind by releasing some Genetic Viruses etc.)
Debian GNU/Linux - apt-get into it.
2007: China takes over Taiwan. The President unconditionally condemns the act while finishing up the details of a Sino-American IP agreement.
2010: The US military has to start up the first peacetime draft because of lack of recruits
2020: After the Hanson massacre, where a disgruntled fan walks into a Hanson concert and shoots 375 people, guns are outlawed in the US
2023: Crime, both violent and nonviolent, are on the rise as criminals are no longer worried about victims shooting them.
2025: The first terrorist nuclear device is detonated in a major city
2040: Hispanics outnumber Caucasians in the US, triggering the formation of the NAAWP
2050: As the world population peaks at about 20 billion (see UN estimates), the average age skyrockets to over 65
2060: Mandatory euthanasia at 80 because of the huge strain the elderly are placing on social services.
2070: Despite such drastic measures as the 2060 Euthanasia act, there are not enough workers to support socialist governments. The global economy begins to collapse.
2099: As the population plummets to 3 billion, the world enters a new dark age
Of course, no discussion of this type can be complete without mentioning Chesteron's introduction to the Napolean of Notting Hill. And since I've mentioned it I may as well quote a passage:
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, ``Keep tomorrow dark,'' and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) ``Cheat the Prophet.'' The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun."
- G. K. Chesterton
The Great Shedding of Religion.
:-)
I agree in a sense with this, but only as relates to mindless dogma. The big sham sects will fade out, but not without a fight. I remember a trial in Mississippi where a woman complained about the public school having morning prayer over the intercom, and the religious freaks in the town used a rally cry of 'religious freedom' to defend themselves. !?!
I am all for the scrutinistic dissection of religions, but to say that ALL religion will fade away, no, I don't think so. Look at the rise in Goddess worship and earth-centered religions. I would say let Pagans inherit the earth, they'll certainly take better care of it.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
The Katz predictions are interresting, but they seem superficial to a certain degree. Additional thought needs to be made to how the predictions will impact society and affect the future predictions. That is one of the great skills of Arthur C. Clarke, he develops a very coherent image of how the prediction will impact our world culture. I don't always agree with them, but he makes good arguments.
First, the "Techno-wars". This is simply not a realistic forcast. With technology prices constantly falling, these devices become more and more easilly obtainable to all levels of society. Any conflicts of this sort would, in most cases, be limited to those with a phobia re: technology. These groups would have a tendancy to seal themselves off from most of society (as technology is spreading to all areas, they need to seal themselves off to avoid it). As a result, any potential "Techno-Wars" would be very localized and contained to small areas. Education is the best deterent to such a future. Another, more likely conflict is a type which has repeatedly scarred human history; conflicts resulting from financial status. While there are more people today who are able to afford their own homes, the divide in incomes between those who can and cannot has been widening. It's a gulf which can create feelings of rebelion, and it could, potentially, create large scale riots more significant than the conflicts resulting from technology acceptance.
While AI can conceivably develop (or "evolve") to a point where machines exceed humans in their ability to think and create. If this comes to pass, each next generation of machines could only possibly be built by the machine generation before it, leaving humans out of the loop. While I see this likely, I also wouldn't expect it until 2100, if then - remember, we need to grant them the right to self-evolve and self-rule first. It's naive to think that humans will willingly grant machines equal human rights (varying by country). Humans will resist this. Also, the suggestion that machines will all be benevolent is eaqually naive. If humans maintain access to the machine "minds", they also have the ability to modify those minds. It is, sadly, human nature to have someone eventually decide to modify those electronic minds to attack his/her enemies. The other side would do likewise, and machine/robot warfare results. Not a promising future, but militaries won't be able to resist the idea of armies of "replacable" robots, no matter how smart they are.
"Fusion Power" - or more acurately Cold Fusion, has long been a dream for affordable energy sources. Create an easy to afford energy source with no dangerous by-products, and the world economy would experience a massive cultural shift. The only downside is that groups controlling existing energy sources will want to hold back any new energy sources. How this will manifest itself is up for debate. At the very least, expect corporate espianage and sabotage of the new technology. If the secret to creating and controlling a cold fusion reaction can be discovered, it will become the dominant energy source. But due to the above, not until 20 or more years after its discovery.
"Sensory Input". Inevitable. This will eventually come to pass; but like much of technology, we will make many partial steps in the race to achieve the full benefits that can be dreamt. A "swap-out" memory is unlikely, but accelerated learning - and more importantly - learning dangerous tasks with relative safety will come to pass. Not to mention the effect it'll have on communication (now this is instant messaging!), entertainment (try playing quake with ALL your sences!), terrorism (expect terrorist groups to try sabotaging or taking over the controls for the sensory input), military (a robot wired to a human gives all the advantages of a live soldier, with the replacability of a robot soldier), not to mention manufacturing, search-and-rescue, exploration, and government.
Just a few of my opinions on the potentials in the future.
I hardly ever use cash anymore. Vending machines and laundry, mostly. I simply charge everything that I can and pay off my bill at the end of the month. I get my paycheck directly deposited so I rarely have to go to the bank. I do most of my transactions on line, or with the phone system the bank has set up. My bank account is set up to pay most of my bills electronically, including rent. The rest I pay with personal checks. If I had to estimate, I'd say that less than 15% of my money outflow involves cash. That would be percent of all outgoing money, not simply number of transactions.
And I don't think it's me.
:)
Quantum computing factoring machines only serve to make obsolete current sizes of keys (512, 1024, 2048, etc..) This is significant, since it takes the world forever to abandon obsolete technology and standards.
However, this doesn't invalidate the facotring problem. Just use much larger numbers. Say, a billion digits. The same tech that makes factoring keys of a few thousand digits also enable use of billion digit keys.
You can't build a quantum machine that can factor numbers that it can enable use of.
P.S. Yes, It's easier to poke holes than make my own predictions.
I don't mean to intrude on your personal reality or anything, but I'd like to offer a couple of thoughts from my own...
/helps/ guide them. The same people are also entirely capable of thinking for themselves (although it seems most people aren't regardless of whether they are religious or not.) They know that God is something they can't understand.
I believe that God will exist as long as people believe H/he exists. I believe the same thing about the Tao. And files on my hard drive. Yeah, I know my hard drive doesn't really have "files" and "folders" in it. Hell, it doesn't even really have "bits" in it. It's just a bunch of magnetized discs and some silicon.
But it really helps me to apply a layer of abstraction to things. I really can't seem to find the time to understand everything in the universe in perfect detail.
Believe me, I do not approve of the way people have abused religions and I feel bad for the people that have been abused by religion.
On the other hand, I know and respect many highly intelligent people that are religious. Religion empowers them, and
What I find to be annoying are people that think they know everything, including everything in the universe beyond their comprehension.
numb
Jan 2000: Dallas beats Buffalo in Super Bowl. Again. Garth Brooks "as Chris Gaines" consumes own feces onstage during halftime show.
Spring 2000: Amid more "random shootings" and "threat of deadly anthrax" in a major American city/cities, US declares Martial Law. FEMA, National Guard, military deployed into American cities. All guns/weapons confiscated. Internet restrictions deployed, NSA censors/blocks foreign
packet traffic. Dissidents, intellectuals identified, neutralized. George W. Bush anointed Supreme High Epopt of New America, marries Britney Spears. First slam dunk in WNBA game occurs.
War breaks out in the Middle East. Again.
Summer 2000: Last "militia group" neutralized. CIA-planted "Turner Diaries", advocating small guerrila armies, effective in fragmenting "militia" movement into tiny local squads easily eliminated by government military force. Buddy Hackett continues his comeback. Latrell Sprewell scores 75 points vs. LA Clippers.
Fall 2000: system in place. Most folks don't notice, don't care, or know better than to
"step out of line". A few freedom fighters, working with the ideas of Nikola Tesla and Wilhelm Reich (among others), attempt to solidify movement, but encounter more resistance from the governed than the government. Ideas are transmitted to the lumpenprole through TV (and HAARP, electromagnetically affecting brainwaves through trace metals in "anti-depressants" and other chemically suggestive products of the pharmaceutical industry). People disappear often,
like those old Russia/KGB stories; apathy reigns nevertheless. A dude who travels the country sharing spiritual insights is hailed as a prophet, then killed soon after.
1.1.2001: Canadian freedom fighters liberate the state of Wisconsin. US zombie citizens, mesmerized by "Backstreet Boys New Year's Rockin Eve 2001" tv program, barely notice.
1.20.2001: Bob Hope dies, as does William Shatner (separately). Last "outlaw" independent radio/tv outlets hunted down, killed. Vice-Epopt Gates and his marauding hordes build a pyramid of LUG members' skulls outside Portland, Oregon.
3.13.2001: Everybody is HAARPed into thinking it's 1994. Forever. Many soma'd citizens become huge collection of wet cell batteries.
Carrot Top remakes "Young Einstein" and wins Oscar--PROOF the deintellectualization process is complete.
May 2001: New Star Wars movie out.
2003 A small group finds a way to get off
the planet unnoticed. Sporting events are violent Roman circuses where many players are killed during the course of games. Tom Jones and Courtney Love collaborate on an album of old Armenian filk songs. Statue of Liberty dismantled, buried up to head on beach.
2004-2011: Some other stuff happens. Like:
Japanese built "Mr. Robotos" appear ubiquitously in US cities, monitoring citizens' daily lives. Howard Stern, a fugitive for eight years, shot down by FCC jet fighters over Sacramento. The riddle of the Ancient Star will be solved and used by the righteous to build the Ditto Machine. Plesiosaur discovered living in Lake Michigan; the "city of Chicago" is revealed as a mind control experiment which never existed. Self-microwaving burritos change the face of the culinary landscape.
Nerf technology is used to repel an oncoming asteroid. A new type of cheese is synthesized.
The night sky is lit up with space advertising. Scooby Doo turns 40 (280 in dog years). Clint Eastwood dies, inspiring the Spaghetti Rebellion (immediately squashed). A controversial report states that french fries are "the perfect food".
People begin to spontaneously disco dance.
Dec 2012: The real apocalypse, at least for us. Bye bye!
2012-
props to all dead homiez
Teach them, as you would your own child, that hurting and killing are wrong. Teach them kindness and compassion and ethics. Perhaps if we do these things, they will be good children and take care of us when they surpass us. This is the dream of all parents.
Plenty of human parents do exactly that, and still manage to raise children who become rapists, thieves, and murderers.
Even more parents raise children who are fine upstanding citizens, but who would gladly kill for "the right reasons". Especially if the thing they're killing is not their own kind (i.e. human) Who's to say what a robot would consider the right reason? Defense or liberation of its fellows from human persecutors? Advancement of the race/species/tribe/make-and-model?
Certainly I think it'd be a good idea to teach (robots) kindness and compassion and ethics; to teach them that hurting and killing are wrong. But I suggest watching your back just the same. Just as with human children, the lessons might not be taken to heart (or CPU).
>(BTW, I am a Christian, and believe in absolute right and wrong, being defined by God's revelation to us, mostly documented in the Bible.
> Outside of that grounding, I see no basis for deceny and order. But our culture as a whole still is based mostly on Judeo/Christian ethics despite
> the rampant philosphical denial of the fundementals of that ethics in our culture.)
> (also, I respect the rules of those of other worldviews, and will agree to live under the rule of the majority's views, whether they are "good"
> acording to how I have come to understand good or not. However, would much prefer that our Judeo/Christian values continue, as they have
> proven to be the most benificial to all...)
While I am not a Christian, I will cheerfully agree with you to a point, for the following reason. Judeo-Christian ethics came into being specifically for a small self sufficient group of human beings. The ethics promoted by Leviticus/Deuteronomy are the ethics that are going to do the least damage to a homogenous group of people, for the most part. As a rule, ethics as a field boils down to the set of actions that are going to do the least damage to the largest group of people in the long run. Thus:people who kill are wrong. They are damaging a large group of people, with no compensating benefit. However, there always comes a time when people decide to distort this basic principle into something for their own use. I don't even remember how many people I have heard cover up their own personal distaste for some activity that harmed no one, by saying it was immoral, or unChristian. I fear to tie a country's laws to something that can be so easily distorted and perverted. A country can only survive by doing the best it can for all of its' citizens, all of the time. And when the populace is short sighted and selfish, the best thing for the country and its' citizens may not be what the citizens want. I realize I've gotten a little off topic from my reply, but I hope this makes sense in that context...
Geek-grrl in training
"Hit a man over the head with a fish and he'll have a headache. Teach a man to hit himself over the head with a fish, and he'll have headaches for the rest of his life."
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
Funny how that works, huh?
There have been some incredible displays of evolutionary programming this decade--programs that start very simply with simple rules that set them up to compete for memory allocation. Given time (...overnight...) some programs had evolved pretty elaborate mechanisms, and the top dogs had even developed some standard program-optimization proceedures (unrolling the loop (?)) that humans use all the time, but of course were not a: known to the researcher or b: designed into the programs at all.
AI will compete for diskspace, memory, hardware... maybe even some bizarre form of AI sex [genetic/code mixing] for variety.
Competition's the way of the world. The AI world may be very, very different, but I'll predict it'll still be competitive in the extreme. Can you imagine what'll happen when you combine natural selection with the ability of an intelligent entity to, in real-time, re-make itself to be more adaptable? Evolution won't take 10E6 years, it'll take 10E-6 years (if that!).
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Another problem I see with a direct democracy is the issue of national security. What happens when we having something of extreme importance that can't be divulged to the public at large because they could give the information to the enemy( sympathists are always out there willing to help their cause, even if it means hurting everyone else in their country ). In order to protect interests of national security, the issues must be kept to a minimum number of people( see the encryption threads of a couple weeks ago ).
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Here's how I think Microsoft will develop its nukes:
;)
v1.0: doesn't really exist, based on old sketches by Oppenheimer. Used only in idle threats and known as the "electron clouds and mirrors" demo.
v2.0: uses Itanium. immediately dropped on a target, no underground testing. Microsoft claims no responsibility for the (minor) damage caused.
v3.0: a dud.
v3.1: still no testing has been performed, causes significant damage to target. The UN promises to look into it but does nothing.
v4.0: rumored to be revolutionary, it merely detonates in the lab, destroying Microsoft. Probably cause: lack of testing.
Around the same time hackers around the world discover how to make a more powerful bomb in their spare time. Its relies on a new scientific principle known as "The Slashdot Effect" wherein an implosion causes all the energy and matter from the surroundings to bombard the target.
The UN investigates ties between the weapon and Slashdot. Mysteriously, all fingers point to Katz.
"And interestingly, this will done not by the governments themselves, but by proxy: apparently, by the United Nations." -How do you know this has to be the U.N.? In actuality, the Warsaw Pact nearly completely abolished religion during the Cold War. China still keeps a very tight lid on organized religion, requiring sects to be registered with the state.
- Jon Katz posts Short History of the 21st Century
- Hundreds of Slashdot Users begin posting hilarious predictions about Microsoft failing/warring against various governments/Linux conquering the world/various Transmeta conspiracies/Bill Gates death
2000 Flushes, the toilet cleaning product, will be known as "One flush for every year since Christ was born."
(ripped uncerimoniously from Conan O'Brian)
In 2005 China at last invades Taiwan. Nobody does anything because they are so F***ing huge. It is later learned that Bill Gates acquired China in 2003. The US Economy is now entirely controlled by Gates, as he not only owns the most prevalent OS in the nation, but also controls the source of all plastic figurines. George Lucas halts his merchandising plan for Star Wars 3 so as not to strengthen Bill's grip on the world. Furthermore, Linux gains ground as millions of patriotic Americans do their part to weaken the Chinese/Gates hold on America.
This is an idea introduced to me by Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, that I've had some time to mull over.
Like the guy who said it said, with our society's increased focus on technology, and its increased impact on our economy, will come an increased generation of low-wage, low-tech workers displaced and estranged from a society that has quickly grown past it's need for them. So, in the mid-21st century, I see 10 percent of the country owning 99 percent of the high-tech stocks, and, in general, posessing personally around 90 percent of anything that could be called "cutting edge" or "high-tech," much like things are beginning to shape-up today. I see the rich, politico class of today slowly integrated, and ultimately, devoured, by an emerging techno-victorian age, that treats cautious geek-dom as the ultimate in social development. E3 and Comdex will be the debutante balls of tomorrow. The jocks of today will be replaced by gamekids. Football and baseball...Quake Seven and Tribes 14. Instead of fast italian cars, it will be more of a status symbol to have the fastest home computer, or the prettiest, tiniest wearable.
Of course, all the Technovictorians, sans hyphen, will live in carefully-guarded gated comunnities, as a ferverous luddite movement spreads amongst the low-tech plebians, addled by the religious right, which, in order to exert more power over the people, will add technophilia to its ever-growing list of sins.
Along this train of thought, I predict that by 2060, there will be martial law enforced in the increasingly lawless low-tech states.
No society I know of has ever been as polarized as the one I'm predicting. There's no telling exactly what will happen after the technological battle-lines are drawn.
But, if everything goes as planned, I will be your benevolent dictator-for-life, with my queen, Bjork, ruling beside me, as my job will no doubt be well phased-out by wireless networking and intelligent motherboards.
- Janiculan
-- Remember: There is no difference between a monopoly and a government. --
As long as something is unexplainable a God will be put in place to explain it by the majority of people. The unexplicable is the Unknown, people fear the Unknown. The ability to attribute the Unknown to God changes it into faith which people can deal with. Ever told a child (your own, sibling, cousin) the answer was "magic" when they asked about something too complex to explain to them (how does the tv work?)...well, religion is the same thing =]
How many millions were killed during the Inquisition, or the Witch Hunts since the Middle Ages?
How about the Crusades?
History is what helps to define something-and Western Civilization's religious history is a little black.
A leading bio-engineering firm will help solve both the overcrowding and food shortage problems of the future by introducing a revolutionary new product:
:)
The Meat-vegetable!
Cows and other commonly eaten animals will be "grown" without their higher mental functions, meaning they will have no independent thoughts (as much as current day cows do anyway), no pain, not even the urge to eat or to move around. They will be fed intravenously and stored in warehouse-like structures, packed in (almost touching) because they will have no need for any sort of space.
Possible diseases will be controlled by keeping on hand a small group of real cows in the area, and taking genetic samples from them, ensuring diversity of the "cows" in the complex. In the case of some discription of cow plauge, genetic diversity will help check the spread through the entire crop.
Meat from these "animals" will be cheaper than natural grown ones, unfortuantely putting most small and medium scale ranches out of business.
This will drastically reduce the land requirements for breeding livestock and open up ex-ranches to become housing or crop-bearing land, increasing the population capacity of the US and feeding the masses cheaply.
And the most important ramification, of course, will be that those sicko vegitarians will no longer be able to use humanity to animals as a reason not to eat meat. By definition, that arguement can only apply to animals in the wild, ie ones that have enough mental function to register pain or inhumane treatment. Being inhumane to a meat-vegetable would be like being inhumane to a sponge
People will realize that productivity isn't really that important and that they can have more fun and be more happy by just taking life a bit easier.
By 2000, a Web industry desperate to explain why they are not living up to the stock market expectations blame deep linking and agents for destroying their profits.
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
By 2001, software, music, publishing and entertainment makers are complaining about massive losses in profit to do online piracy. Massive lobbying for the US and EU to "do something about it".
By 2002, global trade organizations set out new laws to step up "the war on free information". Internet sites are required by law to carry back-doors for government robots, linking to a site is forbidden without expressed permission, and ISPs are required to report nodes with high traffic. Possession of pirated information (illegal data) becomes punishable by incarceration.
Also, the EU and the US legislate for mandatory content ratings on all Internet information. The first trial against a server operator is held in America, where he is sentenced to 12 years in prison. He appeals.
American President Al Gore, who's government largely bullied these laws into effect internationally, holds a press conference together with Disney, Yahoo, Bertelsman Foundation, and now media company Microsoft, who promise this is the road to a better future.
By 2003, the case of the server operator who wouldn't agree to meta-data laws reaches the American supreme court. A heavily lobbied and weak supreme court upholds his prison sentence.
With the War on Free Information going nowhere, and illegal data flying faster than ever over the broadband Internet, the American government sees the court verdict as a green light to install life imprisonment on data piracy, intellectual property violation, and system intrusion.
Slashdot closes as one of the last reader participation sites. Keeping reader comments within ratings proved impossible.
By 2004, the term "Dataglob" enters vocabulary, to denote the dynamic, distributed, roaming globs of encrypted illegal data moving around the Internet. The globs are created to escape government regulation by not depending on the physical network for their infrastructure.
The intellectual property industry releases another report showing that profits are down and piracy is up. The Globs become the scapegoats, and are outlawed. This has little effect on their popularity, since the Web is now a desolate landscape of decent sites full of dancing baloney in the tradition of Disney and Yahoo.
By 2005, the Dataglobs are drawing scientific interest since there mathematical architecture is now so intricate that they can do anything that the physical network could do before.
A study is released showing that 78% of all people in the connected world use and post illegal information on the Globs. Public belief in the governments is down to a new low.
By 2007, A Dutch proposal to review the data laws in the EU is suppressed because of trade war threats from America.
In America, statistics show that over 1.5 million people are now in prison for data-crime. Other government statistics claim that crime is up, that the economy is down, and that the world is seeing its worst depression since the 1930s. The average person is not noticing this at all, however. They have noticed that life is up, prices are down, and that the streets are safer. They now cyber and data crime is up, but for the most part they are culprits, and open source technology as well as a general growth of knowledge about such matters is keeping them very safe crackers.
By 2012, an American presidential candidate goes to election on the promise the she will ensure the total freedom of information by getting rid of all intellectual property laws. Polls show her with a stunning 93% rating when her private jet crashes, killing her and everyone on board. Officially, the black box reveals that it was a software glitch, but information is posted on the dataglobs incriminating the NSA of sabotage. An attempt to take it court fails because the data is illegally obtained.
By 2016, the largest Dataglob declares itself a sovereign state. Citizens are protected by hackers who take down the computer systems and lives of criminals. Citizens are encouraged to protest all government interaction in their lives.
Several digital currencies are started, and are a great success. The Euro and Dollar enter steep devaluation as people stop using them.
By 2020, 50% of all people now claim to be citizens of a glob rather than a country. The American government, followed by the EU, finally lends a sweeping goodbye to all laws forbidding the free flow of information. But it is to late for them, a study shows that citizens of the Dataglobs are better off, better protected, and more free than people still obeying the laws of the territorial nations.
By 2021, the EU and American government hold the first summit with representatives (in one case an intelligent agent rather than a human) of the 12 largest Dataglobs as equals on Antarctica.
The worthless paper currencies are disbanded.
By 2025, almost all the connected have given up claim to there territory, and moved online, trying to compete with Globs at their own game.
By 2030, the world is in a new golden age. With governments competing directly for them, citizens are more free then ever, the none-globbed parts of Internet are coming back alive, and science, based on the ideas of open source rather than patents and profits, is doing better than ever. People dance in the streets (which are more or less free from crime, since physical objects no longer bare much value at all) and smoke a lot of weed.
By 2032, a Muslim terrorist organization manages to produce a strain of flue carrying a retrovirus that reminds of an accelerated HIV infection. Known drugs and vaccines against HIV do not help.
By 2035, the last human dies. The computer of a 55 year old Linux user is left running by a cold fusion reactor, displaying the text "Why did we bother?" over and over again.
-
Using genetic manipulation to control the variation in the gene pool of any species is an action doomed to have horrible repercussions.
Katz's prediction seems to be working off the popular, but incorrect, model that evolution is something that continually strives toward greater and greater perfection. In actuality evolution is nothing more than a response to change, no species is "more evolved" than another, it just has met different needs for survival.
Evolution also cannot create new genes except in the case of mutation but that is very unreliable. Instead it must rely on the genetic variation within a species to meet its requirements. This can be shown in human bipedalism, our backbone is still designed to be supported at both ends as it would be in an animal that walks on all fours. It has modified to have a curve that allows us to balance ourselves, but it also creates a strong dispostion for lower back problems.
If we artifically limit the variation in our species we become specialized, and as we have seen time and time again, overspecialization (biological or cultural) is a one way ticket to eventual extinction.
The American Indians in the western US depended on the buffalo for almost every aspect of their culture, while this formed a strong and stable lifestyle that existed in harmony with the world it also allowed a deadly weakness to filter in. The early pioneers recognized this weakness and sadly exploited it to a terrible extreme, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of buffalo simply to deprive the Indians of that resource.
A more close to home example for many people would be AIDS. Certain people seem to be completely immune to this disease, we know a little of how they are immune but almost nothing of why. If we were to try and select which genes we wanted and which we didn't (as the Eugenics programs established in the early half of this century tried to do) we might unwittingly destroy a gene that protects us, or will protect us, from a currently unknown disease.
to offset the idiotic masses, voting power should be based on knowledge. for example, before each election, voter would take aptitude and knowledge test. that person's vote would then be multiplied by appropriate 'voting power'.
2025 - Cheap webcams hooked to the now everywhere internet make it possible for totalitarian governments (on the left and the right) to really start watching and controlling their people.
Why would this cause mass religious hysteria?
:)
Did the discovery that the earth moves around the sun cause some kind of mass die-off? Or the splitting of the atom?
Give us religious types SOME credit, for crying out loud. We're not all insane cultists, any more than you're a mad scientist!
It WOULD provide a healthy dose of reality for people trying to use the Bible as a scientific text though, like the idiot who tried to use the bible to prove that pi was equal to three (forgetting that old testament Hebrew didn't HAVE decimals). Which is a Good Thing, IMHO.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Just because you don't agree with something is NOT reason enough to moderate it down, and moreover, it was hardly offtopic as the moderation said. In fact, it was quite on topic, as the topic was predictions for the 21st century.
Sometimes I wish moderation was abolished...
I have to disagree with Arthur C. Clarke's view on artificial life-forms. Even though most of us won't admit it, we want money and power. If AI's become as intelligent as humans, they will probably have wants just as ours. Money and power. Since they are computers, their intelligence would probably be more than enough to become powerfull and dominant. I think that we should be careful when it comes to AI and not let it get out of hand. Or better yet, just leave well enough alone!
Quid rides ignare?
There's definitely going to be a lot of disappointment. There will be a continued increase in terrorism, poverty, and population, until something snaps. I expect a major war to take place, maybe not destroying all life, but one that will wake a lot of complacent Americans up.
:)
Also, I expect to see the human brain unravelled. We will be able to make machines that can work as well as a brain does, and we will be able to deal with the brain itself in a much more sophisticated way. We will also be able to manufacture machines on par with animals, something happening on my very desk.
I agree with other comments that things don't change fundamentally, but perhaps at least one person will be able to transform himself into something higher. For instance, to be able to directly interface with a computer and thus gain a sort of artficial ESP.
Really, right now, we're at the stage of being able to make a machine which can pass a Turing test, for instance. The only issue is time taken to develop such a machine. Of course, when it is ever made, it can develop new ones.
The only barrier is politics, and the dangers that government poses to private resources. A nuclear war, an economic failure, or a disaster can all cause the society to go bonkers and prevent people from making these wonderful things.
On a personal note, I intend to have a stable relationship with a female by 2100
The trick to the "museums" from Mote was the Motie's knowledge that their civilization would collapse every couple millennia due to overpopulation, so they tried to start it up again as quickly as possible. The first step, then, to preventing/lessening the destruction of civilization as we know it is to seriously recognize that it's a problem and that we need to do something about it.
For example: If we're worried about nuclear war, we start up a facility in the place we judge least likely to be nuked, and possibly some other places, and set up a sort of biodome covered with about an inch of lead. In our case, as far as I can tell, we need not just worry about the destruction of society, but of life as we know it.
Of course, the humans tending (and presumably living in) the biodomes would need to know how to reseed the Earth in the event of mass destruction. If anyone's ever read the Homecoming series by Orson Scott Card, what we need is someone to take the role of Shedemai (from the fifth book, Earthborn). Gardener of Earth...
We definitely need to put some technology in the domes, too, or some similar structure. Seems to me, though, like human survival's a bit more important than the salvation of art.
Paradox
Farming today is simply not menial labor in the sense that it was 100 years ago. By no means am I disparaging the skills or value of what farmers do. But the farmer today produces food for dozens if not hundreds of people. I don't consider him a simple laborer as farmers of previous generations were.
Besides, I didn't say that menial labor is a bad thing. I was just pointing out that the amount of menial labor necessary to feed us is shrinking. True, we still have people picking fruit and such, but there are far fewer of these people than there once was, and they (or at least their children) have the opportunity to get better jobs. There's nothing wrong with being a menial laborer. But I do think that it is a good thing that fewer such people are necessary to provide for our basic needs.
Maybe this is nit-picking but I've never understood the phrase judeo/christian. The two religions share 5 books together and the torah can't even truely be said to be part of the hebrew religion, judaism as it exists today is the product of millenia of change, adaptation, i.e. the neccesity of sacrafice depending on the availability of a temple and the occasional enslavement of the populace. True they share certain value's but that doesn't mean they are so monolithicaly similar that you can lump the two together in a hyphenated word.s lamic tradition?
Most religions share basic values that are fairly common sence. This is why these religions have stood the test of time.
Subvert anger by forgiveness. Jainism. Samanasuttam 136
The best deed of a great man is to forgive and forget. Islam (Shiite). Nahjul Balagha, Saying 201
Where there is forgiveness, there is G-d Himself. Sikhism. Adi Granth, Shalok, Kabir, pg. 1372
If you efface and overlook and forgive, then lo! G-d is forgiving, merciful. Islam. Qur'an 64.14
The superior man tends to forgive wrongs and deals leniently with crimes. Confucianism. I Ching 40: Release
If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Christianity. Matthew 5.23-24
The Day of Atonement atones for sins against G-d, not for sins against man, unless the injured person has been appeased. Judaism. Mishnah, Yoma 8.9
Show endurance in humiliation and bear no grudge. Taoism. Treatise on Response and Retribution
Because all these religions can agree on the wisdom of forgiveness should we give lip service to the judeo/christian/taoist/confucian/jainist/shiite/i
P.S. I worship a god named lah-lah, and he thinks your all full of shit
Taco bell will introduce the fortune tostada. The most common fortune will be: "Tonight you will suffer from crippling diarhea"
Here's how I see the history of humankind's understanding of God and science:
*Early humans saw the world around them. They realized that they could not control it. Humans hate not having control, so they created God(s) in their own image. Transfer of characteristics: God controls everything. We look like God. Hence: We have some aspect of control over everything. Faulty reasoning, but it made us feel a little more secure in an insecure world.
*Advent of mathematical and scientific understanding. We actually understand certain simple aspects of the world. Anything we don't understand, or can't explain, it was an "act of God." Another characteristic of humans: We hate to admit we don't know something. So "God works in mysterious ways."
*Today: Vast understanding of the way the world works. We know that if we throw something up, it'll come down as long as we throw it low enough. We know that when we deprive a flame of oxygen, it'll go out. We know that if we add HCl to NaOH, we'll get water, salt, and some heat. So why do we need God?
God is there to give people a reason to think that the world is right. God is there because our parents and our rabbis said so. God is there because he's God.
I can tell you one thing, though: If God really does exist, he's going to have to conform to the laws of physics just like the rest of us.
Mile-wide airships for bulk cargo transportation, pleasure cruising and, of course, billboard advertising. Big and stable enough to ride out hurricanes and filled with helium to avoid unpleasant "Hindenburg" episodes. They will never land, dropping elevator cables instead for loading and unloading.
Eventually, airships become so massive and stable that it's possible to launch rockets from them, reducing greatly the cost of placing payloads in orbit. Some people will live on those craft permanently, exploiting tax loopholes.
Airships are just too cool (and potentially useful) not to come back someday...
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
2020 - Pfizer releases the "Mood Monitor". A small device implanted into the base of the cerebral cortex, the Mood Monitor continuously monitors serotonin and dopamine levels in the subject's brain, and automatically responds to abnormal brain biochemistry. No one is ever unhappy again. 2025 - The first fully functioning neural sensory interface is developed by a team of scientists at MIT. 2027 - Sony applies for over 300 basic patents in neural sensory interface technology. 2030 - The first fully functional neural sensory interface "brainjack" is released on the open market by the Sony corporation. Within 3 days there are over 10,000 deaths due to users who, having remained logged in continuously for 72 hours, unwittingly die of thirst. 2031 - Sony markets the "EmbryoVat 3000", a tub of warm pinkish liquid goo that can sustain a human body for years on end. Immediately afterwards, millions of Americans disappear from the real world and continue to exist only as graphical representations in a world that resembles "The Matrix", only without the evil AI's running everything. 2040 - The "Real World Society" is created, a luddite group hell bent on destroying the artificial world in which 95% per cent of the world's population now spends more than half of their time. 2045 - Nuclear fusion. A single bucket of seawater can now power the world's energy needs for an entire year. 2050 - Humanity bids the actual world farewell. A collection of artificially intelligent robots is given control of EmbryoVat and nuclear fusion maintenance. Meanwhile, human beings continue to exist in a artificially generated world where the food tastes great, everyone is beautiful, and the sex is awesome. 2060 - Neuroscientists successfully create a one-to-one digital map of the human brain. The biological information stored by neurons can now be mapped into pure data. Within a year, the human body is obsolete. 2065 - The last EmbryoVat goes offline. Humanity now exists only as a digital representation of its former biological self. People are immortal and perpetually happy. 2100 - Using a super-powered radio telescope run by robots, humanity contacts the first extraterrestrial intelligence. Unsurprisingly, they exist in the same informational world that human beings do. Although the initial culture shock is a little odd, everybody eventually gets along.
2020 - Pfizer releases the "Mood Monitor". A small device implanted into the base of the cerebral cortex, the Mood Monitor continuously monitors serotonin and dopamine levels in the subject's brain, and automatically responds to abnormal brain biochemistry. No one is ever unhappy again.
2025 - The first fully functioning neural sensory interface is developed by a team of scientists at MIT.
2027 - Sony applies for over 300 basic patents in neural sensory interface technology.
2030 - The first fully functional neural sensory interface "brainjack" is released on the open market by the Sony corporation. Within 3 days there are over 10,000 deaths due to users who, having remained logged in continuously for 72 hours, unwittingly die of thirst.
2031 - Sony markets the "EmbryoVat 3000", a tub of warm pinkish liquid goo that can sustain a human body for years on end. Immediately afterwards, millions of Americans disappear from the real world and continue to exist only as graphical representations in a world that resembles "The Matrix", only without the evil AI's running everything.
2040 - The "Real World Society" is created, a luddite group hell bent on destroying the artificial world in which 95% per cent of the world's population now spends more than half of their time.
2045 - Nuclear fusion. A single bucket of seawater can now power the world's energy needs for an entire year.
2050 - Humanity bids the actual world farewell. A collection of artificially intelligent robots is given control of EmbryoVat and nuclear fusion maintenance. Meanwhile, human beings continue to exist in a artificially generated world where the food tastes great, everyone is beautiful, and the sex is awesome.
2060 - Neuroscientists successfully create a one-to-one digital map of the human brain. The biological information stored by neurons can now be mapped into pure data. Within a year, the human body is obsolete.
2065 - The last EmbryoVat goes offline. Humanity now exists only as a digital representation of its former biological self. People are immortal and perpetually happy.
2100 - Using a super-powered radio telescope run by robots, humanity contacts the first extraterrestrial intelligence. Unsurprisingly, they exist in the same informational world that human beings do. Although the initial culture shock is a little odd, everybody eventually gets along.
2008: The Pope denounces Bill Gates as the Antichrist.
2010: AOL declares itself a separate nation, no longer bound by any laws but its own.
2014: All remaining independent corporations merge into one central entity, known as Omnicorp.
2020: A giant fireball engulfs Western Europe for no particular reason.
2027: The US annexes Canada.
2030: The writer breaks off his predictions because he has better things to do.
It is bad form to follow up your posts as an AC.
One thing that never seems to get mentioned in all the discussions of the future is that we are going to be in an ice age at some point (yes, I'm well aware of the global warming predictions that are mostly inconclusive). The last time this happened was right around the time the Roman Empire fell, and many historians think it was a factor. We're a little more prepared this time, but watch for all energy sources to become strained and cost to increase dramatically. It can make the 70's look like a walk in the park. Sure, there's plenty of options out there for developing new sources of energy, but funding development of them was not ever a priority.
We're also way overdue for a plague. The last major plague was limited to Europe, but with global travel comes global problems. It won't be easy to knock it out, either. I know someone whose wife is getting over an infection that almost killed her. The doctors had to use a massive amount of antibiotics just to get her stabilized. The super-bugs that exist today, that resist all known cures (some even feast on them) are only going to get more prevalent.
This may cause society to fractionalize into finer and finer groups. Paranoia will increase to the point that people will be afraid to have any contact with people they don't know. Travel will decrease, destroying what's left of most of the US economy (no more cars, highways, gasoline). The giant agriculture conglomerates will fall apart, since delivery of food will be more expensive than growing it yourself. People won't have time to develop technology much beyond current levels (and much of the knowledge will be lost due to neglect), since we'll all be trying to survive. People will flee the cities and coastal areas to find good farmland, and to escape the terrible living conditions. Major centralized government may become irrelevant.
At this point, we will be in a full-fledged dark age. Something (religion or the state) will be the only source of information, and much of that will be tainted to keep the source in power. It may not last quite as long as the last one, since, hopefully there will be enough people who have enough sense to archive current technology and develop new ideas in the barn.
Don't think it can't happen. I'm sure the Romans thought they'd be around forever, too. Of maybe I should just cheer up.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Our notes over here are made of plastic, and they have a see through window in them with Holograms and shit.
If anyone with a brain is watching, you should realize that downward moderation is worse than useless.
Millenium
2000: The misinformed who believe that the second millenium consists of all the years that start with "1" (1000 - 1999) realise their folly when they realise that the second millenium must therefore also consist of all of the centuries that start with "1" (10th to 19th), and therefore the second millenium probably ended on December 31, 1899.
Quantum computing
2012: The introduction of quantum computing makes old encryption methods obsolete. New quantum encryption methods are invented to cover this need. To the NSA's great annoyance, these new methods prove to be easy to use, provide good encryption, and cannot be tapped without the tapping being detected. The NSA and other espionage organisations, perceiving the new technology as a threat, try to strangle the emerging technology in the cradle, in the same way the record industry did with Digital Audiotape in the 1980's. They fail, and Quantum Encryption gains rapid acceptance in the market.
Genetics
2034: Studies show that due to advanced lifesaving medical methods and infertility treatments, the human gene pool is being dramatically weakened as individuals who would have surely died even a century before are instead being permitted to live and raise many children. A new and highly controversial international treaty is signed that outlaws infertility treatments and compels hospitals to sterilise anyone who is admitted for life-threatening conditions. One unexpected side-effect is the complete elimination of all of the inbred aristocratic class worldwide within forty years.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
2.1.2000: I awaken with a pounding headache wearing someone elses's underpants, in another state.
5.5.2000: Idiots are once again dissappointed by the fact that the earth is STILL here.
6.*.2000: Windows 2000 comes out, at $500 each. When you execute the installer, you see a box which says 'Sucker.' Bill gats has skipped the country.
*.*.2000: Amazingly enough, 98% of Americans write in (variously) 'Donald Duck', 'None of the above', 'Fuck you', 'Hank the Angry Drunk Dwarf', 'Controversial Jack and Duck', or 'The end is near'. Jesse Ventura gets 1% of the vote, and the only person who votes for George Dubya Bush is himself.
*.*.2000-*.*.2060: Use the history from _Shadowrun, 3rd ed._, but replace all instances of 'Shiawase' with 'Microsoft' and forget the whole Dunkelzhann thing: Linus Torvalds' brain-in-a-bottle gets elected by write-in.
Technology Grows at such a rapid pace Next Century there exists a movement or a religion which is Anti-Tech, and who's ultimate goal is a holy war against Technology. The Holy War ensues and Geeks like us become renagades in a Dark Ages sociaty.
Actually shit thats how it was not even 5 years ago. It's Amazing how things change so fast.
------------------------------------
The title of an editorial by syndicated columnist Charley Reese
That will teach me to write fast without doublechecking. That reference should be to November 1994 Scientific American.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
uh, arms buildups? Where (other than the U.S.)?
Short Term Predictions are always too ambitious.
Long Term Predicitions are never ambitious enough.
-AC
Has anyone ever read the book "The Truth Machine." If it is the book I'm thinking of it could be considered to be a true "History of the Future." It tells the story of a genius in competition with an evil genius to invent a perfect lie dectector. Taking place throughout much of the 21st century the beginning of each chapter tells of events that "happened" that year. These blurbs are almost as good as the rest of the book. If you like good science fiction read this book.
Wow! that sounded like a 8th grade book report. If someone has read the book (and liked it) please post a better description of it below.
This is a fundamental ethical question of the modern era.
Before answering a sardonic "yes", thereby demonstrating how sophisticated you are in your own eyes, consider this:
Have you demanded that guys like Katz, Clarke, Sterling, etc. put their credibility where their mouth is?
If not, perhaps this is because you are a superman of the post-Nietzsche era -- and therefore you abide civilization's replacement of the heathen "might makes right" with the literati's "sophistry makes right". But are you really that much of a wise guy?
There is a reason false prophets were stoned:
There wasn't any other way to hold them accountable for the damage they did to gullible people.
So if you aren't entirely certain you can con the con artists, perhaps you should consider insisting, rather relentlessly, that these inspirational futurists put something on the line other than their promiscuous words.
For instance, has Katz ever made odds on the viability of the Princeton Tokamak?
If there had been bets placed on the viability of geosynchronous satellites back in the 1940's would the odds have been as biased against Clarke's predictions as his fans would lead us to believe?
And what ever happened to HAL, Art?
Seastead this.
here's my predictions.
Jan 1, 1999- The US economy will be in shambles over Y2K scare. Not the Y2K bug itself, but because every idiot with a bank account will be pulling his money out of the bank.
2/6/00 2600 freaks around america will have their day.
March/April 2000 MCI Worldcom will buy out AT&T, in a deal worth roughly 800 billion dollars. People shout 'monopoly!'
June, 2000 Microsoft Lindows, a combination Linux distro and GUI will be released. It will be of incredibly high quality, alas nobody in the geek community will trust it because, well, it's Microsoft, dammit!
August, 2000 Windows officially becomes 'old school'. Kids get nostalgic over win 3.11. Windows is out of print, Microsoft becomes the Atari of the computer world, and slowly vanishes without a trace. Lindows, however, is sold to an as yet unnamed company which will take it to the level of 'mainstream OS.' people will cheer! 'hooray for lindows'!
Dec. 2000 People will realize that the millenium is only now about to end/begin. Confused, the Backstreet Boys release "Real Millenium."
Jan 1 2001 The world suddenly ends. No, really. It'll be rather unexpected.
Well, that's all folks.
The film is called Gattaca, because G A T C are the letters of DNA coding.
If things do get as diabolically boring as the root article says - with supercomputers, AI business moguls, and genetic cleansing - we'll probably cause utter social apocalypse, somehow.
No system so stagnant could ever continue to exist, by reason of the natural, chaotic nature of the universe. The problem with such a vision (or nightmare, as it were) and indeed, the Orwellian dictatorships feared by all, is that somewhere along the line, a link in the chain will snap, bringing the entire culture to its knees.
On that note, I'd like to believe that if we don't totally obliterate ourselves in the near future, that a simple, dark-age society would be all that's left standing, with their religion founded upon some old fart's half-crazed memories of a computer game mixed in with supreme being ideology.
Now that's irony; humanity would be serving a 'devine being' that is more literally of our own fabrication than many atheists argue modern religion to be.
EvilSoloman
He sucks. He annoys me. 'Nuff said
In the case that anybody is psychotic enough to read this far into the comments... I predict that people in the future will think many of the more ambitious predictions of today are really silly, as we think predictions from the past are silly. Nevertheless, people will continue making such predictions. Many of the so-called visionaries will also be considered to be overly idealistic Commies.
In 2050, a respected fusion scientist says that commercially viable fusion power is 20 to 30 years away.
Current estimates (by the petrochemical industry itself) until world-wide oil-production begins declining is another 10-20 years,perhaps as little as 5.
The estimate is knowen reserves accesable at current market price.
I do not think that estimate has ever been higher than 30 years since people started pumping oil.
you are forgeting a few things:
New reserves are beenig found all the time
There is a lot of oil that we know about that is not used because the price of oil does not justify it. A small price increase in oil means may more oil becaumes economicly viable for extraction ex) Oil sands
The use of oil will dircrese if the price goes up people will start buing smaller cars, insulating houses etc..
What are we going to do when we suddenly find out that genetic engineering can't change our intelligence the way we want it to? We'll be able to design children to have the right sex and the right hair color and height, and maybe even make sure they're intellectually capable. But we'll find that intelligence is a socially formed phenomenon that no amount of rearranged DNA will revolutionize and that personality is beyond hope of genetic changing. Emotionally deficient people? Heh. Will we riot against the biologists for not finding what we wanted them to?
Oh, and BTW, that bit about supercomputing curing blindness and cancer was really...cute. Go Katz go!
I'm not a smorgasbord.
if only we networked the brains of all the slashdot anonymous cowards, we'd have a borganism with a collective IQ almost comparable to a human being!
By the year 2003, your telephone bill will be one flat charge, allowing you to call almost anywhere on the planet for unlimited amounts of time. Long distance charges will be eradicated.
Best-- Glenn Hauman, BiblioBytes
http://www.bb.com
In addition to putting back the oil and other minerals into the environment in the distant future we'll also start to dismantle all the great superstructures built by humans throughout the millenia. Our extended lifespan will allow us to start our colonisation of the universe but the timescale of such a project makes it unneccessary to leave any form of high tech behind on earth. Human kind will be divided into those adventurers who will go explore the stars in huge comfortable spaceships ala "Culture" and those who decide to go "native" on a planet rendered to the state it was 50000 years ago. We'll be the seeds of a new population on and off earth, returning in a more distant future as aliens to a sociological experiment called earth.
While many of the longterm predictions are interesting, if for no other reason than hilighting some of the pretty neat technology extant now, there are some very interesting realities that we will have to deal with in the much more local future. With the induction of IPv6 (2^128 addresses) and less than $1 match-head sized web servers (already in existance) every light-bulb and refrigerator sold in the next few years will be accessible online (it will allow companies to track their products and repair them remotely). General ignorance and careless coding will mean one bad standard will build on another and very soon we'll have an entirely networked electronic world (i.e. not just harmless computers, but the stuff that really matters -- airplanes, elevators, and the like) built of microsoft quality software. Its not a world I'm looking forward to living in.
This is unfortunate since this kind of thing will be the testing ground for the kind of things that have been suggested that actually sound very promising (convergence of cybernetic and biological technology, and the stronger integration of networked technologies into our lives). The internet was built from the ground up on some pretty simple yet functional principles; unfortunately, as microsoft continues to demonstrate, when corporations are involved, simple and straightforward are never enough... technologies have to be made as awkward and proprietary as possible to prevent others from tailgating on a companies R&D.
On a similar (though fundementally unrelated) note, it will be interesting to witness corporate attempts to proprieties their biological products in the next few decades. No biotech firm is going to want their mosted prized genome stolen and modified by another corporation or individual, or just bred naturally. What might be the result...encoded DNA that can only replicate with the help of a key protein? Animals/Plants that can only exist when given special hormone treatements known only by their parent corporation? Ultimately as biotech and cybernetics converge, human gene sequences will be the most prized resource (humans are complex systems... creating perfect one will require more than just intimate knowledge of the genome). I think ultimately we will replace or incorporate computers into ourselves; it might happen because of fear of inferiority (to AI) or simply an explosion in biotech. In either case it will be interesting to see how we protect what will be our most valued resource, but ultimately one that was intented to reproduce itself naturally.
Sheer sheer@uclink4.berkeley.edu
...next january, most people will believe they are in the 21st century.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Pretty much all political philosophers up through Hobbes were advocating benevolent dictators, saying that the sheer nature of democracy (rule by the many in their own self interest) was a Bad Thing. The world would be stagnant and brutal, etc.
By the time Locke started spouting off his gibberish we were going downhill.
God save the Queen!
4. IT professionals, tired of stodgy traditional government, unite to form the first nation unbound by geographic or genetic ties. The native language of this new country is not English or Spanish, but Java 6.1.
Yeah, so now all IT professionals can talk to everyone else with no compatability problems. Unfortunatly during the talking process your body will completely lock up while your talk process uses 100% of your brain, talking takes 5 times longer, and large companies have added their own words to the language, so they can understand everything you say, but unless you use the updated Java Virtual Brain, codnamed M$JVM, you can't understand them.
The Earth is not at the center of the universe. The Sun actually sits at the center of the solar system and the earth revolves about the sun.
If this doesn't seem absurd [...]
Sound familiar? I'm sure it did sound absurd if not outright heretical and worthy of a death sentence at one time... Pity you religious types can't execute scientific heretics anymore (at least not in the civilized nations). Must be drivin' you nuts.
... it just pays like it! :^)
So much of today's "farming" is not farming at all, but rather large agri-business, managed by people who don't live on the land they profit from, and thus have little concern for preserving it. You can bet their children aren't going to live on and work the land. Without an incentive to preserve the land for future generations, the production of food becomes entirely (short-term) profit-driven.
William Gates clones himself, force grows the new entity to an age of 16 in one year, and undergoes a brain transplant into his new body. It is estimated that he will be able to repeat the procedure every 60 years for about 300 years until his brain decays into a pudding. The entire procedure is estimated by reporters to cost around $10 Billion USD, well within Gates range. Outcries ensue from religious leaders outraged that Gates will be avoiding damnation enternal in the afterlife (though everyone knows they are just pissed he can afford it and they cant).
On his release from the transplant surgery (on 2021 April 30th), Gates is gunned down outside the hospital, dying immediately from a head wound, though he was hit twice. The gunman, claiming that he is innocent and "just a patsy", is given the chair in a public execution televised on Fox. While being strapped into the chair, he screams, "I just couldnt stand the thought of that guy f^cking everybody and trying to take over the world every night for another 300 years!"
Oddly enough, doomsayers and astrologists had marked 2021/04/30 as a day of "A great cataclysm, the end of the world." On rechecking their notes, they discover that it really was "A narrowly averted cataclysm, possibly the end of the world."
Later evidence reveals that it would have been impossible for the gunman to have hit Gates in the head from the angle he allegedly fired the shots. Conspiracy theories fly around the internet for about 3 days, and then everybody decides that they are just happy Gates is dead and leave it rest.
-- bartman
Ever hear of proportional representation? Only the US and a few other countries are using outdated tech like winner-take-all elections. -- Ender, Duke of URL http://www.fairvote.org/pr/intro.htm
wow, well first of all as a forum we as users have to take all we read with a large supply of salt. I for one use a shaker with my tequila.
however the topic here is food its availability and the consequences of its not being available.
Despite what technofiles and other futurists who worship tech will tell you, food availability is not increasing. There was a international debate earlier this century about the green revolution and how the developing world would "make up" for a lack of food. What is happening is that more outlying acreage with smaller carrying capacity is being utilized for food prodcution while local high yielding acreage is being plowed under and turned into malls, parking lots, highways and other modern utilities. Technofiles would have us believe that with the addition of fertilizer these outlying lands can be more fully utilized for the production of food or animal husbandry. This may be useful over the short term but as the land is intensively farmed it loses carrying capacity, not to mention runoff of top soil. While it would be convenient to discuss somewhere in the USA where these conditions exist I would point out to those who have read this far that the USA is pretty much not really where the problem is at its worst. We must take an honest assesement of the developing world.
What is at the heart of the food production issue are a number of INTL issues. First is the corporate farm, second is farm labor immigration, third is the increasing dependancy of the developing world upon developed world markets, fourth is market pressure upon food prices, fifth is the future of family farming. Although there are many other issues contained within this debate I would limit its scope to these 5 key issues.
Thus we must ask ourselves food for profit at what cost to the global carrying capacity ?
Immigrant labor for food production and the effect on human rights and labor conditions.
The future holds a few constants. One is an ever increasing number of humans on the earth, all needing regular caloric intake. Two is an ever increasing use of marginal land for food production. Three is an increased connection between what is grown in the developing world so it can be shipped for sale in the developed world. Four is a direct relationship between sustainable farming techniques versus intensive bottom line farming and the effect upon the carrying capacity of the land.
this issue is far to complex to be contained within this one post or the sum total of all the posts on this site !
this is just a few FACTS to wet your whistle.
where technology can help this situation is in maintaining INTL discussions, assisting in distribution of food stocks to those in need, study of top soil runoff and its avoidance, and the continuation of foodsotck planning. Things like which foodstock grows best in which environment and the avoidance of growing certain foods in areas not suitable for its growing.
looking forward to continuing this conversation: