Humanity's Future

[wingedcat]

Have any of y'all read Age of Em? It predicts humanity's future conditional on mind uploading technology, and that future is full of people run on silicon outcompeting people who don't, and each other, in a weird post-economy. The book makes a pretty good case that the future won't be apocalyptic or utopic as we like to imagine, but will instead differ from our world in directions we see as bizarre and be experienced as mundane by the people living in it. I find that ethos really compelling, although I don't know enough about computer science to agree or disagree with the premise that mind uploading will be That Disruptor.

[Husky51]

I think that mankind will somehow continue on, but not as we know it now.  And I don't think that our world governments will help out much either and that it will go downhill.  I just hope that I'm wrong for the benefit of my grown children and grandkids...

[Lovecats]

Well, i'm hoping that technology will advance up to a point where we won't be needing to use fossil fuels to maintain energy security, globally so we can ensure cheaper, environmentally sustainable, universal access to electricity, anywhere in the world. It might make sure that nations can focus on other important bits like encouraging conservation and reducing poverty (might be a bit tricky, though, since more energy efficiency might just encourage some countries to extract physical resources at a quicker rate for short-term economic growth, accelerating their overall environmental degradation.)

 

I'm just mainly hoping for things to turn out this way since I don't want the Fallout universe to, you know, become a reality (apparently the bombs fell mainly thanks to energy insecurity and the resulting conflict between nations.) But also because i'm a bit concerned that, if we keep increasing global temps by burning fossil fuels, we might exceed a few environmental tipping points (such as collapsing coral reefs, retreating sea ice, disrupted oceanic currents), we miiight kickstart a catastrophic environmental collapse, somewhere. And that wouldn't be nice. So yeah, technological advances and good diplomacy might do us some good.