
Time to dust off your crystal balls and look far, far into the future.
What do you see for mankind 1,000 years from now?
Optimistically speaking
For example:
Will we live in a world of peace? No wars, no terrorists?
Will most diseases and illnesses have been wiped out? Will the average human life span have increased dramatically? Will we live to, say, 200?
Will everybody have enough food and drink? A nice home?
On the transportation front, will cars and trucks and trains and planes still exist, or will people have “transporters” (à la Star Trek) that allow us to travel instantaneously to our destinations, and to transport goods that way, too?
Will money still exist?
Will the Internet still exist?
Will wordpress still exist?
Etc.
Pessimistically speaking
Will mankind still exist? If not, what wiped him/her out? Disease and plagues? Famine? War? Natural disasters? Asteroids?
Will mankind still exists but have regressed to some sort of primitive civilization, where the comforts many of us take for granted today won’t exist?
Etc.
What about you?
Do you think you — your spiritual essence — will be here in reincarnated human form 1,000 years from now?
Or as anything else, i.e. animal, vegetable, tree?
****
Have fun with all this. Let your imaginations go wild if your crystal balls don’t give you definitive answers. And please feel free to stray beyond the parameters of my questions (hence, the Etc.)
Looking forward to your responses, be they the stuff of sci-fi or apocalyptic visions.
— Jillian
Don’t forget about the robots, will they rebel and enslave us?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Got your AR-15 or AK-47 handy? Actually it’s these Nanobots that really scare the living daylights out of me. Wait anti-viral serum for Nanobots by GSK or Pfizer. Or Will Smith?(iRobot) |D
LikeLike
Nope. Unless you have kids, and they have kids, and so on and so on, you’re dead. And for some of us that’s not necessarily a bad thing! Mind you we may just discover the Star-gates to other worlds and dimensions. Who knows..in our Life & Times. Dark Matter matters. Ok, saving that Mead for Valentine’s Day? Closet Romantic? Somehow I don’t think so. Whoop.:-P
LikeLike
lol. I think your crystal ball needs a tuneup!
LikeLike
My crystal ball is fine thank you. I rest my case: http://tinyurl.com/p2v8ujj because if you consider the subject of many SyFy movies they have not been surprisingly far off the mark. Btw Windows 10 will be able to create Holograms which you will be able to project(remember Star Wars Princess Leia) and then recreate on your 3D-home printer. 1000 years? We are all ready there
LikeLike
“In my Father’s house are many mansions.” I have long believed in other dimensions and universes. So, worm holes as doorways or paths to them make perfect sense to me.
Life is an incredible miracle, more so for those of us who can ponder the nature of our existence — and speculate about the future.
Yes, your crystal ball is fine, too!
LikeLike
“Will we live in a world of peace? No wars, no terrorists?”
The world will be mostly peaceful, but there will always be bad people who make it into positions of power. Many smaller nations will merge for economic survival. North America will be one country, most of South America as well. The EU is already taking those steps toward becoming a country called Europe. Remember, 250 years ago the USA was thirteen separate sovereign colonies. Today we are one nation. (Though some right-wingnuts want to go back to separate sovereignties). There have been terrorists before modern man. Primate communities use terror as a weapon. Some use rape, some infanticide, and some steal the young of other communities. There have been terrorists throughout human existence. Modern man has been around for 50,000 years, and another thousand is nothing to human nature.
Jillian – there have always been terrorists. There will always be terrorists. Quit worrying so much. When you worry, the terrorists win. Letting them win only encourages.
“Will most diseases and illnesses have been wiped out? Will the average human lifespan have increased dramatically? Will we live to, say, 200?”
We will conquer most of the diseases that we know today, but there will always be disease because the disease-causing pathogens have had millions of years to evolve, so what’s another thousand to them? While it’s politically convenient to say that we’re living longer, that is false. We’re not getting older. Humans have lived to 100 years for many hundreds of generations. And over time more of us get there. In the future even more will live to 100. But every human cell has a self-destruct timer in it. humans just don’t live much past 100. It would take some genetic engineering that is today just a fantasy to extend the maximum lifetime of any species. We humans are not getting older, but more of us are living longer.
“Will everybody have enough food and drink? A nice home?”
Yes. Humans will self-adjust to meet the available resources. Every species does this, so why would we be any different? It may not be fun for some populations, even tragic, but all species alter their reproductive behaviour to meet the available resources. Already today the Gen X’ers are having fewer children than the Baby Boomers who had fewer children than the preceding generation.
“Will cars and trucks and trains and planes still exist”
Yes, but they will be autonomous requiring no driver/pilot. We have the technology to do that today, and in 100 years my great grandchildren will be asking “what’s a ‘steering wheel'”? I still remember when my daughter asked: “what’s a record”? There will be more high-speed trains to more communities. Japan has a train being tested today that reaches speeds approaching 500 Mph. Elon Musk has envisioned a supersonic tube train that can cross the country in under an hour. We have the technology now, so it’s inevitable that that’s the future of personal travel. Throughout history, advances in communication has always made the world a bit smaller. Tribes warred with other tribes until they realized that, we are all the same. Cities warred with other cities, and then they, too realized that we’re all the same. For the most part, nations do not war with other nations any longer. When inexpensive intercontinental travel becomes the norm, even people on other continents will find that there’s really no difference between us. In a thousand years, travel between continents will be as commonplace as an elevator ride is today.
“Will money still exist?”
Define money. I haven’t used folding cash in months. Money has existed as long as there have been humans. Even some simians barter, so another thousand years won’t make much difference. Currency, on the other hand will be mostly virtual in less than a hundred years.
“Will the Internet still exist?”
Yes, but not as you see it today. I fully expect that the internet of the future will be in the terabit per second speed. It will be even more ubiquitous than it is now. Internet access will be a readily available as running water and electrical supplies are today.
“Will wordpress still exist?”
I don’t understand why WordPress exists today. It has a remarkable learning curve to do anything beyond the basics, but through consolidations, WordPress as a product won’t exist.
“Will mankind still exist?”
Yes. And we will be better people than today.
I am optimistic because the human history, 50,000 years of it, shows a slow but steady pace forward. Sure there have been setbacks, and there will be some in the future, but mankind mankind always recovers and will continue to improve our lot.
What else do I see in 1,000 years? No fossil fuels. Just as the petroleum era replaced whale oil, solar and wind will replace petroleum. already today there are roofing shingles made of photovoltaic cells. Windows made of transparent photovoltaics. Homes will be much more energy independent. If every home in North America were to use deep heat-exchanger wells, we could practically eliminate air conditioning and heating.
LikeLike
This is wonderful, Steve. I think your crystal ball is in fine form. Now, can you predict tonight’s Lotto 6/49 numbers?
LikeLike
I can tell you the ones that *wont* win – they are on my ticket.
LikeLike
lol. They are on my ticket, too!
LikeLike
If you had asked someone in 1015 what they thought the world would be like in 1000 years, how accurate do you think they would have been? Exactly! That is about as accurate as any predictions on here are likely to be.
If we have managed not to wipe ourselves out completely, we will still be the species we are now. Evolution doesn’t work that quickly. We will still be squabbling, fighting, bitching, collaborating, praising, loving, caring – and all the other things that have and do make us what we are.
The rate of technological progress continues to accelerate and we have no idea how long that can go on for.
The world’s population will stabilise according to the food supply available. There will be the obese and the starving, as there are now. There will be the rich and the impoverished, as there are now.
Those that can afford it might live much longer than we do now, but most of us will not. Those of us in the rich West today live much longer than we would have done a century or so ago, but those that live in what we care to term the “Third World” still die comparatively young. That will probably still be the case in 3015.
I feel fairly safe in predicting that the Christians will still be awaiting the Second Coming.
I think it likely that we will have a permanent self-sufficient colony on Mars, and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system. We may even have a self-sufficient colony heading out of the solar system in the hopes of finding a “Brave New World” orbiting some other star, but they won’t have found it by then unless we make very significant discoveries in interstellar propulsion.
LikeLike
Nice! I like your crystal ball!
Cheers
LikeLike