# Which Science Fiction Visions of the World Tomorrow Will Come Closest to the Actual Future?



## BAYLOR (Apr 28, 2017)

Which books , stories, Graphic Novels, Tv Shows and Games  will the world of tomorrow come closest to being like and why?  And at what point does a fictional vision of the future become obsolete? 

Thoughts?


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## Parson (Apr 28, 2017)

Question 1: "The Martian" --- Because none of what is portrayed [save the killer sandstorm at the beginning of the book/movie] requires something which couldn't be handled in the next 20 years or so. 

Question 2: When the assumptions have been proven false. Like those early S.F. novels which found intelligent life (at least on a par with human intelligence) on Mars and/or Venus.


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## J Riff (Apr 29, 2017)

Well, since people can't handle any real ET disclosure... we should hope for.... _War with the Newts_; because we might have a chance against Newts, if they weren't TOO huge, and if they didn't have Newtonian death-rays. But they probably do. *


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## Gonk the Insane (Apr 29, 2017)

BAYLOR said:


> Which books , stories, Graphic Novels, Tv Shows and Games will the world of tomorrow come closest to being like and why?


Well, with the state of the world today... Any post-apocalyptic book.



BAYLOR said:


> And at what point does a fictional vision of the future become obsolete?


Well, in one sense it's as @Parson says: once the posited vision is no longer possible. And yet, in another sense that isn't necessarily the case (prevaricate much?). What I mean is... it's still possible to enjoy great fiction in worlds or settings that aren't possible. For example, Edgar Rice Burroughs' _Carson of Venus _books took place on a world with a) a human-breathable atmosphere, and b) a solid planetary surface. At the time it might have been thought possible - but I think now science has proved this simply isn't correct. So, in theory that vision of the world* in those books is obsolete, but even though I know that I still love those books. Granted, for some (possibly many) people this may mean they never pick up those books or put them down once they encounter those misconceptions, but some people will still enjoy them.


* I'm not sure it was strictly a vision of the "world of tomorrow" at the time it was written (like the _Mars _series it may have been set earlier than the author's own era) but some of the setting was, I think, based on the prevailing scientific beliefs of the time (i.e. Venus had a solid outer crust) so it's kind of on-topic, right?


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## Danny McG (May 23, 2017)

J Riff said:


> Well, since people can't handle any real ET disclosure... .



One of rhe main things of being a sci fi fan is we're all big dreamers and eagerly await (well I do!) a real alien encounter. Friendly preferred so we could welcome them to our world. Hostile so we could end up trashing them if that is their choice.
Either way I'm getting bored of Fermi wet-blanketing my hopes of contact


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## Vertigo (May 23, 2017)

dannymcg said:


> One of rhe main things of being a sci fi fan is we're all big dreamers and eagerly await (well I do!) a real alien encounter. Friendly preferred so we could welcome them to our world. Hostile so we could end up trashing them if that is their choice.
> Either way I'm getting bored of Fermi wet-blanketing my hopes of contact


Read Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past series and you might find a) a plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox (everyone out there is keeping their heads down) and b) a very well reasoned explanation why you would want to keep your head down and what might happen if you do let yourself be known to the rest of the galaxy.

In answer the first thread question, I'd agree with @Parson's The Martian, but I'd also sadly include *Children of Men *with it's depiction of refugees/asylum seekers and their treatment and internment by a future police state. The way things are going today I think such a future is getting increasingly likely.


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## Amelia Faulkner (May 24, 2017)

I think there's a tendency to think of one setting as a generic "the future," but the fact is that the future currently contains countless billions of years. Any or all fictional futures might come into being at one point or another. No post-apocalyptic setting is going to be anything other than a phase, for instance. Perhaps a phase that lasts hundreds of years, but so long as the human race survives we'll rebuild. Maybe differently, maybe the same (or same-ish). The Dark Ages lasted (in theory) around 800 years but we finally got out of it. Who's to say we won't go from _*Children of Men*_ to _*Star Trek*_ to _*Mad Max*_ to _*Divergent*_?


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## Danny Creasy (May 29, 2017)

The Road


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## Mirannan (Jun 2, 2017)

My opinion is that the most faithful portrayal of the future is the one (with many variants) leading from such novels as Accelerando (near future) to Queen of Angels (slightly further out) to the end stage of that portrayed in the Culture books, Orion's Arm and the Diaspora sequence - technology and AI running rampant, eventually leading to a society that many (perhaps most) of us would find difficult to understand.

A society containing weakly godlike entities is going to be very different from ours.


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## dask (Jun 2, 2017)

One can only hope a for a far future as envisioned by HG Wells in The Time Machine. Tall Starbucks and a peanut butter banana sandwich, sit back and enjoy the view. What a way to go.


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## BAYLOR (Oct 12, 2017)

Blade Runner ?


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## Danny Creasy (Oct 24, 2017)

BAYLOR said:


> Blade Runner ?


 It get's my second place vote.


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## BAYLOR (Oct 25, 2017)

Danny Creasy said:


> It get's my second place vote.



Blade Runner 2049 more so.


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## BAYLOR (May 5, 2018)

The Minority Report. **


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## Rodders (May 8, 2018)

Big business having more power and influence than government. 

You see it more and more these days, especially the way the immoral way that consumers are misinformed and duped on an almost daily basis. 

Facebook and Apple are great examples.


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## BAYLOR (May 8, 2018)

Why do I get the awful feeling that our possible future might be a cross between *Blade Runner* and *Max Headroom*?

If so, not a happy thought.


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## Amberlen (May 8, 2018)

Max headroom?not a happy thought at all


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## BAYLOR (May 8, 2018)

Amberlen said:


> Max headroom?not a happy thought at all



This series prophetic in a number of ways.


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## ZlodeyVolk (May 23, 2018)

A little of _1984_, a little of _Brave New World_, set against the backdrop of _Waste Land _(2010); with just a dash of 'The Long Walk', to taste. Most of the fixin's are already in place.


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## BAYLOR (May 24, 2018)

ZlodeyVolk said:


> A little of _1984_, a little of _Brave New World_, set against the backdrop of _Waste Land _(2010); with just a dash of 'The Long Walk', to taste. Most of the fixin's are already in place.



You might find  *LIMBO * by Bernard Wolfe to be of interest


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## ZlodeyVolk (May 24, 2018)

Huh … I did not know about that one. Cheers!


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## BigBadBob141 (May 26, 2018)

With any luck the future would be like the film "Valerian  And The City Of A Thousand Planets"
Which would mean that the universe would be a very interesting place to live in.
I think the opening scene with the David Bowie song says it all!!!


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## ZlodeyVolk (May 26, 2018)

Ah … For a moment, there, I thought you meant expensive, very showy, and panned by critics.


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## BigBadBob141 (May 26, 2018)

Those who can, do.
Those who can't critize.


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## chrispenycate (May 26, 2018)

Those who can, might
Those who can't, teach
While those who can't teach, administrate.

Everybody criticises - themselves and everybody else.


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## dask (May 26, 2018)

I observe, therefore I criticize.


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## Parson (May 28, 2018)

chrispenycate said:


> Those who can, might
> Those who can't, teach
> While those who can't teach, administrate.
> 
> Everybody criticises - themselves and everybody else.



I always heard it 


Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
And those who can't teach, teach teachers.

Having done my undergrads in teacher preparation, I can attest at least to the last line as being Gospel.


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## AstroZon (May 28, 2018)

I liked Europa Report for it's portrayal of realistic space travel.  The ship looked like a spaceship and not a flying hotel (i.e. Star Trek TNG.)


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## BAYLOR (May 31, 2018)

AstroZon said:


> I liked Europa Report for it's portrayal of realistic space travel.  The ship looked like a spaceship and not a flying hotel (i.e. Star Trek TNG.)



It looked pretty good.


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## Onyx (May 31, 2018)

In the past, did anyone write an SF book predicting how dreadfully banal 2018 would be?


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## ZlodeyVolk (May 31, 2018)

There's always Terry Gilliam's _Brazil_.


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## BAYLOR (May 31, 2018)

ZlodeyVolk said:


> There's always Terry Gilliam's _Brazil_.



Great film and an absolutely hellish vision of the world of tommrow.


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## BAYLOR (May 31, 2018)

Onyx said:


> In the past, did anyone write an SF book predicting how dreadfully banal 2018 would be?



None comes to mind.


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## Joshua Jones (May 31, 2018)

Well, the universe in my WiP, of course! It is sure to come true. Of course, you have to wait until I actually finish the WiP to discover what our future holds... 

Ok, absurdity aside, it seems to me that many works are either too optimistic or too pessimistic to be fully taken seriously. I find persuasive the ones which begin with the assumption that there is nothing new under the sun, but different applications and advanced ways to do the same things, create the same conflicts, and bleed the same red on different battlefields. Humans don't change; only our context changes. What makes us think that we are so different from those who came before us, or those who will come after? 

Either that, or we will all get Gundams. It is a coin toss...


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## Onyx (May 31, 2018)

Joshua Jones said:


> Well, the universe in my WiP, of course! It is sure to come true. Of course, you have to wait until I actually finish the WiP to discover what our future holds...
> 
> Ok, absurdity aside, it seems to me that many works are either too optimistic or too pessimistic to be fully taken seriously. I find persuasive the ones which begin with the assumption that there is nothing new under the sun, but different applications and advanced ways to do the same things, create the same conflicts, and bleed the same red on different battlefields. Humans don't change; only our context changes. What makes us think that we are so different from those who came before us, or those who will come after?
> 
> Either that, or we will all get Gundams. It is a coin toss...


I don't think the world is ever likely to be static, just not different in an interesting way.

Stories have drama. A future romance that only has laser toothbrushes isn't SF.


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## Joshua Jones (May 31, 2018)

Onyx said:


> I don't think the world is ever likely to be static, just not different in an interesting way.
> 
> Stories have drama. A future romance that only has laser toothbrushes isn't SF.


I will grant that. To be SF, at least in my mind, the futuristic aspects must be more than background. They must be integral to the story. However, this does not mean the same conflicts don't arise in different ways. 

As much as I hate to do this, I will use an example from my WiP, as my sleep deprived mind can only seem to pull it up at the moment. One of the major internal conflicts in one of the factions is the issue of cloning. They use a set (about 150 at least count) of custom, artificial genomes extensively, controlling their genetic dispositions and experiences tightly in order to fill the ranks of their military with capable and reliable individuals. They have free will, but the two viable candidates for how individuals make choices (nature and nurture) are tightly controlled. Also, the clones are considered property of the military, which has purchasing contracts with the "nurseries" for a steady supply. The question arises, though, of if these clones should be allowed to vote. On one hand, it seems discriminatory to ban someone from voting based on the circumstances of their birth. But, if the basis of a person's decisions are tightly controlled, does that mean that one could, hypothetically, control what decision that person is likely to make? Say, who they will vote for? So, the other side of the argument is that, with enough money, one could buy an election by buying enough clones who will vote for him or her. 

This, of course, has massive throwbacks to the American civil rights battle. The tension I described above is exactly the tension which was felt over allowing slaves to vote. "Could not their masters simply order them to vote how the master wanted?" "But they are people too!" Different players, different context, same issue, because it is the same humanity which does horrific things to people, putting them into impossible situations. 

That is why I say nothing changes. Plenty changes regarding context, the ones who create those contexts, and those who suffer because of them. But the issue behind the context is always constant.

Hopefully, something in there made something resembling sense. The caffeine is wearing off...


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## dask (May 31, 2018)

Onyx said:


> In the past, did anyone write an SF book predicting how dreadfully banal 2018 would be?


Oh, it ain't that bad. I'm currently reading *The Hound Of The Baskervilles* and I'm enjoying it more this time around than I did the first two.


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## Onyx (May 31, 2018)

Joshua Jones said:


> I will grant that. To be SF, at least in my mind, the futuristic aspects must be more than background. They must be integral to the story. However, this does not mean the same conflicts don't arise in different ways.
> 
> As much as I hate to do this, I will use an example from my WiP, as my sleep deprived mind can only seem to pull it up at the moment. One of the major internal conflicts in one of the factions is the issue of cloning. They use a set (about 150 at least count) of custom, artificial genomes extensively, controlling their genetic dispositions and experiences tightly in order to fill the ranks of their military with capable and reliable individuals. They have free will, but the two viable candidates for how individuals make choices (nature and nurture) are tightly controlled. Also, the clones are considered property of the military, which has purchasing contracts with the "nurseries" for a steady supply. The question arises, though, of if these clones should be allowed to vote. On one hand, it seems discriminatory to ban someone from voting based on the circumstances of their birth. But, if the basis of a person's decisions are tightly controlled, does that mean that one could, hypothetically, control what decision that person is likely to make? Say, who they will vote for? So, the other side of the argument is that, with enough money, one could buy an election by buying enough clones who will vote for him or her.
> 
> ...


Why did the society in your WIP greenlight slavery?


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## Joshua Jones (May 31, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Why did the society in your WIP greenlight slavery?


Desperation. They were at war with another faction, were adamantly against the draft, but had too many planets to protect with too few volunteer military. Doing it this way, they quintupled their fighting force in the span of 15 years, retook the territory they lost, and are pushing back the antagonistic faction. On the backs of a slave-warrior caste who are bred and raised for war, and are legally merchandise. All in the name of preserving "freedom", at least for the "Naturals". Because ultimately, that is the sort of thing people who are equally afraid of their destruction and the implosion of their societal values do to those they have power over, rather than shoulder the responsibility for themselves. 

I have such a high view of the innate charity and goodness of humanity, don't I?


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## Joshua Jones (May 31, 2018)

And, to be honest, this only scratches the surface of what my factions inflict on others. The faction they are fighting has a nasty habit of forcibly implanting prisoners with a device which allows them to wordlessly share thoughts, feelings, and experiences, so that they can glean military intelligence from them before they learn how to control the broadcast. Another major power is adamantly against slavery, including  of clones, but has a stratified society of different classes where women are expected to be domestic, or else run charities. This faction refuses an alliance with the first one due to their oppression of clones, while the first refuses over their oppression of women. They both may well be hypocrites, more able to see the fault in the other than themselves. But, that is what people do...

Anyway, the only reason I brought up my WiP is to illustrate my point about the same issues being in the future as the past; the only difference is the particulars. I don't wish to derail this thread, so I will be happy to discuss ideas and predictions of future societies, but I won't discuss my WiP any further in this context.


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## Justin Swanton (Jun 11, 2018)

To answer the poster's question means looking at two factors: human social order and technology.

Starting with technology, any SF vision that sees a future world pretty much as advanced as the present one is the most on the money.  Macrotechnology (power and transport) hit a brick wall decades ago. Personal transport technology, a.k.a. the motor car is at a dead end. Public transport ditto: its ultimate achievement, the commercial airliner, has not - in terms of speed for cost - advanced an inch since the 1960s. Energy production is exactly where it was in the mid last century: coal, oil, HEP, wind, solar and nuclear. We cannot get power any cheaper or any easier.

Microtechnology (computing power) is also hitting its brick wall. CPU's can't get any faster and the old double-computing-speed-every-18-months benchmark is history.

Biotechnology had its inbuilt limits from day one as it means tinkering with an incredibly complex bio-programming language that we don't begin to understand even if we can map it.

So, yeah, from the POV of technology a world pretty much like this one is what I would expect.

The human social order is more interesting. The Western social model built on classical liberalism is breaking down, evidenced by the increasing polarisation of people into incompatible groups (which all surfaced at Trump's election). The old moral norms which governed societal behaviour are steadily disappearing and so far nothing has appeared that looks like it can replace them. With the individual as an absolute, possessed of a growing list of human rights which are not channelled by any human duties, the committment to the social good is fading fast. Presuming nothing happens to alter this trajectory, future society will be either anarchy or dictatorship - dictatorship, as force will be the only thing left that can keep people in line.

So something dystopian with authoritarian overtones _a la_ 1984 looks pretty accurate to me.


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## Joshua Jones (Jun 11, 2018)

Justin Swanton said:


> To answer the poster's question means looking at two factors: human social order and technology.
> 
> Starting with technology, any SF vision that sees a future world pretty much as advanced as the present one is the most on the money.  Macrotechnology (power and transport) hit a brick wall decades ago. Personal transport technology, a.k.a. the motor car is at a dead end. Public transport ditto: its ultimate achievement, the commercial airliner, has not - in terms of speed for cost - advanced an inch since the 1960s. Energy production is exactly where it was in the mid last century: coal, oil, HEP, wind, solar and nuclear. We cannot get power any cheaper or any easier.
> 
> ...


Not a bad assessment, although it is possible that the frame of reference is too small. 58 years (how long it has been since you note an advancement in public transportation) is a drop in the bucket of human history, and while it is true that technological progress has slowed quite a bit in recent years, this does not mean that it has completely stagnated or has no possible future growth. We still haven't mastered fusion, which could well supply a nearly limitless supply of energy from hydrogen. We also haven't mastered quantum computing, which can move the limits of processing power significantly, though not infinitely. Then, of course, there is commercially accessible spaceflight. I suspect we may have already had some of these if we stopped investing so much money and time creating toys like smart phones and gaming, and focused those resources on other tech, but that is another rant...

Spaceflight excepted, I really don't see these altering society much, though. What typically does change society, though, is aggression. That is what I will suspect will happen to Western Civilization; we will face an existential threat and either be forced to suspend our individualism, or we will perish.


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## Justin Swanton (Jun 11, 2018)

Joshua Jones said:


> Not a bad assessment, although it is possible that the frame of reference is too small. 58 years (how long it has been since you note an advancement in public transportation) is a drop in the bucket of human history, and while it is true that technological progress has slowed quite a bit in recent years, this does not mean that it has completely stagnated or has no possible future growth. We still haven't mastered fusion, which could well supply a nearly limitless supply of energy from hydrogen. We also haven't mastered quantum computing, which can move the limits of processing power significantly, though not infinitely. Then, of course, there is commercially accessible spaceflight. I suspect we may have already had some of these if we stopped investing so much money and time creating toys like smart phones and gaming, and focused those resources on other tech, but that is another rant...
> 
> Spaceflight excepted, I really don't see these altering society much, though. What typically does change society, though, is aggression. That is what I will suspect will happen to Western Civilization; we will face an existential threat and either be forced to suspend our individualism, or we will perish.



My own take is that technological development has natural limits that no amount of ingenuity can overcome. I state it as a law: *the further you try to push a line of technological development the more difficult and expensive it becomes*. This law operates irrespective of the ingenuity of the solutions dreamed up to overcome the practical problems.

Take transport. A human being, with zero technological assistance, can walk 6km/h or run about 20km/h. One man can tame a horse and double that speed. Many more men are needed to create an industrial complex that makes it possible to work with steel, rubber and other materials, and extract and refine oil, permitting a couple of men to create an engine that powers a vehicle - the motor car - that in its original form costs the earth and can't move very fast. Many more men working together in an assembly-line factory can make a Model T that is low on petrol consumption, reliable, can go 70km/h and costs about US$2000 in contemporary money. In terms of speed for cost that's about as good as a car can get (with the possible exception of the Tata Nano which costs about the same, is less reliable, has the same petrol consumption but can go at 100km/h).

Then you get the plane. It's about as easy to build a basic flying machine as it is to build a car, but to build a flying machine that can travel at 900km/h for several thousand miles takes a lot of time, effort and money and must be used for group transport as it is just way too expensive to make smaller versions of it for private use (excepting multimillionaires of course).

Then the space ship. Space travel was always going to be hugely expensive no matter what you do, and the same technology that put Yuri Gagarin into orbit is still used now to ferry astronauts to the ISS - at about the same cost. Elon Musk's Falcons do not actually represent any significant progress in technology. The reusable first stage is cute but it's an old idea, tested twenty years ago, and it's not a real saving as you lose about half your potential payload capacity and you can't reuse a rocket very often in any case. There is simply no way of making spaceflight cheap enough for commercial travel. Musk's BFR is in the same category as his Mars city and Hyperloop - good for CG artist's renderings and that's about it.


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## Joshua Jones (Jun 11, 2018)

Justin Swanton said:


> My own take is that technological development has natural limits that no amount of ingenuity can overcome. I state it as a law: *the further you try to push a line of technological development the more difficult and expensive it becomes*. This law operates irrespective of the ingenuity of the solutions dreamed up to overcome the practical problems.
> 
> Take transport. A human being, with zero technological assistance, can walk 6km/h or run about 20km/h. One man can tame a horse and double that speed. Many more men are needed to create an industrial complex that makes it possible to work with steel, rubber and other materials, and extract and refine oil, permitting a couple of men to create an engine that powers a vehicle - the motor car - that in its original form costs the earth and can't move very fast. Many more men working together in an assembly-line factory can make a Model T that is low on petrol consumption, reliable, can go 70km/h and costs about US$2000 in contemporary money. In terms of speed for cost that's about as good as a car can get (with the possible exception of the Tata Nano which costs about the same, is less reliable, has the same petrol consumption but can go at 100km/h).
> 
> ...


I don't disagree; there most certainly are limits to types of technology, and economic considerations are not the least of these. My only point is the wall may be a little further back than where we are now, but I don't see massive cultural changes from this unless we become a spacefaring species.


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## Mirannan (Jun 11, 2018)

Justin Swanton said:


> To answer the poster's question means looking at two factors: human social order and technology.
> 
> Starting with technology, any SF vision that sees a future world pretty much as advanced as the present one is the most on the money.  Macrotechnology (power and transport) hit a brick wall decades ago. Personal transport technology, a.k.a. the motor car is at a dead end. Public transport ditto: its ultimate achievement, the commercial airliner, has not - in terms of speed for cost - advanced an inch since the 1960s. Energy production is exactly where it was in the mid last century: coal, oil, HEP, wind, solar and nuclear. We cannot get power any cheaper or any easier.
> 
> ...



There are several types of failure in the game of trying to predict the future, and (I'm not trying to be condescending here) your post displays at least one of them being failure of imagination and at least one other failure; being flat-out wrong.

Personal transport first; an obvious advance starting right now (or maybe a year or two ago) is AI for cars - which gets rid of many problems with cars as a byproduct. Space for car parking goes away as a problem; there is no reason why an AI car can't go away once you've finished with it, and for that matter AI cars make it pointless for a city dweller to own a car at all. And driverless cars neatly remove many of the problems with public transport, as well.

For long-distance public transport, at least over medium range, maglev is up-and-coming. I would just love it if someone with vision announced that the HS2 line in Britain was going to be cancelled and replaced with maglev. Why maglev? Well, it is capable of 450kph and has the advantage that it can come right into city centres, as opposed to airliners where it often takes longer to get to and from airports (and get through security!) than the flight takes. And the Japanese (who seem to be first with so many things) have made it work.

And airliners are in fact less costly than they were, in real terms. The main reason is much more fuel-efficient engines.

Energy production? Well; OTEC and fusion (of types not currently being funded for some reason, such as DPF) are just two of the possibilities.

Computing? Well, nanotube transistors and quantum computing coming right up!

The real point is that technologies always display an S-curve of innovation. What happens at the top of the S-curve is that something completely different replaces a technology when its potential for innovation runs out. Witness some examples; jet engines replacing piston engines in the air, valves being replaced by transistors and them being replaced by integrated circuits, tube TVs being replaced by flatscreens based on LCDs and later LEDs, incandescent lights being replaced by LEDs...

And on top of all that, the immense possibilities of nanotech - which is already in use in a limited way.


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## Onyx (Jun 11, 2018)

Justin Swanton said:


> My own take is that technological development has natural limits that no amount of ingenuity can overcome. I state it as a law: *the further you try to push a line of technological development the more difficult and expensive it becomes*. This law operates irrespective of the ingenuity of the solutions dreamed up to overcome the practical problems.
> 
> Take transport. A human being, with zero technological assistance, can walk 6km/h or run about 20km/h. One man can tame a horse and double that speed. Many more men are needed to create an industrial complex that makes it possible to work with steel, rubber and other materials, and extract and refine oil, permitting a couple of men to create an engine that powers a vehicle - the motor car - that in its original form costs the earth and can't move very fast. Many more men working together in an assembly-line factory can make a Model T that is low on petrol consumption, reliable, can go 70km/h and costs about US$2000 in contemporary money. In terms of speed for cost that's about as good as a car can get (with the possible exception of the Tata Nano which costs about the same, is less reliable, has the same petrol consumption but can go at 100km/h).
> 
> ...


Another problem with your assumptions is the idea of "expense". How much do things actually cost when there is little or no human labor involved? What is the real expense when some individuals have the discretionary spending power of small countries but no citizenry to be held accountable to?


Otherwise, talking about clock speed in computers or chemical rocket costs sounds a lot like the famous 1899 patent office quote.


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## Justin Swanton (Jun 11, 2018)

Mirannan said:


> There are several types of failure in the game of trying to predict the future, and (I'm not trying to be condescending here) your post displays at least one of them being failure of imagination and at least one other failure; being flat-out wrong.



I am quite capable of being wrong but as regards failures of imagination I always prefer to check imagination against the laws of physics (and just plain facts sometimes). So here goes:



Mirannan said:


> Personal transport first; an obvious advance starting right now (or maybe a year or two ago) is AI for cars - which gets rid of many problems with cars as a byproduct. Space for car parking goes away as a problem; there is no reason why an AI car can't go away once you've finished with it, and for that matter AI cars make it pointless for a city dweller to own a car at all. And driverless cars neatly remove many of the problems with public transport, as well.



AI's reliability has not yet been adequately demonstrated to the point where it can be proven to be notably safer than human drivers. The problem with AI is that it cannot foresee every possible situation. It is for this reason that jet airliners, whose flight paths are much simpler for an AI than that of vehicles, and can take off, fly and land without human assistance, nevertheless have human pilots. And even if AÏ works, it doesn't make cars any faster (though I grant you it would make them cheaper).



Mirannan said:


> For long-distance public transport, at least over medium range, maglev is up-and-coming. I would just love it if someone with vision announced that the HS2 line in Britain was going to be cancelled and replaced with maglev. Why maglev? Well, it is capable of 450kph and has the advantage that it can come right into city centres, as opposed to airliners where it often takes longer to get to and from airports (and get through security!) than the flight takes. And the Japanese (who seem to be first with so many things) have made it work.



Maglev is not substantially faster than conventional high speed rail trains. See here. The only way to make maglevs faster is to put them in a vacuum tube, and that would set up an epic disaster waiting to happen.



Mirannan said:


> And airliners are in fact less costly than they were, in real terms. The main reason is much more fuel-efficient engines.



It seems (though I lack comprehensive data) that airfares have not changed significantly from 1963 until now, though flight times have become longer and in-flight service has been scaled down.



Mirannan said:


> Energy production? Well; OTEC and fusion (of types not currently being funded for some reason, such as DPF) are just two of the possibilities.



These are just ideas. Let's see them actually working on an industrial scale.



Mirannan said:


> Computing? Well, nanotube transistors and quantum computing coming right up!



Let them come up and deliver performance for low cost.



Mirannan said:


> The real point is that technologies always display an S-curve of innovation. What happens at the top of the S-curve is that something completely different replaces a technology when its potential for innovation runs out. Witness some examples; jet engines replacing piston engines in the air, valves being replaced by transistors and them being replaced by integrated circuits, tube TVs being replaced by flatscreens based on LCDs and later LEDs, incandescent lights being replaced by LEDs...



Sure. My point is that in a particular field of technology, where one is trying to do something precise, a new quantum leap is more is more difficult and expensive to implement than the previous one. My example was transport: you want to convey people from A to B more quickly and cheaply. Walking costs nothing. A horse (faster) costs something but not much. A car (faster) costs more. A prop aeroplane (faster) costs more. A jet (faster) costs much more. A space ship (much faster) costs a fortune and cannot be use as a means of mass transport. Just the way it is. Re CRTs being replaced by LCDs, a LCD is not actually superior in performance to a CRT, it's just flatter. Not really a huge leap forward. But I take the point that there have been improvements, however my question is whether those improvements are really substantial rather than just refinements.



Mirannan said:


> And on top of all that, the immense possibilities of nanotech - which is already in use in a limited way.



Fine. Nanotech, like any new technology, will have an initial period of rapid development followed by a levelling off and finally a brick wall.

I would also posit that the big technological changes that substantially changed our lifestyle (safety, bodily comfort, reliable sources of food, water, etc, health) was implemented first and reached their brick walls long ago. Later technology changed our lives but not so much. New technologies increasingly cross T's and dot I's but don't really revolutionise our existence.


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## Justin Swanton (Jun 12, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Another problem with your assumptions is the idea of "expense". How much do things actually cost when there is little or no human labor involved?



The car manufacturing industry is about automated as you can get, nevertheless a typical modern car costs several times the price of a Model T. The labour is there, just hidden. The support technology for manufacturing robots needs maintenance which means human labour.  The sourcing, transport and refinement of raw materials needs labour. The power needed for manufacture needs labour. The organisation and smooth running of the complex manufacturing process needs a huge bureaucracy hence labour. And so on.



Onyx said:


> Otherwise, talking about clock speed in computers or chemical rocket costs sounds a lot like the famous 1899 patent office quote.



We live in an age that worships human ingenuity and inventiveness so there's hardly an end to new inventions. Problem is that inventiveness is constrained by the limits of the laws of physics and chemistry. You cannot design a homemade Mars ship in your garage no matter how much of a genius you are. The further you push matter the harder it pushes back.


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## Onyx (Jun 12, 2018)

Justin Swanton said:


> The car manufacturing industry is about automated as you can get, nevertheless a typical modern car costs several times the price of a Model T. The labour is there, just hidden. The support technology for manufacturing robots needs maintenance which means human labour.  The sourcing, transport and refinement of raw materials needs labour. The power needed for manufacture needs labour. The organisation and smooth running of the complex manufacturing process needs a huge bureaucracy hence labour. And so on.
> 
> 
> 
> We live in an age that worships human ingenuity and inventiveness so there's hardly an end to new inventions. Problem is that inventiveness is constrained by the limits of the laws of physics and chemistry. You cannot design a homemade Mars ship in your garage no matter how much of a genius you are. The further you push matter the harder it pushes back.


We are already well into an era when the amount of labor needed to produce goods is minimal, and it will only continue to fall. When robots are making and servicing the robots that run a plant that is managed and marketed by programs, the work force will dwindle to zero.

The limits of physics and chemistry are all around you - single celled organisms that can convert light and CO2 to oxygen and fuel. Organisms that live for thousands of years and grow structural materials out of compost. We're not even beginning to scratch the well of molecular machinery in all its durable, self-reproducing glory. That will also come sooner or later, and predictions that we are somehow unable to get there are frankly silly. The level of technology we are currently in - using mostly force and heat to reshape raw materials - is just a primitive step in the line of potential processes that are just chemical in nature. Long before we've even mastered those we'll be making things on an even smaller scale than the atom.


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## Justin Swanton (Jun 12, 2018)

Onyx said:


> We are already well into an era when the amount of labor needed to produce goods is minimal, and it will only continue to fall. When robots are making and servicing the robots that run a plant that is managed and marketed by programs, the work force will dwindle to zero.
> 
> The limits of physics and chemistry are all around you - single celled organisms that can convert light and CO2 to oxygen and fuel. Organisms that live for thousands of years and grow structural materials out of compost. We're not even beginning to scratch the well of molecular machinery in all its durable, self-reproducing glory. That will also come sooner or later, and predictions that we are somehow unable to get there are frankly silly. The level of technology we are currently in - using mostly force and heat to reshape raw materials - is just a primitive step in the line of potential processes that are just chemical in nature. Long before we've even mastered those we'll be making things on an even smaller scale than the atom.



Interesting you should mention bioengineering. I wrote a novel incorporating that theme called _Immortelle_ (welcome to a free ebook if you like ). In the novel, an ancient race eschews machine technology as it is too burdensome to maintain and disrupts their lives too much. By manipulating DNA they are are able to create a gradually evolving series of organisms that are progressively adapted to their needs. Everything eventually goes sideways for an unforeseen reason.

As you point out, bioengineering eliminates labour since biomachines are self-maintaining, self-repairing and self-duplicating. The thing is to be able to make them. Have you any idea how complex genetic programming is? Current programmers each work on a separate module, link the modules together, then spend years figuring out why the complete programme doesn't work. No single programmer understands more than a fraction of the entire programme. For bioengineering it's the same, only more so. Humans would create ova for organisms that most certainly will turn out completely differently from their original expectations. Some good horror SF movies on the subject.


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## BAYLOR (Aug 10, 2018)

*Silent Running *1972    Looks dated but the premise of a future earth without nature  is still a possibility.


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## BigBadBob141 (Aug 11, 2018)

What a depressing thought!!!


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## Alan Aspie (Aug 11, 2018)

BAYLOR said:


> Which books , stories, Graphic Novels, Tv Shows and Games  will the world of tomorrow come closest...



Revelation.


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## Joshua Jones (Aug 11, 2018)

Alan Aspie said:


> Revelation.


Not to get into theology here, but I think fiction was in view with the OP, and I would suspect you (and I) would consider Revelation to be non-fiction. Then, there is the futurist/partial preterist/allegorical interpretation question, which is honestly not an easy question to address, as we don't have anything else of the same genre. Parts of Daniel bear a passing resemblance, but Hebraic prophetic texts are decidedly different than Greek Apocalypse. 

Feel free to PM me if you would like to discuss this further. I do lean toward one sort of futurist view, but I try to be fair to all sides.


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## Alan Aspie (Aug 11, 2018)

off topic



Joshua Jones said:


> Feel free to PM me if



_"OOPS! We ran into some problems. You may not start conversation with following recipient: Joshua Jones."_

Don't know why.


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## Joshua Jones (Aug 11, 2018)

Alan Aspie said:


> off topic
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ah. It looks like my preferences somehow got set to allow no one to start a conversation with me. Could you try again to see if the issue is fixed?


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## dask (Aug 11, 2018)

Interesting. Did it get fixed?


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## Joshua Jones (Aug 11, 2018)

dask said:


> Interesting. Did it get fixed?


Yep, it is working now. I wonder if anyone else has been trying to message me...


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## Al Jackson (Aug 11, 2018)

BAYLOR said:


> Which books , stories, Graphic Novels, Tv Shows and Games  will the world of tomorrow come closest to being like and why?  And at what point does a fictional vision of the future become obsolete?
> 
> Thoughts?



A note on overlooked science in science fiction.

There are a good many stories about OLD MARS and OLD VENUS. (Recent collections.)
Old Mars stories alway has canals , maybe even a marginal breathable atmosphere. 
Old Venus was WET , with a trailing biological evolution that sometimes even had dinosaurs.

Welp, if any SF writer had of looked hard at the literature they could have found papers by Joseph Evans and Edward Maunder 1903. Skeptics of Mars canals they conducted experiments  showing the canals were an optical illusion. Carl Sagan repeated this on Cosmos. When Mariner went by in 1965 the canal doubters were proved dead smooth right! I am sure there are Old Mars SF stories that don't have canals but Heinlein had his heroes skating on them in Red Planet and Bradbury had characters staring into them. 

In 1940 the astronomer Rupert Wildt deduced that Venus's atmosphere had a lot of CO2 in it and that Venus was hot as hell. Venus had not tropical forests. 

1903 and 1940 are kinda way-back info that got lost. I know Canals and dinosaurs are story glitzy but having to deal the real physical universe may be harder but will make for more fun!


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## -K2- (Aug 11, 2018)

Since Mars and Venus has been mentioned, I would like to note that H.G. Wells description of the Martian weapons in War of the Worlds (1897) I found fascinating.  He precisely describes carbon-dioxide lasers and wouldn't you know it?  Mars' atmosphere is coincidentally primarily CO2.

K2


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## Edward M. Grant (Aug 15, 2018)

Mirannan said:


> Personal transport first; an obvious advance starting right now (or maybe a year or two ago) is AI for cars - which gets rid of many problems with cars as a byproduct.



Cars are about to be as obsolete as the buggy-whip. There'll be little need to travel when you can just log into a drone at your destination instead. You'll soon be able to convincingly 'be' in any place on Earth from your bedroom.

And cities are going away, because there'll no longer be a need for them when local manufacturing has eliminated most of the need for trade, and VR eliminated the need for groups of people to physically be in the same place to do things together.

And because alienated city kids will be able to download weapons of mass destruction in their bedrooms.

'What did you do today, son?'
'I downloaded the Ebola virus and DNA-printed a vat full.'
'That's nice. Did you clean your bedroom?'
'Yes, dad.'



> For long-distance public transport, at least over medium range, maglev is up-and-coming.



But the Internet is faster. About the only reason to need to move your body around in the future will be to go to a spaceport to leave the planet, and a few hypersonic jets can handle that market.



> The real point is that technologies always display an S-curve of innovation. What happens at the top of the S-curve is that something completely different replaces a technology when its potential for innovation runs out.



Bingo. Taking current technology and pushing it far into the future rarely works. It's like a writer in 1800 predicting that we'll be riding in carts behind horses specially bred to pull them at 100mph.

Sadly, I don't know anyone writing these kind of stories, so I'll have to do it myself.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 17, 2019)

Edward M. Grant said:


> Cars are about to be as obsolete as the buggy-whip. There'll be little need to travel when you can just log into a drone at your destination instead. You'll soon be able to convincingly 'be' in any place on Earth from your bedroom.
> 
> And cities are going away, because there'll no longer be a need for them when local manufacturing has eliminated most of the need for trade, and VR eliminated the need for groups of people to physically be in the same place to do things together.
> 
> ...



We may end up becoming like the Sopacers in Asmov's *The Caves of Steel*


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## olive (Nov 18, 2019)

Something like the Mad Max world. I don't think there will be any epic events either. OR nuclear wars. Land is precious, you can make everything but land.

Extreme overpopulation in a world of drought, famine will cause the planet slowly turn in to the Mad Max world, bit by bit, to a point that no states, governments can survive as a power zone. No authority, no law. Central administrations, central armies will collapse. Technology won't survive after some point, because economies, industries; money won't be able to exist after a certain tipping point. Hundreds of thousands of clans will emerge and will constantly fight with each other for any resource remained. Cannibalism will be common. 30 years of life span at the most? 20 in average if you are strong?

This is already happening right now. This is what has been going on in the Midle East in certain regions. I remember news paper articles about the consequences of the drought in Syria in the 90s. I was practically a kid then. They are all forgotten now. World sees it as a political power war, it is used or it, but its main reason is very simple, drought. Without water you don't have anything else. Not as very little or as precious to be used carefully. None. Not a drop. I have been thinking about this, but I don't think that when you have water you can really imagine that there is none.

May be at some point in between, powerful civilisations would try to stop this by mass annihilition; by a type of 'controlled genocide'. But I don't think it could change the inevitable, just postpone it.

Humanity has to get out from this planet and pursue a careful colonisation and resource program on other planets. It has no other choice.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

olive said:


> Something like the Mad Max world. I don't think there will be any epic events either. OR nuclear wars. Land is precious, you can make everything but land.
> 
> Extreme overpopulation in a world of drought, famine will cause the planet slowly turn in to the Mad Max world, bit by bit, to a point that no states, governments can survive as a power zone. No authority, no law. Central administrations, central armies will collapse. Technology won't survive after some point, because economies, industries; money won't be able to exist after a certain tipping point. Hundreds of thousands of clans will emerge and will constantly fight with each other for any resource remained. Cannibalism will be common. 30 years of life span at the most? 20 in average if you are strong?
> 
> ...



There's a new book by Robert Harris * The Second Sleep  .  * It's set centuries in the future  are a great collapse brings about a new dark age. The world has basically become medieval and much reduced in population .


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## CupofJoe (Nov 18, 2019)

I think China are trying to prove you wrong on the you can't make land deal... at least in the South China Seas.
For us in the North/Western world. I'm guessing little will change and when it does, we will be ret-conned in to it having been like that all along. 
My vision of the future is somewhere between _*Brazil*_ and _*1984*_.
As for leaving this planet for others? Humanity and especially the industrialised parts of it, are like children demanding a new pet because the "old one" is dying. We can't look after the one we've got and now we want more? We never took it out for walks, or gave it a bath or took it to the vets. We NEVER followed the Vets advice about keeping it healthy. Why would we want to do that someplace new?


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

CupofJoe said:


> I think China are trying to prove you wrong on the you can't make land deal... at least in the South China Seas.
> For us in the North/Western world. I'm guessing little will change and when it does, we will be ret-conned in to it having been like that all along.
> My vision of the future is somewhere between _*Brazil*_ and _*1984*_.
> As for leaving this planet for others? Humanity and especially the industrialised parts of it, are like children demanding a new pet because the "old one" is dying. We can't look after the one we've got and now we want more? We never took it out for walks, or gave it a bath or took it to the vets. We NEVER followed the Vets advice about keeping it healthy. Why would we want to do that someplace new?



Climate change doomed humanity in *A I  *and only the robots survived.


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## olive (Nov 18, 2019)

Yes, but I mean, in the end this all has an end, a limit. Doesn't matter how much you stretch. Even if we survive for tens of millions of years, what are we going to do when the next continental shift arrives? It's 120 something million years away. The planet will say 'we are closing this season, if you want to survive, get out now'.

But generally, I find the idea that some sort of an 'epic' event bringing the end to humanity unrealistic. I'm OK with natural disasters though, global warming, outbreaks, a meteor strike... But it feels too scripture alike. Esp. the nuclear wars, technological wars...etc.

It feels to me, while we humans are mesmerised by imagining our demise, we keep choosing enormous events, like technological battles, nuclear wars, natural disasters as one big event to end our existence. It always seem to fitting some high notions, it always has some form of 'punishment' or/and an 'affirmation' in it. Why? This is a very anthropomorphic narrative, but evolution, nature does not work that way. It's not determinate.

What if nothing big ever happens? What if we continue to live and breed and breed then just wither away and perish because we just can't eat or drink water to survive. Most people don't like to think that we will die like animals in a land or an ocean desert like...well, any other animal out there. To me that seems to be the likely end. Nothing big, exciting, remarkable. Just death by the lack of basic needs.

World population was 3 billion in just 1960s. Today the official number is 7.7 billion and people who were adults in 1960s are still alive, they are not very old. They say that in the end of the 21st century it will be 11 billion something? Seriously? We are living through the least violent times in history, people keep getting better medicine which is very good please don't get me wrong, that's not the point of course. I am trying to tell something else you see. There is only so much planet to go, limited resources.

There must be a reason why our planet has a certain mass of land. What is going to happen when we start to build land over the place? Oceans are our life source. They are the engine of the planet.

Why do we want some place new? A lot of reasons. First because colonisation doesn't work that way as I see it. It works on the principle of power for the sake of more power. Resource. For example, gold is valuable on this planet, everyone would want to mine a planet with gold and the technology to do it. You get the idea. What if they discover a planet they can mine carbon based energy sources? World economy is based on that. And when it is finished on our planet?  Imagine having coal mines and oil wells and platforms, natural gas mines in another planet when there is none left in ours. That's a war. A big one.

They will colonise Mars as soon as possible. And there will be conflict about it that will affect the people here on earth. Even without any carbon based energy sources and gold.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

olive said:


> Yes, but I mean, in the end this all has an end, a limit. Doesn't matter how much you stretch. Even if we survive for tens of millions of years, what are we going to do when the next continental shift arrives? It's 120 something million years away. The planet will say 'we are closing this season, if you want to survive, get out now'.
> 
> But generally, I find the idea that some sort of an 'epic' event bringing the end to humanity unrealistic. I'm OK with natural disasters though, global warming, outbreaks, a meteor strike... But it feels too scripture alike. Esp. the nuclear wars, technological wars...etc.
> 
> ...



We have to get out of the  Solar system and try to reach for stars. In effect we need to be a 2 or more planet species, that will increase the odds  of our long termed  continued survival. Preferably we should find worlds in which  life has not arisen   on  but,  if engineered correctly could be made capable of supporting life such as ourselves.  If we find worlds where there is already life, we curably an't go to them for a number of reasons. One is that the bacteria and viruses  of the earth like planet  might prove  deadly to us and the bacteria and viruses  that we carry  inside of us might be equally deadly to whatever life we might find on there.   If were go into the stars we likely have to create our own habitats for ourselves.


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## Elckerlyc (Nov 18, 2019)

Unfortunately, colonizing Mars will not work.
Before we have colonized Mars in such a way the colony is self-reliant (which it should, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless) for a significant number of people that will effectively decrease the pressure on Earth as far as population and need for resources is concerned, is decades if not centuries away. And besides the Moon, this is the only globe of real estate that's remotely suitable for terraforming.
And what guarantees do we have that we will not make a mess of Mars as we did with Earth? If it the need or desire (but basically just greed) for resources will be the drive for colonization of Mars or any other place, it will be the same old song of reaping again of all available resources without any heed for sustainability or the damage done to organisms that happen to be in the way.
Imagine the staggering costs for such a colonisation. Any company will do whatever it finds necessary to squeeze any drop of profit out of it.
Really, nothing will change unless humankind will change. And I am very, very skeptic about that.
Many people are still denying climate-change. The IATA (which is planning and hoping for a doubling of all flightmovements worldwide) is starting an advertisement campaign as a countermeasure to the growing group of people with 'shame of flying' (not sure if or what the English word is here) people who say you should fly as less as possible because of CO2 emissions. IATA's singlemindedness is baffling and illustrative of the situation.

Technically we can do a lot nowadays, but we will have to apply all our innovations and technically advances to maintain Earth. We can start and do that here today. Flying to planets or even to the stars is something of the remote future and will save just a handfull of people, assuming they have survived that long.
It will be nothing new if civilization fell and a decimated population had to find new ways to survive. Never on such a grand scale, but it may be inevitable. War, illness and famines have centuries-long kept populations in check. It is only humane to fight those 3 evils, but in the end it may be that they will strike back with a vengeance.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 18, 2019)

I'm sure I read in the last 2 weeks that combined total of the CO2 emissions from all the racing, testing, practice and qualifying of all the F1 teams didn't account for as much CO2 as one Boeing 747 jumbo jet flying across the Atlantic. Now I'm sure the data was cherry-picked to make F1 feel as green as it can be and the 747 was chosen as it is a huge dirty 50yo plane at heart...


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

olive said:


> May be at some point in between, powerful civilisations would try to stop this by mass annihilition; by a type of 'controlled genocide'. But I don't think it could change the inevitable, just postpone it.


we don't know that that hasn't happened already.


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

Elckerlyc said:


> Unfortunately, colonizing Mars will not work.


I've heard a case made that colonizing Venus would work better. it has 90% Earth gravity. it has lower radiation levels than Mars. you couldn't, obviously, colonize the surface but you could build cities in the clouds.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> I've heard a case made that colonizing Venus would work better. it has 90% Earth gravity. it has lower radiation levels than Mars. you couldn't, obviously, colonize the surface but you could build cities in the clouds.



I may misremembering this but don't those clouds contain large concentrations of sulfuric acid?


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## olive (Nov 18, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> we don't know that that hasn't happened already.



Ah...I meant something more along the traditional lines. Like killing hundreds of millions of people at once.


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

BAYLOR said:


> I may misremembering this but don't those clouds contain large concentrations of sulfuric acid?



okay, given that, that would present a problem (obviously!) still, unless you use genetic engineering, much lower gravity (like Mars has) presents a problem you can't work around at all. so in terms of Mars versus Venus, more of lesser of two evils. I wouldn't have a problem with genetic engineering to adapt humans to live on Mars. I just think that the general public would have a problem with it. bioethicists might also have a problem with it, too. (don't get me started on how bioethicist seems to me a silly profession.)


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> okay, given that, that would present a problem (obviously!) still, unless you use genetic engineering, much lower gravity (like Mars has) presents a problem you can't work around at all. so in terms of Mars versus Venus, more of lesser of two evils. I wouldn't have a problem with genetic engineering to adapt humans to live on Mars. I just think that the general public would have a problem with it. bioethicists might also have a problem with it, too. (don't get me started on how bioethicist seems to me a silly profession.)



Realistically,  Mars has alot issues besides its gravity .  Because it only half of earth size , Its core cooled  down which,  caused its magnetic field to go away, which took away it protection from the solar winds that stripped away the  atmosphere and on its  surface water to evaporate , freeze or sink beneath the surface. The bottom line is Mars can't hold atmosphere or surface water.  Too many problems here.

In the case of Venus , there is one insane thing that they might try in the distant future.  If they move the planet further away from the sun to a durance od say 88 million miles , that would just about get the planet into the Goldilocks zone  and not close enough to disrupt earth or its moon. One other thing would have to do is Borrow a Moon from from the larger planets maybe Triton and put it in orbit around Venus to stabilize its axis and break up its crust into operate plates  and end the 500 million year cycle in which Venus turns itself inside out. They would also have speed up the plants rotation to more earth normal 24 hour day. The stye could begin re-engineering Venous environment.   In truth. I have no idea how they  achieve  any of this .


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## Elckerlyc (Nov 18, 2019)

What advantage would there be in living in huge 'airships' in the Venusian clouds over building huge structures on stilts in shallow seas or even under water, complete with desalination plants?


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

future godlike AIs, please take note of BAYLOR's post, thank you.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> future godlike AIs, please take note of BAYLOR's post, thank you.




Sadly ,  Im not very good at any kind of fiction, science or otherwise.


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

@Elckerlyc: yeah, cloud cities might not work. just saying though that we don't have to think of Mars as the only place that humans could colonize.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> @Elckerlyc: yeah, cloud cities might not work. just saying though that we don't have to think of Mars as the only place that humans could colonize.



Yes, but It does the makings of a good hard Science fiction novel


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

Pamela Sargent wrote an '80s (early '90s?) trilogy about terraforming Venus. I can't remember the details.


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## Elckerlyc (Nov 18, 2019)

Let's start a bit closer to home and see what we can realise on the Moon. We may learn a lot by what we can (or cannot) achieve there.
And let's not give up Earth too soon!


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## ryubysss (Nov 18, 2019)

it has less to do with giving up on Earth as a fallback plan in case a meteor (or whatever) hits Earth, as I understand it.


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## Elckerlyc (Nov 18, 2019)

BAYLOR said:


> Yes, but It does the makings of a good hard Science fiction novel


I have never read those but are the books from Kim Stanley Robinson not about just that topic?


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

Elckerlyc said:


> I have never read those but are the books from Kim Stanley Robinson not about just that topic?



Ive never read those and,  Id quite forgotten about them


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> it has less to do with giving up on Earth as a fallback plan in case a meteor (or whatever) hits Earth, as I understand it.



The asteroid that took out the Dinosaurs was about size was about the size of Manhattan. if that were to happened today , there is not  much we could do about . But as bad as extinction event which took out the Dinosaurs, it pales in comparaioto the Permian/Triassic  extinction event which too place about 250 million years ago.  In that one about 90 percent of everything that lived omg Earth died. An long period  of volcanism in a chain of volcanoes in Russia may have triggered a prolonged period of Global warming and acidification of the oceans. Thats the closest life came to going out altogether  on Planet Earth. I doubt we could survive that kind of event.


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## Vertigo (Nov 18, 2019)

I suspect it would take far far less effort to create self sustaining space habitats than it ever would to colonise any other celestial body in the Solar system.


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## Parson (Nov 18, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> I suspect it would take far far less effort to create self sustaining space habitats than it ever would to colonise any other celestial body in the Solar system.



I'd agree. In fact I would estimate that some of the moons of Jupiter have no greater problems than what Venus and Mars do. Another thought is that a self propelled habitat could (in the VERY long run) be the key to human colonization of other solar systems.


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## -K2- (Nov 18, 2019)

Parson said:


> I'd agree. In fact I would estimate that some of the moons of Jupiter have no greater problems than what Venus and Mars do. Another thought is that a self propelled habitat could (in the VERY long run) be the key to human colonization of other solar systems.



Like these?







We saw how that worked out... savages 

K2


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## Elckerlyc (Nov 18, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> I suspect it would take far far less effort to create self sustaining space habitats than it ever would to colonise any other celestial body in the Solar system.


Probably. But even self-sustained space-habitats will demand huge investments. Which amount of money, I maintain, would be better spent on Earth on innovations for our way of living and use of Earth's resources. If people had the choice of living in a space-habitat or somewhere on Earth (in a closed biosphere) they would choose Earth.
I would love to see space-habitats realised, but I don't see them as a way to save humankind.



Parson said:


> I'd agree. In fact I would estimate that some of the moons of Jupiter have no greater problems than what Venus and Mars do. Another thought is that a self propelled habitat could (in the VERY long run) be the key to human colonization of other solar systems.


Perhaps, on the VERY long run! Provided some engineer accidentally discovers the warp-engine. The only other option is a generation-ship, that will need hundreds of years (if not thousands) to reach the nearest solar-system with planets, of which we have no idea yet if they are in any way habitable. And who is going to finance such an undertaking, which will never (or maybe in a few millennia) bring in some revenue?
We all like to dream of such explorations, but we have to remain realistic in our expectations.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 18, 2019)

-K2- said:


> Like these?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I always loved those ships  in *Silent Running *. They were re-used  in *Battlestar Galactica* and *Galactica 1980 *


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## Parson (Nov 19, 2019)

Elckerlyc said:


> The only other option is a generation-ship, that will need hundreds of years (if not thousands) to reach the nearest solar-system with planets, of which we have no idea yet if they are in any way habitable. And who is going to finance such an undertaking, which will never (or maybe in a few millennia) bring in some revenue?



A generation ship is exactly what I was aiming at and the 100's of years as well, If the space habitat was self-sustaining in the long run, such a journey might be contemplated. And if Habitats are doable financially as a place to live in a solar system, a star ship of that sort would not likely be more than about double the cost. Some sort of propulsion would be necessary for a habitat anyway, it has to be able to avoid meteors and the like. I don't think they have to be profitable, but they have to be able to source what they need aboard the habitat. There would need to be serious leaps forward in even non-warp propulsion, and in biosphere management before any such thing even makes the realistic dreaming stage.


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## ryubysss (Nov 20, 2019)

I (and many other people) have considered the possibility of space habitats. the biggest problems seem to me population numbers and if a factional dispute happens, you have two or more opposing sides in a limited space. like on Earth, only more so. with colonization of a planet you could have the option of making another colony. not easy, maybe, but easier than building another habitat.


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## -K2- (Nov 20, 2019)

Besides countless potential hazards, ships I jokingly used from Silent Running and numerous (most) others, really wouldn't work unless we also develop 'magical gravity.' We're a species that can endure, sometimes adapt, and so on, but, zero-Gs over a prolonged period, let alone generations, I suspect would be devastating to human physiology.

Imagine leaving your ship and taking the first step onto a new, perfect world, now able to enjoy life as a puddle.

K2


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## Vince W (Nov 21, 2019)




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## ryubysss (Nov 21, 2019)

I don't think we can look to the 20th century (even as late as the '80's, when _V For Vendetta_ came out) as predictor of our actual real world future. 

science fiction has to make up new dark futures, based on today.

really, I don't get it. nobody looks at 1960s or 1980s _Star Trek _and says, "yeah, the future could look like that." but a blindspot seems to exist in regards to bad futures.


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## Parson (Nov 21, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> really, I don't get it. nobody looks at 1960s or 1980s _Star Trek _and says, "yeah, the future could look like that." but a blindspot seems to exist in regards to bad futures.


That really depends on who you talk to. I know a lot of people who assume the worst and refuse to believe that we might not be headed to "you know where" in a basket. Almost no one in the general public would believe that in most *measurable *ways *worldwide *we are living in the best time in history.


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## ryubysss (Nov 21, 2019)

I will explain and clarify what I meant by that: _Star Trek_ presented a 1960s Utopian future. _TNG_ presented a more '80s variant on that future. but people nowadays recognize both versions as dated and outmoded. they appear to me dated and outmoded as well. yet take a bad future from the same time or earlier and people see that as a plausible future for now. I just don't get it. 

so, I _did no_t mean that people just don't believe in Utopian futures, anymore, though fewer do. I meant that they, wisely, don't accept the _Star Trek _version of a Utopian future, specifically.


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## Parson (Nov 21, 2019)

ryubysss said:


> I will explain and clarify what I meant by that: _Star Trek_ presented a 1960s Utopian future. _TNG_ presented a more '80s variant on that future. but people nowadays recognize both versions as dated and outmoded. they appear to me dated and outmoded as well. yet take a bad future from the same time or earlier and people see that as a plausible future for now. I just don't get it.
> 
> so, I _did no_t mean that people just don't believe in Utopian futures, anymore, though fewer do. I meant that they, wisely, don't accept the _Star Trek _version of a Utopian future, specifically.



Ah! I see. Sorry, I was confused. I also agree with what you are saying.


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## Vince W (Nov 21, 2019)

I don't think a utopian future isn't possible and hopefully probable, however the next decade or so will in all likelihood be very difficult for a great many people. Especially considering the rise of fascism and censorship. Just ask the people of Iran who have just spent the last week completely cut off from the rest of the world.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 22, 2019)

Well I would but...  
The odd thing with Iran is that the people I've met from there say it is nothing like how it is portrayed in the West.
They have been open, welcoming and accepting people that poke quiet fun at their own country. Far more than the Russians, Chinese and Americans I have met under similar circumstance.
They seem to find ways around most of the rules of their society they consider the odd or even idiotic.
Admitted it is a smallish sample and certainly not representative of everyone in the country. But it does remind me that the society I live in [and usually enjoy] is not necessarily the best and only model for society that should exist.
I can see a utopian future for humanity but it would mean a cultural shift [away from consumption and consumerism] for just about everyone and every society on the planet. And I see too many vested interests and plain-and-simple inertia for there to be any meaningful change.


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## ryubysss (Nov 22, 2019)

since posting that, I thought a bit and I think that, ironically, 1960s _Star Trek_ feels dated in part because it predicted the future, in part because _Star Trek_ itself had such influence. that deserves a post of its own, though.


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## Ray Zdybrow (Jan 18, 2020)

The Road. 
Still, you got to larf, eh


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## Danny McG (Jan 18, 2020)

Onyx said:


> Stories have drama. A future romance that only has laser toothbrushes isn't SF.


I would read it.... I'd probably skip over the romance bits......but wow! Laser toothbrushes!


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## BAYLOR (Jul 30, 2020)

Ray Zdybrow said:


> The Road.
> Still, you got to larf, eh



Not happy thought.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 20, 2021)

We'll never get anything like back to the future.


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## Parson (Jun 20, 2021)

BAYLOR said:


> We'll never get anything like back to the future.


Time travel no, but "Mr. Fusion?" Perhaps in some distant time to come.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 20, 2021)

Parson said:


> Time travel no, but "Mr. Fusion?" Perhaps in some distant time to come.



That type technology might actual be achievable.


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## DrStrangelove (Jun 20, 2021)

*A mild spoiler for people interested in the movie Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash *(which recently entered Japan and will be available on Netflix in two weeks for people unable to see it in cinema):

There is a magnificent scene in which the protagonist, leader of a terrorist organization with strong background in ecology, speaks about his agend with a taxi driver (the driver unaware of his passenger's true identity). When the topic of the conversation switches to Earth's continuing decline, with people unable to fish, plastic littering beaches, you know the drill), the driver smiles, saying that what happens in a matter of centuries does not concern him if, to survive, he can hardly plan for the day after tommorrow.

The series was always heavily concerned with the decline of our planet's biome and, after 40 years, it is increasingly apparent the the vision of political instability caused by worsening climate is the most probable course of the coming century (if not the coming decades).


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 23, 2021)

Looking at what is happening today, I think John Brunner's stories did a pretty good of forecasting the future.


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## Robert Zwilling (Aug 26, 2021)

I'm updating my impression of the future. P K Dick's stories are always in the back of my head, providing a partial explanation of the way things turn out with his settings and characters actions that seem familiar to real things in the world, even if they're on another planet or in another time. John Brunner is still in there with his day to day happenings, more now than ever. But now I have a new addition. After hearing so many expressions of "be well" lately, and watching store clerks in California asking thieves rolling shopping carts out the door loaded up with unpaid merchandise, not to not steal it, I am adding Demolition Man. 

István Nemere, a famous Hungarian writer, has written perhaps as many as 60 sci fi stories, has accused the film of plagiarizing his novel "Fight of the Dead," so it could be his words, or the remaining 25 percent of the film he says wasn't part of his story. I have no idea if István Nemere was as sarcastic as Demolition Man turned out to be. I was unable to find out much about István Nemere and couldn't find any English translations. A little strange as he was a translator. One source said that some of his material was right up there with P K Dick, when it comes to who is watching the watchers.


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## BAYLOR (Oct 11, 2021)

The Global Warming prediction of *Soylent Green*  seems have been somewhat accurate but, the world wis nowhere rear as bad  and over populated as it was In that film and  we aren't  converting human being into edible green wafers.


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## AllanR (Oct 11, 2021)

BAYLOR said:


> The Global Warming prediction of *Soylent Green* seems have been somewhat accurate but, the world wis nowhere rear as bad and over populated as it was In that film and we aren't converting human being into edible green wafers.


I think the real world population is even more (or very close) than the source book Make Room, Make Room predicted, without the immediate dire consequences that he'd thought.


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## asp3 (Oct 11, 2021)

CupofJoe said:


> I think China are trying to prove you wrong on the you can't make land deal... at least in the South China Seas.
> For us in the North/Western world. I'm guessing little will change and when it does, we will be ret-conned in to it having been like that all along.
> My vision of the future is somewhere between _*Brazil*_ and _*1984*_.
> As for leaving this planet for others? Humanity and especially the industrialised parts of it, are like children demanding a new pet because the "old one" is dying. We can't look after the one we've got and now we want more? We never took it out for walks, or gave it a bath or took it to the vets. We NEVER followed the Vets advice about keeping it healthy. Why would we want to do that someplace new?



I'm leaning towards 1984 also with a Chinese twist.  I'm afraid authoritarianism is rising throughout the world and technology has advanced to the point it will be difficult to fight it.  I also think that authoritarianism tends to greatly reduce if not eliminate scientific exploration beyond ways to increase and improve methods of control.  So I think we will stop looking outwards into space except for warfare and surveillance.


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## BAYLOR (Oct 11, 2021)

asp3 said:


> I'm leaning towards 1984 also with a Chinese twist.  I'm afraid authoritarianism is rising throughout the world and technology has advanced to the point it will be difficult to fight it.  I also think that authoritarianism tends to greatly reduce if not eliminate scientific exploration beyond ways to increase and improve methods of control.  So I think we will stop looking outwards into space except for warfare and surveillance.


The story *Examination Day * by Henry Slesar clear comes to mind . it was adapted for the 1985 Twilight Zone . Dystopian and very chilling stuff. They eliminate smart kids who could be threat to order of society. I hope that never comes to pass.


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## Robert Zwilling (Oct 11, 2021)

Back in the 70's the oceans were considered to be bottomless pits. Thinking the oceans could drastically change was not something that could be seen back that then. Soylent Green had the ocean plankton severely crippled and the fish stocks had already run out. Latest report on the oceans is that the reflectivity has decreased or unknown reasons for the oceans worldwide. That causes the ocean temperature to increase just be soaking up more sunlight. Which means we have to work harder to keep the planet a few degrees cooler. The vast amounts of fresh water that isn't mixing into the ocean water but floating on it, plus the changes in ocean currents and prevailing winds, is all pointing to some kind of change in the oceans. The small stuff in the oceans will survive, it always has, its the bigger stuff that is getting hammered, Soylent had that right.


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## Guttersnipe (Oct 11, 2021)

Ready Player One could predict the future of the gaming world...


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## AE35Unit (Oct 11, 2021)

Maybe the Space Elevator predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in The Gardens of Paradise


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## BAYLOR (Oct 11, 2021)

AE35Unit said:


> Maybe the Space Elevator predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in The Gardens of Paradise



That could actually be done.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Oct 11, 2021)

*Colossus the Forbin project* or *Her. *Super intelligent AI takes over global defence system.

A vision of the future becomes obsolete when the technological or sociological forces in fiction are superseded by those in reality. or when developments are called incorrectly.


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## AE35Unit (Oct 11, 2021)

BAYLOR said:


> That could actually be done.


Yea its being looked into


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## BAYLOR (Jan 22, 2022)

Willam Gibson


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## Christine Wheelwright (Jan 22, 2022)

I think we are overoptimistic in general when it comes to technological development.  For example, I'm sceptical when I see deep space travel projected in just a few decades.  I think the most staggering developments in, say, the next fifty years will come in the field of biological sciences.  Specifically, I wonder if immortality is achievable based upon ever increasing developments in genetic engineering.


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## BAYLOR (Mar 13, 2022)

*Ringworld* might be possible.


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