cskendrick
I'm Gnu :)
- Joined
- May 7, 2006
- Messages
- 30
I've got my ideas on what makes history tick. You do, too.
Let's rap about it, me and you, for about a week or two.
But not in verse. That's just plain annoying.
Since this is my idea...
I'll drop a few decades of my (so far) 900-year detailed future history (3000-year, not so detailed), and let you guys go to town on it...or counter with your own sweet moves!
From an exercise called "(Mostly) American History: The Next Five Hundred Years"
Why be so Americentrist? It's a big planet. It was either Chad or the USA. I made a judgment call. We'll do Chad next, if you'd like.
2000s At the dawn of the Third Millennium, education in the United States lagged far behind both the economic and sociological needs of the country, which was hurriedly attempting to retool its schools, even its thought processes, to accommodate an interconnected, cybernetic world. However, at the same time there was considerable discomfort at the prospect of a world in which children would be taught not only that it was possible to manipulate the genome, commingle not only DNA but interface human minds with machines, but that other countries were doing so already and if the USA did not it was going to quickly become an intellectual and economic backwater. Also, it was a world in which people who simply did not have the same normative background were going to have an increasing influence in world affairs, and the choice was either to let them speak up, or shut them up and risk world war and extinction for all. Then, just to make sure the pressure cooker burst, the Americans were going to have to teach their kids to use less energy, not eat so much, and that it wasn’t okay to nuke somebody just because they wanted to play around with atoms, too.
And many Americans, older and younger, found this curriculum to be utterly unacceptable. Thus, the country was compelled to deal with its own sense of threat, xenophobia and reaction to such changes. The aversion to transformation is what propelled and maintained the power of the then-conservative Republican Party, that and a precocious understanding and utilization of the role of rallying media, money and mass participation on an unprecedented scale in order to mobilize supporters at critical times (back then, validation of representatives occured at most once every two years, an unacceptably long interval for post-Second Constitution Americans). It is ironic that a movement that was more sympathetic to modern-era Orchestration would be the pioneer of the the mechanics of the Participation Movement.
2020s In short order, the liberal faction of the early 21st century, the Democratic Party, mastered the techniques that the structural-minority Republicans had pioneered, and applied to a much larger population base, recovered nearly-complete power in the United States by the mid-2020s...and promptly proceeded to make its own version of the mistakes of excess that had disgraced their now-dissolute rivals, including involvement in a series of wars in Saudi Arabia and Yemen as the American economy was even yet still attached to the production of fossil fuels from one especially volatile region of the planet. It was then, and only then, that Americans began to wonder if perhaps the problem was not which party was in power, but the mechanism by which either of the two (and only two) choices obtained authority. Something just wasn't working. It is thus, in on the well-timed date of July 4, 2034, that the Second Constitution was proclaimed, and the ratification process (which would take another seven years to complete in full) begun.
The differences: structurally, hardly anything. Americans liked their three branches. The differences regarding mutual checks and balances, especially on the Executive (to the aggrandizement of Congress) were substantial. The innovation of a vote of no confidence and the popular recall transformed the timing, frequency and choices of American elections...at least until the Third Constitution came along. But that's some time in the future.
The new! Improved! Republic, one hoped, was straightaway more aligned in constitution and in practice (swiftly, the predisposition of the semi-parliamentary system toward 3-5 parties became manifest) with the European democracies, which helped the restoration of the lapsed North Atlantic alliance. Likewise, a refurbishment of the persistent but quite-bruised alliance with Japan was undertaken, as well.
Most affronted, perhaps, of America’s erstwhile friends and neighbors were its next-door neighbors, Canada and Mexico, for the early decades were a time of loud bigotry, both political and racial in nature, directed against countries that had not taken up arms in earnest against the United States for two centuries. The Canadians were quick to forgive, though never forget. The Mexicans, however, had found newer, arguably more powerful friends in the Shanghai Cooperation organization, and for the first time in quite a long time, the Americans had a serious adversary on their doorstep.
And in Japan and the United States, promising developments in two new and complementary fields were about to hit the market; the strengthened alliance was already paying off. Big time, in the words of a former politician.
Japanese explorations into the realm of mnemotech, the remote, intuitive reprogramming of hardware and software systems -- even wetware, if some rumors were true -- were beginning. However, development was hampered by the lack of sufficient (and sufficiently rapid) computing power. France and Canada became major competitors in nanotech, such as it was at that early stage of human history.
In the United States, already a player, the development of androids for a wide range of purposes, least imaginatively for warfare and work in hazardous conditions (such as undersea and offworld) were a lucrative capital market. The UK and the Russian Federation became the new dominant players in all things Internet.
Finally, all of the major powers, and quite a few smaller ones, were involved in the last great land rush on Earth -- the opening of Antarctica for settlement. By 2030, the Southern Continent had 1.17 million residents, whereas thirty years earlier, it had nothing more than several thousand semi-permanent inhabitants. That quite a few were involuntary was widely known but almost never remarked upon in polite company.
Elsewhere, the Russians, Europeans, Americans, Japanese and the newly-declared Han Federation (though most still called it China out of habit) were laying claim to ice veins near the poles of the Moon; by 2030, there were 90,000 people living; the largest single base was the Han facility at Sun Mountain. And just like that, off-world exploration went from the Dark Age back to the Space Age.
And soon after the founding of the major Lunar bases, the path to Mars was laid open, and so it was that that the American spaceship Argo, a precursor to the later helion spacecraft, made the crossing to Mars in a mere twenty days at a constant 0.1 gee acceleration. And on March 14, 2033, the aptly-named Jayson Nelloms became the first man on Mars. He was unfortunately the first to die on Mars, as well, but that is a sad tale best told in full elsewhere.
The Indian-fashioned Garuda and the Chinese Huoxing 1, a tandem expedition, arrived four months later. Which was fortunate, as the American expedition was looking to be stranded as their exotic propulsion system failed, and bartering the propulsion tech away in return for a ride home seemed like a reasonable trade to the astronauts.
What I Tried For
1. Tracking rise and fall in relative power of states
2. Changes in population, education, technology levels, water scarcity (THE ecological constraint!), infrastructure saturation.
3. Shifts in alliances (track both affinity sets among countries based on the above gross characteristics, modified by history as we've known it so far, as well as identify major rivalries and test which states would pick which side, if forced to make a choice).
4. Develop a mechanism of human capital accumulation as the driver of technological progress.
5. Identify which countries move ahead -- and why -- in this venue.
6. Track emergence of aggressive tendencies where relatively advanced weaponry + relatively weak social conditions produce appetite for change via the bullet, rather than the ballot.
7. Make assumptions on the timing of settlement of oceans, Antarctica, other planets of Solar System.
8. Treat planets as countries, same as the rest, going forward.
9. Map out impact of HIV (think: 750 million dead by 2050, 2 billion by 2200), assume it runs out of steam eventually. Or victims. Else, it's probably "see ya!" for Humanity.
10. Add a few additional plagues, famines, wars, the occasional natural disaster (The Yellowstone supervolcano goes off).
11. Keep track of all the above on a spreadsheet.
12. Present a few decades of it, engage peers in discussion.
13. Duck, when rotten tomatoes are cast in one's general direction.
Let's rap about it, me and you, for about a week or two.
But not in verse. That's just plain annoying.
Since this is my idea...
I'll drop a few decades of my (so far) 900-year detailed future history (3000-year, not so detailed), and let you guys go to town on it...or counter with your own sweet moves!
From an exercise called "(Mostly) American History: The Next Five Hundred Years"
Why be so Americentrist? It's a big planet. It was either Chad or the USA. I made a judgment call. We'll do Chad next, if you'd like.
2000s At the dawn of the Third Millennium, education in the United States lagged far behind both the economic and sociological needs of the country, which was hurriedly attempting to retool its schools, even its thought processes, to accommodate an interconnected, cybernetic world. However, at the same time there was considerable discomfort at the prospect of a world in which children would be taught not only that it was possible to manipulate the genome, commingle not only DNA but interface human minds with machines, but that other countries were doing so already and if the USA did not it was going to quickly become an intellectual and economic backwater. Also, it was a world in which people who simply did not have the same normative background were going to have an increasing influence in world affairs, and the choice was either to let them speak up, or shut them up and risk world war and extinction for all. Then, just to make sure the pressure cooker burst, the Americans were going to have to teach their kids to use less energy, not eat so much, and that it wasn’t okay to nuke somebody just because they wanted to play around with atoms, too.
And many Americans, older and younger, found this curriculum to be utterly unacceptable. Thus, the country was compelled to deal with its own sense of threat, xenophobia and reaction to such changes. The aversion to transformation is what propelled and maintained the power of the then-conservative Republican Party, that and a precocious understanding and utilization of the role of rallying media, money and mass participation on an unprecedented scale in order to mobilize supporters at critical times (back then, validation of representatives occured at most once every two years, an unacceptably long interval for post-Second Constitution Americans). It is ironic that a movement that was more sympathetic to modern-era Orchestration would be the pioneer of the the mechanics of the Participation Movement.
2020s In short order, the liberal faction of the early 21st century, the Democratic Party, mastered the techniques that the structural-minority Republicans had pioneered, and applied to a much larger population base, recovered nearly-complete power in the United States by the mid-2020s...and promptly proceeded to make its own version of the mistakes of excess that had disgraced their now-dissolute rivals, including involvement in a series of wars in Saudi Arabia and Yemen as the American economy was even yet still attached to the production of fossil fuels from one especially volatile region of the planet. It was then, and only then, that Americans began to wonder if perhaps the problem was not which party was in power, but the mechanism by which either of the two (and only two) choices obtained authority. Something just wasn't working. It is thus, in on the well-timed date of July 4, 2034, that the Second Constitution was proclaimed, and the ratification process (which would take another seven years to complete in full) begun.
The differences: structurally, hardly anything. Americans liked their three branches. The differences regarding mutual checks and balances, especially on the Executive (to the aggrandizement of Congress) were substantial. The innovation of a vote of no confidence and the popular recall transformed the timing, frequency and choices of American elections...at least until the Third Constitution came along. But that's some time in the future.
The new! Improved! Republic, one hoped, was straightaway more aligned in constitution and in practice (swiftly, the predisposition of the semi-parliamentary system toward 3-5 parties became manifest) with the European democracies, which helped the restoration of the lapsed North Atlantic alliance. Likewise, a refurbishment of the persistent but quite-bruised alliance with Japan was undertaken, as well.
Most affronted, perhaps, of America’s erstwhile friends and neighbors were its next-door neighbors, Canada and Mexico, for the early decades were a time of loud bigotry, both political and racial in nature, directed against countries that had not taken up arms in earnest against the United States for two centuries. The Canadians were quick to forgive, though never forget. The Mexicans, however, had found newer, arguably more powerful friends in the Shanghai Cooperation organization, and for the first time in quite a long time, the Americans had a serious adversary on their doorstep.
And in Japan and the United States, promising developments in two new and complementary fields were about to hit the market; the strengthened alliance was already paying off. Big time, in the words of a former politician.
Japanese explorations into the realm of mnemotech, the remote, intuitive reprogramming of hardware and software systems -- even wetware, if some rumors were true -- were beginning. However, development was hampered by the lack of sufficient (and sufficiently rapid) computing power. France and Canada became major competitors in nanotech, such as it was at that early stage of human history.
In the United States, already a player, the development of androids for a wide range of purposes, least imaginatively for warfare and work in hazardous conditions (such as undersea and offworld) were a lucrative capital market. The UK and the Russian Federation became the new dominant players in all things Internet.
Finally, all of the major powers, and quite a few smaller ones, were involved in the last great land rush on Earth -- the opening of Antarctica for settlement. By 2030, the Southern Continent had 1.17 million residents, whereas thirty years earlier, it had nothing more than several thousand semi-permanent inhabitants. That quite a few were involuntary was widely known but almost never remarked upon in polite company.
Elsewhere, the Russians, Europeans, Americans, Japanese and the newly-declared Han Federation (though most still called it China out of habit) were laying claim to ice veins near the poles of the Moon; by 2030, there were 90,000 people living; the largest single base was the Han facility at Sun Mountain. And just like that, off-world exploration went from the Dark Age back to the Space Age.
And soon after the founding of the major Lunar bases, the path to Mars was laid open, and so it was that that the American spaceship Argo, a precursor to the later helion spacecraft, made the crossing to Mars in a mere twenty days at a constant 0.1 gee acceleration. And on March 14, 2033, the aptly-named Jayson Nelloms became the first man on Mars. He was unfortunately the first to die on Mars, as well, but that is a sad tale best told in full elsewhere.
The Indian-fashioned Garuda and the Chinese Huoxing 1, a tandem expedition, arrived four months later. Which was fortunate, as the American expedition was looking to be stranded as their exotic propulsion system failed, and bartering the propulsion tech away in return for a ride home seemed like a reasonable trade to the astronauts.
What I Tried For
1. Tracking rise and fall in relative power of states
2. Changes in population, education, technology levels, water scarcity (THE ecological constraint!), infrastructure saturation.
3. Shifts in alliances (track both affinity sets among countries based on the above gross characteristics, modified by history as we've known it so far, as well as identify major rivalries and test which states would pick which side, if forced to make a choice).
4. Develop a mechanism of human capital accumulation as the driver of technological progress.
5. Identify which countries move ahead -- and why -- in this venue.
6. Track emergence of aggressive tendencies where relatively advanced weaponry + relatively weak social conditions produce appetite for change via the bullet, rather than the ballot.
7. Make assumptions on the timing of settlement of oceans, Antarctica, other planets of Solar System.
8. Treat planets as countries, same as the rest, going forward.
9. Map out impact of HIV (think: 750 million dead by 2050, 2 billion by 2200), assume it runs out of steam eventually. Or victims. Else, it's probably "see ya!" for Humanity.
10. Add a few additional plagues, famines, wars, the occasional natural disaster (The Yellowstone supervolcano goes off).
11. Keep track of all the above on a spreadsheet.
12. Present a few decades of it, engage peers in discussion.
13. Duck, when rotten tomatoes are cast in one's general direction.
