Suppose you wanted, for some reason, nefarious or exalted, to generate a scenario of what future life might be like in 10 or 10,000 years. How would you go about it? How do you go about projecting a possible future?
The classical advice is to read a lot of science fiction. That is true, but it is also an avoidance, in that one can then ask how do the science fiction writers do it?
There is an old chestnut that almost all science fiction was borne of three frames of mind -- 'What would happen if?', 'If this keeps going on...' and 'A sense of wonder'.
If you want to be critical, you might consider science fiction writers as members of that infinite tribe of monkeys on an infinity of typewriters (word processors? thought processors?), mutating not the letters of the alphabet, but the basic ideas, themes, memes, tropes, and/or elements of the future. What are those basic elements?
It may be that the range of one's sight, forward and backward, is bound to the depth of one's insight here and now. How well do you understand the way the world works today? What are the forces which determine history? Force of arms? Psychology? Mass media? Class war? Economics? Technology? Various people have advocated one or another of these factors at times. What is it that really matters? And what is it that matters to you?
Consider what factors you might usefully project
in a scenario of the future.
Let us say 200 years from now. Think of all the categories that may be
relevant.
What will be the state of medicine? of economics?
What will people use for money?
Where will we get our energy?
What will the population be?
What will atmospheric carbon dioxide level be?
There are a raft of factors to consider:
One of my favourite cartoons has two panels.
One shows a sterotypical golden future of rising spires and flying cars;
the other shows the polluted industrial slumcity behind the billboard.
In ecology there is a rule of thumb that gauges
the effect a culture has on the world. It is:
Impact = Population * Level of Affluence * Level of Technology
Without going into the [IPAT] equation in depth, think of it this way:As long as humans are dependent upon the ecosphere, the equation also spells out fundamental factors that must be taken into account.
Technology - one man on a bulldozer can do more in a day than a thousand men with shovels;
Affluence - a million Eritreans have much less of an effect on the world than a a million Americans;
and the Population term is straight forward.
If the planetary population rises to 25 billion, what will the average level of wealth be? One can (loosely) abstract wealth to watts expended per person per year [W/p/y], and consider how that may change. Currently the human race uses about 12 terawatts per year [12 * 10^12 W/y]. With a population of 6 billion, that works out to about 2000 W/p/y. There are wide discrepancies between the nations of the world, between Canada and Somalia, for example, so that number is only an average. Now consider, at what rate is energy use growing? Upon what does that depend? What will we use for energy when the petroleum is gone? At what rate is our population growing? Upon what factors does that depend? What would be the effect of doubling life span? Petroleum has the side effect of creating CO2. What side effect(s) might a new form of energy have? How much energy can we get from photosynthesis? How much energy arrives from the sun? How much of it can we use? How much do plants use? If we take more, what effect will that have on ecological systems?
You see what I mean, once you begin to think in this way, the questions and the scenarios which can arise from them become endless.
It might be useful to consider what will not change. Is human nature unchanging? How about religion? political systems? economics?
One never knows what unexpected wonders technology may produce. New theories and new discoveries always raise new possibilities for human endeavour. It is also possible, however, to project ongoing trends. One useful way to do that is to consider which fields are getting a lot of research money. Currently genetics, nanotechnology and weaponry are getting a lion's share. Less well funded, but just as eagerly anticipated, physicists and astronomers are endeavouring through particle theory and cosmology to uncover the fundamentals of dark energy and dark matter. When Einstein showed us the identity of matter and energy, our sense of the world, perhaps reality, changed forever. The major practical manifestations were the bomb and the nuclear reactor. Who know what sublime expression an ultimate theory of everything may imply? These are fertile grounds for speculation.
Of course, the fun is the unexpected. There are always surprises. What happens if room temperature superconductors are perfected? What would be the effect of a new and limitless energy source? What happens if aliens arrive one day? What would be the effect of understanding the brain's neural organization? What would happen if we began to grow a new sensory organ? What happens if we build artificial intelligences and they don't like us? Throw in a wild card and how does it affect the rest of your scenario?
Now. Build me a future...
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Last modified November 6, 2006