What will the real 22nd Century look like?

[Mr. Scott]

My grandmother was born in 1908 and died in 2003. I don't know if she was ever held by a Civil War veteran as a child, but since the war was only 48 years ago, there is a fair chance that she was.

I say this because hopefully your children and grandchildren can see the year 2101 and know you. Long before 2101 no one will remember me and my grave will be overtured to build a shyscraper for the rich.

I and my wife have never concieved in nine years. This makes me very sad. She has a child already which I am happy about. If he has a child now, he has about a 5% to make the 22nd Century as a very old person.

What will the 22nd Century? I doubt we will venture far in space. The World will be overpopulated unless there was a worldwide war. If there was a worldwide war, it was nuclear, and no, there is no Vulcans willing to save us.

With you lucky to procreate, do you really see a future for your children beyond that you reproduced yourselves. What is it like to see your child and see it 1/2 you and 1/2 your mate. Will it be like her? Like him? No one, everyi=one, what?

 

[BillJ]

The real 22nd century will probably be a cruel place with over-population, dwindling natural resources and continued warming of the planet. I also imagine we'll see some de-evolution in technology and the way we're governed. World War III will be fought as a conventional war and some of it will possibly be fought on North American soil.

I have three children, none of which I see reaching the year 2101 (the youngest is three).

 

[Ghel]

Visually, the 22nd century will probably be pretty boring. I would imagine the most things will be linked directly to our thoughts and therefore, no more touch screens, keyboards, etc. This is already a nacent technology used for some parapalegics and quadrapalegics.

For political reasons, we probably still won't be back to the moon or mars, much less exploring other solar systems. However, there will be discussions of "planned" missions to these places. Alas, they will probably be continually put off while we wait for some new technology or next years budget. This may be a bit cynical, but no matter what level of technology we have, space is deep and empty and most people have little vision beyond their own noses.

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, the 22nd-Century won't look that terribly different from today. The biggest changes will be socio-political ones. The environment will be worse--people will be paying for clean air to breathe--but there'll have been considerable technological leaps in the fields of telecommunications (goodbye cell phones) and medicine (hello geneotech).

We probably will have reached Mars by this point, but after a handful newsmaking manned expeditions, there still won't be a permanant settlement there by 2110. The overwhelming majority of space missions will still be unmanned.

 

[indolover]

Socially or politically, who knows? China could push communism around the world, or some Chinese could have devised a whole new political system. I predict that Western domination of geo-politics may end in the middle of this century, after about 5 or 6 hundred years of Western Europe and now the USA being top dog. Economically, China may be the largest world economy perpetually, given the large population.

Technologically, who is to say that a computer as powerful as a mainframe could be a personal computer? There may be nuclear fusion, or the world may revert to being Luddites and reject all technology. Anything is possible.

 

[Myasishchev]

The World will be overpopulated unless there was a worldwide war.

The world is overpopulated now. But it's correcting the problem, and birthrates are falling globally, even in the most fertile of places.

China could push communism around the world

What, is Zombie Mao going to rise from the grave and roll back all of Deng's reforms?

Actually not as unlikely as one might think (metaphorically speaking). I'm predicting a Chinese social collapse in twenty years, because of the seaboard-interior divide, the rich-poor divide, the regional divides, and, perhaps most critically, the gender divide. China has a history of cyclical collapses; it probably won't be as bad as the last (which ended in 1949 or, perhaps, 1953), but then again they're unlikely to face, this time, a genocidal, imperialist Japan, a mad American general who wants to nuke them, or an even madder ideological zealot who can't administrate a shattered industrial and agricultural base well enough not to starve several tens of millions to death.

people will be paying for clean air to breathe

Perri-Air?

Or do you mean institutionally, through increased taxes/regulatory schemes that internalize the externalities of industry and commerce or simply prohibit short-term-profitable practices?

Western pollution regulations have been tremendous successes overall, and our deindustrialization and population decline is to a point that I don't really see it getting to 1970s levels again. Now, China has some problems in this regard--and I concede that China's problems have spillover effects, but not to the point that we will have to steal Druidia's air. Incidentally, the gentle reader may add that to the growing list of reasons this is no Chinese Century and there will not be a Chinese Century.

(Now an Indian Century? Just possible.)

I do agree it will be warmer, though. There's no way around that at this point, although for the most part we'll probably have stopped making it worse.

Visually, the 22nd century will probably be pretty boring. I would imagine the most things will be linked directly to our thoughts and therefore, no more touch screens, keyboards, etc. This is already a nacent technology used for some parapalegics and quadrapalegics.

Not very cinematic, is it? Even transhumanist authors struggle with the likelihood of everyone simply being a simulacrum and/or brain-in-a-jar.

 

[indolover]

Should China become a dominant world power, it's only natural that Chinese influence would spread. I just don't think that Western dominance will last forever, or at least be unchallenged. The USA and a unified EU could have large world economies, but China would continue to grow and rival them in size.

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm just saying that China is not communist.

But also that China has rarely been interested in exporting its culture, in the same vein as the West, as well as Islam, have been--of course, our respective civilizations were each founded on messianic, universalizing principles, which bled over even into secular ideologies like fascism, communism, and even Western liberalism. (Indeed, you can actually trace the messianic, universalizing principle back much further than organized Pauline Christianity--to Alexander, at the latest.)

Maybe they'll start. But does China even have a coherent ideology to sell? "Communism with Chinese characteristics" doesn't seem like a particularly well-marketed slogan for foreign consumption.

 

[sojourner]

China is already a dominant world power.

And how soon till this gets moved to Misc.?

 

[Myasishchev]

By what metric? GDP, per capita GDP, military potential? Lower than the US and Japan, lower than half the countries on Earth, and inferior to any other UNSC member (and vastly inferior to the US), respectively. Also a country with deep structural and social problems that are terrible and insoluble in anything less than a generation, due to the disaster of the One-Child Policy as well as the pollution, corruption, etc.

And soon! Edit: Maybe. In an attempt to keep it Trek-related, I'll pose the following question: does it make sense to identify the Eastern Coalition with a PRC-led alliance in First Contact? The answer is no.

 

[indolover]

I'm just saying that China is not communist.

But also that China has rarely been interested in exporting its culture, in the same vein as the West, as well as Islam, have been--of course, our respective civilizations were each founded on messianic, universalizing principles, which bled over even into secular ideologies like fascism, communism, and even Western liberalism. (Indeed, you can actually trace the messianic, universalizing principle back much further than organized Pauline Christianity--to Alexander, at the latest.)

Maybe they'll start. But does China even have a coherent ideology to sell? "Communism with Chinese characteristics" doesn't seem like a particularly well-marketed slogan for foreign consumption.

Part of world power status by definition is the spread of cultural influence.

 

[indolover]

By what metric? GDP, per capita GDP, military potential? Lower than the US and Japan, lower than half the countries on Earth, and inferior to any other UNSC member (and vastly inferior to the US), respectively. Also a country with deep structural and social problems that are terrible and insoluble in anything less than a generation, due to the disaster of the One-Child Policy as well as the pollution, corruption, etc.

And soon! Edit: Maybe. In an attempt to keep it Trek-related, I'll pose the following question: does it make sense to identify the Eastern Coalition with a PRC-led alliance in First Contact? The answer is no.

Chinese GDP is second largest in terms of PPP and normal exchange rates. Per capita GDP cannot denote economic weight, as Luxembourg has for a long time had a high GDP per capi. As for military forces, well compared with the USA, UK and France perhaps not, but Russia is not as technologically advanced as those other Security council members.

 

[C.E. Evans]

people will be paying for clean air to breathe

Perri-Air?

Pretty much, yes. Large tanks of purified, oxygen-enriched air sold right next to bottled water. It's a commercial market that's just waiting to be exploited by big corporations. I think I recall some bar somewhere in the U.S. that is actually selling clean and even flavored air right now in a way not too unlike a coffee house, with patrons hooked up to oxygen tanks for recreational and/or medicinal purposes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_bar

Imagine them being as prolific as McDonald's a century from now...

 

[Arpy]

It'll be a recovery period after the loss of millions or billions in the 21st century to plagues, nukes, and nanites...oh geez, it really will be like First Contact.

After that, we'll will start genetically engineering themselves to be healthier, live longer, and look and feel better. We'll be plugged in (without sockets in our heads) into countless infinite fully immersible cyberworlds. Early AI's will work for us and we'll just begin mining the solar system as we are just beginning sending up tourists now. Strike that last part.

By the 23rd c, I expect we'll have tons of AI's all around us, we'll begin mining/exploring the solar system in earnest, make copies of ourselves to live forever (in cyberspace at least) clone our bodies at least to live almost forever too. Well, maybe the 24th c that last part.

Oh, and we'll be Borg. We'll be able to plug in and out of cyber connections that will mind-meld people together like the Vulcans or the Founders...one moment a mega-organism or sets of them, and the next, an individual. Sex may be better for it.

The new problems will be making sure we don't create too intelligent AI's, lose ourselves in our achievements, or forget the importance of each other when we no longer need each other - immortals without toil capable of conjuring worlds and populating them with companions. It'll start slow and crudely, but it'll just get better and better.

 

[iguana_tonante]

And soon! Edit: Maybe. In an attempt to keep it Trek-related, I'll pose the following question: does it make sense to identify the Eastern Coalition with a PRC-led alliance in First Contact? The answer is no.

A interesting hypothesis is that Eastern Coalition in FC was actually an alliance of East-Coast States after a breakdown or civil war in the US.

 

[shareitall]

Of course, none of can know... and there's certainly a lot to be concerned about. But ST was always hopeful, and so am I! We persevere and overcome obstacles and problems all the time... and we have evolved and become more humane with time as well.

 

[Frontier]

All things considered, my guess is this is what the 22nd century will look like -- if we're lucky...

 

[Myasishchev]

By what metric? GDP, per capita GDP, military potential? Lower than the US and Japan, lower than half the countries on Earth, and inferior to any other UNSC member (and vastly inferior to the US), respectively. Also a country with deep structural and social problems that are terrible and insoluble in anything less than a generation, due to the disaster of the One-Child Policy as well as the pollution, corruption, etc.

And soon! Edit: Maybe. In an attempt to keep it Trek-related, I'll pose the following question: does it make sense to identify the Eastern Coalition with a PRC-led alliance in First Contact? The answer is no.

Chinese GDP is second largest in terms of PPP and normal exchange rates. Per capita GDP cannot denote economic weight, as Luxembourg has for a long time had a high GDP per capi. As for military forces, well compared with the USA, UK and France perhaps not, but Russia is not as technologically advanced as those other Security council members.

Per capita GDP is a good indicator a quality of life, and a visible quality of life is one of the key aspects of culutral hegemony. While democracy and liberalism are certainly inspirational, Western decadence has been at least as essential in building the Western cultural hegemony.

In any event, if China can't offer a vision of prosperity, they have nothing to offer, because their political philosophy, such as it is, is extremely off-putting and ultimately a historical accident. At least India is, more or less, free.

A interesting hypothesis is that Eastern Coalition in FC was actually an alliance of East-Coast States after a breakdown or civil war in the US.

Yeah, I always figured it was New England, possibly including the Southeast. It wasn't until it was pointed out to me that I even entertained the possibility that it was the PRC, since I can't readily imagine a situation where the PRC would or could be overly concerned with Montana following a nuclear exchange between the US and it.

 

[Arpy]

My two cents:

The US isn't going to fall apart. For all the misery the future will see, it's not that different from the misery that the past has seen.

Last century began with a bunch of uptight Victorians and decadent Edwardians with old Old World notions of war, morality, and governance. They did what they knew until it didn't work any more - i.e. with WWI, they conducted war basically for its own sake and found that technology no longer made that feasible.

The old mentalities and foreign policies also gave birth to totalitarianism which then was fought - fascism in WWII, and communism in the Cold War. The war against fascism also gave us the nuclear weapon, which we then had to learn to live with and not destroy each other entirely with - the lesson of WWI to the nth degree.

By the grace of divine luck and human effort, humanity made it through and for the better. The current generations don't have to relearn those old lessons entirely...though the war in Iraq makes me think there are a lot of bored dissafected people in our prosperous West - otherwise they wouldn't have been so readily duped into it. But the status quo is different as of 2001 from what it was in 1901.

There will be countless people giving their all, and countless others giving not a damn this century, and most in the vast spectrum in between. Hopefully, the catastrophes I alluded to in the last reply will be surmounted, and if they are, the humanity that remains will be as to us as we are to the Victorians.

Writing all this, I have a discovered a new-found dread. I hope this is a good thing. You have to want to survive to do so.

Maybe it's the inner-Trekkie in me, but if we are all to go by way of the Dodo one day, I hope we see a Federation-like world first. None of my notions of how I think things are/were/should be matter to me so much as seeing that. If Q or aliens or the Big Crunch wipes us out at some point (before we can figure some way out of it), it won't be our fault.

Toward that end, for what it's worth, how should I put this...oh fuck it, this has already gone on too long. Friend, I love you. Good luck.

 

[Gary7]

While I'd like to be optimistic and say that the 22nd century will be a good one, led by the ever innovating and leading USA... I do not think this will happen, based on what I've witnessed over the past few decades.

We are in an environmental quandary, whereby people too heavily vested in continuing the large profit streams won't listen to reason about the need to protect the environment. It's already "too late" in a number of respects, whereby we will see an erosion to the ecosystem that we will be unable to stop... it will erode to a point where it will eventually level off, but the toll taken on human civilization will be great. The numerous dead zones forming in the oceans is just one example. You think we've got hunger problems now? Just wait a few more decades.

The economic problems we will face due to an eroding environment will put a major stop to the scientific innovations we've been making in a number of areas, most definitely where space exploration is concerned. And the quality of life will suffer due to the scarcity of luxuries that were once commonplace. There will be a greater disparity between the wealthy and the non-wealthy.

How long it will take to recover from this is way too difficult to speculate on. There are so many factors, the bulk of which will be dependent upon how much warfare and subjugation takes place. The terrorists living in the Middle East subsist on very little... and when our defenses weaken enough, they will take advantage of it. They have a neurotic passion against our way of life, and they will take every opportunity to continue hurting us. That will exacerbate the problems we're facing.

China is fast becoming the next superpower. Can they maintain it? Possibly. There are inherent flaws in their society, especially where quality control is concerned, which might interfere with progress. But their differing beliefs on human rights laws and intellectual property will jeopardize fairness in the rest of the world, if they succeed in financial domination. If no one can provide a sufficient threat to them from taking over Hong Kong and Taiwan, they will walk right in because they believe that capability without sufficient threat is entitlement. This trend of subjugation will continue as long as they've got the resources to do it. A large ocean helps stifle the threat, but it's not impossible to overcome. Who knows how far they could go...


In the 22nd century, I will not be surprised to see many people keeping old tech alive, struggling to make ends meet, and longing for the lush days of prosperity we all once had. I really, really wish that would not happen, but unless there is some tremendous enlightenment that befalls our society, the edicts of "greed is good" will continue to dominate and bring much strife/chaos. We have got to change our ways and quick. Every year that goes by without any shift of mindset in our society takes us further and further into a more difficult recovery, if we ever do make it.