What changes will occur to civilisation in future?

Question

It would be interesting to guess what changes might take place to us i.e., human civilisation in future (both near and far future). This may be difficult but still let us try. Please give your opinion. What are the changes that you have noticed in past among majority of the nations. What are your best expectations for future (please be realistic)? Do you foresee any danger to mankind? What about the environment and the animals? What about our moral values? Lastly sum up: will it be a better world or worse?

Answer 1

Great quesiton Roy, and for once, there seem to be a few thoughtful answers.

Lifespans in the first world will increase 50% due to payoff of research in genetics.

Nanotech will probably be some kind of a joke (remember the flying car?), though we will have multiple electronic implants.

We will have interactive wireless entertainment customized to our own preferences. Protheses for the disabled will transform their lives; very few 1st world people will be blind or deaf. We will have a permanent research station on Mars.

In the next 100 years, a regional nuclear war seems likely. Maybe India and Pakistan, maybe Israel and Iran, maybe South vs. North Korea.

We will have used up all the oil in the next 20-50 years, though there will be plenty of coal. We will have frantic research and spending to solve global warming. People will travel less and telecommute more. There will be multiple competing repacement technologies to compensate for the lack of oil. Plastics will become rare.

Global warming and other habitat destruction will have caused extinction of 20-50% of the species on earth. Fishing as a commercial activity will have ceased. Hurricanes and other extreme weather will become more devastating and prevalent.

Miami will spend massively to build dikes and become an island. New Orleans and other poorer cities will be abandonded. Bangladesh will have mass refuge problems due to related flooding. Shifts in rainfall will make some areas fertile while turning others into desert. The US will become a net food importer as parts of the Midwest dry up.

Due to massive pollution and refuge problesm, lifespans in 3rd world will decrease. (Already there is a "brown cloud" over southern Asia.)

If China can avoid accidents and catastrophes, it will be the #1 economic power in the world. US, the world's most flexible economy, will be #2 but will be hurt by losing its status as the world's reserve currency. Continued brain drain from other countries will compensate for poor American education.

Some Muslim fundamentalist will take over a country and start a short-lived war to create an Islamic Caliphate, but it will eventually collapse under it's own backwardness after attacking one or more neighboring countries.

Terrorists will make a few spectacular attacks, but have no real impact on the first world. They will make some city uninhabitable via a dirty bomb, while killing 20K people and shortening the lives of another half million.

We will have a few plagues of impressive proportions, but epidemic fighting techniques in the first world means that most deaths will occur in the 3rd world while first world is basically inconvenienced and frightened for six months.

Africa will remain an economic basket case. Much of the Middle East will remain repressive and backwards. After the oil runs out, Saudia Arabia will revert to a nomadic herdsman lifestyle. Cuba undergo an economic miracle after Castro dies. North Korea, if it avoids war, will collapse when Kim Jong Il dies and become the next Somalia. China will invade to stop refugees and set up a buffer state.

Moral values: Americans will become more like Europe, e.g. less religious, but relatively unchanged morally. 3rd World dictators will continue to use US as a whipping boy to take their people's minds off of their problems. US voters will contribute to the problem by voting for more actors and unprincipled poll-pleasers with their own Karl Rove's.

To sum it up, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Overall, I'd say worse on average

Answer 2

Right now the world is ruled by money. This won't change for a long long time. Technology is going to transform the world very rapidly. People will live longer, and stay young-looking for much longer. The greatest threat to mankind right now is viruses like avian flu and HIV, but in about 100 to 150 years bionanotech will make all infectious disease harmless, so then our main concern will be Nuclear war or possible nanotech war. I think we are becoming more of a commercialized race, so our values will continue to be centered around obtaining wealth and material posessions. It will be a wondrous world in the future, and there will be a lot more people that are living longer, so we may become wiser because of that.

Answer 3

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Great quesiton Roy, and for once, there seem to be a few thoughtful answers.

Lifespans in the first world will increase 50% due to payoff of research in genetics.

Nanotech will probably be some kind of a joke (remember the flying car?), though we will have multiple electronic implants.

We will have interactive wireless entertainment customized to our own preferences. Protheses for the disabled will transform their lives; very few 1st world people will be blind or deaf. We will have a permanent research station on Mars.

In the next 100 years, a regional nuclear war seems likely. Maybe India and Pakistan, maybe Israel and Iran, maybe South vs. North Korea.

We will have used up all the oil in the next 20-50 years, though there will be plenty of coal. We will have frantic research and spending to solve global warming. People will travel less and telecommute more. There will be multiple competing repacement technologies to compensate for the lack of oil. Plastics will become rare.

Global warming and other habitat destruction will have caused extinction of 20-50% of the species on earth. Fishing as a commercial activity will have ceased. Hurricanes and other extreme weather will become more devastating and prevalent.

Miami will spend massively to build dikes and become an island. New Orleans and other poorer cities will be abandonded. Bangladesh will have mass refuge problems due to related flooding. Shifts in rainfall will make some areas fertile while turning others into desert. The US will become a net food importer as parts of the Midwest dry up.

Due to massive pollution and refuge problesm, lifespans in 3rd world will decrease. (Already there is a "brown cloud" over southern Asia.)

If China can avoid accidents and catastrophes, it will be the #1 economic power in the world. US, the world's most flexible economy, will be #2 but will be hurt by losing its status as the world's reserve currency. Continued brain drain from other countries will compensate for poor American education.

Some Muslim fundamentalist will take over a country and start a short-lived war to create an Islamic Caliphate, but it will eventually collapse under it's own backwardness after attacking one or more neighboring countries.

Terrorists will make a few spectacular attacks, but have no real impact on the first world. They will make some city uninhabitable via a dirty bomb, while killing 20K people and shortening the lives of another half million.

We will have a few plagues of impressive proportions, but epidemic fighting techniques in the first world means that most deaths will occur in the 3rd world while first world is basically inconvenienced and frightened for six months.

Africa will remain an economic basket case. Much of the Middle East will remain repressive and backwards. After the oil runs out, Saudia Arabia will revert to a nomadic herdsman lifestyle. Cuba undergo an economic miracle after Castro dies. North Korea, if it avoids war, will collapse when Kim Jong Il dies and become the next Somalia. China will invade to stop refugees and set up a buffer state.

Moral values: Americans will become more like Europe, e.g. less religious, but relatively unchanged morally. 3rd World dictators will continue to use US as a whipping boy to take their people's minds off of their problems. US voters will contribute to the problem by voting for more actors and unprincipled poll-pleasers with their own Karl Rove's.

To sum it up, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Overall, I'd say worse on average

Answer 4

What a question on Christmas morn. I believe coal,gas and electricity will be in limited supply. This will vastly separate the rich from the poor. The human race is to intelligent to perish,it will get bloody. We don't role over and just pass away all that easily.Only the strong will survive. Of course that all could be thrown out the window if we get hit by a meteor blocking the sun from the planet and all dependent upon the sun will perish. Of course we can still "believe" that it was gods will.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

I think there will be no contact of person to person because everyone will sit in their home and do the work ( computer based jobs and other works including robot) people will work with robots and computer. Robot will be managing human in the beginning and may take over step by step because people who make robots will give more power to them than human.

No human love. you can see animals only in zoo. most of the world area will be converted into buildings and industries.Population may be reduced much due to no love.

Finally the world without love exist. Without love means sometimes create hatred and becomes a separate world. There will be a war between good and evil.

Answer 7

I think that history will play out as it always has in cyclical fashion. Empires and great nations rise, dominate a region culturally, politically and militarily and then suddenly fall. Then a "dark age" is ushured in where the past technological gains are lost to knowledge and then people slowly rebuild. A new nation or region takes center stage and it begins all over again.

Answer 8

It will be definetely worse. Humans are cruel, vain and selfish and that's why they are humans. You think in the 22th entury the planet will be better? The way global ecology is now, the odds areagainst it. We better get a hi-tech spaceship and go live n another planet. Destroy that one too, then move to another one etc.
It would be good if robots of the future realize this and kill humaniti. If not, it will be like a disease for the galaxy.

Answer 9

We've got lots of information in the book of Revelations. For example a "mountain will fall into the sea" -- how's that for a giant hit by a meteorite, and the seas and fresh water will be polluted. There's a lot of other interesting predictions in this book.

Personally I think there will be regional nuclear conflict. The most intelligent brains devoid of Godly wisdom will continue to do stupid things like wage war, brainwash their children with lies, and continue to kill innocent people.

I think people will live longer, if not with replacement parts, the Asians will become the dominant world power.

Answer 10

GOD doesn't much like the way we have become so disrespectful of his laws and order he has set forth for us to live by so he will allow us to be disciplined. You know GOD does things so not to let the world know he is doing it so we can go on believing he doesn't exist and living the me first way of life. When the world has a major earth quake for example is just explained away as the earth did it and we must find out why. The hand of GOD is very patient and has been still but soon the earth will shake and quake and many bad things are going to happen just to try to get our attention but that too will be explained away so get ready and hold on tight and by the way what flavor of shake and bake do you like?