In 2080 when Liam will have to celebrate his 83rd
birthday he will be still younger than my father is today. When my father was
born in 1923 his father tended the field with horses. Tractors, cars, radios,
telephones were invented but just began to become common goods. Europe had just
finished a horrible war and although everybody had resolved that no such war
should ever occur again, the second world war was only 16 years away.
When Liam will be great grandfather, what will the world
look like then? It is common knowledge that the rate of change accelerates
almost exponentially, predictions over 79 years seem a very bold and
presumptuous undertaking. But watching Liam keeping a close eyes on his cars
and trucks while he eats breakfast, I couldn’t resist to wonder, if there still
will be cars and buses in 2080.
So here we go:
In 2080 the world will finally have transformed entirely to
renewable energies, mostly solar. But energy also comes from transformations of
waste, foremost human waste. Except for the big cities people live off the grid
and create electricity from hydrogen cells which are fueled by the sun. There
will be 18 billion people populating the earth, almost 2.5 times what it was
when Liam was born. There is little hunger but water had first become a
precious commodity before desalination was used so widespread that the water
crisis had been overcome.
Nobody seems to eat animals anymore; killing animals for
food or even raising animals for food seems barbaric now. Meat like processed
food is generated with cell cultures and genetic engineering. Most countries
have dissolved and instead large metropolitan conglomerations are governed on
their own not so much by parliaments, kings, presidents or mayors but by task
forces, councils and numerous ad-hoc assemblies of people that solve a problem
and the dissolve. There are few elections but many procedures to vote issues up
and down on an almost daily basis.
Most people live in large metro areas but good
transportation has become less important since many products can be produced
locally or even on the premises with 3D printing, genetic cultures and virtual
depictions of faraway places and experiences. Places and people can be
encountered as holographic images including touch and smell sensations making
distant travel an exotic undertaking for the privileged or very adventurous.
There is still fascination with mobility, for sure and car like vehicles are
still sought after. They are propelled with solar fuel cells and small electric
motors directly in the wheels or small air jets. However, control of these
vehicles is almost entirely coordinated by electronic systems that couple
individual trips to a kind of train with very high speeds, the orchestration of
the movements follows the principles of emergence which is now very well
understood and has substituted all mechanical and linear thinking and science.
The uncertainty principle just discovered after my father had been born has
become the modus operandi of all science, multiverses have been proven to exist
and it is generally assumed that universes expand, then contract and then
expand again in an endless cycle. Many problems are analysed in far more than
four dimensions and each child can understand the idea of nested dimensions and
the holographic principle.
Along with these scientific changes religion underwent
substantial transformation from teleological and theocratic models to an
adoration of phase changes, transformations and emergence, a kind of natural
religion in which science and religion are very close and not at odds.
Medicine has entirely changed from the plumbing and cutting
approach of the 19th and 20th century to one of
programming and renewal. Any damaged tissue can be grown back in any part of
the body except the brain, but here progress is on the horizon as well. Most
babies are not naturally conceived nor are they born by mothers. Women became
fully equal to men by having the gestation occur in devices that allow
interaction with the growing fetus almost as well as in the woman’s body,
except the interaction is now available also to men. The main reason for this
development had been less the liberation aspect as more the fact that the heads
of the newborns had become larger and larger until birth has become too risky
for too many women. There are always new
diseases appearing that have not found a counter program yet, but generally
embryos will be genetically coded so that they are immunized against all known
defects and with the most desirable features that parents like to see.
Worldwide a hybrid race of part Asian, part Indian part African has been most
popular, medium dark skin, brown or blue eyes, smooth dark hair. Humans can
direct all kinds of devices and tools with their brainwaves without lifting a
finger. The attempt to run computers this way as well failed since the humans
seem to never be able to concentrate long enough to exact complicated commands
via brainwaves, only short and simple ones. But in the reverse, computers can
instill brainwaves and initiate direct action this way. Humans seem to be
omniscient this way since they have full access to almost all available data in
their thought processes to a point that one would be hard-pressed to tell the
difference between human and device intelligence. Still, there are huge
differences how adept people are with their tools and differences in
intelligence and success are still as noticeable as ever.
People still die of old age in spite of all attempts to
prolong life. Somehow the average life expectancy stalled out around the age of
90 and seems to be stuck there, no matter all scientific progress.
The division of life into childhood, adolescence, adulthood,
of learning, working, retirement has entirely been transformed into a continuum
of work, research, learning and enjoyment that begins as young as 10 and ends
often only near death. Very young people
often have the best ideas and are fully integrated into the cycle of life
including decision making and production of things. Little time is spent on
basic sustenance, most issues and problems pertain to organizational matters.
Almost everybody enjoys and practices the arts, creative writing and various
forms of music. The materialism of the early 21st century seems very
uneducated now and so does the simple pursuit of money. In fact, real money is
absent from daily life and even in virtual form it is rarely used. Instead there is a virtual bartering
system in which desirable items are directly obtained as payment.
The creation of alternative realities out of whole cloth in
which an individual can readily transpose him or herself is a favorite pastime
and reduces the need for travel which is limited to the well to do and the
privileged because it is difficult to obtain the necessary mobility tickets for
the surface or the air passages, even though large airships transport up to
1000 people at a time in nuclear propelled air vehicles that travel in higher
altitudes utilizing gravitational forces once they have reached travel
altitudes.
The earth climate had shifted drastically and what appeared
to be apocalyptic around the time when Liam was 25 years old. The gulf stream had
suddenly tipped and whole climate zones abruptly shifted with terrible flooding
in some areas, aridity and freezing conditions in others that had just gotten
used to mild climates. But then engineers received the green light to use
methods to capture large amounts of carbon and other greenhouse gases in huge
ocean algae sinks and a series of large underground graviton accelerations that
shifted the earth axis slightly. Thus the climate was finally corrected and now
almost resembles conditions in the 18th century before the
industrial revolution.
Due to the failure of making devices write directly from
men’s thoughts (due to the lack of concentration already mentioned) pens like
the old fashioned pencils became again the standard mode of writing. Just that
there is no need for paper and that the pens can complete words and sentences
as soon as the writer has established some key words and store the entire
message instantly in whatever places are designated including communication
receivers in far away places even as far away as Mars where several colonies
have been erected for those who are bored by living on earth.
And as so often before, history seems to repeat itself. On
Mars unfettered materialism is reported to have led to degradation of the
environment and human settlements push ever further west on that planet.
Liam looks out of the
60th floor of his New York apartment. Sheer nostalgia brought him
back to the place of his childhood. The East River glimmers in the red glow of
the sinking sun. The bio-mimicry skin of the building will soon turn the
transparent windows into a solid for the night for better insulation. He looks
at his wife who is already asleep. Sleep and love are still the two best things
in life, even in 2080.
(Initially written on March 15, 2011, slightly modified on
12/8/11)
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