What is ahead?

[FESFES]

Originally posted by Melbourne

Originally posted by FESFES
we must all destroy druke befor he takes over the world!!!!!!!!!

Why? There is nothing wrong with setting your goals high.  I admire Druke for being so bold as to attempt world domination, I on the other hand would be happy to rule my own country.  You know Druke, I could assist you in your plans and all that I request is a little province for me to rule with an iron fist.

well, I said that because I plan on taking over the world my self and I didn\'t wan\'t any competition

[kbilik]

In all these movies back tens of years ago our world is imaged with flying vehicles and robots,cities in space..don\'t forget the one colored uniforms and all the other jetson type qualities!

Well since we are hitting those years that have been predicted to be so futuristic in the past, and since none of it really has come true. Its our generations turn to predict the future years of society, cultures, environment, fashion, pop culture, entertainment, material objects and domination!

Predicting the future is hard business. You never know what kind of discoveries we might make, or how they will affect the world and progress. For the most part, people in the 50\'s didn\'t predict the internet (as far as I know) and didn\'t know the impact of discovering genetics (not even Francis Crick and James Watson knew what their discovery would lead to in terms of practical use).

What will the future be like? Good question. I think that the fields of nanotechnology, biotech, and computer technology will rapidly mature. Computers will keep getting faster - although the rate at which they do might hit a wall because you can\'t keep miniaturizing your components forever. But I\'m sure they will make up for this with different processes of making computers faster (not just shrinking transistor size and increasing frequency).

Also biotech is really advancing. We already know what the human genome consists of (might lead to pharmacogenomics  - custom drugs based on our DNA). But before we are to battle cancer and other diseases, we need to learn how proteins fold and how to interact/counteract and engineer them. So beyond genomics, there is a field called \"proteomics\" that will really influence the near future of medicine and treatments. Also look for

And if you thought genetic engineering was interesting, take a look at synthetic biology  (making life from scratch - or simple chemistry).

Anyway that\'s my opinion. I\'m sure the social conditions of the near future will be even harder to predict than the technology. Here are some sites that deal with the near future and how technology might advance.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=2
http://betterhumans.com/News/index.aspx
http://www.newscientist.com/
http://www.foresight.org/

[kbilik]

Sorry for the double post, but here\'s a link to the US National Nanotechnology Initiative . Just thought it would be relevant to the discussion as it refers to the \"next Industrial Revolution\". Many other countries like Japan have similar national programs.

Some more background here
http://www.cofc.edu/~physclub/clubpages/nanotech.html

Any other opinions?

[Syzerian]

The end of the world is based on perspective, it ends when you end

[druke]

Originally posted by Syzerian
The end of the world is based on perspective, it ends when you end

and yet persective beyond that, not when does my world end, \"the\" world, and you could go as far as saying that you dont spiritually beleive your world doesn\'t end when you die


but this is drifting to close to a touchy subject so lets stear clear

[kbilik]

I don\'t think human civilization will destroy itself any time soon. Of course there will always be wars and violence - that\'s just human nature. Keep in mind that the human population never decreased by more than 30% in history (even the black death didnt do that).

There are many potential conflicts ahead. Here are just two of them for now.

- For one, the problem with energy. The oil supply is said to be running out and peak shortly then decline. The change from fossil fuels to alternatives will have a big impact. There\'s research into hydrogen fuel cells and plasma fusion reactors  for near future energy demands. Farther down the line, highly efficient solar cells (enhanced to 60% efficiency) will need to do the job. After all, the earth recieves a thousand or so terawatts of solar power from the sun at the surface (1,410 W/m^2).


-Fresh water and food. With population set to increase to 10 billion in about 30 years, this will get more important. This is where nanotech and biotech can come in handy. Nanotech in the process of catalyzing and filtering sea water undergoing reverse osmosis and making it drinkable. Biotech will have to take care of the food problem by GM or other more reliable methods (even though there is a lot of opposition).

Plenty more problems would come up - some that we couldn\'t imagine today. Others would just fade away or become lesser.