What do you think the 24th Century will REALLY be like?

[Lazarus]

Just a random thought for a Friday afternoon, what do people think the world of the twenty-third or twenty-forth century actually be like?

Just as the setting of Space 1999 came and went, the setting of SeaQuest and Blade Runner are rapidly approaching, we will eventually reach the years when Star Trek is set.

With the year when Cochrane launches the Pheonix only half a century away, clearly we're don't seem to be on course to create faster-than-light propulsion of any kind - warp as described in Star Trek would appear to be impossible, but other avenues such as creating a wormhole or folding space are no more than interesting theories at this point.

So what predictions do people have for how the Star Trek era will pan out in reality? Will there even be a human population by then or will we have blown ourselves up or destroyed the world through environmental damage?

What are people's opinions?

 

[Hambone]

Damn dirty apes will be in charge.

 

[Tomalak]

In the West we'll be like the humans in Wall-E. It will be interesting to see how everyone else has managed.

 

[NIUPonyBoy]

There be no more people as exhaling CO2 will be a crime and thusly outlawed.

 

[apenpaap]

This is all asuming we do not obliterate ourselves in nuclear war before that time:
I highly doubt we will actually go faster then light. Though I think we will have discovered extraterrestial life by then, I doubt we will actually have had contact with them.
I think we will have sent probes to the closest stars by the 24th century, but I doubt humans will actually have visited them by then. The planets are a different matter though, and I think all planets and large moons (Except Venus) will have permanent inhabitants. Maybe we will have started terraforming Mars, but we will definatly not have come far with it yet.
As for Earth, if we haven't obliterated ourselves with nuclear war it seems almost inevitable that it would be a political entity. Considering how morals have advanced over the centuries, I think Trek's utopian Earth may not be very far from the truth. Though I don't think money will actually be obsolete by then, I think we will actually have come a lot closer to Trek's utopian socialistic paradise.

 

[ST20133]

Hopefully robot wives will be cheap and effective.

 

[Hambone]

Hopefully robot wives will be cheap and effective.

And plentiful.

 

[Forbin]

Dark Ages. We're heading that way now - anti-technology feelings, ennui regarding space exploration, creationism attempting to shout down real science, lesser religious extremists running governments and extreme religious extremists trying to blow everything up.

We're fucked.

 

[Strider]

Dark Ages. We're heading that way now - anti-technology feelings, ennui regarding space exploration, creationism attempting to shout down real science, lesser religious extremists running governments and extreme religious extremists trying to blow everything up.

We're fucked.

..breeders and their nasty crotch spawn! :shakesfist:

 

[Pemmer Harge]

We're not going to develop FTL travel, we just have to wait till the 22nd century when the Centauri sell us the technology

Seriously, though, we'll all wear tin foil clothes and live in cities on the moon. And there won't be roads any more, since we'll use our jetpacks to get everywhere.

 

[Jeri]

Not a clue; just like those dudes three hundred years ago had not a clue about us. It will be stranger than we can imagine.

 

[RandyS]

I'll let you know.

 

[USS Excelsior]

http://www.futuretimeline.net/24thcentury/2300-2349.htm

 

[Joby]

Not a clue; just like those dudes three hundred years ago had not a clue about us. It will be stranger than we can imagine.

This is what I was thinking, people 300, 400 years ago in the pre-industrial age couldn't have guessed where we would be today. The task of seriously predicting the real 24th century seems horribly daunting.

Even in the more recent "modern past", say the 1960s, the predictions for today were often silly and way off the mark. People often over predict things as well as under predict. Even 5 years ago, most people thought the day America finally had a black or non-white president would be set against a back drop of flying cars and trips to Mars, few figured it would happen so soon.

I would like to think there would be long and well established colonies on both the moon and Mars by the real 24th century. Somehow I suspect that one day the United States and Canada may merge, with Canada likely becoming more American then anything else. As awesome as interstellar travel could be, the sobering reality is that the distances between even our closest stars is so vast that it seems unlikey to happen unless we have FTL travel...which again seems unlikely. World governments may unify more, causing growing fear and xenophobia in the West....but these are more my predictions for 100 years into the future, not 300. I couldn't even began to guess where technology will be. Many things will be wildy different, many things will be astonishingly the same.

So basically....eh, I don't know. I mean 300 years is a lot. All I will say is that I know that humans will not be the perfect evolved people that Trek shows, we haven't changed much in 2,000 years so to expect us to in 300 is the stuff of fantasy.

 

[Biggshow]

^^^Unless we really go off the techno-human rails and start self-evolving. We may end up very Borg-like. Or like "Surrogates". I thought it was a "meh" movie but the basic premise is not all that unbelievable.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think we'll have permanant settlements on the Moon, Mars, and a space station near Jupiter by the 24th-Century, but that's about it. There may be something similar to Starfleet in the form of an "International Space Service" that will handle scientific, logistical, and emergency rescue missions, but I doubt we'll see armed spaceships and personnel unless law enforcement is needed too...

 

[T'Girl]

Dark Ages. We're heading that way now - anti-technology feelings, ennui regarding space exploration, creationism attempting to shout down real science, lesser religious extremists running governments and extreme religious extremists trying to blow everything up.

Most of the major scientific discoveries throughout history were made by people of faith. The changes I'd like to see would be sociological/cultural, not technical. Increase in both personal liberty and personal responsibility. Who wants a future with a population of billions of peons?

I believe our current list of problems like medical cost, environment, energy, transportation, will be behind us. Of course there will be a host of all new problems/crisis that we could never dream of.

I think we'll have permanant settlements on the Moon, Mars, and a space station near Jupiter by the 24th-Century, but that's about it. There may be something similar to Starfleet in the form of an "International Space Service" that will handle scientific, logistical, and emergency rescue missions, but I doubt we'll see armed spaceships and personnel unless law enforcement is needed too...

There will be one combined or two separate services. One very much like the America coast guard, another dealing with police matters, wherever people have gone in the past eventual some form of law enforcement has come into existence. As long as governments or collections of nations are the only players little will happen in term of major human colonization of space. When private groups, businesses and individuals start going in to the solar system in large numbers, they will need a guard-like organization. They will need other things as well, earth colonies will form into city-states and eventual into independent nations, independent of earth. How many will be completely sovereign? Mars may have one government or it surface could be covered with multiple nations, growing out of isolated early colony sites.

Many speak of a one world/one government earth, I'd like to see us move in the other direction. A earth with thousands, tens of thousands of nations. All sovereign. A homeland for every man. No big nations. When Will Riker spoke of his home, he said not the United States but Alaska. Kirk mentions only Iowa. Some nations would still belong to the UN, other to one of a dozen different organization of nations, or multiple memberships. Or none.

 

[WillsBabe]

Feudal-medieaval-agrarian society, with vague rumours and myths of a time when man could fly and of metal machines that ran faster than horses.

 

[Joby]

If you really think about it, successfully colonizing Mars is something that would take centuries, possibly even 1,000 years or more. It's a cold, harsh enviornment as is the moon. People would be living in bio-domes as the agonizly slow process of converting the planet to be more like Earth takes place.

 

[Tomalak]

Most of the major scientific discoveries throughout history were made by people of faith.

Well, it depends on society doesn't it? The only people who had time to devote to science were the rich, or the priests and monks with their stipends. Most people followed religion because that was what you did. There was less scepticism.

I believe most scientists in the Royal Society said they did not hold religious beliefs when asked a few years ago. I think it's slightly disingenuous to link scientific discovery with faith. It's also irrelevant to the original point, that creationist views come hand-in-hand with anti-intellectual sentiments.