RE: Futurology - What will society look like in 2040?
Thanks for such post, I crave for anticipations. However I have a much more pessimistic vision. Therefore you sound to me very optimistic, maybe utopic :).
Especially about two things, climate change and UBI.
Climate: of course you do mention that when reaching a toll, could happen that we finally react, albeit indeed probably too late. This will have already lead to unforeseen, catastrophical and unreversible major crisis of various forms. This might even lead to impossibilities to continue important scientific researches. In a world dominated by corporations with their elites living cut off in ivory towers, I think it's very unlikely that any global action would be taken.
Ubi: I have a hard time seeing such (social) tax/law/system like the UBI to be put in place in, again, a world ruled by ultra-supra-riches who I cannot imagine suddenly starting to have more interest towards the population than today. I could only say that revolution(s) could initiate changes, but I don't believe it can happen in the shape we know, especially with a society that will be (is) constantly hypnotized by extremely advanced forms of entertainment, consumerism and legal drugs. Not questionning anything.
To prevent riots and other forms of revolts, we could see a re-apperance of public and bloody games like the Roman's circus as a valve for an angry, bored and driveless society.
Also I find fusion power and longer life expectation available of commerciable for (almost) every one, rather utopic. So long everything will be driven by profit, people's life expectancy and nature won't be a priority.
So yeah I do agree with most of the rest of your post, just with a slightly duller veil. Lots of stuff I'd like it to happen, some really not :D I dig a lot the passages about the future of cryptos because not much sci-fi stories had foreseen such revolutions (that could be the one) and it's a fresh factor to anticipations.
In addition, I'd also see more wars, more obscurantism, intelligence levels lowering, disparition of good orthograph, big parts of the planet extremelly polluted, unliveable,.. oh well, the usual dystopic, I stop there!
Well, I synthesized to the minimum, I guess we could always find other arguments!
Thanks again.
@haedre Thank you for reading and I'm glad you enjoyed and commented! :D
I appreciate some of your feedback and will make some edits to include some points you mentioned that I missed and let me counter some of your points that I may disagree with to an extent and explain why:
Climate Change: I don't think I emphasized this enough and will go back and make edits. I think that we would have caused irreparable damage to our environment, polar regions, glacier meltings, marine ecosystem devastation, air pollution so bad (people have to wear hazmat gas mask respirators), forests, etc. by this time. I also think private sector will be leading the change (not out of prerogative to do the right thing ofc, but bc there won't be any more oil and gas pumping out of the rigs since we would have consumed almost the entirety of these nonrenewable energy resources by then) because they know they have no other choice and need to create renewable energy, smart grids for the new smart cities that start getting built by this time. There will be alot of authorities from both government and private sector driven by AI intelligence and innovations to make major infrastructural investments and changes to the new clean energy economy.
Resource Wars: I also think that you are right and that there will be resource wars fought over water and perhaps food during this time. I think because of human consumption and global warming-caused droughts, these basic factors will become scarce, but I also believe we will start working on very innovative solutions in 2040 to solve these problems by 2050. These innovative solutions will be the desalination of Oceanic or Salt Water into Fresh Drinking Water and the biotech-agricultural industry will start producing artificial or Genetically Modified meat, vegetables, fruit, grains, etc for the food shortage.
Economics - Now that I'm thinking more critically about the economics (I was thinking a little more abstractly when I was writing the article) of how the future will play out in terms of money, crypto and UBI - it's very hard for me to wrap my head around and I must admit I am getting a bit confused because of the complexity of it all. I am not sure if the unemployment rates I provided were a little extreme but I do imagine us eventually hitting unemployment rates like that in the near term so long as the singularity happens and humans do not merge with robots by this point (pre-transhumanism). I believe that employment will start to surge once the transhumanism movement fully takes off, but this will be towards the end of the century by 2080 or 2090 because transhumanism implants will not be available to the mass population nor will it be a perfect science by this time (there will be volunteers however, willing to experiment with themselves in this matter) because of the risks and complications involved but moreso because acceptance levels of transhumanism will not take off by this time. I can not anticipate as of now what the nature of the currency will be, but I imagine we might have a few cryptocurrencies (I do not know if they will be centralized or decentralized - this depends on how government intervention plays out). Then again if humans are mostly unemployed and if wealth inequality is so great then perhaps money will not have any meaning as most people will possess very little. This depends on how fast automation and the singularity play out and how quickly after we adapt by resorting to Transhumanism.
Economics and money is the most complex factor that I am really uncertain of what could happen. I do know one thing for sure however, and that is that we will need to rethink our economy and how the population is taken care of as well as how resources are accounted for. This is why I believe by 2080, capitalism and current models of economics will not apply.
Trans-humanism: I believe that towards the latter end of the century, trans-humanism will enable humans to start working again, because they will be millions of times smarter with their new cyborg and AI implants, and they will be on the same level as AI. I also think that "work" and the economy will be defined much differently by 2080 or 2090 then it is now, and people will all have resources to support themselves without work. In fact by this time I think that capitalists will not be in the picture because they will have been either assassinated by the rebel movements or governments who saw them as a threat. For now, humans will have more purpose, and since they are as smart, energetic and resourceful due to their transhuman properties, they will work together to preserve and proliferate humanity. In fact they will be seeking to fully colonize the moon and begin trips to Mars to begin it's terraformation. They will also begin other galactic missions and ventures into deep space. Asteroid Mining will start during this period as well as water extraction missions on Mars, Venus, Neptune as well as the moons of Saturn and Jupiter.
Geopolitics & Governance: I also believe that geopolitics will become ever more complicated and that most nations will be under one mega government branch, which might be the United Nations. There will also be alot of changes to borders and some countries may merge with others becoming bigger or divide with differing ideas in a rapidly advancing tech-driven world. There may be geopolitical wars and civil wars around power struggles in addition to resource wars.
What do you think about blockchain technology for voting in a kind of direct-democracy? If by any chance people get a bit more responsibilised, educated (and I am not just talking about learning how to make profit) and involved in the society, blockchain would allow such thing (that wouldn't in today's centralized and rather opaque system).
I think it has the power to do so and I hope it does bro. I really want a better world for humans but the stark reality is that right now society is not as progressive and forward thinking as us steemians want it to be.
But, I am really grateful I found this community. I never blogged before or shared my beliefs on all this sort of stuff. And I am finding true connection with my beliefs, with yours and other steemians who believe in decentralization and who are deeply dissatisfied with the current system and the direction we are heading in. It was all kind of pent up before, but now I have a medium to voice my concerns and find like-minded people from across the world who share the basic principles of PLUR.
I hope this platform takes off along with decentralization within this decade, cause we really need some change. And we need to inspire others to start thinking much more open-mindedly and progressively. I believe with blockchain tech, we have the means for a direct-democracy. Now it is just the attitude of the silent majority to set things in motion.