2050

the end of the game is 40 years away and I was thinking on all the things that changed in the world in the last 40 years (and all the things that didn't change)so I wonder how would the world really look like by then.

Discuss

edited 8th May '11 2:41:17 AM by nnokwoodeye

We will look back on the persistence of the baby boomer's influence as their generation dies off and become mythical creatures. People born near the millennium will now control the world, empowered by the infinite knowledge of our interconnected societies via the internet. Such a postmodern life will have them considering seriously ideas that went stagnant during the cold war because they never grew up during a time of modernism, a time of idealized visions of a shiny, bright future. Such a generation hopefully will avoid manipulating itself with such self-flattery.

Living in the twilight of the 20th century, the effects of which has permanently altered oceans, forests, mountains, species, and drained energy sources, our future selves will have to contend with the limitations of the planet, and slow down our population growth or possibly extend into outer space because the world is no longer an infinitely deep resource as we thought it once was. We will be cleaning up trash for centuries to come. Alternative energies (like solar and wave) and methods (recycling) will be the energy paradigm of the 21st century just as oil was during the last. Private space travel will enter a golden age assuming costs go down.

Power will shift. Third world countries will become empowered with technology faster than first world countries did in their history, and the markets will find themselves having to change as the social inequality chasm becomes smaller with improvements in technology and life. Perhaps Africa will be the new China.

The world will surely be more global, more intimate. And that means an increased amount of nostalgia and awareness of people's identity and cultural treasures. A boom in historical landmarks, cataloging, and museums is to be expected as communities die off.

The 20th century saw more advances in 100 years than the human race achieved during the last 15,000 years. In the next 50 years, we will eclipse that advance in half the time. The future will be here sooner than we expect, in unexpected ways.

edited 8th May '11 1:38:01 AM by victorinox243

I guess I will experience the singularity, even if it has already happened.
Those who died of old age back in the 60-70ths had experience their entire world changing, far beyond anything any other generations had seen before. Those who are over a hundred years old have seen the entire society change, and heard rumors about the first world war.
I am born in 1992, and I guess I will live to be a lot more than a hundred years old due medical advancment. If I am lucky, we will beat aging at some point while I still live.
But what will change? That will be the amusing part, because I has soo far lived to see that Internet moved from a niece to something entirely mainstream, and I have seen some decent revolutions in tech, and I am still quite young.

The endgame of Civilization is pretty diffuse in most versions, but there's a few which try to cover it.

We'll see how wrong the are.

edited 8th May '11 10:14:16 AM by blueharp

I wonder if WW3 would finally happen, or if the western culture would still be dominant and if not what would it mean for human rights and the so called "international law".

"End Game" is apparently a Canadian show about a chess player who solves crimes. Not whatever you're referring to.

edited 8th May '11 9:22:31 AM by ThatHuman

I wasn't linking to anything on purpose, just referring to the endgame of the Civilization franchise, which tends to be quite vague.

If Civilization had any relation to real life, the Aztecs would have discovered Fusion Power 1000 years ago and be hanging out on Alpha Centauri right now.

edited 8th May '11 10:15:34 AM by storyyeller

Well, if Ray Kurzweil is right, the endgame is actually in 2045.

The last 40 years have been one of stagnation and decline for the 1st/2nd world. After the extreme progress between 1850 and 1950, becoming mired helplessly in the Cold War shifted concerns from sweeping technological and economic progress to largely personal (illusionary) social and cultural progress. Even following The Great Politics Messup, people were so heavily wrapped in egotistical and solipsist triviality that they were unable to become conscious of their own apathy, or of the fact that the external causes they had abandoned for internal ones still held as much influence over them as ever.

I agree with victorinox that the 3rd world, will decide the future. Even though I disagree with you on the matter of their present and future self-determination (China is basically a puppet of 1st world multinational corporations, IMO,) whether their increasing importance results in increased living standards (and, thus, a population with enough idle time to become politically aware, organize, and seize democratic power, also using resources more wisely as democracies tend to) or an unprecedented source of wealth for an age of boundless tyranny and environmental abuse, will be the big question.

@storyyeller: The ancient Greeks invented steam engines, mechanical computers, and democratic government, among numerous other things, two millennia before the Victorian Era. Probably a poorly managed civ that got knocked out of competition early in the game.