1) Sounds unlikely. Clap Your Hands If You Believe does not apply to reality.
2) Sounds fine.
3) Sounds unreasonable because there are far too many emotions involved, so we're probably never going to do it entirely logically. Though if you go with this anyway, think about how marriage works/doesn't work (and the latter is more interesting) if reproduction isn't as enshrined as it used to be. (Do the children belong to just the mother? Might this be unfair?)
4/5) What about cyber-enhanced sports? After all, not all modifications are easily removable.
edited 25th Feb '11 8:33:31 AM by Yej
I like your idea on cybernetics, most probably will spawn a new subculture either similare to bikers or punks, of course you could spawn something completely new out of the concept of cybernetic implants.
Are there Aliens in your setting? If there are, you might consider racial interaction between aliens and humans.
Yej: It doesn't matter what's real or not. What matters is people want to be able to be recognized as certain things. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant.
As for the pregnancy thing, it's not like the world woke up one day and went full test tubes. At first it was just a possibility, became a business, became the popular choice, became part of the insurance, and soon people saw it as just as emotionally fulfilling (it would be possible to have the child share half the genetics of the parents, or 2/3s if it was so desired) because less and less people were seeing it as something horrible.
Marriage would be a bit of an Artifact Title, but would still happen for financial and instinctual reasons.
Heartless: I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle aliens. I think I'm either gonna have them A) exist, but mostly only cells and primitive creatures have been found, B) exist but are so far away and so incompatible that usually the only time one would come into contact with them is if you had been working in the right department for about 20+ years of just studying and learning, or C) never say if they exist or not, and just have it be irrelevant to the plot.
I mostly don't want to focus on them because if I did, I'd want to really make them actually alien. No human faces, nothing. And combining that with the already hefty task of making a futuristic society is just flat out daunting. If I did it, I'd probably do it separately, or when I had this world more established.
Some other thoughts n' stuff:
- To replace oil and stuff, most things will be run by magnets, for mostly rule of cool reasons involving levitating.
- Some skyscrapers will be made up of 'chunks' separated from each other by said levitating, and they will be able to rotate and switch spots much like a rubiks cube. While having its functions, it is mostly a glamour thing for the rich.
- Said magnetization is almost everywhere, even in the supposedly 'country' area, and is usually taken for granted, as cell phone service is.
- Skin dye will have become more commonplace, being seen as the next type of hair dye, where most people will accept it without question, but there will be some bias.
edited 25th Feb '11 8:48:23 AM by MrAHR
Read my stories!But seriously, this does rather automatically position your story sufficienltly far to the soft end of Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness that it blurs the line between Sci-Fi and fantasy; if you're OK with that, then there's nothing wrong with that.
edited 25th Feb '11 1:04:22 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV
Plausible = good, doesn't it?
Also, I don't know much about science, so I wouldn't ever plan on explaining how something works. It'd prolly be something along with magnets, but yeah, science will be vague and softish.
Read my stories!@OP: Like what you're rolling with there. A couple of suggestions...
- Since the world's much more permissive than ours is, the fringe element in society would be really out there by today's standards. I know you can be perverse...let it run wild when coming up with stuff and use medical advancements to make the slightly implausible plausible.
- Perhaps the mainstream conservatives end up being an example of a wacky fringe element?
- problems with cybernetic addiction instead of what people usually do with it?
All I got now, I'll post more if I have any other ideas.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~If you want to look at polygamy, look at The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, that has 'line marriages' (man marries woman, marries younger man, marries younger woman, etc. can be kept up for hundreds of years) and 'clan marriages' (a bunch of women marries a bunch of men).
What sort of cybernetics are we looking at BTW?
edited 25th Feb '11 4:29:46 PM by MattII
Immortality: if cybernetics and other Transhuman technologies are possible immortality really shouldn’t be that difficult, the moral and social impact however is an interesting question.
"If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you." —Don MarquisBread: Yeah. Good idea.
Drunk: ...I guess it's a good thing that trope never occured to me, eh?
Matt: Well, I think most cybernetics would be strictly regulated. I decided that weapons are gonna have much more serious regulations and bans on them (It's not that I'm pro or anti gun or anything, I just want a reason to justify laser swords being carried by the police force...
)
So most cybernetics that can do harm would be top notch gov't stuff that you really can't get your hands on.
Then you have the basic 'it's like bone only metal' which would probably not be controversial, but be unreliableish, some people accept it, some people reject it, stuff like that. Obviously these would have certain benefits, but no 'shoots out laser beams' or anything, and most people just opt to get cloned * replacement body parts, due to the upkeep needed on something like that.
Then you get the people that just put litebrites along their jawline cause it looks badass.
Generic Guy: Still not sure how I want to handle that. I think I'm edging to extended life, but still death. Same reason as the aliens. If I did it, it would be a story on its own, and be a distraction from the rest of it.
edited 25th Feb '11 6:06:32 PM by MrAHR
Read my stories!

So, gays in a century or two will be as accepted completely, and there is no point in assuming otherwise.
So, what type of morals, values and whatnot would be challenged in the future?
So far, I have
Any other possibilities or suggestions?
Read my stories!