I actually doubt anything too drastically changing to the human consiousness will happen in this generation, technologically. Teleportation seems quite a ways away, computer A.I may happen but it'll be rare and probably be viewed as a morally grey morass of "does it count"s. Should robots have the right to vote?
Socially, however, I can see some big changes. The advent of the internet has allowed nations to become even tighter than before. This will undoubtably spark quite a few wars, possibly even a new world war, but I don't think anything apocalyptic will happen. But now people have friends all over the world.
Like here. We all know eachother, and would likely consider eachother friends if we were in person. So if two of our countries get in a war, what happens? Do we just stop being friends? I doubt that's going to happen often, so I think the net result is a cultural melding, a giant worldwide stage where all sorts of people from different cultures come and speak to eachother, a exchange of ideas on a scale that could never have happened before. If the human race unites, the Internet or it's descendants will be the catalyst. I'm sure of it.
Something awkward is going to happen if we don't unite and start to explore space, though. Lets say that we can now fly at FTL speeds, but all the powers here today are still separate. Using Russia and America as examples, how would earth be viewed? With a planetary scale view of things, how would a planet where each nation has a certain point on the surface function? Would Russia/America simply move their capital elsewhere? Some sort of New Moscow, New Washington? Would they invade Earth on a planetary scale, reducing their own homeworld to dust? How would they explain that to say, Uganda, a nation which has colonized no more than a few asteroids in the asteroid belt?
What the sam hell do you do with Earth?
I move that we declare it official territory of the U.N. and make it neutral, but there are a few countries I think wouldn't quite respect that, especially if it's the early period where only the rich countries have extra-solar colonies.
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On a similar but unrelated note, do you think that any bodies in the solar system are really viable for habitableization and not just bubble-colonies and a few shipyards. I could see mars as being used mainly for mining without disturbing the environmentalists, Demios could be a major shipyard, and Luna would probably be best utilized as a sort of jump-point from Earth to elsewhere, maybe with a few colonies to help soften the effects of over-population.
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Topic: Will the old people of the future be as technophobic as the old people now? (Read 43488 times)