What will a truly future society look like? - What happens when we get to space, man?

[Marco Fucko]

So whenever I do consume fiction, it's usually science fiction. I prefer looking forward to the future than dwelling on the past of fantasy (or something like that).

Now granted, there are many sci-fi civilizations modeled on our own present and past experiments, but there is a subset of science fiction that believes in a "hard" future where there are societies that we haven't really tried on a massive scale, these books justifying these civilizations with, what else, advanced technology.

Star Trek is a very famous standard example, wherein many if not all people's needs are taken care of. In the various series it is referenced that the Federation is past religion, corporate greed, racism, sexism, et cetera et cetera. The military is even mostly concerned with exploration and diplomacy, hard armed conflict being pretty rare.

Personally I don't buy that. I think if humans ever do get into space and start colonizing, it will at least start as more of an extension of the modern powerful governments. That is to say, representative government occupied by the wealthy or connected or charismatic, or a one party apparatus navigated by similar people (a la China).

I think if we do achieve sustainable energy and "free" food production, then the market economy will stay via marketing certain things as luxury or novelty experiences. Why eat bars or pills or goop when you're a higher up and can afford a nice juicy steak?

Furthermore, I think these few powerbrokers will turn against each other on the frontier if they run into each other. I can definitely see American Space Marines and PLA forces clashing directly, whether that be for planet territory/resources or even the support of the local aliens, if we run into any.

I don't think we'll ever see a truly globalized Earth, either. I think at maximum, the three states of 1984 seems more likely, and even that is sort of flagrantly ignoring cultural differences and alliances that have lead to our more complicated geopolitics.



So what do other Kiwis think? Will a future, space-faring civilization be more of the same? Will there be a hard shift due to advancement in tech rendering parts of our society redundant? Will the working class murder all the rich people before that happens due to being replaced by robots?

 

[millais]

le 56% globo homo civilization

 

[Damn Near]

smoldering craters, all life exterminated. better luck next time, losers

 

[Zersetzung]

I'm gonna fucking kill all you chimps before you have a chance to smear your shit over the rest of the universe

 

[Toucan]

If all goes well then hopefully Solarpunk will become a thing.
But hopefully whatever happens in the future it will be something new. something we havent ever seen before. Anything but this circling the drain and feasting on nostalgia that weve been doing for the past however many years.

 

[Chexxchunk]

Virtual experiences are going to become so compelling in the coming years that there's going to be massive crises centered around people not caring about/interacting with reality at all.

All the speculative VR fiction I've seen assumes there's some balance between people doing stuff online and offline, but I think that's just an artifact of people not wanting to see the real trend. Society will become radically restructured. Personally, I'm looking forward to it, but I wish everyone else would just go play Ultimate Frisbee or whatever regular people do so society can be robust.

 

[DK 900]

Telehealth, automated food and package delivery, online college, online banking etc. along with the appeal of VR means people will hardly ever leave their house. Fewer and fewer members of following generations will own cars as they rely on Uber or other ride sharing services. Automated vehicles will eventually replace these drivers, as well as truck drivers and other people in the transportation industry. Robots will put so many service and manufacturing workers out of a job that Universal Income will be required to keep the middle class afloat. Large-scale agriculture is already shockingly automated, and what can't be done by a machine will be imported from Mexico or some third world country. UI and other welfare means that even local bum can afford to purchase the latest technology pumped out of China and Silicon Valley. All of this results in people spending their entire lives alone and in their homes in front of a digital screen.

In my vision of the future, the majority of citizens in 1st world countries live in cubicle-sized apartments in chrome, windowless skyscrapers hooked to hygiene beds and VR systems. Until the planet explodes.
The End.

 

[1864897514651]

The Antichrist shall reign for three and a half years, and then the world shall be consummated. There is no "future" society, unless you are conjecturing a society that has not fulfilled the criteria for the end-times. In such a case, neo-Sodomite economics will apply, which is simply an economy that uses sin as its basis for production. But even in such a society, we are not allowed to pay taxes into these systems, so it is highly likely you will be kicked out of a "futuristic society" if it uses neo-Sodomite economics to sustain its activities. Even further, all Christians will be kicked out of the Antichrist "kingdom" for failure to bear the mark of the beast, so it ultimately does not matter if there is a future society. We will be ostracized from these societies for being the children of God.

I also would not look towards the future with envy. Not only is envy a sin, but it is highly unlikely that you would actually appreciate participation in a "futuristic society" with a bunch of sci-fi bullshit. There is nothing glamorous about living forever in the dark void of space without God as your ultimate end. You would have to make yourself out to be God to even be able to suffer through it—let alone actually tolerate it. Thanks be to God that His only begotten Son rose from the dead in fulfillment of the Scriptures. We have been saved by the passion, death, and resurrection of our God from such a miserable existence.

Have a holy Easter, and fuck your batshit crazy sci-fi fantasies.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

MechaMovieBob will rule with a titanium fist, his deific and magnificent intelligence safely perched in a body that perfectly emulates the ideal male form. Women will tremble at the thought of receiving his superior Mario-seed, and men will weep, knowing that they will forever be eclipsed by the least of his deeds.

This, my pathetic apes, is the future he's earned.

 

[Lemmingwise]

The Antichrist shall reign for three and a half years, and then the world shall be consummated.

Uhm.

Have a holy Easter, and fuck your batshit crazy sci-fi fantasies.

Okay. Why don't people ever take their own advice?

I think as exciting as it can be to think of the future and either the doom or utopia that will wait for us there, in practise it will be mundane and boring and most people won't fathom what is going on.

People don't realize we already have flying cars, but they're called helicopters and they're loud as fuck. People don't realize we already live in half of brave new world as a substantial part of the population is on "happiness" drugs.

When the space empire unfolds, people will be bitching about being stationed on mars again with its killer commute.

Or if we're reduced to the 500 million of the georgia guidestones, we'll be bitching about how few people there are to steal the oil from.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

I can understand the curiousity people develop but ultimately, why? We'll never live to see it. As we're about to check out 50-60 years from now, we'll get to see some snotty kid with a sci-fi smartphone that can call down a drone with a band aid when he fell in the park, as Amazon cover the skies in zeppelins.

It's like the evolution of computer graphics. You hit a few huge milestones, but after that, every step is minuscule, I'd like to think.

 

[Vorhtbame]

Have a holy Easter, and fuck your batshit crazy sci-fi fantasies.

Dude, chill. This is coming from someone who also figures it's all destined for the flames. There's nothing wrong with speculating about where things go in the meantime, so chillax all the way and rejoice in the Lord. He died for you as well as everyone else.

I can understand the curiousity people develop but ultimately, why? We'll never live to see it. As we're about to check out 50-60 years from now, we'll get to see some snotty kid with a sci-fi smartphone that can call down a drone with a band aid when he fell in the park, as Amazon cover the skies in zeppelins.

It's like the evolution of computer graphics. You hit a few huge milestones, but after that, every step is minuscule, I'd like to think.
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I'm curious why you think everything is ending specifically in that timeframe. Genuinely so, not even being snarky.

But I'm going to disagree with you about milestones. When you've hit a plateau, sure, all you can do is refine and perfect; but every so often, we get a massive paradigm shift that ends up touching almost everything. That's because technology that is invented is built on technology that exists, and it takes a little while to combine and recombine and hit on the exact thing that will revolutionize the world as we know it. Hell, the ideas for what comes next are already out there; it's just a matter of figuring out how to work around that unobtainium that it currently calls for.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

Virtual experiences are going to become so compelling in the coming years that there's going to be massive crises centered around people not caring about/interacting with reality at all.

All the speculative VR fiction I've seen assumes there's some balance between people doing stuff online and offline, but I think that's just an artifact of people not wanting to see the real trend. Society will become radically restructured. Personally, I'm looking forward to it, but I wish everyone else would just go play Ultimate Frisbee or whatever regular people do so society can be robust.

That's pretty much what Ready Player One was about, everyone is obsessed with a big VR game where the user could be or do anything they wanted so people are content to live in sprawling shanty towns and spend most of their money on virtual items or computer upgrades and talk non stop about nostalgic pop culture.

 

[RG 448]

All I know for sure is Half Life 3 still won’t exist.

 

[Sexy Senior Citizen]

I think the future will be a combination of the movie Surrogates and the Adventure Time episode "Imaginary Resources." All your needs taken care of, your mind uploaded into a superior body while your inferior meat body wastes and rots away. Machines handle all needs and all wants will be satisfied. Disease, need, poverty, and a host of human ills will be solved.
But progress will stall. One ill will remain. Ennui. When all pleasures have been tried and all vices indulged, what then will remain? Like a junkie taking increasing dosages of drugs to fuel their next high, humans will indulge in such bizzare hedonism that it would horrify the Marqius de Sade and make Slaanesh slink away in underachieving shame. Soon, even massive, direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure centers won't sate the lust of humanity.
The dystopia will eventually implode as humanity pleasures itself into extinction and the machines, with no purpose left, will shut down. Mankind will return to the dust, forgotten by all.

 

[Marco Fucko]

I think the future will be a combination of the movie Surrogates and the Adventure Time episode "Imaginary Resources." All your needs taken care of, your mind uploaded into a superior body while your inferior meat body wastes and rots away. Machines handle all needs and all wants will be satisfied. Disease, need, poverty, and a host of human ills will be solved.
But progress will stall. One ill will remain. Ennui. When all pleasures have been tried and all vices indulged, what then will remain? Like a junkie taking increasing dosages of drugs to fuel their next high, humans will indulge in such bizzare hedonism that it would horrify the Marqius de Sade and make Slaanesh slink away in underachieving shame. Soon, even massive, direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure centers won't sate the lust of humanity.
The dystopia will eventually implode as humanity pleasures itself into extinction and the machines, with no purpose left, will shut down. Mankind will return to the dust, forgotten by all.

That sounds really cool in a fucked up sort of way.

 

[Chexxchunk]

That's pretty much what Ready Player One was about, everyone is obsessed with a big VR game where the user could be or do anything they wanted so people are content to live in sprawling shanty towns and spend most of their money on virtual items or computer upgrades and talk non stop about nostalgic pop culture.

Yes, but I think Ready Player One pulls its punches so the story wouldn't be too controversial.

 

[Slappy McGherkin]

I see a future that looks like Starship Troopers. Big nasty alien bugs that want to feed on us.

Or otherwise want to eat us. "To Serve Man."

Spoiler

IT'S A COOKBOOK!

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

Black holes! From Uranus.

 

[ICametoLurk]

The Future is Female.

Men will become obsolete and there will be only be lesbians however because men are innovators and women preserve tradition there will be no human progress.

This is how the world ends, with lesbians scissoring.