Are we living in the last century of our civilization?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=5045549&page=2

This could be an interesting thread. How does Wordforge predict the next 100 years? Where do you see things going? What will life be like for the average citizen in the year 2108?

Global temperatures on average will be slightly warmer and coastal areas will have a bit rougher weather.

As far as technology goes and how much it helps us in various areas I think it's almost impossible to predict.

I also think climate (per se) is the least of our worries. This planet went through climate change while our species was around, and adapted.

But how our modern world will react to climate change, famine, nuclear war, etc. is the problem. Everything (good or bad) happens so much faster these days, that once the tide starts turning we could really go downhill exponentially faster.

Things that took centuries will now take decades, or years. When civilization crumbles it will be almost overnight.

Personally I don't think the world as we know it today, will make it past the year 2012

Usediesel would love this thread.

I think it will be a peaceful world of happiness. Why? Because by then either everyone will have arisen in a tidal wave of righteous irritation and swept the long-suffering Earth clean of soulless idiots (not you, Flashlight, you're just using this as a conversation starter. I mean like the person who wrote this) and corporations who try to pass sensationalistic promos off as proper news stories, or everyone will be brain-dead for all intents and purposes.



I should totally send ABC a link to this post, shouldn't I? It might actually make someone hesitate, just for a picosecond, the next time he or she tries to pull something like this.

Why 2012?

I think it will be like this

Sensationalist twaddle. Must be sweeps month.

The next hundred years? Quantum computing, nanotech, and fusion energy will make the world of a hundred years from now as unrecognizable to us as our world would be to someone from a thousand years ago. The massive, intractable problems we're facing will seem childishly simple in a hundred years.

Or Apophis will have wiped us out and it'll be the cockroaches' turn. Whatever.

Did you really have to ask?

Every child of the 80's knows that when Nature finally gives up on humans and starts again, it will be with the bees, probably.

Thats when the almighty aztec calenders say the world as we know it will end.

I believe we could be, but I have other reasons.

Last century?

Not likely. All our trends are positive. People are living longer and they're richer. Economic integration has all but eliminated war in the developed world. Medical science continues to invent new therapies and eradicate or control old diseases.

Only the most alarmist of global warming evangelists would project existential disaster from climate changes. Although nuclear war could still happen some places in the world, even if it did--and I think cooler heads will surely prevail--it would not be global in nature. I suppose we could be wiped out by an asteroid (though we's stand a pretty good chance of seeing it coming well in advance) or by airborne Ebola (not likely, from what I understand).

Don't worry about 2100; you cannot POSSIBLY predict the challenges that the human race will face then. And we don't need some collection of social engineers telling us how to get there. What's 'sustainable' in 2008 was not in 1908 or 1808 and no one then could've predicted where we are today on that basis. Let's not try to fall into that stupidity.

The article deals with two different and pretty much unrelated issues: "Are we living in the last century of our civilization?" and "Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?" is one issue, and a valid question for discussion. But "The 21st century is going to be the century which determine whether we live or die as a sustainable species," is just sensationalist nonsense and/or the same old catastrophism we have heard for so long. The year 2000 was the big bogey-man for decades ("By the year 2000, things will be so bad..." was what we have been hearing since the 60s) and now that it has come and gone, some people want to make 2100 the big bogey-man. Human beings will not cease to be a sustainable species in any predictable future. The only events that could make that happen are not predictable.

As to whether or not our society will fall in the next century, that is hard to say. I am fully convinced our society is in decline, and has been for about a century now. But contrary to common belief (fueled by Hollywood), the fall of civilization will not come quickly, nor will it be accompanied by a decline in technology. During the centuries of decline of the Roman Empire (the decline began at the very latest with the ascension of Commodus to the throne in 170 but arguably started as much as 200 years earlier when the Republic was replaced by a military dictatorship), technological progress continued and life went on. It was only a long time later that it became obvious to everyone that "something had been lost." By the time that happened, it had been lost for so long that it could not be recovered.

Our own society will necessarily go the same way. All societies do. I believe that the erosion of personal liberty, the steady growth of government, the loss of human values in favor of material values, the increasing sense that life has no meaning beyond "just enjoying it while you can," all point to a decline that is already under way. But my best guess about the year 2100 is that by then, technological progress will have continued so that people will still be amazed by how "good" life is while accepting all the declines in other areas.

Life will be even more meaningless, our national motto will still be "liberty" and we will still be claiming to defend it but the "liberty" we will be defending will be rather similar to the "oppression" that we denounced in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, but the majority of people will still not believe that civilization is declining, because they won't have a detailed enough grasp of history to tell the difference. Nevertheless, the gap between the rich and the poor will be greater than it has been in a long time, so that a smaller part of the population will benefit fully from the advanced technology, and there will be more and larger "lawless zones" in America and Europe than there are today.

Those trends will continue for a couple of centuries at least, and perhaps as much as 500 years or so, before it really becomes obvious that Western Civilization is irrecuperably dying. So whether or not the 21st is "the last century of our civilization" is really a matter of definition. The final end of it? No, almost certainly not. The end of it in some places and for some classes of people? Quite likely. The end of certain aspects of it (not technological aspects)? Absolutely.

"Three days ago I saw a rig that'll haul that tanker. You want out of here, you come to me."

Robots, who look like whichever celebrity we want! I'll take an Angelina and Jessica Alba robot, at the same time, please.

Actually, I find it more likely that the last century of our civilization will be singularity, not ultimate collapse. Knowledge is exponential. The only question is can we keep up with it socially.

But either way it won't be this century.

I don't think the next century will be all happy-happy-joy-joy. No matter how much certain people fight it, the oil will go away. Pollution will increase, as will global warming. I think that what we have now will be laughed at as a food and energy crisis in 20 or 30 years.

I do believe we will rebound, tho. The source of all problems is too many people on this rock.

Or maybe we will finally stop quabbling over non-existent supernatural beings and pieces of paper with printed numbers on it and pull together to solve the most urgent problems. I'm afraid we'll have to see near-doom before that happens, tho.

Ehhhh . . .

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We already see that happening: No, we can't. It's quite telling.

For human civilization, no. For Western Civilization... probably yes unless the Euros start breeding like bunnies.

I'll tell you guys all about it when I look down upon it from my ascended plane of existance.

This phrase should always raise a red flag, cause what's coming next is usually conjectural bullshit. It should read "Experts think, but don't have any actual proof to substantiate it, that..."

Prove it, you sensationalist prick. Otherwise, you go in the same box as Father O'Malley telling me God loves me and has a plan for me.

I was all set to bitch about how we have too much rep, and I find out I'm out today.

Yup. I'm-a evolve into an "Star Trek" energy being. Like Dr. Daniel Jackson.

I would take aussie Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr.

Soooooooo hot! and

Nope. The source of all problems is a tiny percentage of those people using far more than their fair share of the planets resources.

Overpopulation is a myth designed to make first-worlders feel better about themselves.

There is some truth to what you say, but it is not the truth. The situation is not that simple.

Some resources are limited, and must be shared between all the people on earth. But many resources are not limited or are not limited to anything that puts any restrictions on us in the forseeable future. More resources are renewable than people think.

Food? You can produce much more food on a given land area than is done, on the average. Western countries manage it quite well. Fresh water? Water is pretty much endlessly recyclable, so there is no shortage. It is just a question of purifying it and re-using it. Air? Plenty of it to go around, and as long as we keep plenty of plants around (especially algea in the ocean) it will continue to recycle itself also. Metals? A lot of it is recyclable, and there is still a lot in the ground, and even more in the oceans. Getting it is a matter of technology. Living space? We're not even close to "packed in" across the planet yet. Oil? There's lots of it, and in any case there have to be better ways of providing energy than burning it. (Plus, there have to be ways to recycle it, by turning plastics back into some kind of petrolium goo, for example.)

And so on...

The bottom line is that the real issue is neither over-population (as you correctly point out), nor the rich "using more than their fair share (as if that meant anything) of resources," but pollution and a failure to recycle what can be recycled. There is plenty of room, and there are plenty of resources, for several times the present population of earth. What there isn't room for, is for people to continue polluting and wasting (by not recycling) resources. When there were only a billion people on the whole earth, none of that mattered much. Today it matters more. A century from now it will be critical, with a population of 15 to 20 billion people on the planet. There will still be plenty of resources for everyone, even then, provided they are not wasted.

I blame Whitey.