The 22Nd Century at First Light: Envisioning Life in the Year 2100
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© 2012 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • www.wfs.org • All rights reserved. The 22nd Century at First Light: Envisioning Life in the Year 2100 A special report by members and friends of the World Future Society Introduction submit forecasts, scenarios, wild cards, dreams, and nightmares about the earth, humanity, governance, A child born today will only be 88 years old in the commerce, science and technology, and more. year 2100. So, what do we see in this “first light” view over the The next 88 years may see changes that come expo- next horizon? A fuzzy and inaccurate picture, no doubt, nentially faster than the previous 88 years. What new but also an earnest attempt to shake out our futuring inventions will come out of nowhere and change instruments and begin improving them. To build a bet- everything? What will our families look like? How will ter future for the generations who are depending on us, we govern ourselves? What new crimes or other threats we’ll need the best tools we can develop. It’s time to loom ahead? Will we be happy? How? start thinking and caring about the twenty-second cen- THE FUTURIST invited WFS members and friends to tury now. —THE EDITORS © EMRAH TURUDU / ISTOCKPHOTO Timeline Questions 34 Major Transformations to 2100: Highlights from the TechCast 51 Ten Big Questions for 2100, Michael Marien Project, Laura B. Huhn and William Halal 54 On Being Human: Questioning Ourselves, David Brin Forecasts Scenarios 36 Where the Wild Things Are Not, Brenda Cooper 34 Looking Back: The Wonders We Didn’t Expect, Paul Saffo 37 Keys to Future Energy Prosperity, Ozzie Zehner 36 When the Storms Came, Richard David Hames 39 Bio Age 2100, Olli Hietanen and Marko Ahvenainen 38 Energy and Living Well, Paul Bristow 40 Healthy Aging in the 22nd Century, Marta M. Keane 40 Paradise Found: No Aging, No Pensions, Jouni J. Särkijärvi 43 Will We Still Have Money in 2100? Stephen Aguilar-Millan 42 Beyond Transhumanism, Gene Stephens 43 Slums: A Catalyst Bed for Poverty Eradication, Eric Meade 44 Meaning for Miranda, Robert Moran 45 From Communication to Transmission, Manjul Rathee 46 Southern Africa Takes Center Stage, Michael Lee 45 Religious Belief in 2100, Gina A. Bellofatto 48 Life and Love in the Pod, Bart Main 47 Lanes in the Sky, Davidson Barlett 50 Automated Government, Peter Denning 47 The Local–Global Duality, Joshua Loughman 52 Geonautics, Gereon Klein 49 Game Changers for the Next Century, Arthur Shostak 54 2099: Headlines Warn of Global Cooling, Tsvi Bisk Tools 55 Reunion: A Civil War Fable, Cynthia G. Wagner 50 Scenarios and Long-Term Thinking, House of Futures (Gitte Larsen, Søren Steen Olsen, and Steen Svendsen) 41 About the Authors www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST September-October 2012 33 Timeline Major Transformations to 2100: Highlights from the TechCast Project By Laura B. Huhn and William Halal Will the year 2100 bring disaster or salvation? A global population that exceeds food supply and ex- hausts planetary resources? Ecological collapse and Scenario severe climate change? Or will we experience a uni- fied world heralding an unprecedented Age of Global Consciousness? Looking Back: The Wonders We Didn’t Expect TechCast (www.TechCast.org) draws on its knowl- edge base of forecasts pooling empirical trend data By Paul Saffo and the knowledge of more than 100 experts to ex- amine the big transformations ahead. Lifestyles, fam- ilies, homes, and other aspects of life are likely to It has been a wild ride of a century change because the forces of nature, technology, de- full of expected wonders. Molecular mographics, and economics are transforming the manufacturing became a reality well world dramatically. Here is a macro-forecast that summarizes the 70 stra- before 2050, turning all sorts of once- tegic breakthroughs that offer an outline of how the valuable materials into commodities, foundations of society are likely to evolve over the re- and yes, we even eventually got flying mainder of this century. cars. 2015: Next Economic Upcycle But the century also came with a rich harvest of utterly unexpected sur- Our timeline begins around 2015, when the following technological advancements are expected to start the prises and the stubborn persistence of next 35-year economic upcycle: some things we thought had been left • E-Commerce. Internet use explodes worldwide, behind in the twentieth century. Here producing trillions of dollars in revenue. are a few of the outcomes you never • Global Access. About 50% of the world population guessed back in 2012: will have Internet access. • Globalization. At today’s growth rates, we’ll halve • Ownership is so twentieth century. poverty by 2015. My generation looks back with nostalgia • Green Business. Thirty percent of corporations are on a time when we actually owned things. likely to practice environmental management, leading Compared to 2012, we have access to an to a $10 trillion–$20 trillion green industry at the end of astounding bounty of goods and ser- the decade. vices, but we don’t really “buy” things • TeleMedicine. Online records, videoconferences with your doctor, and other electronic practices will im- anymore because everything comes with prove medical care and reduce escalating costs. strings (and license agreements) at- • TeleWork. Globally, 1 billion people were mobile tached. In much the same way that you workers in 2010. By 2015, that number should increase subscribed to software and e-books, we to 1.3 billion. now “subscribe” to physical objects. • Space Commercialism/Tourism. Space trips for tourists and visits to low-Earth orbit are likely to pro- • Longevity arrived, but with limits duce a boom in commercial space. and for a price. Life extension remains a work in progress. Sure, 100 is the new 2015–2020: Global MegaCrisis 60, but 130-year-olds remain a curios- From 2015 through 2020, a doubling of global GDP ity. The debate still rages over whether will cause the Global MegaCrisis to become intolerable, or not there is a hard-wired limit in the with the planet teetering on environmental collapse (see THE FUTURIST, May-June 2011). Here are Tech- human organism. In the meantime, lon- Cast’s four scenarios: gevity ain’t cheap, and the cost of im- • Decline to Disaster (25% probability): World fails to react, resulting in catastrophic natural and economic calamities. Possible loss of civilization. • Muddling Down (35% probability): World reacts 34 THE FUTURIST September-October 2012 • www.wfs.org only partially, so ecological damage, increased poverty, tions to a responsible global order. and conflict create major declines in life. • Muddling Up (25% probability): World reacts in 2020: High-Tech Era time out of need and high-tech capabilities; widespread Assuming the world survives reasonably well (Mud- disaster averted, although many problems remain. dling Up), major breakthroughs are likely to introduce • Rise to Maturity (15% probability): World transi- a High-Tech Era: Scenario Looking Back: The Wonders We Didn’t Expect By Paul Saffo less AIs haunting the global noosphere. • Discovery has deepened mystery. I can’t even begin to catalog all that has been discovered in the last century, but with our new knowledge has come a new appreciation of just how vast and mysterious the universe is. J. B. S. Hal- dane got it right way back in 1927 when he observed that “the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” The astonishing consequence has been a religious resurgence. In 2020, sci- ence’s relentless explanatory logic had © IGOR DEMCHENKOV / ISTOCKPHOTO believers on the run, but in the decades that followed, it became clear that an ever mortality rises exponentially as individu- nearby neighbors. Life has turned up stranger, more capacious universe had als enter their second century. everywhere we look, with the implication ample room for the divine, the spiritual, The result is a new societal divide that life just wants to happen no matter the mystical, and the mysterious. between the chronological haves and how improbable the environment. The result has been a repeat of Jas- have-nots: The wealthy “old turtles” We also stopped counting Earthlike per’s Axial Age on a smaller scale, as move at a stately pace, making long- planet discoveries early in the twenty- new belief systems have proliferated. term plans, while the “may-fly” poor first century, but astoundingly, we still Many of your late-twentieth-century die out decades earlier. It has created have no clear evidence of ETs—extrater- cults are all respectable and spruced vexing issues around the distribution restrial life forms that we can communi- up, and Atheism itself has become a of wealth and power. cate with—despite a century of search- mainstream faith, complete with its • Life everywhere, but where’s ET? ing. Perhaps the answer to Fermi’s own rituals. It all seems a bit less than A century’s worth of space exploration question (“Where are they?”) might be rational, but like Bohr’s horseshoe (“I has turned up all sorts of weird life an existentially unnerving realization am told that it will bring good luck forms. The extremophiles found in that we are terribly, profoundly alone. whether or not I believe in it”), it gives Earth’s hellish niches back around 2000 This could, of course, change us comfort as we look out over the are prosaic compared to the astounding tomorrow, but in the meantime, we can giddying vastness that is the frontier of range of what constitutes life on our at least talk to our robots and the count- the twenty-second century. www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST September-October 2012 35 • Smart and Green Transportation: e.g., intelligent 2070–2100: Beyond Earth cars, high-speed trains.