Discussions
Next 1,000 Years
Posted by JacobDiv • 6/06/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: biosystem, future, population, world population
What do you think will come of humanity over the next 1,000 years?
I am thinking world population has to go down, either because we burn out the biosystem, so it cannot support us, and the population crashes, as on Easter Island, or people get nuked. I think both will happen on large scale, leaving the earth with maybe 5 billion people in 1,000 years. Obviously, we cannot sustain population growth like we've seen in the last few hundred years.
I also think biotech will create new species of humans, who will subjugate or exterminate homo sapiens.
What do you think?
User Comments
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Sounds like a movie...
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Strange things will happen. At least, I think they'll be strange. Improving technology will blur the line between man and machine, things will be technically better but perhaps humanity will lose its sense of, well, humanity. We may in fact experience a technological boom unlike anything we've seen before.
I'm not sure how wars will be played out. There will undoubtedly be a nuclear attack somewhere, sometime. There's no stopping that.
I'm not certain about the future. -
The population of 2 of the largest countries-China and India have already dramatically decreased. I think the problem is starting to come under control and will get better. If I had to make a wild guess, I would say an illness will do us all in someday. It's freaky to think about. -
I suspect the superbugs will get us.-
I can tell you are right about everything, and I am not kidding....
Gotta remember the superbugs.. smallpox and other stuff has wiped out lots of people.. here's the thing though...we've survived the super bugs till now, I don't see why at least a few of us won't survive another 1000 years. 1000 years is nothing compared to how long people have been dealing with bugs... but I guess super bugs, hummmm... they suck
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The Mind will continue to evolve. The physical bodies .... that's a crap shoot. But we all die individually anyway, so what's the big deal.-
what is the big deal? Are you serious?
We have been living as humans in various forms for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years, depending how you define human. Before that, we have lived in an unbroken chain for what... how long has life been on earth, for that is how long we have been living in one generation to the next.
We were here during the time of the dinosaurs, we just were not human yet. It's my understanding we were little squirrels of some sort, but the point is, if any of us count back enough generations, we'll get to the so-many-times-great grandparents who were alive during the dinosaur days, living as other species that eventually evolved into us. This goes all the way back to the slime, where ever it came from that still is unknown, but our DNA fingerprint, in every one of us, proves our descent from the slime and animals from the beginning of life on earth.
You don't have an instinct for continuing this? To me, this is basic impulse. But then again, even my mother says I am primitive. :-) She loves me though, so it's all good.
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I think it'll be pretty much like the last 1,000 years, only different.
About the population thing: remember that there are about 1,000 times too many human beings around for this poor planet to support. If we were still getting food through hunting and gathering.
Now that's a crisis!-
yep ... I love what Robin said though, about how China and India are charting a path for coping rationally with the population problem. We should honor their courage especially now that so many of their only children have been lost in the earthquakes.
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Hmmmm. Depends on what meaning is assigned to "rationally."
With China, things could get exciting. Odds are that, with Chinese culture regarding a male heir as being quite important, and sex selection being a fairly straightforward matter, if cumbersome ethics are left out consideration, there are going to be a lot of young men, and very few women of childbearing age in China fairly soon.
Anecdotes hint that this may already be happening - sorry, nothing solid to offer on that.
If that scenario is playing out, we could see something like Ancient Rome's Sabine strategy implemented. United Nations Security Council discussions of that would be lively.
There's an interesting look at China's policy, at afe.easia.columbia.edu/china/geog/population.htm
If the faithful cities/growing rural areas model presented there is accurate, there's probably a massive ethnic shift going on in China. I'm no expert, but my understanding that China is no more uniform, in terms of ethnic diversity, than Europe is.
Unless the cities of China are populated by the same brand of people that are having replacement-plus children in the boondocks, there's change coming.
An American (fictional) equivalent might be America of 2100, where the east and west coasts have been repopulated by people from the populous areas of Appalachia, the Louisiana bayou country, and the Ozarks.
(Please: I'm not criticizing people who live in those areas: just pointing out that they're different, at least culturally, from your typical New Yorker or San Franciscan.)
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I do strategic planning for a living... doing "future" concept planning like this is extremely difficult.
Imagine you're in 1000 AD. Let's see... life is pretty much over at 40 (literally). The Roman empire has just imploded fully - and the affects of that implosion are well under way (trade has all but stopped "regionally" in Europe from 200 years of the Roman roads eroding away. Emperor Otto III is kinda the head dude around Europe - but the Muslims are becoming powerful and expanding their reach into European lands... China is plotting along on its merry way isolated from most of the world... in short - things really are crappy for most of the world...
... now explain to me in that environment how you could possibly foresee...
The rise of automation.
The rise of electronics.
The development of international commerce (something they had experienced not less than 300 years prior - which had totally imploded with the fall of the Roman Empire).
... now I suppose if you're Nostradamus - you can pretend to see all sorts of crazy stuff in lines like "the lion and the cumquat will sit on the riverbed and stare at the clouds..."
... that stupidity aside ... predicting in 1000 AD what 2000 AD would be like is an impossible task.
... okay forget all that - let's do a prediction of a mere 200 years out... That's a total of 10 generations... something that could be possible for the most astute of observers...
You'd have to predict the Muslim dominance of North Africa and creeping into Europe.
The ascendance of the Mongol dominance of Asia and later Europe.
The Magna Carta
The beginning of systematic farming in Europe
The earliest beginnings of the Western legal tradition with King Henry in England...
... the list goes on ... again - nearly impossible.
Okay... let me give you an even simpler analysis. Let's predict only 40 years... and use modern history...
In the 1960's... the "future" of 2000's was pills for lunch, jet packs... and the Jetson's lifestyle...
... where's my fricking rocket car? Would be nice given gasoline is going to cost a zillion dollars soon...
It is extremely difficult - and probably impossible for people - to predict an end state of a system that they can also control and manipulate... let alone make predictions a thousand years into the future.
Oh and btw - Humans have not been around for "Millions of years." At best - the line of genus leading to Humans - Homo Sapiens - is 1.8 million years old... and that's presuming Homo Habillis was truly part of the linage of man... something that has not yet gained scientific consensus among paleoanthropologists as I understand it.
So in 250,000 years - the beginnings of humankind evolved into the modern society of today....
... and none of it was immediately predictable. History isn't the weather - you can't tell me in advance when it's going to rain... you can only tell me how bad the storm might be just before it comes... and how bad it was after it has left.
So quite frankly - anyone's prediction on here has as much probably, as yours, of being both right - and wrong... and that probability in both instances is negligible.-
Yes, deep future planning is difficult. Look at how well the Prussian General Staff got it in 1914—or how well we got it in Iraq. (Course it helps at least a little to get the past right.)
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I am not going to argue with any of these learned comments, except the reference to Iraq.
WE didn't get it wrong in Iraq. GW Bush got it wrong. Criminally wrong.
Other than that, fascinating discussion.. :-) -
Thanks for a sensible look at the subject.
I enjoy science fiction: but don't take 'futurists' too seriously.
BTW, you left out the food riots that destroyed civilization in the sixties or seventies, and seem to have completely ignored half of my ancestors: the Vikings.
They had quite an effect on the development of Europe (and western Asia - look up the Rus). Not just through the burning and pillaging you see in "Hagar the Horrible" (one of my favorite comics).
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Like the last 1000 years - filled with wars, booze, great thinkers, inventors, philosophers and crazy people.
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we have to find a way to end war... it will be hard, but we have to do it anyway. The booze and the rest sounds ok. :-)
Ever hear about the guy who won a big lottery, then, he is said to have said, "I spent it all on wine, women, and song, then wasted the rest."
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I think the world is heading into blocks, as in the EU, etc. I think this is the way the central bankers are pushing us and if things don't change soon that's the way it will go. It will be the Orwellian nightmare of constant war, double speak and ghost enemies. The scary thing is we won't know the difference because it will be all we have known. -
Back to apes. I believe in progression through regression.-
Didn't they make a series of movies about that?
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The best thing that will ever happen is when we get off fossil fuels. We have two ways to go: continue to mine energy like we've been doing, with all the attendant environmental and social costs, until it's gone - or make the conscious shift to renewal energy and sustainable living. BTW, this is not news. -
Jesus is coming soon. Hopefully Jesus is coming in less than 50 years. No more 1000 years..-
That would mean 1000 yrs. of peace.
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1000 years? I'm sure blogging is still alive in that days..lol
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