Bigger separation between first and third world. Increasing automation will basically make sweat shop workers slaves to the efficiency of solar powered assembly lines.
Taking a leaf from Joss Whedon’s book, the whole world will speak chinese or english in 200 years. Or maybe english will be part chinese, being the scavenger language that it is.
Ala William Gibson: Corporations will be the new nations. You’ll belong to a tax bracket and have health care and social security based on your employer.
Also, as weasel mentioned once, everything will be a monthly fee. The entire world will be service based. Even you. Your contract with your employer will be them buying a service from you for a monthly fee. Sure there’ll be a measure of job security and whatnot that is required by the government - the government is run by people after all, and no one wants to be laid off and go live in a dump 3 days later.
People will be smarter. Everyone will have access to the internet from everywhere, so no one will be forced to learn multiplication tables in school or memorize poetry or any of that. We will evolve socially as data analysts. Ask me a question, and give me a google prompt and i can give you an answer. In two hundred years? you won’t be asking me questions - you’ll be querying the database yourself.
Lots of people will be dead. *lots*. The moslem sects shouting for jihad aren’t going to go away unless they’re all in 7th heaven, or they win. Battlefields just get bigger as time goes on.
Computers? I can’t make an educated guess. I would say we’ll have AI and be tooling around in flying cars but such fantastic projections are always such letdowns. I’ve seen ads for robot maids and brainwave recording portable devices in prototype magazines for the last 10 years, and none on shelves. People cling to the mud in which they stand.
on February 28th, 2006 at 7:10 am #
Weasel, it’s optimistic, unless humanity were to be given a goal, besides itself, that was necessary to accomplish for its survival. Our own instinct to survive drives us away from helping others.
Darwin’s theory, while incomplete, and not accounting for human compassion, is a part of our subconscious.
While I’m not as cynical as Foz, here, nor as driven to remain cro-magnon, I do wish for a world unified by the goals of bettering itself, and the lives of the people in it, or from it (We’re going out there, people. Whether you believe in god or not.).
Anyone who spends 5 minutes pondering the vastness of the universe, suddenly grasps a pretty simple concept. There’s no way in hell we’re alone here, and eventually, we as a species, are going to need to band together, to become the “Animal Family Group” Foz was discussing. I just wish it’d happen sooner than later. But that just seems so unlikely, since we appearantly cant keep ourselves from killing each other and stealing from each other.
Poet. I truly dislike when you ignore the topic, and you hanging around in a coffee shop, creepily listening in on old decaying women talking about theories most people dont hear unless they watch alot of scifi, and then criticizing them for it, doesnt surprise me one bit.
At least they were talkin about it. Try criticizing the people that ignore it.
on February 28th, 2006 at 7:16 am #
In conclusion, my country isnt all that great. The freedoms we so cherish and aspire to love are conditional to the mood of the government, at any given time.
The democratic process, in this country at least, is flawed by the human monster. Politics is a marketting machine, not resolving problem, not being honest about your intentions, and certainlly not being in the best interest of the people you represent (All politics, from the top down.).
Do I love my country? No, not really. It disappoints me daily, and misrepresents me and a great mass of people its supposed to represent, through its actions and decisions.
Could I love any other? Perhaps not. Finding flaws isnt necessarily my game, but I bet they’re not being honest with their people either, and its all a part of the human problem. The same human factor that makes communism imperfect.
on February 28th, 2006 at 8:13 am #
Menagerie is a noun not an adjective.
on February 28th, 2006 at 8:45 am #
In this college town I tend to avoid alot of coffee shop purely on the face that they “the place to hang”. People thinking they are cool drinking over priced shitty coffee and an atmosphere that is less than relaxing with all the stupid conversations that float into my ear drums.
on February 28th, 2006 at 9:10 am #
Double OH Poet (00Poet), a licence to kill the closed minded. Has a nice ring to it really.
I personally agree, I am a canadian through and through but I am also a big fan of my heritage also. Poet came over the othe day for the first time and saw the massive Union Jack on my wall and he seemed alittle shocked to see such a show of patriotism for a country that I have never been to.
I do sometimes marvel at the sheer fact of how closed off peoples minds grow as they age, in some ways I think the aging of the mind is a disease in some peoples cases, they seem to forget that using and stretching and constantly looking at problems in new lights or from a new view will keep the thoughts from growing stagnant.
on February 28th, 2006 at 9:29 am #
woah wait a minute, that was not my post for today!
on February 28th, 2006 at 9:35 am #
Causality is a fundamental theory of physics and philosophy - if you saw it on an episode of star trek voyager or something I pity you.
As for the word “menagerie”: I used it as a noun. If you’re going to be shooting down my articles, please get better guns.
on February 28th, 2006 at 9:37 am #
Poet wrote an article with nearly the same title as next week’s, that has more to do with next week’s, and is a better fit. But apparantly I must conform to his creative freedom and fix it. *swaps*
*shakes head sadly*
on February 28th, 2006 at 9:43 am #
Well then I retracted my the 00Poet till next week
on February 28th, 2006 at 10:06 am #
If you are going to quote from Joss Whedon, you are not allowed to mock people for learning about causality from Star Trek.
DS9 rules!
on February 28th, 2006 at 10:11 am #
Are you saying that Voyager was as good as Firefly? You’d be better off watching re-runs of patrick stewart in medieval garb than jeri ryan’s tranwreck they call acting.
on February 28th, 2006 at 10:14 am #
I’m saying DS9 was not only as good, but far superior to Firefly. TNG was passable, the rest are crap.
on February 28th, 2006 at 10:46 am #
Apologies to everyone for not getting my article in! I was going to try and get the first response in today…but I see I am WAAYYYY too late for that.
I find it very hard to support Canada as a whole, since we are so large and have so many different agnedas. For instance, it’s hard to be concerned about the woes of New Brunswick - it feels like a different country to me, being so distant and foreign.
I remember a history professor saying once that there were only 2 things that have ever unified Canada: hockey, and our dislike of Americans. I’m only a mild fan of hockey, and I don’t support the view that hating a country is a very healthy reason to be unified. I remember a lot of propoganda on my provincial final for English, about the differences between Toronto and some American city (New York maybe), and how much more beautiful it was in Canada. I felt disgusted.
I find it easier to just support our province. (Though it’s been a little tough lately with the big raises government is giving itself, and looking next door at Alberta who is GIVING MONEY TO EVERYONE IN THE PROVINCE! ARGH!)
As for the unifying of countries, I don’t think it will happen. Things get to be to big, things collapse. I think it’s in our nature to try to be large and powerful, but not succeed.
Speaking Chinese? It could happen. By speaking Chinese of course, I’m assuming we’re talking about Mandarin. China has about 7 different languages, which while all branded as “Chinese” are all as different as French and Italian. It seems like it would make more sense if China was all speaking the same language before the rest of the world settled on a dialect to speak and mix in with English.
And on seperate tangent…why is everyone’s view of the future always so bleak? It’s the same with movies - always dark colours and depressing. It’s something that has always seemed strange to me…
Sorry again for being late!!
on February 28th, 2006 at 10:46 am #
I watched them all, because they’re distinguishingly better than any other TV available. Please, contradict me.
Im not comparing anything to firefly, ya damn newb, and my comments are replying to an error made by weasel. Not of my own making.
If I needed bigger guns then pointing out that you cant say “very” before a noun without sounding like you’re 6, then I’d have used them.
I’ve seen Firefly, and I was at a sneak preview of Serenity, lets not question where *I* stand in that respect, even if it is just a TV show, and not having any bearing on what I may or may not know about causality. You were talking about old ladies, afterall.
Something you have to understand, about those old ladies, and the rest of the world, is that most of them arent enlightened in any fashion. It’s the very reason they ask you to look something up on google for them (indirectly), and the same reason that people like president bush got reelected.
A majority of people in this world, operate on hype, and marketting generated by someone else. The way you get around being one of those drones, is by learning things, as I assume you have, and I know I have, and opening your mind up to things that involve geographical areas that you’ve never been to, and people with different beleifs that you’ve never thought of or understood.
These old ladies talk about it, and consider such a subject for one moment, not knowing that people like you or I have discussed it, read books on it, and thrashed old ladies for talking about it on an online forum, and you flame them relentlessly for it, anonymouslly online instead of being truly brave, and providing your knowledge to them after politely asking them if you could interject on what you impolitely overheard.
Im not gonna pull some well-published forward thinking author out of my ass to make my point. I read their books, but I form my own opinion, and here it is.
on February 28th, 2006 at 11:25 am #
Uhg. Misread. Sorry. Bad Day. I hate weasel.
on February 28th, 2006 at 11:39 am #
YOU ARE ALL DISEASED!
on February 28th, 2006 at 11:41 am #
Except Maristar; she’s just in trouble for being late.
on February 28th, 2006 at 11:48 am #
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=very
on February 28th, 2006 at 12:09 pm #
I would prefer the usage of the word “Veritable” in that situation. Mayhaps if one were to change it prior to its reposting, this would lessen the impact of the usage on the plebs.