Creating a Scifi Time line


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The Exchange

What are the hundred things you would expect to happen in the world by 2050 and why?


Nothing that qualifies as sci-fi come reality.

A lot of sociopolitical BS.

Grand Lodge

Innundation of a lot of coastline and the disappearance of a lot of low lying islands.

Extinction of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

Silver Crusade

Self inflicted damage of the human race totaling approximate 70% of our, at that time, population.


Could you posit what sort of themes or technologies you want to explore? It might be beneficial to work backwards, see what changes need to happen to facilitate those ideas, and how that comes about. For example, The Windup Girl isn't set vaguley in the 2200s somewhere, it's set well after peak oil and a genetic engineering revolution. it's not about the date, but the ideas.

But, if I was just futurism wanking, by 2050 I'd suggest some of the following:

1. Africa rising, maybe, rare earths and other mineral resources become increasingly profitable. But, Chinese infrastructure into exploiting these rights creates tensions.

2. Less nation states, or many more, but either way the nation state is a less powerful entity. The EU will hold together and eventually have a meaningful civil rights movement for immigrating Muslims, this will look a lot like the immigration of Latinos into the US. Kurdistan, Palestien, and a number of other small states come into existence, or are recognized by the UN as observer states (like Palestein is now.)

3. No energy crisis. Call this optimistic if you want, but I wager we avoid an energy war by the skin of our teeth. In 2050, we're transitioning to renewable fuels. Not to save the environment, but because it's cheaper than petroleum.

4. Flooding and desalinated seas wreck a lot of damage. Fish stocks face extinction, and this is the major crisis of the age because a dead ocean means a dead planet.

5. Asteroid mining isn't profitable, but is being pursued by multiple companies because it will be soon. Space has a population of a couple hundred at a time, but rotational gravity stations are regarded as the new flying car.

6. Fusion reactors are proliferating very slowly because people are afraid of nuclear power and the fusion lobby can't win the PR war. Transhumanists still claim the singularity is right around the corner, but while the newest Nintendo has really cruddy mental control through temple-mounted diode headbands, brain uploading isn't really a thing.

7. Carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes everywhere.

8. The farm lobby in the US keeps verticle and urban farming operations to a minimum, but in the UAE they're providing fresh foods to otherwise nutritionally challeneged populations.

9. AIDS is treatable to the point of a cure, a vaccine exists, but isn't widely distributed because of social pressure.

10. Mars has been landed on, there is a small habitat ready to recieve new visitors, but there hasn't been another trip in ten years.


To play off of Zorajit's point number 7:

Carbon Nanotubes pave the way for nearly 100% efficient solar cell technology, as well as things like self-healing "concrete" and plastics. Using these technologies, entire cities are being planned and built based around the concept that the city should meet most of its day-to-day power needs, while new highway construction is being bolstered by it (factual basis, these things are already being theory-crafted in labs today). Projections say that by 2070, the entire continental United States will be "smart-paved" with highways that not only fix their own potholes, but feed the local power grids.

Canada, Japan, the UK, and Australia have already accomplished this goal by 2050.

The Exchange

Zorajit Zorajit wrote:
Could you posit what sort of themes or technologies you want to explore?

Anything and everything.

I like your list so far...

Gravity wheel Space station: A Maglev Train in space travelling in a loop with a parallel maglev train functioning as a 'turbolift' between gravity wheel and space dock. That would also be the core of a future viable space travel technology...

How about a conflict of cultures...where the need to genetically diversify the whole populace comes into conflict with cultures and religions who need to inbreed to keep their culture strong? Human Genetic diversity laws on trial.


1) Everyone not in the highest top caste has a tiny explosive charge implanted in their skull at birth. This also provides online GPS data. As a consequence, social unrest is a thing of the past, prisons are no longer needed, nor are trials, care for the elderly or disabled.

2) Starvation is a large-scale problem, which those in power say they are dealing with. Nobody notices them actually doing much about it.

3) Copyright is utterly inviolate. Anyone trying to market new ideas is smashed with hundreds of cases of copyright violation.

4) A few gargantuan companies exist. They provide what social protections exist for those who are loyal to them.

5) Nation-states have ceased to exist with the end of democracy, in favour of "administrative regions" under a world government made up of representatives from the various companies.

6) War is a constant. Nobody even has a clue anymore as to what current wars are going on. Anyone can be drafted at any moment, and there are always new, interesting weapon designs that need testing in a combat environment.

7) The internet has been shot dead with a slew of anti-anonymity laws and crackdowns on copyright infringement and "immoral information".

...I think that's enough for a start.

Dark Archive

I am still amazed with Cell Phones and the Internet, I do not think I can handle any more advances in technology in my lifetime. Maybe teleportation would be cool. Yeah mark me down for teleportation.

The Exchange

Sissyl wrote:
A few gargantuan companies exist. They provide what social protections exist for those who are loyal to them.

Earth-Corp: A single corporation free of the taxes of individual nations producing energy for the world from an artificial island in international waters. And when you want something from the company you will buy it and the 3-D printer factory in your apartment will print it for you.

The Exchange

Nimon wrote:


I am still amazed with Cell Phones and the Internet, I do not think I can handle any more advances in technology in my lifetime. Maybe teleportation would be cool. Yeah mark me down for teleportation.

Do you think we will have computer/cellphone tattoos?

Dark Archive

yellowdingo wrote:


Do you think we will have computer/cellphone tattoos?

Yes, and the ink will have nanites that you activate to teleport to each other. Impromptu live action sports will be the new MMOs.

The Exchange

Living without a space suit on the moon: Apparently if you dig a deep hole the atmospheric gasses currently in the lunar soil will be stored under pressure. It means that the earth-like pressure of our own 20 km thick atmosphere can be duplicated at the bottom of a very deep hole on the moon. As this hole will be the end product of very deep mining on the moon, Lets put The Colony at 2050.


Carbon nanotubes are carcinogens.

Whoops.

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