Will humanity lose its technology or will we achieve a Star Trek style future?

[CaptJohnSheridan]

Will karma kick us in our collective asses for destroying the Earth and our bodies by taking away all technology and all human knowledge of technology or even losing our power over technology forcing us to live in a Horizon Zero Dawn style future?

Or will we achieve a Star Trek Mass Effect style future?

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Well... I mean, the big question is if we can keep up with developing the technology to deal with problems before or soon after they arise. I mean, I gotta be honest, the great danger for the future of mankind I see right now is people submitting to dangerous and irresponsible political ideologies for... no explicable reason whatsoever, really, other than a vague dislike of ethnically different people. And don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that environmental issues and the scarcity of ressources and the massive growth of population aren't dangers we'll have to face rather soon too but I feel like there would be ways to prepare for these problems and find ways to deal with him if the developed world wasn't so eager to throw away all that development to put deranged monsters in power, simply because they scream at brown people.

 

[Thaluikhain]

In the foreseeable future, neither. We'll come up with new and better toys, and not let everyone play with them.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I hate to be a pessimist, but if there's a sci-fi future out there, it's not going to be Star Trek. It's going to be Wall-e.

Maybe after a world changing event will we change our ways, but remember it wasn't Zefram Cochrane's actual invention of the warp drive that made people be civil. It was the fact he did it in a surreptitious way that his flight just happened to coincide with the Vulcan's being overhead and making First Contact.

When learning that there are other civilizations out there, even then, humanity still had far to go. The last world war ended in 2053, and Cochrane's flight and first contact happened in 2063.

Without a galvanizing force, there are only two options if humanity is consistent. We will use further advances in Technology to kill us wholesale (Drones, weaponized diseases, bigger and better bombs) or we will use further advances to make us more lazy and more overweight (Escalators, Uber, food additives that do nothing but make you addicted to the flavor).

Right now, we're just at a neck to neck race to see which one will win out.

 

[CaitSeith]

Why not both? It isn't like space-traveling would stop natural disasters in Earth.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

It'll probably be more like Judge Dredd. Hyperhuge cities, huge apartment buildings essentially being their own towns, cops given the right for summary executions, noodle shops with neon signs at every other street corner...

 

[Saelune]

Maybe many of you don't know this, but between 'our time' and 'Star Trek time' was a virtually apocalyptic dystopian time. Who knows, maybe we're right on track for Star Trek.

There was a whole episode about it with Q, the first Q episode I think.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/World_War_III

 

[Erttheking]

Radical thought, humanity's future will exist outside of the templates that exist in science fiction.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Maybe many of you don't know this, but between 'our time' and 'Star Trek time' was a virtually apocalyptic dystopian time. Who knows, maybe we're right on track for Star Trek.

There was a whole episode about it with Q, the first Q episode I think.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/World_War_III

The first Q episode was the first TNG episode, which touched on a authoritarian regime (Q mocks up a courtroom from there). It's also mentioned in "Space Seed" that there were big nuclear wars in the 90s (run by superhumans), and a DS9 ep has them go back to slightly ahead of now US where they cordon off parts of cities and throw the unemployed in.

 

[Elijin]

Maybe many of you don't know this, but between 'our time' and 'Star Trek time' was a virtually apocalyptic dystopian time. Who knows, maybe we're right on track for Star Trek.

There was a whole episode about it with Q, the first Q episode I think.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/World_War_III

Wasnt one of the major principles of Star Trek that they only came to value their utopia through decades of brutal, horrible war? War so terrible that everyone on Earth decided 'We probably shouldnt war anymore.'

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Maybe many of you don't know this, but between 'our time' and 'Star Trek time' was a virtually apocalyptic dystopian time. Who knows, maybe we're right on track for Star Trek.

There was a whole episode about it with Q, the first Q episode I think.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/World_War_III

Wasnt one of the major principles of Star Trek that they only came to value their utopia through decades of brutal, horrible war? War so terrible that everyone on Earth decided 'We probably shouldnt war anymore.'

And such extreme poverty and hunger they decided not to have money and make food out of raw energy and sunlight

 

[Zontar]

I say No. Not no to one but no to both. At the point that we've developed, even a nuclear war wouldn't send us back to the stone age, nothing short of a nearby nova causing a gamma burst would do the trick, and that'd kill us all. But we also aren't going to have a Star Trek style future, because even ignoring the impossible technology the simple fact of the matter is that humans just don't like each other enough to do that. Even Europe couldn't unite democratically and looks to not be capable of doing so dictatorially either, to think we will homogenise global culture to an even greater degree then that is patently absurd. While we probably won't have war (since we will rapidly run out of reasons to make war) what we'll realistically see is an uncountable number of new nation states arise throughout the solar system. We'll probably agree to universal standards for time, translation, navigation and the like, but if anything we're going to become less united as a species from a governmental perspective then we ever where under tribalism.

Unless the globalists win and some world wide dictatorship arises before any of that can begin. In which case we're totally fucked.

 

[Saelune]

I say No. Not no to one but no to both. At the point that we've developed, even a nuclear war wouldn't send us back to the stone age, nothing short of a nearby nova causing a gamma burst would do the trick, and that'd kill us all. But we also aren't going to have a Star Trek style future, because even ignoring the impossible technology the simple fact of the matter is that humans just don't like each other enough to do that. Even Europe couldn't unite democratically and looks to not be capable of doing so dictatorially either, to think we will homogenise global culture to an even greater degree then that is patently absurd. While we probably won't have war (since we will rapidly run out of reasons to make war) what we'll realistically see is an uncountable number of new nation states arise throughout the solar system. We'll probably agree to universal standards for time, translation, navigation and the like, but if anything we're going to become less united as a species from a governmental perspective then we ever where under tribalism.

Unless the globalists win and some world wide dictatorship arises before any of that can begin. In which case we're totally fucked.

'If we work together, we wont work together, so we shouldn't work together, cause we work together better that way'

 

[Zontar]

I say No. Not no to one but no to both. At the point that we've developed, even a nuclear war wouldn't send us back to the stone age, nothing short of a nearby nova causing a gamma burst would do the trick, and that'd kill us all. But we also aren't going to have a Star Trek style future, because even ignoring the impossible technology the simple fact of the matter is that humans just don't like each other enough to do that. Even Europe couldn't unite democratically and looks to not be capable of doing so dictatorially either, to think we will homogenise global culture to an even greater degree then that is patently absurd. While we probably won't have war (since we will rapidly run out of reasons to make war) what we'll realistically see is an uncountable number of new nation states arise throughout the solar system. We'll probably agree to universal standards for time, translation, navigation and the like, but if anything we're going to become less united as a species from a governmental perspective then we ever where under tribalism.

Unless the globalists win and some world wide dictatorship arises before any of that can begin. In which case we're totally fucked.

'If we work together, we wont work together, so we shouldn't work together, cause we work together better that way'

You know we can work towards mutually beneficial goals without having a single government.

 

[Saelune]

I say No. Not no to one but no to both. At the point that we've developed, even a nuclear war wouldn't send us back to the stone age, nothing short of a nearby nova causing a gamma burst would do the trick, and that'd kill us all. But we also aren't going to have a Star Trek style future, because even ignoring the impossible technology the simple fact of the matter is that humans just don't like each other enough to do that. Even Europe couldn't unite democratically and looks to not be capable of doing so dictatorially either, to think we will homogenise global culture to an even greater degree then that is patently absurd. While we probably won't have war (since we will rapidly run out of reasons to make war) what we'll realistically see is an uncountable number of new nation states arise throughout the solar system. We'll probably agree to universal standards for time, translation, navigation and the like, but if anything we're going to become less united as a species from a governmental perspective then we ever where under tribalism.

Unless the globalists win and some world wide dictatorship arises before any of that can begin. In which case we're totally fucked.

'If we work together, we wont work together, so we shouldn't work together, cause we work together better that way'

You know we can work towards mutually beneficial goals without having a single government.

Not when ethnic nationalism has us bombing and killing each other.

 

[Kyrian007]

Will karma kick us in our collective asses for destroying the Earth and our bodies by taking away all technology and all human knowledge of technology or even losing our power over technology forcing us to live in a Horizon Zero Dawn style future?

Or will we achieve a Star Trek Mass Effect style future?

Your avatar kind of says it for me. I see us as headed toward more of a Babylon 5 future... but worse. As opposed to being the up and coming species, we will be seen by other civilizations as more of a backwoods hillbillies species. Watch the humans from behind glass and see how stupid they are. We will be barely chugging along in tin cans in space while the other civilizations have the Star Trek tech.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

We're all going to be chocking to death on ash from constant wildfires and drought before we have to worry about our tech disappearing.

Smoke season's started up in Montana recently. The constant low-level headache has me a bit cranky.

 

[Trunkage]

I say it's going to be Futurama style. Even though we would have new gadgets, it would literally be the same nonsense every day.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

If there's any sci fi like future we're likely to end up in it'll probably be closer to Dark Matter or The Expanse. ...or possibly Star Trek's mirror universe.

 

[lionsprey]

neither. unless something like a solar flare kills all electronics or another natural disaster like that we would never simply lose all technology. a Utopia is impossible for humanity to achieve because of human nature. the closest thing to a Utopia we could probably reach would be if we create a "caretaker" AI that manages all of humanity's needs and stops us from killing each other