Category Archives: Future

The world’s resources are running perilously low and the human population is at an all time high.  Every human being on the planet, no matter what the nationality, religion, race, or location needs so many resources to continue to live.  When these needs are not met and affect large populations conflict is almost a certainty.

Rather than investing in new technologies and in education to uplift the population, the world powers scramble to secure the most resources possible triggering a series of regional wars and conflicts.  Alliances and trade cartels attempt to concentrate resources for the top strata of the ruling elite.

Using inadvisable methods, more hydrocarbons are coaxed out of the ground, compounding the climate change problems of the world and polluting more water sources.

Economic inequality continues to spiral out of control.  The ruling elite turn to technology in the form of drones and mass media propaganda to control the masses and force them to accept lower standards of living by distracting them with entertainment programs and using low quality mass-produced foodstuffs.

Arable land begins to diminish due climate change.  Fish schools exploited for food collapse due to harvesting pressures.  The last of the great rain forests felled.  Air quality begins to suffer worldwide.

The last nonaligned countries are subsumed into the trading cartels.  The large alliances have no other choice but to turn on one another.  The mass media entertainment used to control the ever-growing lower classes begins to lose its appeal as food shortages begin.

Small scale clashes begin between the large powers for control of more resources.  Small scale nuclear exchange.  Mass revolts begin worldwide as people protest wars and food shortages.  Self nuclear strikes as ruling elite try to curve revolts.

Mass starvation as distribution network collapses due to strife and fuel shortages.  Large cities begin to depopulate as people flee to the countryside.

Technological reversal as the hydrocarbon economy ends and the animal powered economy restarts.

World human population collapses to 20 million.  Planet begins process of regeneration that will take tens of thousands of years.

I spend way too much time watching TED talks.  But it’s a bit of an addiction of mine.  I like to listen to all these ideas and concepts so well presented and so thoroughly explained that you would at times believe that anything is possible.

A presentation last week got me thinking.  This TED talk was about growing meat and leather in test tubes and culturing these for human use.  The speaker speculated on a future where ranches didn’t exist and we just “brewed” meat and leather.  But then that got me thinking, how would such a world work?

So I’ve been making mental notes on possible futures and in this installment I would posit a future that takes us away from primary resource gathering.

Professions such as mining and ranching are a thing of the past.  Robots take the place of miners in dangerous and strenuous mining jobs.  Ranching is of course replaced by cultured cells creating meat and leather.  Farming is mainly automated and some of it is accomplished in factory type settings using vertical and airponic techniques.

Heavy  construction and factory jobs have been supplanted by robotic labor.  The only real human positions in these fields are supervisory positions.

Shipping is going to be automated as high-speed rail and automated trucks bring goods either to local distributors or right to the home.

So what are people doing then?  Well there are still many service and light construction jobs available.  Even in the distant future things like plumbing and electrical repairs need to be done.  Roads need to be repaired and some construction specialties can’t be automated.

But the real growth will be in the intellectual and information sectors.  A heavier emphasis on using your mind to create new designs, new programs, and new entertainment content will increase the gross national product without involving the use of more resources.

This will mean that we will work, play, and live more online than ever before.  Commuting will become less and less necessary, work schedules will be more flexible, health rates will rise as people feel less stress and take more time to relax and improve themselves.

This increase in the number of people working on new technologies and in science will lead to more and better inventions intended to curve energy use and to create new sources of cheap reliable energy.

Living standards will rise worldwide as this model spreads through the globe and larger and larger parts of the world formerly set aside for agriculture will be returned to pristine wild states further helping to alleviate global warming.

I know, a really, really sunny and bright outlook and somewhat improbable.  Next time I will go to the opposite end of the spectrum.