A future perspective on the coming of technological maturity

I have been toying with this conceptualization lately so I thought I would share it. We have for the past two decades, been in a time of great technological change largely due to the advent and rise of personal computers and information technology. We went from home computers to the internet, to tablets and smartphones in a relatively short time. Now we are on the cusp of another great leap with the advent of AI, virtual reality and, soon driverless vehicles. I also believe in the next several decades we are going to see a conversion from fossil fuels to a society that utilizes solar/electric and to a lesser degree wind energy. This is going to happen for two main reasons. One, India and China are planning on totally revamping their transportation and power to solar/electric and the eventual elimination of fossil fuels. Second, as this happens, the cost of those technologies will eventually render oil obsolete as oil and coal will prove far less cost effective. I am in no way a student of the social sciences, but the convolutions socially from these developments are going to be extreme. I believe we are already seeing the social changes resulting from the last two decades in the form of extremism in politics and social viewpoints, a big polarization of thought is taking place. You see it on the internet, in the way people interact and in discussions daily. The focus of this post, however is not on the current societal changes but on the future ones. There are several drivers for this change that I can see. First, is AI. It has been estimated that something approaching 50 percent of jobs are going to be replaceable by AI in the next 20 years. This will certainly result in a profound social change. The second driver is going to be population growth. The current world population stands at 7.5 billion and is expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. This, as the prospect for employment is halved. Climate change and environmental degradation will play into these factors as well.

So in my humble opinion, it could result in a couple different scenarios.

One is a total societal collapse. Not as far fetched as one might think. As our society becomes more complex it becomes more vulnerable to collapse. A good example is a power grid failure, from either a solar event or an EMP. Such an event if extreme, could send us back to the nineteenth century virtually overnight. A global pandemic could also result in a collapse. Or nuclear war. All very plausible in the present day.

The second possibility is a societal recoil from rapid technological change. People may start to link all the negative repercussions of all the new technologies and reject it en masse. This one I kind of find far fetched, given that the smartphone is becoming a physical extension of an alarming number of people. But looking over the curve of this, maybe at some point it will result in some kind of rejection of the same. I kind of envision a sort of neo Amish kind of thing, people embracing family, spirituality and the land, and rejecting the electronic frontier. People may start to reject the lack of privacy and social isolation that has increased over the years. One example is a resurgence in playing of board games over video games the past couple years. I read last week that there is an upsurge in farming by millennials this year, maybe its the star of such a trend, the problem with this scenario is we are fast approaching the birth of a generation that doesn't know any other life than one awash in technology, so I don't know how this will play out.


One last possibility, is that we might achieve some kind of pseudo star trek , utopian civilization, with AI and new technologies solving all our problems, poverty hunger and disease all eradicated in a century. If space exploration really takes off, all bets are off on this one.


I guess the crux of my post is, we may inherit either heaven or hell or something else entirely, but the future looks to be a time of great change. Some of which we cant imagine. I guess my question is, what do you think is going to happen in the next century?

I think a.i. will be huge. Robots will interact with humans on a daily basis.

When in a society that everything becomes a convenient and the people become use to the convenience, even in 3rd world (ex: countries that no longer use the oxen and rely on machine to plant and harvest rice) will suddenly collapse after a natural disaster. Puerto Rico comes to mind very quickly. Since much of modern society lives within 100 miles of a major city, collapse of society will happen over night. The "law and order" of modern society will only be seen in closed circles of groups that can maintain group mentality to prosper in a caring way. Americans and the British are now seeing what is a human nature disaster among the politicians that write the laws to save their butts, but they realize they must maintain their political power and NEVER lose it or the laws they wrote will be their worst enemy. It is "human control, natural behavioral" disaster that will determine the future, not a machine. Remember man made the machine and can turn it off too if it works against them, just like the casino slot machines.

a reply to: openminded2011

I quote this part of your OP because it is exactly my thinking but my views come from a different if not matching position.


"The second possibility is a societal recoil from rapid technological change. People may start to link all the negative repercussions of all the new technologies and reject it en masse. This one I kind of find far fetched, given that the smartphone is becoming a physical extension of an alarming number of people. But looking over the curve of this, maybe at some point it will result in some kind of rejection of the same. I kind of envision a sort of neo Amish kind of thing, people embracing family, spirituality and the land, and rejecting the electronic frontier. People may start to reject the lack of privacy and social isolation that has increased over the years. One example is a resurgence in playing of board games over video games the past couple years. I read last week that there is an upsurge in farming by millennials this year, maybe its the star of such a trend, the problem with this scenario is we are fast approaching the birth of a generation that doesn't know any other life than one awash in technology, so I don't know how this will play out."

Eventually, it will be recognized by fact or theory that technology is basically bad because it is soundly faulty at its core. Look around you, what item do you possess that has various parts that work to do a complex task will never fail? There is no such machine made and there never will be.

So right there is why our conscious and unconscious minds are starting to wonder if our heavily trodden path toward more and more technology is the correct way to proceed.

Looking far, far ahead in human development and based on the knowledge that technology is basically bad (some will say the work of the devil) we can glimpse the concept that a vastly expanded consciousness will provide us with a self-based and interior satisfaction that has nothing to do with drastic drag of material things that we "need" to exist today. I suspect that few will identify with my view of this situation, but I'll insist that it is a strong undercurrent in basic human existence (and connects exactly with the basic Biblical stories of that loathsome apple and the snake.)

Great thread BTW.