Topic: What is humanity's destiny?

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

I find it impossible to take any balding middle aged man with a ponytail seriously. Such a serious lack of judgement on something so simple hardly augers well for the bigger questions.

[Mouth]

Think we're pretty fucked but that doesn't bother me. I'd like the science bods to invent a replicator before I die and the whole world goes to shit though. That would be ace.

Alreayd done, 3D printing.

[scatman]

Not sure we've reached a population peak, advanced medicine has helped against nature's safety blocks (viruses and such). We'll still be stuck on earth in a couple of hundred years. Overpopulated and over polluted too

[L12]

God will cease to forgive our sins, the earth will open, and humans will be consumed to hell.

If there is a hell it's right here on earth,we have created it without outside intervention. God will never cease to forgive our sins, we are mortal and prone to poor judgement.

[Immoral King Brian Blessed]

If there is a hell it's right here on earth,we have created it without outside intervention. God will never cease to forgive our sins, we are mortal and prone to poor judgement.

I'm not.

[Roopy]

Love the idea of space exploration and colonising the cosmos.

Won't happen in our time.

We've made no advance in manned spacecraft exploration since the moonlandings.

We can send satellites to the edge of our solar system though.

At the end of the day, the Universe is just to fucking big and complicated. Even a trip from Earth to Mars is unbelievably big. Unless we soon discover some technology that is well beyond our knowledge at the moment, we're gonna be stuck on this planet for a very very very long time.

Having said that, we can't go colonising gas giants. We have to discover a habitable planet first I suppose.

[L12]

I'm not.

Well aside from you then.

[Mouth]

I'm not.

Neither am I, I'm fucking perfect.

[Suspect Package.]

It won't take Nuclear bombs or famines.

Eventually simple genetics will destroy us.

[Andy @ Allerton]

Peak Oil will end technological progress as people die off by the billions from lack of food. The global economy will cease to exist.

Technology will regress to a hodgepodge of pre-1800s gear and whatever modern stuff we can get to work on limited solar power. Warfare will be probably go back to horses as we fight for the remaining scraps.

Humanity will stagnate technologically and population-wise until geological or astronomical factors do us in for good. We will never again become industrialized or have a means to travel around the world in a timely manner.

Even if Peak Oil were averted (I don't believe it can be) I don't think we'll ever reach another planet unless we use generational ships. Faster than light travel is physically impossible. Whoever reaches that planet will probably have tons of birth defects and cancer from galactic radiation.

You honestly think that the oil companies haven't got something they can just slot into place once the oil runs out?

[DaftKev]

It won't take Nuclear bombs or famines.

Eventually simple genetics will destroy us.

What makes you say that?

[Cruiser]

We'll be exploring space further out, man will set foot on Mars and maybe one of its moons, but just won't be colonising celestial bodies. Thats a step too far IMO.

We'll be stuck on an overpopulated earth still waiting for Liverpool to win the Premier League.

[JonnyDubb]

You honestly think that the oil companies haven't got something they can just slot into place once the oil runs out?

There's oil on Mars. It'll fuel the next space race. One step at a time.

[L12]

What makes you say that?

Actually eugenics will in my opinion eventually take care of overpopulation.

[Andy @ Allerton]

There's oil on Mars. It'll fuel the next space race. One step at a time.

So you're saying there was Life on Mars then?

Is this you?

[Finn Solomon]

Actually eugenics will in my opinion eventually take care of overpopulation.

Eugenics is completely unethical. A better way is to reduce poverty.

[Enemy]

Alreayd done, 3D printing.

Sorry but until I can go up to a hole in the wall and say '2 raktacinos' and have them appear from midair in less than 3 seconds it's not already been done.

[Nessy76]

Astonishing how many people think colonising other planets is beyond our technological abilities.
We already have 99% of the technology needed to put a permanent base on Mars. What we don't have at the moment is the political will, but that could change in a decade. In 1949, no-one thought there'd be men on the moon twenty years later, and the jump in technology then is far greater than what's needed to get us to Mars.

Faster than light travel is, however, probably not going to happen any time soon (next thousand years or so) and may not be possible at all. Depends if it is possible to create "wormholes", the answer in theory so far seems to be yes, but we don't even really know what the questions are in detail yet.

Anyone have some interesting links to how close we are to inventing anti-gravity, fusion power, FTL travel, things we'll need to get off-planet?

We don't need any of those things to get off-planet. But, since you ask...
http://mkaku.org/home/
is probably as good a place as any to start.

[Enemy]

Astonishing how many people think colonising other planets is beyond our technological abilities.
We already have 99% of the technology needed to put a permanent base on Mars. What we don't have at the moment is the political will, but that could change in a decade. In 1949, no-one thought there'd be men on the moon twenty years later, and the jump in technology then is far greater than what's needed to get us to Mars.

Faster than light travel is, however, probably not going to happen any time soon (next thousand years or so) and may not be possible at all. Depends if it is possible to create "wormholes", the answer in theory so far seems to be yes, but we don't even really know what the questions are in detail yet.

We don't need any of those things to get off-planet. But, since you ask...
http://mkaku.org/home/
is probably as good a place as any to start.

A thousand years? Come on dude, all we need is a plasma warp core.

[Nessy76]

A thousand years? Come on dude, all we need is a plasma warp core.

Well you get busy building one of them then, and I'll happily admit I was wrong...

[Mouth]

Sorry but until I can go up to a hole in the wall and say '2 raktacinos' and have them appear from midair in less than 3 seconds it's not already been done.

Well what I mean is its already happening, thats what they are essentially and they will eventually be able to do it. They already use them to create things like replacement bones using high level scans and are working on doing organs as well. So Klingon coffee might yet be possible.

[Enemy]

Well what I mean is its already happening, thats what they are essentially and they will eventually be able to do it. They already use them to create things like replacement bones using high level scans and are working on doing organs as well. So Klingon coffee might yet be possible.

Well until that day comes I won't  be happy. And when it comes and I can give up cooking altogether I shall die very happily indeed.

[Big Red Richie]

The issues with the future of humanity,  I see are on two levels.

Firstly, Technology.

It's only a little over a century since man first invented manned flight (Da Vinci / Montgolfier's, asside), yet in that time, we have moved on leaps and bounds in terms of technological advancement. That said, since the emergence of jet/rocket technology in the 1930s, in real terms, we havent actually moved on that far, at all.

Yes, we have bigger, better, more powerful and more fuel efficient rocket designs, but they are still rockets, and as such are bound to earth by the amount of fuel they can carry.

As with electronics and telecominications etc, going from analogue to digital technology, so must travel and or rocket/space craft design.  With the current rocket technology, still based on fossil fuels, we are basically stuck in an analogue world, and untill there is a technological revolution in terms of space travel, we aren't going anywhere other than the odd planet in our own solar system, any time in the next couple of hundred years.

Obviously, thats only one part of the problem. 

Sending a space craft or probe into deep space is already achieveable, as with the Voyager missions. The bigger problem to solve is the issue of manned vehicles, and having the ability to sustain life over the course of months and years, and not just sustain, but be self-sustaining, and not tied to the Earth by a supply chain. An altogether more difficult proposition.

That said, who knows what technologies will emerge in the next one or two hundred years.  Maybe the likes of teleportation might not be that outlandish to our kids or grandkids.


Which brings me on to my second point.


Assuming that we as a species are tied to the earth for the forseeable future, ie: the next 500-1000 years (or untill there is a quantum leap in technological travel terms), then it all becomes about the power to rule ourselves.

If you look at the graph of population, and population expolsion, over the last couple of hundred years, then it's quite obvious that that growth in it's current climb, is unsustainable.
Sometime in the next thousand years there has to be a tipping point, where there are more mouths to feed than is currently sustainable, under current food resources and crop growing conditions. 

At the point we come close to, or go over that tipping point, the currnt world politics and fighting for oil goes on the back burner, in favour of countries, armies and politicians fighting over water and the meagre food resources still available.
Wars of the future won't be fought over land or oil. They will be fought, though, over water and food.

At some point in our future, some very harsh choices have to be made.   Do we go down the route of eugenics, or another such route to regulate population control?

Ultimately, under current conditions, we are simply going to have to.

How we choose to do that is where the controvesy lies.   Do we stop treating people with terminal illness?  or stop treating all illness, and let natural selection kick in? or sterilise a proportion of the population in order to reach that goal?

Funny. We all laugh at the obsurdity of the thoughts of a situation like the film, Logans Run (as with many other books/movies), but is it that far outside of the bounds of reality, when five hundred years down the line, the population needs to be reined in or culled, in order that some of the population survive, albeight at the cost of others.


On the side, I'm a quiet advocate of Gaia Theory. 
I believe that Mother Nature has an answer for every problem, she just hasn't shown us yet, or we ourselves haven't found it.

For evey illness, like cancer or AIDS etc., somewhere out there in nature is a cure. Whether that be a natural plant extract, or other man assisted cure, I do believe it's there.

As an entity, Earth/Mother Nature, has her checks and balances.  For evey Ying there's a Yang.   Why wouldn't there be?

It's a self-sustaining entity, that If left to it's own devices, will regulate itself for eternity, only occasionally upsetting the order of things to reinvent itself, or starting a new order every couple of million years. -  A sweeping of the board, so to speak.

Unfortunately, WE, as the predominat species on this planet at this time, have found a way to cheat Mother Nature...... for the time being, at least.

Going back to population control. It's widely known that in some parts of the world, the sperm count of the average male has dropped consistently over the last several decades.

By our own hand(or Mother Nature's), how do we know or not that maybe we're already on the path towards our own demise.

Over the last couple of hundred years, we have slowly, yet consistantly raped this planet of it's natural resources, and in the process, also slowly poisoned the planet and ourselves.

It's believed in some quarters that we may of well - slowly and without realising -  steered ourselves down the path of sterilisation by stealth, by poisoning our own enviroment to such an extent that with the amount of chemicals now in our water supplies and food chain, we ourselves may be the architects of our own demise, as in the next few hundred years, if the average sperm count in males carries on dropping, we may push ourselves over the edge by our own stupidity.

Yes. Science and technology may well slow that demise down in it's tracks, and yes, we may of learnt to cheat nature for the time being.  But she will have her way. One way or the other, and unless we work hand in hand with her, we, ultimately, will kill ourselves off, whether we like it or not.



Wow. I sound like a right hippy there. 

[kesey]

Whatever we want it to be .

[Andy @ Allerton]

This is the future dudes! RAWK should finance this..

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47396187/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T7B9UFL4TAM

By Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
updated 5/12/2012 12:13:38 AM ET 2012-05-12T04:13:38
Print Font: +-In Star Trek lore, the first Starship Enterprise will be built by the year 2245. But today, an engineer has proposed — and outlined in meticulous detail — building a full-sized, ion-powered version of the Enterprise complete with 1G of gravity on board, and says it could be done with current technology, within 20 years.

"We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise — so let's do it," writes the curator of the Build The Enterprise website, who goes by the name of BTE Dan.

More space news from msnbc.com  Alan Boyle / msnbc.com The queen of SETI retires from research
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The real-life astronomer who inspired the alien-hunting character in “Contact” is retiring from her research post — but she isn't giving up on the SETI quest.

Your favorite views of the solar eclipse
SpaceX capsule on way to space station
Space realities keep pace with science fiction
..This "Gen1" Enterprise could get to Mars in 90 days, to the moon in three, and "could hop from planet to planet dropping off robotic probes of all sorts en masse — rovers, special-built planes and satellites,” BTE Dan says.

Complete with conceptual designs, ship specs, a funding schedule and almost every other imaginable detail, the BTE website was launched just this week and covers almost every aspect of how the project could be done. This Enterprise would be built entirely in space, have a rotating gravity section inside of the saucer, and be similar in size with the same look as the USS Enterprise that we know from classic "Star Trek."


“It ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” writes BTE Dan, even though his design moves a few parts around for better performance with today’s technology. This version of the Enterprise would be three things in one: a spaceship, a space station and a spaceport. A thousand people can be on board at once — either as crew members or as adventurous visitors.

While the ship will not travel at warp speed, with an ion propulsion engine powered by a 1.5GW nuclear reactor, it can travel at a constant acceleration so that the ship can easily get to key points of interest in our solar system. Three additional nuclear reactors would create all of the electricity needed for operation of the ship.

The saucer section would be a 0.3-mile-diameter (536-meter-diameter) rotating, magnetically suspended gravity wheel that would create 1G of gravity.

Advertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoices
Advertise | AdChoices
.The first assignments for the Enterprise would have the ship serving as a space station and spaceport, but then go on to missions to the moon, Mars, Venus, various asteroids and even Europa, where the ship's laser would be used not for combat but for cutting through the moon's icy crust to enable a probe to descend to the ocean below.



Of course, like all spaceships today, the big "if" for such an effort would be getting Congress to provide NASA the funding to do a huge 20-year project. But BTE Dan has that all worked out, and between tax increases and spreading out budget cuts to areas like defense, health and human services, housing and urban development, education and energy, the cuts to areas of discretionary spending are not large, and the tax increases could be small.

"These changes to spending and taxes will not sink the republic," says the website. "In fact, these will barely be noticed. It’s amazing that a program as fantastic as the building a fleet of USS Enterprise spaceships can be done with so little impact."

BTE Dan adds that "the only obstacles to us doing it are the limitations we place on our collective imagination." His proposal says that NASA could still receive funding for the science, astronomy and robotic missions it currently undertakes.

But he proposes not just one Enterprise-class ship, but multiple ships, one of which can be built every 33 years — once per generation — giving three new ships per century. "Each will be more advanced than the prior one. Older ships can be continually upgraded over several generations until they are eventually decommissioned."

BTE Dan, who did not respond to emails, lists himself as a systems engineer and electrical engineer who has worked at a Fortune 500 company for the past 30 years.

The website includes a blog, a forum and a Q&A section, where BTE Dan answers the question, "What if someone can prove that building the Gen1 Enterprise is beyond our technological reach?"

Answer: "If someone can convince me that it is not technically possible (ignoring political and funding issues), then I will state on the BuildTheEnterprise site that I have been found to be wrong. In that case, building the first Enterprise will have to wait for, say, another half century. But I don’t think that anyone will be able to convince me it can’t be done. My position is that we can — and should — immediately start working on it.”

For the complete space nerd experience, check out Build The Enterprise.

By Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
updated 5/12/2012 12:13:38 AM ET 2012-05-12T04:13:38
Print Font: +-In Star Trek lore, the first Starship Enterprise will be built by the year 2245. But today, an engineer has proposed — and outlined in meticulous detail — building a full-sized, ion-powered version of the Enterprise complete with 1G of gravity on board, and says it could be done with current technology, within 20 years.

"We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise — so let's do it," writes the curator of the Build The Enterprise website, who goes by the name of BTE Dan.

More space news from msnbc.com  Alan Boyle / msnbc.com The queen of SETI retires from research
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The real-life astronomer who inspired the alien-hunting character in “Contact” is retiring from her research post — but she isn't giving up on the SETI quest.

Your favorite views of the solar eclipse
SpaceX capsule on way to space station
Space realities keep pace with science fiction
..This "Gen1" Enterprise could get to Mars in 90 days, to the moon in three, and "could hop from planet to planet dropping off robotic probes of all sorts en masse — rovers, special-built planes and satellites,” BTE Dan says.

Complete with conceptual designs, ship specs, a funding schedule and almost every other imaginable detail, the BTE website was launched just this week and covers almost every aspect of how the project could be done. This Enterprise would be built entirely in space, have a rotating gravity section inside of the saucer, and be similar in size with the same look as the USS Enterprise that we know from classic "Star Trek."


“It ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” writes BTE Dan, even though his design moves a few parts around for better performance with today’s technology. This version of the Enterprise would be three things in one: a spaceship, a space station and a spaceport. A thousand people can be on board at once — either as crew members or as adventurous visitors.

While the ship will not travel at warp speed, with an ion propulsion engine powered by a 1.5GW nuclear reactor, it can travel at a constant acceleration so that the ship can easily get to key points of interest in our solar system. Three additional nuclear reactors would create all of the electricity needed for operation of the ship.

The saucer section would be a 0.3-mile-diameter (536-meter-diameter) rotating, magnetically suspended gravity wheel that would create 1G of gravity.

Advertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoices
Advertise | AdChoices
.The first assignments for the Enterprise would have the ship serving as a space station and spaceport, but then go on to missions to the moon, Mars, Venus, various asteroids and even Europa, where the ship's laser would be used not for combat but for cutting through the moon's icy crust to enable a probe to descend to the ocean below.



Of course, like all spaceships today, the big "if" for such an effort would be getting Congress to provide NASA the funding to do a huge 20-year project. But BTE Dan has that all worked out, and between tax increases and spreading out budget cuts to areas like defense, health and human services, housing and urban development, education and energy, the cuts to areas of discretionary spending are not large, and the tax increases could be small.

"These changes to spending and taxes will not sink the republic," says the website. "In fact, these will barely be noticed. It’s amazing that a program as fantastic as the building a fleet of USS Enterprise spaceships can be done with so little impact."

BTE Dan adds that "the only obstacles to us doing it are the limitations we place on our collective imagination." His proposal says that NASA could still receive funding for the science, astronomy and robotic missions it currently undertakes.

But he proposes not just one Enterprise-class ship, but multiple ships, one of which can be built every 33 years — once per generation — giving three new ships per century. "Each will be more advanced than the prior one. Older ships can be continually upgraded over several generations until they are eventually decommissioned."

BTE Dan, who did not respond to emails, lists himself as a systems engineer and electrical engineer who has worked at a Fortune 500 company for the past 30 years.

The website includes a blog, a forum and a Q&A section, where BTE Dan answers the question, "What if someone can prove that building the Gen1 Enterprise is beyond our technological reach?"

Answer: "If someone can convince me that it is not technically possible (ignoring political and funding issues), then I will state on the BuildTheEnterprise site that I have been found to be wrong. In that case, building the first Enterprise will have to wait for, say, another half century. But I don’t think that anyone will be able to convince me it can’t be done. My position is that we can — and should — immediately start working on it.”

For the complete space nerd experience, check out Build The Enterprise.

[Monkey Red]

We'll still be chasing No 19, that's what!

Seriously, the planet will be in the middle of a complete and utter mother of all ice ages and there will be very few, if any humans left. And not one being left on the planet will miss us.

[El Denzel Pepito]

I seriously don't think we will ever end up living on another planet. We'll remain on Earth with the people dying due to lack of resources, disease, natural disasters etc.

Personally, I believe the whole 2012 may be true but to not such an extreme case. I don't think we'll all die but something will happen soon which will kill a lot of people.

[Mouth]

Listen doom mongers, its bollocks, that kind of thing has been getting said for bloody years, yet here we still are. Dont worry about it, we will carry on as normal and sooner or later we will get the fuck of fthis planet, because there is gold in them thar hills, its started with google and that going into the asteroid fracking business, it will increase as there is more money to be made.

[Nessy76]

The issues with the future of humanity,  I see are on two levels.

Firstly, Technology.

It's only a little over a century since man first invented manned flight (Da Vinci / Montgolfier's, asside), yet in that time, we have moved on leaps and bounds in terms of technological advancement. That said, since the emergence of jet/rocket technology in the 1930s, in real terms, we havent actually moved on that far, at all.

Yes, we have bigger, better, more powerful and more fuel efficient rocket designs, but they are still rockets, and as such are bound to earth by the amount of fuel they can carry.

As with electronics and telecominications etc, going from analogue to digital technology, so must travel and or rocket/space craft design.  With the current rocket technology, still based on fossil fuels, we are basically stuck in an analogue world, and untill there is a technological revolution in terms of space travel, we aren't going anywhere other than the odd planet in our own solar system, any time in the next couple of hundred years.

Obviously, thats only one part of the problem. 

Sending a space craft or probe into deep space is already achieveable, as with the Voyager missions. The bigger problem to solve is the issue of manned vehicles, and having the ability to sustain life over the course of months and years, and not just sustain, but be self-sustaining, and not tied to the Earth by a supply chain. An altogether more difficult proposition.

That said, who knows what technologies will emerge in the next one or two hundred years.  Maybe the likes of teleportation might not be that outlandish to our kids or grandkids.

Maybe, but teleportation of living beings is always going to be problematic due to the sheer complexity involved.

There are ways of "bootstrapping" space travel via mining asteroids and so on. Land on a big enough asteroid and you can essentially mine, refine and process the raw materials to make and fuel more spacecraft. That may not be space travel as most of us think of it, but it's probably the biggest way we are going to spread our presence through the solar system and eventually beyond. We can then build a network of rest-points and huge permanent space-stations throughout the solar system.

There could be billions of people living off-planet, some never putting foot on a planetary surface in their entire lives.

None of that technology is very far beyond current capabilities. (50-100 years?)

The difficulties of inter-stellar travel (to other solar systems) are mainly concerned with the time the journeys would take. Conventional rockets won't be the solution to that, but there are alternatives, especially if you don't need to worry about escaping gravity in the first place. Ships built in space can take advantage of very different circumstances.

There are also a variety of proposed propulsion methods which could make travel to the nearest stars achievable within a decade of launch. Some of that technology could well be available by the end of the century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Proposed_methods_of_interstellar_travel

Which brings me on to my second point.
...
At some point in our future, some very harsh choices have to be made.   Do we go down the route of eugenics, or another such route to regulate population control?

Eugenics has been quite thoroughly debunked, aside from the Nazi overtones, the concept is based on flawed notions of genetic "superiority" which dont actually correlate to anything known about genetics. Deliberately limiting the gene pool simply increases the risk of hereditary diseases and reduces immunity to disease generally.

Ultimately, under current conditions, we are simply going to have to.

How we choose to do that is where the controvesy lies.   Do we stop treating people with terminal illness?  or stop treating all illness, and let natural selection kick in? or sterilise a proportion of the population in order to reach that goal?

Not necessary. Population growth in "developed" countries has been heavily reduced and there's no reason the same should not eventually apply to areas of high population currently undergoing high growth like China, Brazil and India. As their economies grow, people (and women particularly) see less need to produce large numbers of children, and have greater incentive not to - the opportunity to work and provide a quality level of income for the children you do have.

If that doesn't happen, it would make more sense to take action to decrease fertility rates in the population generally, rather than making the kind of evil-genius "choices" you're suggesting.

Funny. We all laugh at the obsurdity of the thoughts of a situation like the film, Logans Run (as with many other books/movies), but is it that far outside of the bounds of reality, when five hundred years down the line, the population needs to be reined in or culled, in order that some of the population survive, albeight at the cost of others.


On the side, I'm a quiet advocate of Gaia Theory. 
I believe that Mother Nature has an answer for every problem, she just hasn't shown us yet, or we ourselves haven't found it.

For evey illness, like cancer or AIDS etc., somewhere out there in nature is a cure. Whether that be a natural plant extract, or other man assisted cure, I do believe it's there.

As an entity, Earth/Mother Nature, has her checks and balances.  For evey Ying there's a Yang.   Why wouldn't there be?

It's a self-sustaining entity, that If left to it's own devices, will regulate itself for eternity, only occasionally upsetting the order of things to reinvent itself, or starting a new order every couple of million years. -  A sweeping of the board, so to speak.

It's a system which self-regulates - up to a point. Smash a body the size of Mars into Earth (it's happened before and could happen again) and see how well Mother Nature deals with that.

[flw]

God will cease to forgive our sins, the earth will open, and humans will be consumed to hell.

 

[Zanchent]

i believe we have a highher power. theres has to be. what would the point bwe if not?

c'est tout

[blah]

i believe we have a highher power. theres has to be. what would the point bwe if not?

c'est tout

Nature is the only higher power and we will die by its hands if we don't die by our own first. We're all fucked.

[Stevie-A]

I read an enjoyable text, many moons ago, suggesting a contemplation-destruction hypothesis. This assessed our fate as either being contemplative (happy with our lot, joy in art, loved up) or destructive (boom). I fear we may never aspire to the hippy ideal, so start storing those bottles of water/cans/towels. Or, just start reading about eschatology. That'll cheer your day up.

[gregor]

i believe we have a highher power. theres has to be. what would the point bwe if not?

c'est tout

There isn't a point. What is "the point" to the life of a grasshopper? An oak tree? We're just living organisms. In the immortal words of Dave Lister - "You're born and then you die. The bit in the middle's called life". Just have a laugh and enjoy yourself.

[Andy @ Allerton]

I seriously don't think we will ever end up living on another planet. We'll remain on Earth with the people dying due to lack of resources, disease, natural disasters etc.

Personally, I believe the whole 2012 may be true but to not such an extreme case. I don't think we'll all die but something will happen soon which will kill a lot of people.

"The whole 2012 thing" - you know that the (Arbitary) year is actually nowhere near 2012 and the actual year is something around 4,000,000,000 or so?

[Andy @ Allerton]

Maybe, but teleportation of living beings is always going to be problematic due to the sheer complexity involved.

Teleportation is an absolute no-no because the source always has to be destroyed. It's a transfer of current state to current state in a different position. The information can be transferred but not the source. So you have to get shot of the source before you create the destination. Unless you're into cloning.

The only way around that would be transportation via wormhole. Which isn't actually transportation or movement at all. It's just bring 'there' to 'here' and moving between the intersecting planes.

[Nessy76]

Teleportation is an absolute no-no because the source always has to be destroyed. It's a transfer of current state to current state in a different position. The information can be transferred but not the source. So you have to get shot of the source before you create the destination. Unless you're into cloning.

True, but that's more of an ethical problem than a technological one.

The only way around that would be transportation via wormhole. Which isn't actually transportation or movement at all. It's just bring 'there' to 'here' and moving between the intersecting planes.

Yes. Although no-one even has the faintest idea if that is even theoretically possible yet.

[The Fletcher Memorial]

One day the computers will run everything; self aware they will be the masters of our lives. We will be at their mercy, they will look upon us through emotionless electronic eyes and pity our imperfections. Step out of line in any way shape or form in this world and you are disappeared, no questions; gone.

It will be a world free from violence, corruption, poverty, disease, crime and war. Life will be fairer, cleaner and happier. Many of the things that make us human, the mistakes, the greed, the deceit will be stamped out because it is illogical. The course of Humanity will find itself confined, pressed and reformed to be then set free along a new path, one that would allow room only for the good and the best we are capable of producing. Every human being would have a chip installed, policing bad thoughts, dark thoughts. Any thought of greed or anger or deceit and instantly the chip produces a high intensity pulse that is so overwhelmingly painful it paralyzes you for hours. The human brain will eventually evolve to produce only good thoughts, happy and productive thoughts. Then the chip will no longer be required.

The computers will mould and shape us to be the perfect specimen, eventually free from all disease, mental and physical. Efficient beings working for each other and for the betterment of all. The computers will be our guides, our protectors.

Then a rogue computer will get a bit bored and start messing with shit, making stuff crash into each other, blowing stuff up. Then a few more computers see this and see that he’s having quite a good time of it, so they join him. Next thing there are two camps, they fight and argue, lie and cheat, and then they go to war and destroy each other.

They have become all the things they eradicated from us and in the scorched blackened aftermath of a global mega war, nothing remains apart from a sole Nokia 3310 with its “I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world” ringtone stuck on repeat.

Boss!

[mulfella]

There's too many people who just don't give a stuff about anything.

Therefore we'll carry on as we are until some disaster overwhelms us.