The Future?
NP - Novembre - Aquamarine
My housemate comes to me today and asks me how I see the world in the year 3000 (a friend of his has to write an essay about this, and his friend asked him for ideas, and he came to me...). We decided the year 3000 is far too far ahead to think about, so we said ok, how about 100 years in the future.
So at first we came up with the usual stuff - robots, technology, cyborgs, all matrix-esque. Then hes like hmm, what about global warming, what effect would that have? And we started thinking and I said okay, well all the oceans would rise and there would only be a few islands left, so civilization would only survive on those pockets that are above water. But wait, my friend said, I think the pollution would be so bad. The way I see it, the air would be too polluted to survive. We would live in little cities under the water, in bubbles of air - real sci-fi stuff. Sounds interesting.
Then I remembered something rather chilling that my International Relations professor told us - its been predicted that sometime between now and the year 2010, the dwindling supply of oil will not be able to meet the booming demand. So Im like this will lead to loads of wars, nuclear holocaust, the elimination of civilisation...you know, back to the middle ages.
We started to talk about forms of government and stuff. I said that, while many writers predicted totalitarian regimes that rule their people by force (ala 1984, Equilibrium), government will be virtually eliminated. Democracy would be eliminated. Instead, EVERYTHING will be privatised. Elections would be eliminated. So you wouldn't have some general elections every 4 years or so. Instead...you would have shares. The ministry of education would be privatised. The ministry of health would be privatised. So you would be able to buy shares in those ministries, as well as other ministries, the armed forces, the courts...everything would be privatised, and controlled as corporations are controlled. It wouldnt be a democracy, it would be "corporatocracy" (a word I borrowed from David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas). A government run by corporations.
How scary is that. Another thought we had was about babies. He started saying that babies would be genetically engineered, so that if you have some cancer gene, it could be eliminated. My other friend (who was there, I forgot to mention), said "nah man, we wouldnt have babies anymore, so we wouldnt need that. It would all be babies grown in labs". So the other guy is like no, people will always be having sex, and thus always be having kids. Its natural. Then ones like but they wont have time, life is getting more and more hectic, who has time to raise kids? Im like, even with children the rules of the market would rule. Its like a bag of chips - if you want chips, you dont make them. Someone else makes them, and you go buy them. It'll be the same with babies - there'll be other people who 'make' babies, of all different sorts (depending on your specifications), and couples would go and 'buy' them, should they want them.
Any ideas?
Posted by illogicist at 1:00 PM
8 Comments
Will they build husbands ?
We won't make it to then, dooms day will be before we get there.
I doubt we'd make it to 3000, but lets say 2106. I think we'll make it to that.
PQ: probably not husbands, but male sex machines maybe?
Interesting.
Kinda depressing too.. I mean I worry about making it through the day let alone 1000 years *gulps*
(well when you SMS while driving, yeah, Id worry about making it through the day too...*rolleyes*)
PT I strongly recommend the novel (brave new world) by Aldous Huxley,if you haven't read it already,it talks about the future like 1984 but in a more Scientific way.(the theme of brave new world is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals)
-assuming then, that we are capable of learning as much from Hiroshima as our forefathers learned from Magdeburg. We may look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited and only partially ruinous warfare. During that period it may be assumed that nuclear energy will be harnessed to industrial uses the result, pretty obviously, Will be a series of economic and social changes unprecedented in rapidity and competence. All the existing patterns of human life will be disrupted and new patterns will have to be improvised to conform with the nonhuman fact of atomic power.
Quote by Aldous Huxley from brave new world
Thanks for that Floydian. Yes, I have heard of Brave New World, but I never got the chance to read it. Ive heard its good though, and Id like to get around to it sometime. Hope to see you around here more often!
you are welcome PT and yes the novel is a good one.you know when i read your post i remembred that (1984,brave new world and Fahrenheit 451)when i read them, all of them have the same theme (the censorship regarding the past and about dystopian societies that look like utopian ones but they are totalitarian ) i really enjoyed your post intresting one and thanx for the welcome.
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