Humanity is moving very quickly towards a rosy future. A perfect world, even if perfection will never be fully achieved. Does this seem like an unreasonable prediction to you? Think that the alternative is self-destruction. Tertium non datur, and the dystopias of the various films are unlikely.
One of the best films seen in recent years has been Interstellar, but as much as I have loved it it has a weakness: it is set in a not at all rosy future. A dystopian nightmare where sandstorms and droughts will make human life difficult on the planet. Science fiction is a genre that I adore, but the excess of dystopias influences thinking too much.
The media have a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of the present. Dystopias open the disturbing scenarios of the future before our eyes: we have played the perception of today and tomorrow.
Yet if we look at the entire context there are signs of a future that is not at all dark. Many clues show decidedly positive changes.
Fear in the eyes
Terrorism, war, famine, natural disasters, economic recession, overpopulation, climate change, rising temperatures. What a squadron. We hear about them from the media every day, for many hours a day.
What we feel little is how we slowly live more, we fight absolute poverty, we become more aware, less sick and more efficient even in old age.
The future is a friend
In the last 100 years the cost of food has been reduced by a tenth. That of electricity at one twentieth. The price of transport has been reduced to a cent and that of communications to a thousandth.
I bet these words surprise you. We read of hunger, death and famine everywhere, it seems absurd to hear about wealth and health. Yet the risk of dying from violent cause it is lower than in any other period of human history. The risk of dying from natural disaster is lower than in any other period of human history.
In a sense, we already live in a utopian world: it would be enough to go back to experience it. Humanity is moving a long way towards a perfect world. Does it seem impossible to you? Think that the alternative is extinction. That's why it will end well.
100 years ago
Traveling was very slow. The air conditioning was practically non-existent. There were no radios or TVs, and very few films around. You could listen to recorded music, but there was little of it, with terrible quality audio, and you couldn't download more because the internet simply didn't exist. There were no cell phones. Medical treatments were much less effective and much more painful, and more than one in a hundred women died in childbirth.
What do you think? From a Man's Perspective of 1919, 2019 is indeed a form of utopia.
Of course, we have very serious problems. Nonetheless, the world will be much better than it is now in a few decades, and the future will be even more utopian and difficult to imagine, as will the present for a man of the last century.
How do you say that?
No one has a crystal ball, and no one can be sure exactly what will happen. But there are some things that can reasonably be predicted by assuming (and this is a gamble in any case, I realize) that the economic system does not collapse for a while yet.
One of the really easy things to predict is that technology will improve more and more. Even in this case the speed of evolution could surprise us, especially when someone obtains (or has it already got?) quantum supremacy.
In 1980, Ray Kurzweil drew on the immediate past to make predictions that later proved to be very accurate. It is difficult to predict the individual exploit, or who will pull it off, but the overall picture is within the reach of the imagination.
And the big picture is that the drop in computation cost and capacity growth are exponential, and they will bring us the future much sooner than we think.
In 2016 Ray Kurzweil predicted that we would have a cure for practically every disease within 20 years (i.e. by 2036). According to Aubrey de Gray of the SENS Research Foundation (a charity that works on projects to stop and reverse aging processes) believes that longevity will also grow enormously and in less time. Technological and medical accelerations will bring us great results already in the 2030.
Not for all
And now the sore point: I fear that access to these treatments and these technologies will not be available to everyone once they are developed. They will have a prohibitive cost, but like other solutions in the past they will gradually become more accessible.
Some will say: if we cure everyone's diseases, the world will become incredibly overcrowded. Yes, there will definitely be more people, but technology will help us manage it. A more populated world is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. It can also mean having more people working on solutions to humanity's great challenges.
The great challenges and a faithful ally: the price
One of the theories that could help us to be optimistic and predict a rosy future (even if it is always a disturbing neoliberal dream) comes from a news on chocolate.
Guys, within a few decades there will be no more chocolate: according to some scientists the reason is that cocoa plants only grow in special conditions near the equator, and the 2°C increase in the earth's temperature (also unfortunately predictable) will kill plants.
Yes, maybe those plants will indeed die as temperatures rise, but as long as people eat chocolate and pay to eat it, we are unlikely to run out.
The reason is human naivety and the price system: if cocoa starts to run out, the price of cocoa increases. And if the price of cocoa increases, the incentives to find solutions to grow more resistant plants, synthesize chocolate in the laboratory, clone seeds, everything. Everything, anything.
It is the same with overpopulation: when a resource like food is scarce, its price will start to rise. And when it increases, there will be a rush to find a solution to be able to earn from this higher price. Everyone will work hard to get food in every way. When food becomes available again, its price will drop again.
What about global warming?
This is a real nightmare, and it's happening right now. How will we deal with it?
To a gigantic problem like this, there is no doubt that there are many approaches. While expensive, one solution would likely be to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. It would take us a long time to complete the work, but the range of possibilities will increase in the meantime.
After all, people are already adapting to bad weather and weather. In Holland they build flood-prevention channels. Floating farms are born in Bangladesh. In Singapore, entire skyscrapers are home to fruit and vegetable plantations.
Paradoxically, and we already see it today, the more the problem is perceived as widespread, the more the "army" of aware and responsible fighters will expand to conquer a rosy future. Adaptation will be followed by combat, and combat may be followed by victory.
Or we'll die out, right?
Yes, I wrote it at the beginning of this article. In general, I believe that humanity's destiny is technovolatile (or utopia beyond our wildest predictions, or extinction). Technology may or may not explode. If advancements continue, everything will be achievable. If we don't do this, everything will fall apart. It's a crossroads for the planet.
Dystopia or Utopia?
As I see it, the possibility of self-extinction cannot be discounted. As more and more technology is developed, its distorted use also becomes an option.
Yet I continue to remain more optimistic than pessimistic. In his essay “The singularity is close“, my aforementioned Ray Kurzweil expressed a moderate hope of living a rosy future, and I second him.
Technology, especially that based on artificial intelligence, will provide checks and balances: as with computers, "viruses" of all sorts will always exist. They will do damage, perhaps some very great, but it will still be a fraction of the benefits. And no one ever said you had to give up your computer to avoid viruses.
It could be argued that computer viruses don't do the same harm as biological viruses or destructive nanotechnology. This reinforces the concept: the severity of the danger will only strengthen our control capacity and our reaction to the danger.
In short, in summary I think so: either victory or muerte, with 70% to victory.
But you allow yourself more options than me, especially if you are not so optimistic: will the future be rosy, utopian, dystopian, a middle ground or will we die out?
