The Medium Future

The Antares from the 2009 TV series Defying Gravity. Set in the year 2052 (a good candidate for future rust), the series follows eight astronauts (four women and four men) from four countries on a six-year space mission through the Solar System. Given the best case scenario, spacecraft very like this are likely to be commonplace in the Medium Future as ocean freighters and liners and jet aircraft are today - original page

Possible medium term futures

Although the future is unpredictable and remains to be determined, four possible stylised outcomes are listed here for the longer term, representing a five hundred year time-scale, like Modernity, but going into the future. This is the time span of a loy of science fiction, especially of the “space opera” genre.

The scenarios are:

Star Trek:. Following the utopian vision of Gene Roddenberry, this scenario represents a post-scarcity high tech utopia and ecotopia, the best of all possible outcomes, given our present knowledge and capabilities. This could be a development from Technological Utopia, or it could be that the turn to a positive future may occur later. This scenario does not have to be Environmental Collapse or Technological Dystopia. This can also lead further down the path of the Long Decline, until the situation becomes inevitable.

Postapocalypse: out with a bang, equivalent or even worse than the P-T mass extinction. It could be caused by anything; nuclear war, nanotech, catastrophic environmental collapse… For imagery, google apocalyptic wallpaper

Singularity:. This would be the evolution of a new posthuman "kingdom", whether A.I., human-AI hybrid, or something else, transcending current humanity.

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Page by M Alan Kazlev, 2023