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I figured we would have an abundance of resources and that technology would help us live healthier lives and be more productive. Technology continues to let us have ample resources but GMO's and processed foods are killing us, so I was half right.
It's interesting you bring that up because we need all these processed foods to sustain such a large population. Organic, grass fed beef just isnt an efficient means of feeding everyone. I predict that by 2100 there will be sooooo many people on the planet that there will be a food shortage. Nature or God or whatever will step in and wipe out about 1/2 of the planets population. I think the current prediction is 11,0000,000,0000 by 2100, just under half of the current world population.
I think an android which is sufficently comples to qualify as life will exist sooner over later. The Japanese have some stunning versions of cyber life. No, its not human but it doesn't have to be human. Its just early in its evolution. Fifty years ago computers could add things, and formulas. Today they can apply complex specifics of differeing weight to a problem and come up with nearly the same results as a human. There are programs which can diagnose illness with all the judgement calls which match human doctors and are even used as preliminary runs.
Will they look like Number 7? Will they decide that they have achieved sentience and demand recognition as life? Maybe some day they will. The great leap was in recognizing that a sentient AI does not need to mimmic the human brain, but the functions of it. They gold is at the end of the rainbow, not in how you get there.
Nor does something which is true AI have to be beyond Einstein. A simple creature of the organic variety which barely has a brain at all is still alive. Why would a stripped down, basic ancestor of some future AI not fit the description if its eventual descendent did?
If you truly want to understand the science of the mind and it's functions - meaning...how it processes data, conscious as well as unconsciously, keeping one's body alive while maintaining a sane mind so one remains a productive member of society. How do you replicate that stress? I will never see it.
I was very young when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon but I remember it well. I thought by 2000 the US would have sent astronauts to Mars and perhaps othet planets.
I never even considered that every person would have a personal telephone to carry around at all times.
I never thought that people would actually purchase water in bottles instead of drinking tap water.
I turned 7 a week before the start of 2000. When I was really little, I thought that there might be something very bad that would happen when 12/31/1999 ticked over to 1/1/2000, but I wasn't sure. On one hand I had my mom and dad as well as some of the media telling me that there wouldn't be a big issue. On the other hand there was the media and pop culture saying bad things would go down with computers especially. I was as intelligent as an average 9 or 10 year old by the time I was 7 but I was still a kid
Well, I was born in '65, and grew up reading and hearing about how bad things were getting. I read articles predicting that the quality of products would continue to decline until virtually everything was, of necessity, disposable (because it would fall apart).
Overpopulation was going to destroy the world. What we didn't know about was that the White People were going to be extincted/genetically-swamped, and that the world they'd created would start going to Hell because of that. We had no concept of the destructive effects of Disadvantageous Immigration (and actually believed that the Government had enough sense to only allow-in the best and brightest from around the world). We did, however, know that Dysgenic Fertility was creating a vast and dangerous underclass (and as the little brown welfare baby of a backwoods hooker, growing up in an almost all-brown rural community, I could see for myself that Dysgenic Fertility - there were other names for it, then - was very real).
Mostly, though, we expected a nuclear holocaust and/or a Communist takeover. Also, we expected to get cancer from single particles of fallout, which would be be inhaled, and then irradiate the surrounding cells over time. And, we expected currency collapses and massive currency devaluations. Movies like Soylent Green and A Boy and His Dog gave us a glimpse of the future, along with Threads.
What we did not expect were the wonders of the Digital Age. I think that really old people, who came along before it was even conceivable that their world would turn brown (The Advanced countries were almost 100% White, back then), quite reasonably expected things to just get better and better. They could not imagine that most of the GNP would eventually be siphoned-off in dealing with (and subsidizing the breeding of) a growing mass of people incapable of participating in an advanced society. There were assumptions, back then, of certain levels of behavior, altruism, and competence, which are no longer valid, today. If you cannot assume a well-behaved and intelligent populace, then predictions for a bright future are more optimistic than prescient.
I think that without the shift in demographics, we would be far more advanced, by now, than anyone could have dreamed.
Back then, I just didn't see things in society being as bad as it is today. Like all the mass killings and a total disregard for human life, the lack of respect people have for themselves and others, the lack of compassion and empathy. People just don't care about much beyond their front yards these days, or it seem that way.
This is one of the major changes I see. Selfishness, and lack of empathy in many. Another major change I have noticed recently is people staring at tablets, or phones. Now, I don't get out much, so I notice things when I do.......
We go on holiday a lot. So this is when we do our social interaction. We stayed at a hotel in Tunisia last November, and have been to this particular hotel a lot over the years. Many times we have sat in the bar chatting to other holidaymakers at night. The visit at the end of last year was different. The lights were low in the packed bar. All my wife and I saw were people staring at their various electronic gizmos. An eerie light shone on their faces from their devices as they stared intently at the screen. No one spoke.
We caught the train home from the airport when we arrived back in England. We normally drive, but took the train this time. Same thing, people talking into phones, others with earphones in listening to music. Others texting....... I don't own a cell phone, or any other gizmos, except this lap-top. Without this I couldn't talk to y'all.......
It's this public silence in busy places I find so strange. Or the talking to friends in other countries on things like Skype. This was predicted in the movie 2001. I remember someone out in space phoning and seeing the person they were talking to on a screen. Back in 1968 while watching the film, I wondered if such a thing would ever happen....... well it has!
Cell phones were not something people ever imagined existing. Phones were in homes, or in the street, and needed wires to work. I don't remember anyone ever musing about anything different. I now hear children bully each other by messages on phones. We sure are advancing aren't we?
I remember the Internet before the "September that Never Ended" -- back when the entire daily USEnet feed could be read in an hour or two.
Back then, TV and movie writers simply had not clue about computers. It seems that every Sci-Fi show extent at the time had episodes where people transferred their consciousness into a computer. I remember thinking at the time, "That villain can't have much going on upstairs if it all fits on a floppy disk."
I remember 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. That was an exceptional time for me because I've seen both sides of Berlin. I thought at the time that humanity was finally going to get it's act together. I never considered the possibility that we would quickly find a new "bad guy" to replace Communism.
I turned 40 in the year 2000 and I would have never guessed that I would be starting college that year. Otherwise I didn't think much about it, kids, responsibilities, work, etc. took up my thoughts.
I stayed up all night in an online chat room. Great fun! And we were still communicating after midnight. lol
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