The Astounding World Of The Future

Futurists, sometimes called futurologists, attempt to systematically predict what the future will look like. Since the future hasn't arrived yet, these predictions always expose the biases or beliefs of the predictor. These biases or beliefs are never stated explicitly, so they reside mostly in the unconscious of the predictor or the society at large. Exposed bias makes it informative, and sometimes highly entertaining, to watch futurist films.

My own view of the future is based on my understanding of Human Nature. The future will resemble the past. Since hunter-gatherer times during the Ice Ages and the early Neolithic, a time during which many expressions of Human Nature were not yet enabled, we have always had organized warfare. This was the world after the invention and spread of agriculture and the first cities. It is thus reasonable to conclude that we will have organized warfare in the future. These new wars will be made more lethal by humankind's astonishing technological prowess.

Since hunter-gatherer times, we have always had hierarchical societies run by elites. We will therefore have such societies in the future. Truly "free" trade as described in economic textbooks has never existed. It will not exist in the future. In the past, we have always exploited the natural world to increase human populations and economies. We will continue to do so in the future, though with little success, I fear—Nature always bats last, as the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan attest. I could enumerate such examples ad nauseam.

I have two futurological film clips today. The first, called The Near Future Of Our World (2011-2200), is interesting in the sense explained above. The second one, called The Astounding World of The Future, is simply one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I will not comment on this second one, which is so true to human life as we know it. You'll see what I mean.

The first clip presents an extraordinarily optimistic vision of the future. Indeed, it is characteristic of futurist films that they expose the optimism bias which seems to be built right into human cognition. This strong psychological tendency is also described as overconfidence bolstered by positive illusions. The filmmaker obviously believes that global warming will have disastrous effects—rising sea levels, severe droughts, etc. But even as he predicts these disasters, the March Of Progress goes on and on! For example, by 2115—

• Nomadic "floating cities" are roaming the oceans since many of the world's cities lie partially submerged due to rising sea levels.

And in the sequel, the terraforming of Mars is complete by 2500! How would we terraform Mars?

So, how would we terraform Mars? It sounds like a momentous task when you consider it. Mars has an average surface temperature of minus 60ºC, and so to make it viable for plant and human life you would need to raise that to above freezing, to roughly 5ºC. And of course you would need an atmosphere to breathe. This would require heating up the entire planet by 65ºC, and forming an atmosphere consisting of trillions of cubic metres of air. It is nothing short of an incredible task, but we plan ahead, and we've got a lot of time.

Of course, Homo sapiens will successfully terraform Mars when Hell freezes over. For example, where is the energy going to come from to heat up the entire planet to 60ºC? We're lucky we can still fill up our gas tanks—at an ever increasing cost over time.

The hidden assumption revealed here is what I have called The Assumption Of Technological Progress, which I first stated on DOTE in Technological Progress And The Oil Leak. I recommend you read that post, and the background links if you are interested in understanding this important aspect of human optimism.

I shall have to devote a separate post to this subject. An examination of Human Nature says our species is very technologically clever, but says nothing about what progress we might make along those lines. For example, where are the alternative energy technologies that will replace fossil fuels at the vast scales we require? They don't exist, regardless of what Al Gore thinks. Perhaps they never will. I think that is the likeliest outcome.

And now, without further ado, the films.

 

 

Comments

[urewi]

One thing comes to mind... terraform the Earth first.

[Remi]

I find it funny that they think we will need to migrate to the moon or to mars. Do they actually think we will make the earth less hospitable then those lifeless planets?
Even books like Eaarth are overly optimistic. The first half paints a grim picture of climate change, and the second paints a half picture of how we will fix our problems. It omits that we will have to ditch our current economic system, and what that will mean for the average person. Letting go of growth will mean letting go of most credit and debt...

[Gail]

Your thoughts on human nature have me running to reread "Lord of the Flies."

Meanwhile it is quite perplexing which of those films is more ridiculous!

[KLR]

I notice that in 2030 for some reason the AI powered car has an old Merlin handheld game mounted on the steering wheel; that some attempt at wit, filmakers? As in contrast to the pomposity of the rest, especially the soundtrack.

2nd clip is more on target; I've seen that one before, good yucks. The more accurate prognosticators have never painted a future as some glitzy utopia, and don't leave out the fact that so much of "progress" is quite mundane. These guys in Clip 1 aren't even bothering to think once about what they're forecasting; WWIII in 2031 followed the next fucking year by a manned Mars mission. Did they forget about what nuclear war entails?

[Bill]

The Astounding World of the Future .. made my day! To think that we'd live to see it all come true! Thanks, Dave ... great stuff! I'm sending the link to Jim Kunstler, with credit to you, if you don't mind, though he probably reads your site :)

[Morocco Bama]

Humanity will be but a tiny, insignificant blip in the history of planet earth, let alone the Universe. What ridiculous irrelevant egos humankind possesses to think it is something more than it ever was, or will be.

[Tony Weddle]

When you say "since hunter-gatherer times", do you mean all the time AFTER hunter-gatherer societies became the minority? From what I've read in recent years, hunter-gatherer societies were likely egalitarian and fought "wars" very rarely and hardly that well organised.

[Tony Weddle]

Yeah, it's funny that the first film sees countless wars leading up to world war three but at the same time development of all kinds of space technology that would require worldwide cooperation.

And, after world population "plateaus" at 9 billion, it eventually reaches 20 billion, even whilst the natural world that supports humans is being stripped away.

[DD]

I think some of you above have missed the point of the video...clearly a video satire in the spirit of A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.

The video juxtaposes back & forth between total environmental devastation, and a bright shining future of techno utopia. While half of humanity gets displaced & destroyed, the other half goes on to enjoy floating cities, unlimited resources from lunar mining, nuclear fusion, hypersonic trains, and trips to the stars.

Too subtle for some of you, but it was intended to mock the techno-optimists in futurist film-making.

[Gail]

DD: Poe's Law reigns supreme!

[Morocco Bama]

I think it's an example of the Singularity, once again, where satire and the reality satire is based off of, have now merged, and therefore are one and the same, thus rendering attempts at satire superfluous. Our world is a satire, and there is no sane reality to fall back on after we've had our laugh.

[rjs]

in the fifties, we were told the kitchen of the future would run itself with no hands...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiACOLuYlJ4