Possible Scenarios
Critical point = sensitivity to perturbations
(with positive feedback)
Management of complexity?
Impact of catastrophic drought
- Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia
- the Old Kingdom of Egypt
- the Indus Valley civilisation in India
- early societies in Palestine, Greece and Crete
all collapse in 2300-2200 B.C.
"The lessons from history, or prehistory, are usually inconvenient and painful to deal with and easy to ignore."
Scarborough (archaeologist, Univ. Cincinnati)
Gloomy scenario
Humanity will enter a sever recession fed by the slow (or spasmodic?) death of its host (the Earth).
Analogy between the human species and cancer (four major characteristics of a malignant process)
- rapid uncontrolled growth;
- invasion and destruction of adjacent tissues (ecosystems);
- metastasis (colonization and urbanization);
- dedifferentiation (loss of distinctiveness in individual components as well as communities throughout the planet).
EXISTENTIAL RISKS: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards (Nick Bostrom)
Abstract: Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career. In addition to well-known threats such as nuclear holocaust, the prospects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks. Our future, and whether we will have a future at all, may well be determined by how we deal with these challenges. In the case of radically transforming technologies, a better understanding of the transition dynamics from a human to a “posthuman” society is needed. Of particular importance is to know where the pitfalls are: the ways in which things could go terminally wrong. While we have had long exposure to various personal, local, and endurable global hazards, this paper analyzes a recently emerging category: that of existential risks. These are threats that could cause our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life. Some of these threats are relatively well known while others, including some of the gravest, have gone almost unrecognized. Existential risks have a cluster of features that make ordinary risk management ineffective. A final section of this paper discusses several ethical and policy implications. A clearer understanding of the threat picture will enable us to formulate better strategies.
external page http://www.google.com/search?q=existential+risks&hl=en&sa=N&tbo=1
Positive scenario
"Ecological" actions to a smooth transition towards an ecologically-integrated industry and humanity (wind power, solar photo-voltaic power, governments have "ratified" more than 170 international environmental treaties, on everything from fishing to desertification).
- Transition to a knowledge-based society, in which knowledge, intellectual, artistic and humanistic values replace the quest for material wealth. "knowledge" is non-rival
- New discoveries at a different hierarchical level
- colonization of other planets (much faster propulsions, mutated humans adapted to the hardship of space). New acceleration to another finite-time singularity...
- colonization of the oceans...
- Self-evolution: Human beings engineering (controlled and probably not)
- inserting genes into the cells of existing people (somatic cell manipulation, sometimes called "gene therapy");
- copying an existing person (cloning);
- changing the genes of future generations (germline manipulation).
Solutions to all of humanity's major problems will be created—sooner or later.
Aging: Currently, this is the biggest and most urgent problem humanity faces on a societal and personal level since it kills 100,000 out of the 150,000 people that die worldwide every single day, causes the most suffering of all other causes combined (since most people suffer for years from age-related diseases before dying), and will kill everyone that's alive today if something isn't done about it. The most likely solution is the development of medical therapies that repairs aging damage instead of simply fighting the loosing battle of slowing disease progression.
external page http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/39
Population: Eventually, a one-child policy will have to be instituted (after aging is cured and, unfortunately, space colonization can't be a long-term solution to over-population due to the finite size of the solar system and the speed of light).
Nano/Bio Threats: layered, artificial immune systems and/or invasive surveillance
external page http://www.crnano.org/dangers.htm#terrorists
external page http://www.lifeboat.com/ex/nano.shield
Energy: electric transportation, solar power, battery-based electric storage systems
external page http://www.pluginamerica.org/plug-in-vehicle-tracker.html
Hunger/Poverty/Deforestation: continued economic development and/or personal nanofactories using molecular assembly
external page http://www.crnano.org/benefits.htm
external page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEYN18d7gHg
Global Warming: carbon dioxide air capture and storage (treaties to reduce C02 emissions will only slow its accumulation and certainly won't be able to remove already-elevated levels of C02)
external page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_removal-
external page http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/AirCapture.html