100 Years from Now [View All]

[Mythsaje]

I will admit I am an optimist. I think humanity has it within it to reverse the most dangerous trends of its advancement. I believe this to the core of my being, though I cannot say why this is so.

Thus this essay will touch not on what might go wrong, but what might go right--though it may also be argued that even the wonders I believe are coming will have their dark sides. And I accept that this is truth. I have an occasional inability to make decisions because I can see not only the good, but the bad in every decision put before me.

I must weigh and analyze everything. It is who I am.

100 Years from Now--we will have conquered matter. We will be able to render even the most toxic substance completely inert. It will be possible to actually turn deadly poisons into food, should we wish to do so. There will be nothing that we cannot transmute, by simple molecular engineering. One thing will be able to become another. Lead to gold? Sure. But why bother? Gold will be as common as sand, assuming that it remains a substance worthy of desire.

100 Years from Now--we will be rendered immune to all known diseases. No virus or bacteria will be able to breach the walls of our defenses. Our symbiotes will supplement and support our white blood cells, and nothing that does not belong within us shall be able to survive long enough to do us harm.

100 Years from Now--we will have homes other than this Earth. There may be humans walking on worlds circling other stars. We will live on stations within this solar system, utilizing spin to create artificial gravity--if we have not yet mastered true gravity itself--and we will use the raw materials of other worlds, asteroids, and comets to restore the Earth to something approaching its former glory.

100 Years from Now--Humans will live twice as long, stronger, healthier, and with much greater potential to learn more of the secrets of the universe.

100 Years from Now--we will have lifted up our younger siblings, created other sentient creatures out of some of the others with which we share our home world. We will have talking dogs, and apes that share our burdens. We will have the opportunity to make other races in our own image.

100 Years from Now--we will have the capacity to feed all people, to house all people, and to make certain no human being, or no younger sentient, lacks anything it needs to thrive. We will have discovered new, clean, renewable sources of energy, and we will finally see the potential our species has possessed since it first climbed down from the trees and used its first tool.


Or, conversely, we shall all be dead and nothing we have done will mean a damn thing in the scheme of things.

As I said...I'm betting on the former.