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 A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future. May-June 2001, Vol. 35, No. 3 |
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Online Indexes: Top 10 Forecasts From Outlook 2000 Report
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Think Big The authors in this issue invite you to think about the future of our species and our planet on an unusually large scale. Michael G. Zey believes that humanity is destined not only to inhabit space but to humanize it with our presence. He sees four major forces driving humans toward "vitalization" of the universe: our growing ability to dominate the environment; our increasing efforts to unify our species through telecommunications, transportation, and other systems; our continual improvement of our own bodies and minds; and our growing merger with computers and other machines that enhance our capabilities. (See "Man's Evolutionary Path Into the Universe," page 28 of the print edition.) Thinking on such a large scale may also help humanity avert cosmic collisions and other natural and unnatural catastrophes. What is needed, says disaster-prevention expert Douglas Mulhall, is extreme sustainable development. This could include tools for enhancing our catastrophe-warning systems, using "extreme engineering" to create structures that are either indestructible or disposable and easily replaced, exploit robotics for working in hostile environments, and using biotechnology to improve agriculture. Then we'll also need to think about sustaining our culture after an apocalypse. (See "Preparing for Armageddon: How We Can Survive Mega-Disasters," page 36 of the print edition.) Mulhall sees a bundle of technologies now in development that are eventually going to make his disaster-proofing ideas possible. For example, nanotechnology will make it possible to build a new generation of tunnels allowing high-speed evacuation of people. He calls this bundle of technologies GRAIN, for Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Nanotechnology. Efforts such as what Zey and Mulhall describe would require human cooperation on an unprecedented scale. But the prospects of such unity are bleak if humans cannot communicate with each other. A solution may be at hand: Synchronous Automated Translation Systems connected by the Internet may soon allow us to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime, suggests mass-communications scholar Sam Lehman-Wilzig. (See "Babbling Our Way to a New Babel: Erasing the Language Barriers," page 16 of the print edition.) To order the print edition of the May-June 2001 issue of THE FUTURIST ($4.95 plus $3 postage and handling) or to become a member of the World Future Society ($39 per year). Send comments about our web pages to: webmaster@wfs.org |
