Technology in 10000 years time

[jammix]

I think the debate on future technology has been exhausted in the usual senses, i.e. thinking of near-term realistic yet exciting technological breakthroughs that may happen in the future.

However I want to hear what your ideas are on technology in the distant distant future. I choose a 10000 years arbitrarily, I just wanted to indicate a period of time that we have no real idea what to expect, so we can be free to speculate wildly on technologies that we may not even know are theoretically possible.

To clarify, this is intended to be less predictive and more speculative. Let your imagination run wild and think what technologies may be possible that far away! Ideas don't have to be your own, feel free to talk about Dyson Spheres or whatever.

Here are some thoughts of mine (taken from already existing sci-fi ideas):

- I think its obvious that at some point we'll have to start mining asteroids and other planets but my far future twist is that instead of using fuel to bring them back we will use Lagrange paths (I think thats the name). The complex interaction between the gravity of all the bodies in the solar system sometimes creates pathways between points in space that pull an object through them with no propulsion needed (this is already scientific fact). I believe as our understanding of chaos theory improves we will be able to predict where these pathways will open and use them to transport millions, maybe billions of tons of resources from one asteroid/planet to another at virtually zero cost

- Dyson Shells around stars with the surface used for habitation. Essentially this is a huge hollow metal sphere with a star inside it, thus able to capture 100% of the stars output for energy. That leaves the entire exterior (or interior but that's harder to accomplish) for living space with all the energy it'll ever need being supplied by the star in the middle

- Screw space elevators: space fountains are the way to go. The same concept as space elevators but instead of being held up by strong material, the material is flexible, and held up by the centrifugal force of loads of "bullets" being fired up and around it

 

[SagaLore]

There is just no way for us to have any idea where we'll be in 10,000 years. Just the last few thousands years has seen exponential improvements in technology and understanding of the universe.

What I hope would happen in that much time is that we had left the solar system and planted colonies on many other planets.

What may actually happen is that we end up having screwing something up so bad that most our population will die and we'll just have underground city states waiting for a chance to emerge and rebuild again, at which point most everyone will be spending most their time in virtual environments and not caring much about the real world. Governments will either be run by religions or by corporate communisms - either way, there will be no more democracy in such a confined space.

 

[mmntech]

10,000 years ago, we were just starting to learn farming and city building. We can barely predict with any accuracy what the future will be like 10 years from now, let alone 10,000.

 

[sourceninja]

10k years from now the human race will be extinct. Most likely due to a massive breakdown in our infrastructure due to religion, politics, and the rich preventing us from investing in the types of technology that would allow us to maintain the populations we had. This leads to the planet slowly healing itself and new species gaining dominance.

 

[SagaLore]

- Dyson Shells around stars with the surface used for habitation. Essentially this is a huge hollow metal sphere with a star inside it, thus able to capture 100% of the stars output for energy. That leaves the entire exterior (or interior but that's harder to accomplish) for living space with all the energy it'll ever need being supplied by the star in the middle

It's a cool concept but it will never happen. The amount of energy and time spent to build such a structure would outweigh any benefits from capturing full output.

It would make more sense to maneuver Titan, Europa, and Mars within the Goldilocks zone and set up ringworlds as massive solar collectors.

 

[Remobz]

10,000 years ago, we were just starting to learn farming and city building. We can barely predict with any accuracy what the future will be like 10 years from now, let alone 10,000.

I think about what it would be like 500 years from now technologically. We are still in the infancy for many forms of technology at the moment.

You know what concerns me more at the moment? The state of the planet 200 years from now and longer. Sooooooooo many species being killed off and animals becoming endangered along with potential climate and ecological disasters maybe it is best we are alive now?

Think of it this way guys... the things we experience now might not be around 500 years or let alone 10,000 years form now. Children in the future might be asking, what does real beef taste like? What was a whale? What was Los Angeles like before it sank to the bottom of the sea?

You get the idea right?


So what would the trade off be for advanced technology in the future?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

why would we ever have to mine asteroids or other planets? the earth contains zillions of tons of everything. even for the rarest of elements, there could be no demand so great as to justify space mining for earth's benefit - a practical alternative would be found.

now if you wanted to mine space for non-earthly needs, that sounds more reasonable. let's say you found a nice, stable star with plenty of matter in orbit. it would be almost trivially easy to launch a tennis ball-sized egg full of self-replicating nanobots at a few major masses, have them go completely ham, and in maybe as little as a century you've got a completely tailor-made solar system. my own choice would be several earth-like planets occupying the same ideal orbit at evenly-spaced intervals.

10,000 years is also way more than sufficient to master both cybernetics and quantum entanglement. "upgraded" humans could instantly communicate with servers and each other across any distance. we are borg.

- Dyson Shells around stars with the surface used for habitation. Essentially this is a huge hollow metal sphere with a star inside it, thus able to capture 100% of the stars output for energy. That leaves the entire exterior (or interior but that's harder to accomplish) for living space with all the energy it'll ever need being supplied by the star in the middle

- Screw space elevators: space fountains are the way to go. The same concept as space elevators but instead of being held up by strong material, the material is flexible, and held up by the centrifugal force of loads of "bullets" being fired up and around it

dyson spheres will never happen. the shell would consume 1000's of solar systems for construction, and who wants to live on either the inside or the outside? not me.

you're misunderstanding space elevators. they're under tension, not compression.

 

[feralkid]

 

[MrRamon]

Teleportation please.

 

[darkewaffle]

I'll be kind of surprised if humans last 10000 more years. We're getting really good at destroying things.

 

[clamum]

Hopefully Half-Life 3 will be out by then. What a time to be alive! :awe:

 

[The Boston Dangler]

I'll be kind of surprised if humans last 10000 more years. We're getting really good at destroying things.

i'll be kind of surprised if either of us are around to be surprised 10,000 years from now

 

[Thebobo]

Yes but the problem is scientist have yet to announce the discovery of the sequnce of genes that will end all life and our civilization in 146 more years. Thats all we have folks. Time for a planet reset.

 

[Markbnj]

I'll be kind of surprised if humans last 10000 more years. We're getting really good at destroying things.

We've probably been around in approximately our current form for about 100k years or so, so I'd take the bet that we'll still be here 10,000 years from now. I imagine that at this point we're very hard to eradicate barring some extreme change in the ecosystem. It's doubtful, though, that the onward march of technology will be steady over that time. You would expect a dark age or two in there.

 

[moonbogg]

Humans will have transformed completely in 10,000 years into something different, maybe pure information, who knows. The clunky limits of known physics will be long forgotten. No limitations of space or time will exist. Traveling anywhere will be obsolete and pointless. Bodies are used only for fun, or if you feel like it but they aren't needed. 3930K is still going strong for gaming during this time.

 

[Hugo Drax]

we would definately not be around 10,000 human race is too self destructive.

 

[ultimatebob]

we would definitely not be around 10,000 human race is too self destructive.

Yeah... some Jihadist nutjob will have killed us all with a self replicating nano virus or something similarly destructive long before then.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Humans will have transformed completely in 10,000 years into something different, maybe pure information, who knows. The clunky limits of known physics will be long forgotten. No limitations of space or time will exist. Traveling anywhere will be obsolete and pointless. Bodies are used only for fun, or if you feel like it but they aren't needed. 3930K is still going strong for gaming during this time.

Yep, pretty much
I assume we will be pure consciousness spread throughout the universe (or multiverse...) and thats still pretty far off I bet

10K years of technological advancement is just way out of our comprehension... If you asked a guy 10000 years ago where we would be, do you think they wouldve even thought about anything remotely close to what we have now? Nope

This of course assuming we dont nuke ourselves/the planet meanwhile blablabla

 

[rh71]

hell we can't even agree on the legitimacy of solar freakin' roadways right now...

 

[MrColin]

10k years from now the human race will be extinct. Most likely due to a massive breakdown in our infrastructure due to religion, politics, and the rich preventing us from investing in the types of technology that would allow us to maintain the populations we had. This leads to the planet slowly healing itself and new species gaining dominance.

This, the new dark age is coming and it will be unrecoverable.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Give the exponential rate in which technology is developing, I don't believe anyone can realistically imagine what life will be like in 10,000 years. Considering, for example, that it took 10,000 years just for "modern" humans to visit different celestial body (our moon), in person. Now, merely decades later, we're looking at the realistic possibility of walking on Mars. Bear in mind that Mars is 150 times the distance of Earth to the Moon.

Even 1,000 years would be baffling. 1,000 years ago no single person knew what the entire planet looked like as a whole - how much total water, how much total land, etc. Today, I can pull up a simulated view of the Earth and browse around as I please, even zooming in to see real photos of virtually every area. I can pay for a flight to virtually anywhere I want to go, and can be there within days or even hours including all preparations. Just 100 years ago we were still in the infancy of terrestrial human flight. Today, we have man-made objects that have finally left our own solar system.

 

[Rakehellion]

Technology in 10000 years.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Assuming the rapture/tribulation or something else like a large astroid that wipes everything does not happen, I think what will happen is we'll eventually destroy ourselves and the planet with it. Only certain microbial and insect and similar organism will survive. Maybe certain species of aquatic life but most will die due to the water being too polluted and wrong temperature. It will be too warm for a period of time, then too cold. After there is a global smog cover established not enough sun will make it on Earth and most vegetation will die. We might have the tech to artificially grow stuff, but a couple wars that destroy all that or finally running out of fossil fuel, will doom us all.

We need to get off fossil fuel now, but the politicians and megacorps that control all that don't really care about thousands of years from now. Heck, they don't even care about 5 years from now. These type of people only think short term. They only care about the next quarter results.

 

[Rakehellion]

Assuming the rapture/tribulation or something else like a large astroid that wipes everything does not happen, I think what will happen is we'll eventually destroy ourselves and the planet with it. Only certain microbial and insect and similar organism will survive. Maybe certain species of aquatic life but most will die due to the water being too polluted and wrong temperature. It will be too warm for a period of time, then too cold. After there is a global smog cover established not enough sun will make it on Earth and most vegetation will die. We might have the tech to artificially grow stuff, but a couple wars that destroy all that or finally running out of fossil fuel, will doom us all.

We need to get off fossil fuel now, but the politicians and megacorps that control all that don't really care about thousands of years from now. Heck, they don't even care about 5 years from now. These type of people only think short term. They only care about the next quarter results.

There's many times more life underwater than there is on land. Humans will kill themselves off long before they make a dent in the ocean.

 

[nCred]

Flying cars!