2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
Not least of the changes facing us - in terms of its potential impact upon society as a whole - is the fact that we already have the resources available to carry out most of the activities needed to secure humanity's future. For the first time, we now have - for all practical intents and purposes - unlimited resources at our command. As a result, paradoxically, the limitations on change now must be found in the other scenarios - those which explore the management of society and of the changes within it.
One potentially massive discontinuity still remains in this scenario, however, and that is the development of a new form of mankind - 'homo integrans' - which will emerge from a synthesis between medical developments and IT developments.
In terms of its 'character', this scenario represents the harder-edged, more-mechanistic aspects of future development. For this reason it is the least uncertain. The technologies it describes are already in existence, albeit in embryo form, and the changes will come about progressively as they are implemented on the large scale. The only real uncertainties are how and when we will implement them. It is just possible that we should also ask the question whether they will be implemented. Only a couple of decades ago, when nuclear annihilation did pose a very real threat, this was the key question. Now, though, it has - thankfully - become much less important.
In general, the scenario is an extrapolation of humanity's exponentially growing exploration of, and exploitation of, all aspects of science and technology. In the best of all worlds, these will be our servants. Thus, it is now titled Evolutionary Space but was originally titled Outer Space not just because of the anticipated explosion of humankind into space itself, though that will be an important development in its own right, but as an expression of the rapid expansion of humanity's other physical activities - as opposed to its 'inner' ones, such as the development of society. Above all, it is a scenario which is highly optimistic about the future.
15 May 2003
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