ROCKMAN wrote:Interesting thought game. But consider this: how did folks view the year 2000 in 1918? The world just witnessed the slaughter of WWI especially from huge tech advances in weapons. And remember it wasn’t called WWI back then. It was “the war to end all wars”. Autos and airplanes were the new big exciting techs. One general speculated countries wouldn’t go to war since their civilians could be killed by enemy aircraft. A funny speculation now for survivors at Hiroshima. And then the tens of millions killed by the Spanish flue pandemic. A tad more serious then Ebola, eh?
Now jump back to 1818 and think about what they might have anticipated for the year 1900. Just finished a new war confirming the existence of a new upstart country called the United States of America. The same “united” states that saw 600,000 of their citizens slaughtered trying to remain united less then 50 years later. Slaughtered by their own citizens no less.
If one has a good knowledge of history they could play this game for hours. Given how no one has ever come up with anything close to correctly speculating what the next 80 to 100 years would bring should we expect any better accuracy doing so today? Especially if one considers the rate of change of societies and tech. Granted it’s somewhat subjective but IMHO that delta has been increasing at least over the last 200 to 300 years.
But no harm in anyone here giving it a try today: you won’t be alive in the next 80+ years to face the ridicule of folks at that time. LOL.
I can't guess what current nations will remain nation in 2100, jeeze if you look as recently as 1939 there were a handful of world empires and just about a dozen independent nations and nobody in 1920 would have guessed that there would be 279 independent nations recognized by the 'world government' just a few decades later. We might be a single global world government in fact as well as form in 2100 or we might be 1000 squabbling little city states that are the survivors of a global war or catastrophe. God only know the future, they best we can do is guess based on some fundamental knowledge.
I think the world of 2100 will be considerably warmer than the world of 2020. I think humans will survive and remain much the same as we have been for all of recorded history being cruel to some of our fellows and kind to some others Beyond those basic starting points almost anything could happen. Maybe we will do the Greer/Kunstler thing and return to 18th century lifestyles and practices, maybe on the other extreme we will have fusion powered starships using hyperdrives to explore the galaxy at many times the speed of light. Either result is within the scope of our imagination but niether is an assured outcome.