2022: TO THE MOON, AGAIN
Shouldn’t we be content to be cosmic sloths enjoying the universe from the comfort of earth? The answer is: NO
Stephen Hawking
Elon musk sends the first SpaceX starship to mars preparing the way for the first human explorers of the red planet.
On earth digital fabrics are embedded with sensors and displays gathering data. They give feedback about the user’s health such as muscle use, sleep habits and sun exposure. Companies merge digital fabrics with VR gaming letting users feel vibrations and even hot and cold sensations when playing.
Nasa’s Artemis mission launches to begin building a permanent habitat on the moon. Back on earth building materials are becoming a new generation of smart materials where bricks double as energy storage cells and are capable of data storage. Retrieval robotic dogs are employed by fire and rescue services police military and delivery companies. The first humans leave earth for the red planet aboard a SpaceX starship. Mars astronauts use VR goggles to help keep them calm during the seven month journey.
2025: THE INTERPLANETARY INTERNET SYSTEM
To look to the future we must first look back upon the past that is where the seeds of the future were planted. I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
Humans begin to interact with virtual reality artificial life living beings in a digital world that learn how to act move and interact with humans on their own, creating their own behaviours and way of life. Wearable tech is replaced by sub-dermal tech chips that are inserted beneath the skin and link users to their home and robotic devices giving them control through verbal instructions. People with medical issues are using Neuralink chips to improve their quality of life. The chip is able to restore eyesight and help people who are paralyzed to walk again. A universal translator is used at the united nations reducing the need for human interpreters and translators.
Quantum computers are used in high-end chemical engineering as they are able to quickly design new medicines biodegradable plastics and building materials. 5G networks carrying vast amounts of data take control of transportation flow systems and self-driving networks to improve urban flow.
The interplanetary internet system goes on-line creating a computer network in space… The network is made up of landing robots, planet satellites and earth ground stations. A Jupiter rover sends data to a Jupiter satellite which beams it to a Mars satellite that then sends the data to earth facilities. On mars we begin the production of 3d printed habitats while a robot factory produces water and oxygen as well as laboratory grown plant and meat for the arrival of more human explorers and scientists.
The first guests arrive at the former international space station (ISS) that has been converted into a luxury orbital hotel while a new commercial international space station is being used for scientific research. The rise of bioplastics takes place created from renewable resources such as sugar and mushrooms. Re-programmable microchips allow hardware to be upgraded just like software.
Filming begins on the first Hollywood-Cinese blockbuster that is filmed entirely off-world using sets and locations in earth’s orbit and on the moon.
2027: A NUCLEAR FUSION REACTOR IS OPERATIVE
SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation for earth is fully operational.
The world’s first industrial scale fusion reactor goes online and starts generating electricity from the fusion of hydrogen atoms creating vast amounts of clean energy.
People start taking anti-aging drugs that take away certain cells that develop as humans age. Elon Musk begins implanting Neuralink chips in healthy people to give them enhanced abilities. The first artificial intelligence judge sentences a criminal to jail.
People are now working in completely virtual workspaces. Digital fabrics evolve into power assist fabrics helping humans walk and gain back mobility, when humans grow old, they also give humans added strength and show users how to learn new physical skills. Smart tattoos are used with embedded personalised circuits that allow people to control the devices around them.
4D printing is being used to create new smart materials materials that are able to transform their structures in response to the environment such as when exposed to heat or light. People are now living with 3D bio-printed artificial organs.
2031: NANO ROBOTS
Swarm nano-robots start to make their way into everyday life – fleets of robots such as small drones or robotic ants communicate with each other and work together. They are able to lift construction materials and become structures themselves by organising to form a bridge.
Everyday people are living with IA, brain chips for intelligence amplification allowing their thinking memories and problem solving to be helped with the use of a machine. Subdermal tech is overtaken by neural links.
Permanent luna settlements: Humans are living on the moon in science research stations and transit hub facilities acting as a link between earth and mars and the outer solar system. A space station constructed in orbit around the moon begins operations.
Billions of people around the world tune in to watch the bionic olympics where humans with robotic limbs compete.
People are wearing self-cleaning fabrics that are woven with micro metals which break down dirt when exposed to sunlight.
The square kilometer array goes online, dishes across the deserts of South Africa and Australia are 50 times more sensitive than the Hubble space telescope and are able to pick up faint radio signals from any potential extraterrestrial civilization.
Quantum computing-based chemical engineering creates a genetically altered strain of wheat designed to survive in the extreme cold and thin co2 atmosphere of the martian environment. Neural brain chips allow people to talk to each other “telepathically”.
2041: DOESN’T IT REMIND YOU OF “JURASSIC PARK”?
Humans record every event of their lives from birth to death. Inner speech recording is possible. Hackers are able to plant artificial memories.
Humans have sensors flowing through their bloodstream monitoring their health.
In robotics, police robot units accompany human police officers for patrols.
Extinct animals are brought back to life ad the first woolly mammoth is grown from DNA found in the preserved soft tissues of the long-dead beasts. “Asteroid capture” operations begin as robots guided by artificial intelligence capture asteroids from the asteroid belt and maneuver them into the orbits of the moon and mars – their raw materials are converted into materials for further off-world habitat construction and space exploration crafts. Stem cells regenerate missing body parts including teeth and limbs.
2051: SPACETRAVEL-PROOFED HUMANS
Genetic engineering adapts human bodies for the rigors of spaceflight reducing muscle and bone mass loss from prolonged periods of weightlessness. 300 000 people live on mars.
2061: BLOCKBUSTER DREAMS
People are able to rent and stream dreams while they sleep and dream together in the same virtual world. Artificial general intelligence emerges from a super quantum computer. A human designed computer achieves consciousness it is able to learn new things and is self-aware
2071: MY IPAD CAN CRY
Inter-species communication is now possible. Robots begin to hold funerals for one another.
2081: WHO’S YOUR GOD NOW?
Artificial life forms are born. Quantum computers are able to design biological life forms from scratch – from redesigning bacteria that can consume plastics to creating designer humans.
2100: WARP SPEED, SCOTTY!
The average lifespan of someone born today will be 5000 years. An AI has the status of a corporation. A global artificial intelligence manages a global hyperloop transit system removing the need for commercial flights. All hyperloop vehicles are built with self-repairing smart materials. Basic molecular assemblers are in use letting humans create any type of food with the push of a button.
Humanity is well settled all around the solar system and is exploring the outer system. Robotic transit fleets transport materials across the solar system. Nasa’s Alcubierre warp drive goes live: In the vacuum of space nothing can move faster than the speed of light but negative energy is used to warp space-time so the space behind the spaceship expands and the space in front contracts causing a “warp bubble” that bends space-time around the spaceship and allowing it to break the speed of light.
Mars declares independence from earth. Humanity is declared a type 1 civilization: They control weather, sea currents, volcanoes, earthquakes and have terraforming technologies.
2400: HITCHHIKING A RIDE TO NEARBY STAR SYSTEMS
Dyson structures are built in orbit to capture the energy from the Sun. Ships built from super lightweight and self-repairing materials are accelerated to sub-light speeds so journeys to nearby star systems can take place. Colonization of worlds around distant stars begins.
4000: HUMANITY ACHIEVES TYPE 2 STATUS
Orbital cycles of earth create a new glacial ice age so environmental engineering is employed to warm the planet and reduce glacier growth. Humanity achieve type 2 status: the beginnings of the galactic civilization. As a type 2 civilization they are able to use and control the energy of its planetary system and can prevent the death of its own star by injecting fuel into it. Humankind’s consciousness is downloaded into a quantum computer core.
The matrioshka brain, a supercomputer using multiple Dyson spheres, drives a simulation for humanity. Humanity is transferred into a simulation to live and travel much further in the Galaxy. Swarms of tiny lightweight robots enter distant star systems and begin construction of various facilities before the arrival of humanity. Human consciousness is transmitted as data to the new star system where robot bodies are waiting to accept the human consciousness. Robotic bodies are exchanged for biological ones designed and grown to be suitable for local planetary environments.
Humanity is on course to become a type 3 galactic-scale civilization needing to use all of the energy available in its galaxy and with technology so advanced that space-time is their playground. At this point humanity meets another civilization of pure numerical spirits that have been waiting in a colder space outside of the Universe.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Arthur C Clarke
REFERENCES:
Books about future technology, innovations, and sci-fi (affiliate links):
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies https://amzn.to/3j28WkP
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence https://amzn.to/3790bU1
• Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era https://amzn.to/351t9Ta
• The Foundation: https://amzn.to/3i753dU
• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: https://amzn.to/3kNFSyW
COOL VIDEOS TO WATCH:
• Space Inc: The new space businesses and tech https://youtu.be/JpQbDcc7lWA
• How Elon Musk is Building a Railroad to Space (Starship & SpaceX) https://youtu.be/VnUwB7xrlcE
• Elon Musk on Artificial Intelligence (and the Basics of AI) – Documentary https://youtu.be/1Pql2nNR80k
INNOVATION WAVES 