Bladerunner and the like

somehow i think Bladerunner sums it all. everything is dark and gloomy and it continuously rains (weather going crazy with global warming) everything is in Chinese, even the police mark on the police cars (china has the biggest population as we speak) everyone speaks inner city language (at the rate things are growing, it'll be inner city everywhere), etc etc. i love Bladerunner and the director, Ridley Scott. Most if not all the movies Scott directs are dark, wet, single source of light, fogs and everyone speaks at normal tone (not speaking loud for audience hear)

Though you just fused my two discussions together (i forgive ya) I'll still answer. I can and do hope for a better future, but I seriously don't see something like Star Trek or Star Ocean happening in the future. I think its more likely a spiral into ruin will occur. That or we'll still be here on earth basically doing the same thing, being born, eating, sleeping, working, procreating and dying. Mundane I know, but thats how I feel about it.

I do not know what the world will be like then. It all depends on what the reaction of the important people are to such things as global warming, pollution, fossil fuels, etc. If no one panics, we will have cleaner air, and solar and wind power, but not at the expense of the population. We will have better cars, cheaper transportation, the food will be better, you will be able to grow it yourself rather than having to buy it at the supermarket. However, if the gas prices are raised too high, so that the people cannot afford the solar and wind power, then it will be as dank as Bladerunner, the case of the cure being worse than the disease. In the first case, we will be able to reach the planets, but I doubt we will get that far.

I envision the earth starting over in 100 years. Maybe with two apes and trees and rivers coming back because there won't be any humans on the planet.

Because many people are so short sighted and think social programs should come ahead of such things as space exploration, I sometimes fear the future will be a time of shortages and famine. Technoloy can only keep increasing food production up to a point and then it will lose ground to the ever increasing rate of population growth, not that famine isn't a problem in some places already. The biggest hope I can see is to expand into space and harness the vast resources there as well as using it as a place for expansion. But, as much as I would like for matter transmitters and Star Trek transporter to be possible, as a physicist I just don't see that ever being possible. We will have to do it the hard way as it has always been done and that will take resources which means we need to start as soon as possible while we still have the resouces to do it.

For an ordinary person, the world will pretty much be 'life as we know it' The technology might change, the planet might change, the galaxy might change - but people will still be more or less the same. ... Unless we do some awesome genetic stuff, of course :)