Take Me to the Future

In the words of Captain James T Kirk I want “To boldly go where no man has gone before”. This dream, or fantasy if you will, is not limited by my imagination or intellect but my place in time and the limitations of our “modern” technology. I think most people on ATS have a similar problem, we are frustrated by our place in time, we want to know more and see more.

I have spent many nights roaming in the fields of my vast imagination trying to envisage what my life would have been like if I were born many millennia into the future, as I am sure the ancient’s must have done. It seems to me that every “advanced” civilisation in the history of mankind have thought of themselves to be at the pinnacle of human existence. There was a time when the bow and arrow was at the cutting edge of military technology, now we call the cutting edge the nuclear bomb. There was a time when man looked at the sky and dreamed about flying like a bird, and now flying is an everyday convenience.

This leads me to the obvious conclusion, we will continue to advance, I am not living at the pinnacle of human existence but I am only moving towards it. Worse than this I am moving towards it very slowly, and if one assumes time to be infinite it may never come. After my 80 or so years on earth I will become a distant memory held by my ancestors and if I am lucky I might also have a piece of stone marking my eternal resting ground. Sadly however I will never have my dream of seeing the pinnacle of human existence realised.

I know that even if I were born many millennia into the future I would still have the same problem, I would be asking myself what would those who came before me and my civilisation thought of us and I would still be frustrated by the limits of technology. For this reason my dream has to change, I do not wish any longer I was born into the future. I wish I could travel through time to compare our worlds. I wish I could take myself form the year 2010 and advance to 8010 in the blink of an eye, I would only have to travel through time once, I would not care to travel back.

This raises the question what do we think the earth will look like in the year 8010 (assuming we are still about) will we have mastered advanced time and space travel, will we be able to visit far of lands, will extraterrestrials have became integrated into our society and us into theirs. Will I be able to take a trip in a star ship to visit distant and wonderful planets, could it maybe even look into the eye of a black hole and surf over the event horizon?. Could it even be that we have all left the earth, it is no longer the base for humanity, could we have the ability to move between parallel universes. I think one of the first things I would do would be to go and read some history books to discover if any 9/11 conspiracies turned to conspiracy fact. I also think I would go onto the future ATS equivalent and tell them where I have come from.

Even in 100 years into the future, we might not have mastered any of the above but I still can’t help but ponder what life could be like. The truth is, in the absence of a time machine I will have to use the next best thing the human imagination, to take me to the future. The collective human imagination is always better than the individuals, therefore I invite you all to contribute to what you think the future of mankind could hold.

I think in the future there will be one-eyed cyclops women, criminal robots, disgusting crab monsters, Jamaican bureaucrats, and senile old people.

reply to post by 547000


That sounds like a funky fun filled future you have envisaged.

reply to post by kevinunknown


No other takers then.....?

Robert Monroe of Hemi-Sync fame had some interesting viewpoints, he said he saw the future where people put on human forms randomly, as they chose, to look whatever they wanted to look like and that the earth was more pristine. I'm not sure what book it was in but it was quite interesting.

If change is progressive, be it of geometric or exponential nature, it stands to reason we would no more imagine the truth of a future 6000 years in the future than an inhabitant of a time equidistant in the past would properly envision ours.

Imagination and dreams are wonderful things, capable of taking us to both times near and distant as well as space of the same. I wonder, though - does the glut of informational fodder we deal with daily enhance or detract from our ability to get the most from imagination? Has it not become dulled? Couldn't an argument be made that the individual of 6000 years ago had less to influence - and inhibit - his or her imagination?

As a note to all those who immediately proclaim time does not actually exist in the manner used herein - you may well be right; all things may exist in the 'Now.' Still, for the sake of this discussion, it should be used perceptually.