Wednesday, March 13, 2019

In a million years or so...





"If you are a change agent, good times await you. If you hate change, and wish things would just slow down a bit, I have some bad news - ain't gonna happen. Very few of us will be around to see what happens in 2069. But our grandchildren will be."


Did you know it was late in the year of 1903 when the Wright Brothers kicked off the era of aviation? Just think - from December of 1903 to July of 1969 (a mere 65 1/2 years) we went from wishing we could fly, to walking on the Moon. If you think that is impressive, I am with you. Did you ever ponder what the next hundred years would hold? From 1969 to 2069? Since we are halfway through that hundred years, we know part of the answer. But what about the rest of the story?

Also in 1908, Henry Ford unleashed the Model T from the assembly line. "Sell the horses Ma! We got us a car!" In that short period of time from then to now, cars have become the main mode of transportation in most developed countries. The are ubiquitous - it is estimated today there are over a billion cars worldwide. Even though cars are everywhere, the day of the car is about to change. In fact, everything is about to change. We are about to reach a major milestone on our journey to 2069.

I addressed this before. I am convinced 2025 will be remembered by future historians as the start of a new renaissance age of technology. Everything is going to change in how we live. Plus, the speed of those changes will be lightening fast. Our beloved Model T will start morphing into a self driving pod - or something that can fly. We will be discovering more and more energy sources which will be abundant and less costly - hint: not wind. Everything we do, how we live, where we go, will be controlled by the internet. "I o T" (Internet of Things) will become so common, it won't even be noticed anymore.

I recently saw on the Science Channel that NASA is working on a new propulsion system which will allow us to send a probe to Proxima Centauri (one of our closest stars) by 2050. It will use a laser type of propulsion to get its speed up to half the speed of light. So even though Proxima Centauri is over four light years away, this probe could be there in about ten. That will be our first step in true interstellar travel. 

Meanwhile, in our own solar system, we will have bases on the Moon and Mars, and will be mining the asteroids. Robots will be commonplace on Earth as well as in space, and AI will be in just about everything.

How different will things be? Kids who are in school at that time (that is, if schools still exist) and study history, will think we lived like cavemen in 2019. They will wonder how people today could live the way we do.

Why do I bring all of this up? If mankind can make the progress we have since the early 1900's to now, just imagine where mankind will be in 2100. Or 3100 - a thousand years later. Right now, we are racing forward to 2025. As different as things will be six years from now, that is only the beginning to wave after wave of huge changes. 

If you are a change agent, good times await you. If you hate change, and wish things would just slow down a bit, I have some bad news - ain't gonna happen. Very few of us will be around to see what happens in 2069. But our grandchildren will be.

As for us in 2019, the future is ours to make or break. I am banking on we make it. 

6 comments:

  1. Not to worry. We will all die from Climate Change in just a few years, so...

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  2. I know climate change is definitely real. But physicists have a gold standard for the burden of proof known as five sigma. A new analysis shows that even the most conservative climate data have passed this point. I won't bother to add a link as you wouldn't believe it if you read it.
    ps I've been blocked from Facebook for some sin, so your page will be safe from my comments for a few days. Guess I said something about Trump. the GOP or Climate Change and someone reported me.

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    1. Dave! You bad boy! I just told Sue, I read all your posts. Why in the world you would be blocked is way, way beyond me. FB has become the Nazis of controlled speech. Sad. You will be back in a few days, no doubt full of "P" and "V".

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  3. Of course climate change is real--& it's occurred throughout Earth's history!

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  4. Dave, in the face of overwhelming mathematical evidence I have no choice but to agree with you: climate change is real. MAN-MADE climate change, however, is a fraud, a scam, a hoax and a great deceit. It has been disproven logically, mathematically and scientifically many times over. The Theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) has a fatal flaw. It's predictions clearly and consistently Fail to match the actual measured Temperature data. A rough analysis shows this to be an error at the three Sigma level.

    Oh, and you can save a link to the paper. I read it a week ago, and read the complete and brutal rebuttal a couple days after that. I would post the link but you probably wouldn't believe it.

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