Posts tagged futurology
It must be very dark and hot on the surface of Venus, but my humans want to change that and make a Venusian colony. The problem? The extremely thick atmosphere would make it problematic to say the ...
Setting: Earth, in the future, near 2060 or 2100 Technology: a bit more advanced than ours Armies and police forces are already using systems for crowd control. Some devices can generate disco...
Assuming interstellar travel, and self-sufficient colonies in other star systems, what are some methods of destroying the Earth while leaving minimal impact on the colonies? Context I would like ...
Related, and in continuation to The Challenge of Controlling an Advanced AI. At this point in my story, I'm assuming a got-out-of-the-box-AI scenario, where no singleton (a single self-coherent dom...
By now, everyone is familiar with the remarkable achievements of special-purpose AIs like Deep Blue and Watson. Now, it is clear that as our accumulated knowledge of algorithmic methods and of the ...
A messenger from the stars just arrived in peace but has brought horrible news. A vast swarm of planet devouring phototropic insects are approaching from deep space and our only hope is to obscure ...
The universe is in a long, slow decline to darkness Sorry folks but it's true, read the article! Here's a much edited-down version: The universe is cooling down, its stars pumping out about h...
I'm trying to write a 'gundam like' series, though with space fighters instead of humanoid robots. I want a semi-hard science world, I'm okay with making up technology without fully explaining how...
First of all I would like to precise what my species of wyverns actually are. I do not plan to make them huge and gigantic like in many fantasy worlds. Instead they are rather small and can be the ...
Background: The main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is the closest and richest source of non terrestrial resources to Earth in the solar system. Even though it is vast its resources are ob...
The title is pretty self-explanatory. How powerful does a computer have to be before it has the hardware capability to simulate and emulate a human mind in real-time? I'm leaving the question of ...
EDIT: As it turns out the method I had thought of using to combat aging doesn't work the way I expected. As such I have rethought this question in more vague terms. New Question: Using current hyp...
It's the future and oil resources have run out. A scientist has suggested using personal fart power to meet our individual power needs. World governments are seriously considering this. They have ...
I am running a sci-fi RPG. One of my players (the Engineer) has expressed interest in having a gold hammer. This seems pretty ridiculous to me as gold is soft and softness doesn't seem like a qua...
With the increase in living standards, the number of children by women is decreasing in highly developed countries. Question: Is it conceivable (with the aggravating factors proposed below) to s...
This is inspired by The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells. In the book - in the far future - humans have split into two races, the Eloi, who live aboveground, and the Morlocks, who live underground. The...
I'm looking for flaws in my reasoning. My world is set in the near future, and AI technology is progressing rapidly. There are strict rules and regulations about AI development and the threat it p...
Conquest and discovery has been an important part of developing the global political structure of today's Earth. After we expand and settle other planets, whether within the same solar system or n...
The Average Human Achieves IQ Scores 60 Standard Deviations Above The Average Person of 2016 By the time the year 3016 rolls around, the human race for the first time ever has achieved an average ...
In a future where all cars and public services are self-driving the way, I am assuming traffic congestion would be seriously limited, if not removed completely, because the road network would also ...
We are an interplanetary human empire at war with an alien species. On the brink of defeat, this alien species designed a virus to turn the tide of war. This virus is airborne and highly contagio...
Hope this isn't too broad. I tried to make it as easy to understand as possible. A list of these technologies would be great
Scenarios for a technological singularity usually seem to wait for machine intelligence to exceed human intelligence. Say the consumer needs of humans are food, clothing, shelter, transportation, ...
You gotta admit. That roguish guy you just met at space bar looks cooler with cig in his mouth. Not only he always shoots first, but also he manages to do so while puffing awesomely looking clouds ...
Scenario On Earth in the latter half of the 21st century: the increasing ravages of climate change (e.g. droughts and a rising sea level) are creating more conflict between nations over the batt...
Assuming that in the not too distant future space travel developed enough, that large numbers of ships and people were leaving the earth's surface on a regular basis. Would this ever reach a point ...
Inspired by comment under this question "Darling, does this dress make me look fat? QUICKSAVE "Uhm ... no?" WRONG ANSWER, WANNA TRY AGAIN? We all dreamed about having possibili...
In my world, I want to create cultures resembling cultures of old Earth ages. This applies both to state structure and culture. (e.g. ancient Egypt revival) Since this does not happen spontaneousl...
On Earth today, even though most people speak some English, there is seemingly no reason to believe that future generation's main language will be the same in decades/centuries to come (i.e., we'll...
Assume there is a point in time when every planet in our Solar System consists of colonies. Each colony is inhabited with civilians that primarily serve the purpose of its colony. Some colonies m...
Imagine a world in which technology we would probably call "technological singularity" is possible and already happened on few places of the galaxy. By the singularity I do not mean that anything i...
So we make code for an A.I., and it makes better code, which makes better code, which makes better code, etc... ad infinitum. I'm not going to specify its goal. Maybe it's Robot Overlord Green. May...
Discounting the actually quite good idea of having the asteroids be the site of colonization would it be better to use human miners or automated ones? Both would probably deliver the goods by unma...
Scenario run-down. Several billion years from now, Sol has finally exhausted its hydrogen supplies and has entered the red giant phase. It has already been increasing in lumosity for some time and ...
So I'm approaching this question the wrong way. Instead of asking how long a road would last (which is apparently too broad for stackex), let me tell YOU how long I want it to last and you can tell...
At a crucial point in the development of human civilization, there is a split in the timeline: one where FTL travel is facilitated by jump-drives/wormholes, and another with superluminal speeds (St...
Let's make the following assumptions: Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is inevitable, much like Y2K was. People assumed that this ASI would have the power to prevent any other ASI from being cr...
The government of Futurestan has finally decided to hear the voice of her people. It would seem that the protriotors access to malware, EMP-otovs, and weaponized angry glaring (and thermite. Lots o...
Follow-up-question to this scenario: ~ 2750 A.D : Quite a few asteroids/celestial bodies have been move to a stable earth orbit and are beeing mined for ressources. I am currently designing the eco...
EDIT: Question timeframe changed from early XXI to mid-XXI century. Lets say 2040 decade-ish. You are the engineer in charge for the construction of the latest 's stealth suit. It should be the...
In a short story that I read (don't have the link, but the short story itself is not relevant to this question), it is set about a millennia from now, where humans have long since made contact with...
I'm getting bored waiting for monkeys or dolphins or crows or whatever to just evolve human-level intelligence. Is there anything practical we can do to create more favorable "natural selection" co...
Considering a distant future where mankind has spread and inhabits lots of star systems. Would there be a justification for inter-system trade or exchanges ? FTL travel may be considered, but with ...
This question is inspired by book The Day of the triffids and this question Russia and USA have never been really "friends", lets admit it. So we will not be surprised, that one of them (pick your...
The setup: Near future (maximum 50 years in future) where "only" thing changed is, that company SpaceX together with NASA and ESA found out, how to get cargo and people to space very cheap USA dec...
For the longest time growing up with Peak Oil and other such dire predictions, I assumed humanity had just about peaked, in terms of industrial-technological might and capacity to influence its env...
I wonder if it possible for human civilization to evolve into two different civilizations. One is controlled by artificial intelligence (or by uploaded human minds) and the other is biology-based ...
I'm trying to figure out realistic futuristic jobs for my characters. We're in a verge-of-singularity world, 15-25 years in the future. Convoluted neural networks and their even more awesome near-...
I'm considering making a novel about something weird that really happened sort of: an island that was on every map of the world, but never really existed. The real deal is called a Phantom Island,...
I'm working on modeling how a civilization can progress from some known state making conscious choices about the fields in which to apply its resources. Is there some good / theoretically sound / w...