The current world is filled with many uncertainties that may not be resolved in my remaining life time. So, what if there is a way (cryogenic or otherwise) by which my body is preserved after I die, and I am able to wake up and peek at the future. Say 50 years from now. Wouldn’t that be exciting?
Here are some of the things I am eager to find out.
Let’s start with my two grandchildren. They would both be middle aged by the time I wake up. What would they be doing? What type of education did they have? What career did they select? Did that require going to a place called “office”? If they did not go to an office, what happened to all the office buildings? More importantly, how did they manage to make a living in an AI dominated world? Was there a guaranteed universal income that kept them going?
I also wonder to what extent AI would have influenced the human civilization. There is currently an extreme point of view that AI would dominate the world and humans will become secondary. Did that come to pass? Or, was AI absorbed in the civilization as other human progresses have?
Given the progress in AI and robotics, I won’t be surprised when I wake up that a special service would be available to wealthy folks to that they could live forever. They would be able to get a brain transplant and a robot would imitate their physical structure. For poorer folks, the advances in medicine would guarantee a disease-free life, even if it were just 150 years, and not forever. Is that what is coming?
I am also eager to find out what will we use for entertainment and communication in the future? Will there be TVs and laptops? Social media? Would people be communicating through brain implanted chips instead of external devices? How common will be holographic images for communicating, teaching and entertainment?
Will anyone physically travel to see a place and experience its culture? The way things are going, every nook and cranny of this earth would have been covered by hordes of tourists, so will people prefer to travel through virtual reality?
What is more certain is the future of routine transportation. When I wake up in 2074, I am almost certain that nobody will be driving a car, or whatever that device is called. With AI firmly in place, every vehicle will be autonomous. The current automotive industry would have become completely different. Will they still exist or AI dominated firms take over the transportation segment of the society?
Talking about another major uncertainty hanging over our heads today, I wonder what would the world look like in 2074 after 50 more years of climate change. Would the civilization blunt the rapid change in climate? When I wake up, will I be in some place safe from extremes of rain and heat? Will that be on earth or would I be transported to be a part of the human population that had shifted to moon or even mars to escape the savagery of climate change?
In that regard, how common would it be to travel to Moon or Mars in 2074? Would Moon be a routine destination for tourists (after they have saturated every place on earth)? Would Mars be accessible for the more adventurous types? More appropriately, would either of my grandchildren have traveled to Moon or Mars?
Would they have found life outside our earth? I have high hopes that some form of life, even microbial will be discovered in my life time. There are probes going to places like Europa and Ganymede that will send back some confirmation in 2030s. Perhaps JWST will detect some signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. However, it is more likely that we will have a more definitive answer when I wake up in 2074. How exciting!!
The universe is a special place. Currently, two major uncertainties are regarding dark matter and dark energy. There are speculations about what they are, after all they make up most of the universe. However, by 2074, there will be definite answers. Then the next question will be how will that affect our concept of ever-expanding universe. Will it eventually collapse?
So many questions. I hope we will have answers to some of them in fifty years..
