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Looking Ahead: Top Stories of the 21st Century What will our children's children see as the top stories of the coming century? In this special report, GSReport editor Michael Lindemann suggests some possibilities.  By Michael Lindemann Start Date: 8/25/99 Many pundits have taken up the sport of discussing the top stories of the century just ending. To be sure, it's been a bumpy, exhilarating, sometimes horrific hundred years. Among other things, the 20th century has seen more people born, and more of them killed in wars, more wealth created, more new technologies developed, more knowledge amassed, more speed achieved, more democracy practiced, more education provided, more diseases overcome, more civil rights won, more species lost and more of the global environment despoiled than in any other similar period since human history began -- and by a very long margin in most cases. Quite a unique century, if only by these measures alone. What cannot be ignored is that the rate of change in many aspects of life -- most especially in technology but also in sheer human numbers and everything that entails -- has steadily accelerated throughout the past 100 years; and these trends do not stop at the border of the new millennium but instead continue to increase. What will our children's children see as they look back across the century now before us? When they debate the stories of their century, what stories will they recall? Herewith, a sample of genuine possibilities: HUMAN LONGEVITY: Within three decades, the human lifespan will be elective up to at least 120 years of age, for those who can afford it; and some may live to 150 or beyond. The path toward immortality will include radical improvement in nutrition, elimination of obesity, hormone treatments to stall aging, super-immunity, and elective replacement of tissue and organs grown from one's own body. The big question for many people will be: What to do with all those extra years? But for several billion of the least privileged, life expectancy will decrease substantially from current levels, only beginning to recover in the late decades of the century. CLONING of many life-forms will become commonplace, but cloning of humans -- reliably achieved by about 2010 -- will stir one of the biggest bio-ethics struggles of all time. Human clones may be found to have unexpected and highly disturbing flaws. Because both the allure and potential abuse of cloning is so great, the controversy might not be settled one hundred years from now. Human cloning will create a mass of new laws and regulations and also a rich new arena for criminal activity. BEATING DISEASE: In medicine, the world will necessarily enter the post-antibiotic era, as new strains of bacterial and viral diseases prove impervious to all currently available drug treatments. New approaches may center on attacking the genetic coding of infectious organisms, as well as building super-immunity in the human body. The net result will be better control, tending toward eradication, of most of the common diseases that plague humankind. Most forms of cancer will be history in one hundred years. Alzheimer's disease, the great plague of old age, will all but disappear, as will diabetes. A vaccine for AIDS will be available within ten years, and a full and affordable cure within twenty years. However, before that happens, hundreds of millions of people will succumb to this disease. ENERGY -- how it is made and how much is consumed -- will be among the biggest stories of the 21st century. The obvious progress of global climate change will drive a variety of energy innovations aimed at reducing fossil fuel consumption while also eliminating nuclear fission power plants entirely. New automobile technologies alone will substantially reduce petroleum consumption. Given current knowledge, solar-hydrogen production could be the biggest new energy technology of the coming century. But breakthroughs related to Cold Fusion could be brought to market within 20 years. Some decades later, we may see several varieties of "free energy," including so-called "zero-point energy." The coming energy revolution will eventually reverse the current trend toward global warming and will be a prime component of other revolutions in transportation, communication, manufacturing and agriculture. HUNGER: The end of human starvation, and the end of human destruction of crucial habitats such as rain forests, will come when breakthroughs in energy, biotechnology and nanotechnology lead to radical innovations in food production. Current agriculture will be augmented and partly replaced by foods directly synthesized from raw materials. A crucial ingredient that might be termed "life-force" will be missing from these synthetic foods, however -- so specialized varieties of agricultural products will be cultured strictly to provide minimum daily requirements of this ingredient. The net result will be that starvation and malnutrition are nearly eradicated in a world of approximately 9 billion humans by the year 2075. SPACE TRAVEL will become commonplace and huge new fortunes will be built on space enterprise. Many specialized forms of manufacturing will be moved into orbital facilities, or to the moon or asteroids. Permanent settlements will be established on Mars; by 2075, that planet will enter a protracted period of colonial struggle with various Earth-based political and economic entities. As the population of Mars-born humans grows, so too will a distinctly Martian mythology, spirituality and politics. WARP DRIVE: By 2020 it will be generally agreed that light-speed is technically possible; a rudimentary demonstration of a relativistic spacecraft will occur by 2050; and a fully functional, human-piloted starship with "warp drive" will be flown by 2075. BEYOND RADIO: Driven in part by the impending need for quick communication across interstellar distance, human society will enter the post-radio age with the invention of a communication system utilizing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Electromagnetic technologies will remain widely used for Earth-based communication. But quantum communication will become ever-more crucial as human enterprise expands throughout the solar system, and then toward the stars. DARWIN MOVE OVER: Attempts to revise the prevailing theory of evolution will spark one of the century's greatest scientific struggles. Increasing numbers of scientists will acknowledge that evidence does not support the general claim of random mutation and natural selection alone resulting in the appearance of millions of separate species since the beginning of life on Earth. A counter-theory involving the participation of intelligence and "continuous panspermia" as shapers of evolution will gain force against strenuous opposition and will achieve majority acceptance before the end of the century. NEW RELIGION: The evolution debate will be one strand in a broader scientific inquiry into the nature and origins of the cosmos. By mid-century this inquiry will lead many scientists to acknowledge the necessity of a universal organizing force or intelligence -- God to the religious. The emerging scientific explications of this cosmic force will be resisted by both orthodox religions and non-believing scientists. But the eventual result will be the genesis of a new and highly successful science-based religion which posits the fundamental reality of consciousness, the purposeful tendency of matter to become life, and the existence of the human soul. EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE will be discovered and acknowledged within our own solar system by 2020. At about the same time, ET intelligence will be generally acknowledged as existing in the wider galaxy. Controversy over claims of ET visitation will persist in the face of mounting evidence because of uncomfortable political, scientific and religious implications. But by mid-century it will be clear to most people that the Earth has been visited often by beings from elsewhere. SENTIENT MACHINES: Super-intelligent machines capable of abstract reasoning and independent volition will be developed within 30 years, sparking one of the greatest social upheavals of modern times. Combined with nanotechnology, these machines will become self-replicating soon after. An entire new body of law will be required to deal with the vast implications of true artificial intelligent life. Many people will argue that such machines are inherently too dangerous to be allowed to exist, much less reproduce. TERRORISM: Mounting social pressures due to population density, dwindling resources and widespread poverty will spawn extreme acts of terrorism during the early decades of the 21st century. At least one act of nuclear terrorism will occur, destroying a major city. But far more lives will be lost when terrorists unleash a biological weapon. BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE will be perfected by 2020. Among the many applications will be computerized control of muscles allowing paralyzed persons to regain mobility, and computer-aided vision offering sight to the blind. Some kinds of thought and memory transfer will also be accomplished, though major advances in this area will occur late in the century. NO ARMAGEDDON: Despite widespread expectations of doom or deliverance at the turn of the millennium which persist for many years, spawning numerous strange and radical cults, the world and human civilization will muddle through without major discontinuities or magical transformations. Neither Satan nor the Messiah will visibly return; Atlantis will not rise from the sea; aliens will not arrive en masse to rescue the elect from disaster; nor will any astrological alignment, photon belt or other cosmic phenomenon alter the Earth's natural course and destiny. It is possible that a moderate-sized asteroid will be discovered on a collision course with Earth before 2100; but the means will be found to deflect this danger. Undoubtedly the greatest peril to the Earth and humankind is human activity itself. On this account, the 21st century will experience terrible calamities, but it will also see the beginning of a true return to balance between human society and the natural world. The century will end on a better note than it begins.
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