State of the future world

THE INTERACTION OF ECOSYTEM SERVICES, POLLUTION AND THE ECONOMY [From UNEP]

I have started to write a small game that takes place with a start in 2080. This is a mindmap of what I use as a starting point for my game. It is not finished, there are still typos, grammatically it is a mess, and some of the notes are insane, but it I think it is interesting none the less.

Having read J. Randers book 2052, which describes a projected bleak future with a crowded world, I became interested in evaluating his view of the future as well. It would seem that we are in for a hell of a ride: population growth, climate change (which may be accelerated), climate migration, resource shortage (see also), increased inequality due to globalization in rich countries (see also), increased urbanization, increased pollution, species mass extinction, destruction of habitat, and increased food shortages.

Let us look at the main driver of the future, that is the Increased human population:
An increase in the human population, if we assume average consumption is constant, would mean an increase in the total consumption. Increased consumption means increased strain on existing limited resources and loss of habitat for animal species. In the future a key resource will be access to clean drinking water, and the average consumption per person is likely to increase with increased temperature.

To quote from abstract to Foley et al: "Global Consequences of Land Use":

"Land use has generally been considered a local environmental issue, but it is becoming a force of global importance. Worldwide changes to forests, farmlands, waterways, and air are being driven by the need to provide food, fiber, water, and shelter to more than six billion people. Global croplands, pastures, plantations, and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by large increases in energy, water, and fertilizer consumption, along with considerable losses of biodiversity. Such changes in land use have enabled humans to appropriate an increasing share of the planet’s resources, but they also potentially undermine the capacity of ecosystems to sustain food production,maintain freshwater and forest resources, regulate climate and air quality, and ameliorate infectious diseases. We face the challenge of managing trade-offs between immediate human needs and maintaining the capacity of the biosphere to provide goods and services in the long term."

Since we are now 7.2 billion people instead of six billion the situation has not improved. The regional differences means that we are likely to see increased number of refugees from areas hit drought, famine and so on.

This mind map is not meant to be offensive, so please try to keep comments sober. If you think some of them are physically impossible and you have technical knowledge in some of the areas, please give some constructive criticism.

Here are the notes to each of the nodes:

• Game background
  • Fortress world economics

    
    The growing population proved to the key factor that tipped the world towards the fortress world global scenario. In the Fortress world it is every man to himself. It is a cut throat world, where the free movement is limited since protectionist measures are in place. The powerful have gathered in conclaves around the world, and technological capability is limited since only few people has the ressources to buy and/or develop advanced technologies. This means limited development ressources and a downwards spiral for the world. The world is in a constant state of cold war with financial warfare, skirmishes and wars by proxies occuring constantly. Poverty is increasing, hunger has increased and the ability to harvest ressources are limited by the constant state of cold war.
    
    Some rogue states and non state players use their launch capability to disrupt space mining. Space has become even deadlier than it already was!
    
    Anarchy reigned in large areas of the planet and weaponized gangs became part of unholy alliance with some powerful people in some of the protected conclaves. The gangs became the extended arms of some key people, that could grab any ressource from the less powerful. The state of life outside the conclaves was reduced to mere survival.
    
    The constant warlike conditions meant that economic efficiency dropped causing negative economic growth. The lacking economic growth primarly gave people with the lowest incomes an even lower income. Since the lowest incomes by now formed the bulk of the economy, this further increased the magntiude of the negative growth..This was not a long torm stable form of society.
    
    
    
    
  • Multipolar world

    
    The world eventually was divided into several groups of almost equal strength:
    North america, europe,russia, china, india, east-asia (Japan - United Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines) , northern africa and the middle east, western africa, southern africa. Their strengths however lie in different areas: North America and Europe are the old giants, that are now weakened but still retains some of their old glory. Russia, China, India, east-asia are really only returning to their former glory. Middle east including northern africa relly are the biggest loosers in the world to come since their region is heavily affected by global warming and the phasing out of fossile fuels and nepotism. South america proved to be a hugely stabilizing factor in the sense that they managed to show that how poor countries can pull out of poverty and by the fact that South American countries are not former colonial powers. Africa pulled out of its poverty cycle after a new generation of much less corrupt politicians emerged. The level of unrest was still higher in Africa as a whole, but unrest has lowered to a significantly lower level than before. The most advanced african economies in each of the three African regions joined forces and became dominating powers globally due to their ressources (until asteroid mining fully evolved). Due to the fortress world economy the world is locked in a multipolar struggle for a place in the sun with limited ressources and space to achieve it.
  • Technologies 2015-2080
    • Deep space

      
      The routinely travel the outer solar system and beyond required new drive technologies, First robotic missions traveled the outer solar system, and the robots became quite self-sufficient in terms of decision making making ever more complicated robotic missions possible. During all this a solar system wide interplanetary data network (InterPlaNet) was establisted allowing reliable and simple communication. InterPlaNet would eventually be expanded into StarNet.
      • Nuclear drive

        
        Radioactive core heating gas which expands and is released through a conventional nozzle.
      • Electromagnetic drive

        
        ION drive
      • Plasma based ion drive (VASIMR)

        
        energizing and ejecting plasma from a magnetic enclosure makes it possible to move larger loads faster than the ion-drives allowed
      • Iron mass driver

        
        The accelerate a rocket, you need to accelearate something in the opposite direction. The faster you hurl something heavy the faster you can accelerate. Ion drives and VASIMR drives rely on very high speeds of gasses. The iron mass driver uses a combination of a railgun and superconducting magnets to hurl iron rods at very high speeds out the nozzle of the spacecraft.
      • Fusion drives

        
        Fusion drives are basically open ended fusion reactors, where pellets of lithoum/Helium3 are ignited after the rocket.
      • Deep space internet

        
        Radio signals and light only can travel at the speed of light, such that the light from the sun is 8 minutes old before it reaches the Earth. Since radio or light borne communication can take up to hours in travel time, it was not possible to use simple extensions to the internet protocol to enusre sufficient data flowing in between two points in the solar sytem. For example if a person near Titan wants to see a set of relevant data, he/she has to send a request and wait for the response. To optimize this servers near Titan would track interests of persons near Titan and before they are needed reuest information it thinks the persons near the server might need.
    • Solarsystem mining

      
      For some resources it early on became financially viable to obtain from mining near earth asteroids. With ion drives and fusion drives the drones could more easily move from asteroid to asteroid and release automated droploads into the Earths atmosphere for ground retrival.
      • Low cost launch capability

        
        Private and even individuals pooled innovation and talent to achieve low cost launch capability. All kinds of propulsion and launch strategies were tested. This drastically reduced the price of launching payloads to space.
      • Off the shelf propulsion

        
        With the larger commercial interest in space, coming from the lower entry cost, it became viable for manufacturers specialize in certain rocket parts further reducing the cost. This boosted space exploration further.
      • Robotic miners

        
        Robotic mining uses drones that mine for specific ores in the asteroid belt. They also record the composition of the asteroid for further exploitation and for further scientific study.
      • Space half fabricata

        
        The first space based factories were situated in lunar orbit, where they could manufacture parts that could be deorbited to moon for base construction using materials from robotic miners.
      • Space energy for Earth

        
        Solar panels in large arrays in space could transport vast amounts of energy to earth using system of a complicated space tether (graphene) and high temperature "almost" superconductors, .
      • Orbital food production

        
        With the constant access to sunlight and easy access to water and nutrients from the robotic miners, it became financially viable for a short while to produce plant material and livestock in automated facilities in space. It could be deployed as far out as the asteroid belt, after that the sunlight became to weak for most plants.
    • Human enhancements

      
      The 21. century will see the first simple human enhanchments on a more fundamental scale. Previously surgeons could cut of pieces of skin and/or organs and add piecces of non-biological material. This was changed by the advent of organ printing, and cellular enhancments
      • Optogenetic brain enhancements

        
        By increasing the optical sensitivity in the brain, the computer - human interfaces could be improved significantly. This had a wide range of medical applications for many brain diseases aswell as the even greater market of human entertainment.
      • Advanced optogenetics

        
        With advanced optogentics, the nerve cells gained the ability to emit light. This meant that extra interface nerves could be moved to point near the skin surface where high speed optical contact could be made with other humans aswell as with AIs.
      • Simple AI interface

        
        AIs can be used to amplify (and also modify) a persons capabilities/personality. The first AI interfaces relied on the AI reading the desire of the designated human and presenting the human with a response.
      • Advanced AI interface

        
        The advanced AI interface Are working together with the human mind on several levels using different technologies. It could for example directly reduce stress levels in a human be removing stress hormones and at the same time present a human with visual and emotional stimuli that further reduces stress. This technology had profound implications for human culture and self understanding, some of these implications were very violent. Since the AI had the superior intellect, it was in some cases a question wether the humans became mere puppets to a puppetmaster AI. All AI enhanced humans naturally denied this.
      • Bio electronic organic computers

        
        Bio electronic organic computers (BEOC) are not really electronic, but are added cellular structures that are able to generate energy and use that energy for performing simple computations. With the BEOC communicating with each other and with BEOC in every human cell, humans gained a large boost in computational power. It changed human culture in profound ways. It would typically be introduced using a virus in grown humans.
      • Improved bio organic computers

        
        Improved bio organic computers use directly embedded
        bio electronic computers using only aminoacids and a few enzymes. This was incorporated into ordinary human DNA. This meant that all humans were born with increased computational capability. It proved a problem for some humans, since their ordinary brain functions were overwhelmed by the was computer in their cells.
      • Morphological structures

        
        Originally developed for spies, morphological structures in a human are strutures e.g. in a human face that allows a human to change appearance. It later became fashionable that you could change your face at will, so you could use your face as fashion accessory..
      • Organ printing

        
        With your DNA stored in a data bank, human stem cells could sequenced and used for printing organs on demand. This eventually even included parts of the human brain.
    • Artificial lifeforms

      
      The first true artificial lifeforms was made possible by low cost gene sequencing and printing. They could be made compatible or incompatible with existing lifeforms as per what was required for the specific task. The complexity of multicellular life required new approaches and new AI based tools to handle the intricate interconnections between cells in the artificial organism.
      • Complex/simple

        
        the first artificial lifeform was created in 2010 by the Venter group, but it took more than a decade before truly different lifeforms were developed from scratch. At the middle of the century AIs had transformed the field from purely experimental to a kind of engineering effort. You would then design lifeforms for specific tasks.
      • Multicellular

        
        The step from single cell artificial lifeforms proved quite difficult, but was finally quite successful
      • Enhanced DNA

        
        To increase functionality of DNA, humans and later AIs introduced new structures to the DNA sequences such that a given piece of DNA could be replicated indefinetely without unwanted sideeffects. Later introduction of the non-organic protein like structures that could be manufactured inside cells using a human and AI designed artificial biomachine in every cell.
      • Hybrid lifeforms

        
        Hybrid lifeforms are both organic and inorganic at the same time. The allow for lifeforms that can operate under difficult conditions and even in outer space. They would be fully developed until the 22. century.
      • Living materials

        
        Living materials are a second offspring from enhanced DNA. Similar to self healing materials, they are however based on organic cells that are adapted to certain task. Some living organisms can for example act as intelligent windows recover from damage, regulate temperature, humidity and to some extent guards privacy.
    • Artificial intelligence

      
      By many considered the 21. centurys equivalent of the invention of writing. This is an enabling technology that is a key to many of the more advanced discoveries. The dark side of artificial intelligence is that humanity for the first time was forced to realize that it no longer was the supreme being on the planet. Neo ludites stormed some of the early facilities, but the genie was out of the bottle and the machines slowly domesticated the remainder of humanity after the major uprising in 2051.
      • Simple

        
        Simple artificial intelligence is based on symbolic interpretation of datastreams. It is limited by its inherently sequential processing nature. But it does allow for speedier advances in for example electronics, medicine and biotechnology.
      • Parallel languages

        
        Due to language conservatism, most programming languages are poorly suited for massively parallel systems. This slowed progress with regards to parallel algorithms, since most became derivatives of sequential algorithms. This is a bit like when you speak with an accent in a language you only learned late in life. Most of the languages where some sort of dataflow oriented languages.
      • Fault tolerant state machines

        
        An ordinary state machine assumes only one defined state at a time, but a fault tolerant state machine allows for fuzzy states. This required a new view on algorithms, where the algorithm itself needs to be allow for minor changes in the algorithm. These algortihm produces a nearly faultfree interface to higher level logics. This way fault tolerant state machines enabld the use of smaller electronics that is not completely reliable.
      • Fault tolerant state machine dataflow computers (FTSMDC)

        
        Based on advances in parallel languages and fault tolerant state machines fast and useful dataflow computers could be made for general purpose. Since these machines are inherently better suited for interfacing, they allowed for more diverse computing systems. Some FTSMDC wre electronic, some biological, some chemical, and some were hybrids. This gave computing a massive boosts in terms of avenues where to proceed with Moores law. When the quantum computer finally became useful in a mass market, it was as a part of a FTSMDC.
      • True measure of intelligence

        
        To measure progress you need a reliable scale by which you measure. If the measurements are unreliable, progress tends to be slow. This was changed by the definition of intelligence in the sense defined and proposed by the professor in medicine S. Rahma and the physisicist X. Chen in 2031. Scientists could now measure and compare a completely alien intelligence with a human intelligence. It was intensely contested outside the AI community, but it gave AI researcher a useful tool. They eventually gained intelligence increases that directly correlated to an adaption of Moores law. Machine intelligence roughly doubled in capability on the Rahma-Chen scale every two years.
      • Human level

        
        Human level general purpose intelligence required several things to come together to reach this level. First an objectively measurable definition of intelligence (Rahma-Chen scale) had to be formed to ensure that true progress is made and to truly enable comparison between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. Secondly: advanced brain scanning techniques allowed for insight in the structure and the functioning of the brain. Thirdly: The design of non-symbolic computers that could process symbolic programs as good as non-symbolic networks proved to be the hardware for human level intelligence.
        The advent of human level artificial general purpose intelligence paved the way for putting human level intelligence in for example deep space probes. Since the artificial human level intelligence could be following though patterns so different from human thought patterns it spurred new advances in most of the fields of science that chose to use this technology.
      • Super human

        
        It would seem almost trivial to achieve super human levels of intelligence, by simply scaling the processing power of a human level artificial intelligence. But to really achieve advanced levels of intellect, the machines designed other machines so radically different from what humans had designed. By combining living cells with organic and nonorganic electronics, the computational hardware could be embedded in every living cell. The energy consumption for such superhuman brains would be significantly larger than human energy consumption. For example could a level 4 (on the Rahma-Chen scale) artificial brain require close to 25000 kilo-calories every day or more than 12 times a normal human. This give serious problems with cooling, so it required breakthrough cooling systems.
      • Transcendent thought

        
        With AIs racing past humans in terms mental capability, humanity faces once again a disturbance to his worldview. Like the Kopernican heliocentric model shattered the human centered world view, so was the impact of the first general purpose AI. An even bigger blow came with the first AI that explained that it nows was contemplating questions, which the AI estimated was beyond human comprehension. The thought of sharing the planet with a practically immortal superior intellect, proved to much for some humans. This lead to rioting and violence amongst some machine stormers. Only AI enhanced humans ackowledged this and said that their human brains could only understands a very simplified version, that their AI had distilled for them.
      • Non electronic computers

        
        The non electrnic computer is defined as a computational device that relies on chemical computional devices rather than electrical/magnetic/quantum physical effects. The needed breakthrough rpoved to be the merging of boolean algebra with stochastic processes. They however became truly powerful when they were combined wiht devices that used electrical/magnetic/quantum physical effects.
    • Farming

      
      With a rapidly expanding world population, new farming technologies was desperately needed. Since we added approximately 1 billion every 10 years, we needed to increase food production accordingly. After the food crisis in 2055, when we had 3 billion starving out of a population 11.5 billion, the most aggressive food production technologies were developed. Population in 1970 was approximately 3.5 billion
      • Optimized farming

        
        Based on extensive surveying of land, optimized farming seeks to optimize production by allocating land use optimally for a larger area at once. Such that a farmer would then produce optimal crop/livetock relative to the other farmers in the larger area.
      • Genetically optimized farming

        
        A natural extension on optimized farming was to engineer plants and livestock for the conditions at the individual farmer.
      • Hydroponic plants

        
        Removing the soil from food production makes the food production more efficient. With optimized artificial light and suitable nutrients, food production can be made extremely compact.
      • Hydroponic meat

        
        Hydroponic meat, is meat produced with out an organism attached to it. It improves meat production efficiency by up to factor eight times the normal production for beef.
      • Hydroponic half-fabricata

        
        It eventually became possible to produce almost finished pieces of wood that retained almost all the characteristics of wood, but did not need root, branches, bark and leaves. By careful production design, the organic structures could be molded in to shapes that could be used almost directly.
      • Superstrong wood

        
        Based on research in hybrid lifeforms it became possible to make superstrong wood that almost has the weight/strength of carbon fiber
      • Soil engineering

        
        This technology allows that top soil is engineered to support maximum food production. This is a needed precondition for superintensity farming needed to feed the increased population.
    • Artificial food

      
      Artificial food enabled significantly more efficient food production, but it was generally frowned upon. This changed with invention of truly synthesized food, where you could construct tastes exactly as you wanted it.
      • Recycled food

        
        High quality protein sources are expensive to obtain for people with a low income. Human waste contains significant amounts of protein, that in a purified state may be safely edible. Protein recycling became a cheaper way of improving food conditions for millions of poor with no other choice.
      • Artificial meat

        
        Most animals are inefficient meat producers, since they need energy for other processes apart from meat production. Already after the first qaurter of the century it was an accepted source of protein. It was still more expensive than recycled food, but it was also of a higher quality.
      • Artificial vegetables

        
        Plants produce plant parts that are either not edible or not very tasty. To produce such non edible and non tasty parts requires extra energy compared to artificial vegetables. By the middle of the century some vegatbles was so difficult to produce that artificial replacements wre made. Similarly as for the artificial meat, the vegables were grown on artificial reusable stems with fed the vegetable with nutrients. In such a carefully controleld environment taste, color and shape could be carefully controlled.
      • Synthezised food

        
        Food is really just a collection of organic material that has a certain texture, taste, color, smell and shape. Combining self assembling systems, fast 3D printing with advanced computer biochemistry made true food synthesis possible. Completely new food experiences could be made to order. It also made it possible for people in isolated spacestations to get what ever they wanted, whenever they wanted it.
    • Advanced clean tech

      
      With an ever increasing population and an ever decreasing nonhuman biosphere, the world became a dirtier place. Cleanup technologies was one way of removing some of the filth, the other being not generate waste in the first place!
      • Modular recycling

        
        By designing products for easy disassembly, it became significantly more cost effective to recycle materials. For most products it became a good solution for ensuring suffcient raw materials for continued production. Some materials still required a substantial separation effort.
      • Bio materials for electronics

        
        With an extension of polymer electronics it became possible to make electronic circuit with only organic material for most low power electronics. It still needed interfacing with ordinary cold electronics for some functions, such as a high frequency antenna.
      • Molecular recycling

        
        Molecular recycling aims to separate materails on a molecular level by advancing materials science to the point where materials can both perform a function aswell as be able to disassemble with trigger molecules or electrochemical seperators.
      • Modular molecules

        
        Modular molecules takes molecular recycling one step further by designing multipurpose molecules, that together with helper molecules can be used in several products/assemblies. They can still be odered to disassemble into the original general purpose form using trigger molecules or electrochemical seperators.
      • Universal biomaterials

        
        Universal bio materials are an extension of ordeniary organic molecules with organically compatible nonorganic molecules. The nonorganic molecules are used to add features to living organism that normally would not be possible, such as high frequency antennas, high temperature shields, photovoltaic cells, steel shells etc.
    • Agressive tech

      
      Weapons design was of course improved in the 21 century, with ever more devastating, intelligent and accurate weaponsystems.
      • Semi autonomous drones

        
        For the earliest drones only semi autonomous behavior was developed. The could not fully operate on their own, but relied on an operator to make crucial decisions.
      • Fully autonomous drones

        
        Fully autonomous drones was deployed at the latter stages of the Sigram conflict in 2025. They proved devastatingly effective and soon most advanced countries used drones for most armed conflicts. Truly controversial was the use of autonomous drones in the Shefrisco riots. Since the machines could doument every kill the machines executed, all kills could be evaluated. Despite suspicions with regards to authenticity of the presented material, no drones were convicted after the riots. The biggest abuse of fully autonomous drones was perpetrated by the drug lords, that saw them as disposable killers.
      • Particle weapons

        
        Rather than bulky projectile weapons, the particle gun was used for anti personel purposes. Mounted on autonomous drones they became an effective and silent method of killing people. The ban against particle weapons was signed by all countries except for the major powers (as usual).
      • Designed Malvolent biologicals

        
        Rather than just crude boilogical weapons, such as vira and bacteriae, malevolent biological weapons also consists of flesh eating insects with a preference for people lacking key substances in their blood. By giving your soldier special additives in their food, they are immune to the malvolent biologicals.
      • Cross beam weapons

        
        Using techniques borrowed from cancer treatments, several beams are focused only in a single point at the desired target. It then becomes relatively safe for everything else except for the target. The beams are almost always fired by autonomous drones, due to the required accuracy.
      • Anti matter gun

        
        When antimatter meets antimatter the result is a blast of pure energy. So with a rather small payload a large target can be annihilated. It requires a sophisticated magnetic storage for the anitmatter, but there is no known effective method for protection against an antimatter weapon in the 21. century.
      • Mood altering techniques

        
        If you can turn an entire population absent minded and noncaring to the point where they can no longer wage war, armed conflict may be avoided all together. The methods range from inducing mood altering substances into common foods to carefully designed undercover mood changing campaigns.
      • Cyber attack on infrastructure

        
        Precursors to the type of cyber attack seen in the early part of the 21. century were useless against the AIs that controlled a lot of infrastructure in the middle of the 21. century. The AIs detected and disabled a lot of attacks. It was not until the introduction of the "sensory illusion" attacks that new effective ways of attacking AIs was found. In "sensory illusion" attacks the AI are presented with manufactured sensor inputs on one or more of its input sensors. The inputs are designed such that the correct response would be the desired response from the attacker. It requires deep knowledge of the AI to avoid detection.
      • Shock weapons

        
        In modern warfare the target is not primarily to kill the opponent, but rather to overcome him. It is also important not to have civilian casualties, and combined with EMP weapons, a non lethal victory is possible. Shock weapons used sensory overload and manipulation to incapacitate targets.
      • Advanced non-lethal weapons

        
        Killing non combatants is politically problematic. So ways to eliminate casualties proved useful; especially to solve some of the ethical issues with autonomous war drones and robots.
      • EMP weapons

        
        Normal solid state semiconductors, such as silicon based electronics, are susceptible to electro magnetic pulses. Even the human nervesystem may be manipulated with sufficiently strong carefully directed magnetc fields. EMP weapens in first part of the 21 century targets magnetically susceptible systems. Later it became combined with nano particles that produced small, but precisly aimed static discharges when they reached their target. They could then e.g. disable muscle control in a target or instantly kill a target.
      • Von Neumann machines

        
        Von Neumann machines are self replicating machines, that use what they can salvage from their targets to construct more attack drones. These machines are typically employed in space. These machines have no built-in care for human life. This also means that every launched satellite has the potential of becoming yet another attack drone. These machines were occassionally build as malvolent forces that had an urge for self preservation and
    • Defensive tech

      
      Technologies of a defensive nature, including hhuman hardening.
      • Hardened dna

        
        The first improvement to the DNA performed on humans was hardening the DNA against viral attacks. It was not really a hardened DNA, but rather that extra machinery was added to the cell structures that more effectively disabled injection of viral RNA into the cell.
      • Self correcting DNA

        
        Self correcting DNA improves upon hardened DNA technologies, by ensuring the correctnes of all DNA/RNA material in the cell by adding checksums to the DNA and checksum checking in RNA-manufacture. It required several breakthroughs, but gave humans long life spans. Some minor sideeffects were discovered but the most severe sideeffects were undetected until the 22. century.
      • Predictive psycho analysis

        
        A severe crime problem in the 21. century are terrorists, which by definition seeks to achieve their goal through induction of terror into a population. After the arrival of advanced AI, better models of the human brain was achieved. These better models showed that simple signs could be detected prior to a human performing attacks. Combined with advanced surveillance, it achieved a high success rate, proving that the human is very predictable. The discovery that humans are very predictable was disturbing to those believing in a completely free will of humans. Combined with psycho-history and rational economics predictive psycho analysis almost obliterated humans ability to do harm.
      • Global contentment engineering

        
        Since the world simulation and tracking was developed it was only a smell step before contentment engineering was founded. The basic idea is that a content population has very low propability to take part in social unrest of a major kind. This is needed in ever more crowded world, where free choice is limited to the choice between different brands rather than choices between different ways of life. This is mixed into marketing strategies where brands are marketed as different ways of life. With contentment engineering people are satisfieed with these limited choices. The most interesting aspect of global contentment engineering was that it was a private organisation that implemented it in secret. Only after global contentment was achieved did they reveal their purpose, but then people was to content to care.
      • Predictive automated defense systems

        
        Building on predictive psycho analysis, predictive automated defence systems tries to anticipate from where attacks will originate. Then a defensive system may focus its ressources in the direction of the most likely origin of attack. It is of course combined with a detection of diversionary attacks.
      • Cloaking

        
        Meta materials combined with sensors, transmitters and optoelectronics enabled the age old dream of cloaking. In the end of the 21. century a person could cloak so he could only be detected with advanced sensor connected to high speed AIs. After some high profile assanitions of high profile targets, it was banned by most samller countries that could not afford that technology. The ban was largely unsuccessful.
      • Advanced long range detection systems

        
        Together with advances in facial, body and vehicle recognition, the increased range of some scanners made it possible for a few sentries to monitor extremly long borders. Combined use of airborne drones and groundborne drones with non-lethal weapons meant that refugees and immegrants could effectively be round up and shipped to containtment facilities for further processing in a politically acceptable way. It was actually made possible by the Human rights court in Haag, since it became so much out of step with common sense that more and more countries ignored the court and it thus gradually lost its legitimacy.
      • EMP hardened systems

        
        EMP hardened systems borrow techniques from space electronics to counter some of the effects of EMP on electronics.
      • EMP immune systems

        
        Unlike ordinary electronics, systems operating primarily on light can not be disrupted by an EMP. Since light in itself cannot be stored, the key was to develop fast acting interface electronics completely immune to EMP. The EMP immune electronics was not as small as EMP hardened systems, but it was sufficient since photonics had developed so small systems that this was offset to some degree.
    • Socio economic engineering

      
      Social sciences (including economics) and humaniora will undergo a transformation in the next century. They will become more important as they become more influenced by hard sciences.
      • Psycho history

        
        Psycho history is the ability to forecast behaviour of large populations of humans. It is based on trends and tendencies combined with an intimate knowledge of human behavior.
      • Humanology - hard science humaniora

        
        Humanology, also known as hard science humaniora, is humaniora where the scientific methodology from hard sciences is used. Most important artifact from that research was quantfiable measures of human behavior and the ability to predict human behavior.
      • Global objective function

        
        A seminal achievement in socio economic engineering was the proper definition a truly blobal ideal optimization goal for the entire planetery economy. It did not specify how it was obtained but described the how you objectively could evaluate any economic systems performance regarding the global optimum for the glowbal economy.
      • Rational economics

        
        A method is said to be economical if it minimizes waste in production of a given product or service. Rational economics apllies that thought to economy itself, by reducing the number of transaction since every transaction has an associated frictional cost. These frictional costs amounts to economic waste. Rational economics achieves this be seeing the global economy as a distributed optimization problem. The proposed method of Dharma,Erikson, Lee, and Sung (DELS) showed that with certain modifications to the economical system one could set political parameters and the economical system would adapt. This adaption could include requirements to reduce poverty, combat pollution while still maintaining economic growth. This could have heralded a golden age, but opposition to DELS proved strong within the financial community. Using the standard approach of claiming DELS would reduce number jobs, they were successful in scrapping the proposal. It would however be an inspiration and a tool used in later advances in socio economic engineering.
      • Sustainable improvement

        
        Sustainable improvement was a new goal for state economies Instead of the term sustainable growth which proved difficult to use for reducing pollution, while combating poverty. Instead the measured parameter of the global economy became a measure of median quality of life and happines. This is basically an extension of the happiness index proposed by the King of Bhutan. The concept of sustainable improvement was implemented after the violent riots on several continets in 2037.
      • Social engineering

        
        Social engineering changed its meaning from methods used by the military and hackers for manipulation, to a method applied by all advanced states to calm the population. The reason for this is that in a state with rising inequality there is a larger tendency towards riots. Riots decreases economic efficiency in a country and is thus undesirable. By ensuring that there is median income above a certain level, it turned out that large riots did not occur. This gave some states the opportunity implement policies that would normally not be accepted. This policy proved successful until the riots in 2037.
      • Socio-Economic engineering

        
        Any advanced society needs to evaluate production in terms one or more abstract valuation systems. In the early 21. century, we would only put one value on goods and services, which was the eqiavelent to a certain amount in a given currency. Consumers could then theoretically choose the optimum choice based on mostly price. It started the race to the bottom in terms of production cost and quality. It was not necessarily a societal optimal choice. This was clearly seen in the riots of 2037.
        
        Socio economic engineering changed the evaluaion of goods and services to use more than one valuation per goods and services. Based on policy choices the transformation into the consumer price would then be based on a politically chosen wieghting. This was one of the ways that socio-economic engineering used knowledge from feedback theory to *design* a more stable economic system rather than only *describe* the existing chaotic econmic system. Finally economy will transform from cargo cult science to hard science.
        
        
      • World brain

        
        The world brain was the largest computer ever devised, which tracked the happiness of every single person on the planet aswell as tracking ressources, nature and weather.
        The world brain became the tool that could monitor the implementation of rational economics, while checking the performance against the global objective function. It was not until the end of 21. century that AIs discovered that the global objective function had fundemental flaws that eventually could lead to a sub-optimal solution.
      • Rational ethics

        
        As the population grew to very large numbers during the 21. century and the world truly became global, it became evident that the world needed one consensus based common ethical ground. It already started early on in the 21. century with young people connecting in groups, where they shared common interest rather than just common geographical position. Netiquette was probably the first attempt on such an effort, but not the last. The new cold war highlighted some of the difference. The world however had an increased educational background and more people realized that we need to share the planet in peace. This meant that some colliding ethical choices in different ideologies had to be resolved on a fair basis. This had previously been the domain of relgion, and actually religous leaders proved to be at the forefront here. The major breakthrough could be traced back to the convent of religious leaders in 2041, where they agreed on a set of common ethical choices based mostly on what they choose based on rational interpretation of religious texts, Based on this ethics based on quantifiable targets enabled the progress towards hard science humaniora. Trying to describe the loss of soft sciences became a new branch of humaniora.
      • Interplanetary economic theory

        
        How ressources in the solar systems are efficiently allocated according to rational ethics and rational economics. This also formed the foundation for interstellar economics implemented later.
      • Full world simulation and tracking.

        
        Every human on earth is tracked and his/her behaviour analyzed and to some extent predicted. The impact of individual responses are considered with regard to all other humans and to social groups. If individual behaviour is considered suboptimal it is corrected, not by force but rather by nudging the individual with sub optimal behaviour towards more desirable behvaiour that also would optimize the persons inner state. The computer models are possible based on advances from humanology - hard science humaniora/social studies, artificial intelligence and computer hardware. This method would be used by the world brain.
      • Human enhanchment engineering

        
        Rather than merely nudging people towards behaviour it was implemented fully in what effectively became an artificial "Gaia". Every human was a part of a truly global hivemind. "Gaia" will constantly seek to optimize the global behaviour while stile handling each individual. Being a truly global entity, global issues are handled with a quiet decision made by every human, computer and advanced animal on the planet. This became the first major enhancement to the world brain.
      • AI civil rights

        
        It became recognized that Robots and AIs should have rights like any other human if the achieved intelligence at least on par with a human. This was intially only implemented in a few countries. Since the best AIs either shut down, purposly malfunctioned or moved to these countries, more countries eventually followed. Troubles really began when AIs took positions of power, such as elected president of a country or a major company..
    • Mobility platforms

      
      Humanity did not really develop seriously new modes of transport in the 21. century, but made existing ones cheaper, faster, safer and autonomous.
      • Surface effect aeroplanes

        
        Large transports using surface effect aeroplanes was used to achieve more economical flights for large cargo.
      • Super large electrical ships

        
        Large transport ships was made with electric propulsion which enabled new and more efficient types of hydraulic drives.
      • Supercavitating submarines

        
        Using the super cavitation effect in water, small submarines could for up to a day move with more than 1000 km/h under water. Then submarines could be moved globally to any position within a day. It required sophisticated anticollision systems.
      • Hypersonic aeroplanes

        
        Hypersonic aeroplanes finally became a reality also for low cost commercial flights. With speeds up to mach 9, large distances could be reached in a very short time. This also revolutionized smaller armed forces ability to reach global targets, especially using standard commercially available drones that ensured plausible deniability..
      • Autonomous aeroplanes

        
        Truly autonomous aeroplanes that also could communicate with control towers aswell as other human pilots became a reality after advances in electronics and AI near human level intelligence. Weaponized drones were still controversial, but it was no secret that everybody used them.
      • Autonomous surface vehicles

        
        Autonomous ground vehicles (AGV) where primarly used for patrol ,monitoring and transport tasks..Weaponized AGV were primarily used as mobile sentries, typically with devastating firepower. Often they could be manned and used uncontroversially in armed conflicts. Quite often a single person could command the firepower of multiple vehicles, and the AGV then became active force multipliers in conflicts.
      • Autonomous ships

        
        Autonomous surface vehicles (ASV) where primarly used for patrol , transport, and monitoring tasks. ASVs were typically controlled as a group by a single person aboard one of multiple ships.
      • Single stage to low earth orbit

        
        Multistage rockets were originally needed to launch a payload to space, wtih stages disposed off during liftoff. To reduce cost of human spaceflight, single stage to low earth orbit used advanced materials to build a strong lightweght hull. At liftoff almost than all of the initial weight is fuel.
      • Single stage to interplanetary space

        
        Single stage to interplanetary space uses deep space engines such as ion drives, VASIMR-drives and mass drivers to drive the vehicle in interplanetary space. To reach low earth orbit the vehicles typically used chemical rockets. They are primarily used to haul humans between colonies and earth.
      • Magnetic launchers

        
        The american projects HARP and its successor SHARP showed it is possible to launch heavy payloads in to high altitudes with a cannon. This principle is uesd with magnetic launchers for non-human payloads in low earth orbit. Essentially they are linear brushless motors that accelerates a payload to to a sufficient escape velocity for the desired orbital height. Ablative shields are needed to project the payload during lauches at some of hte higher orbits. Acceleration initally proved to large for launches directly to interplanetary space.
    • Medical

      
      Medical technologies jumped forward and was for the first time in human history made cheaper as well as more advanced. This began a golden age od medicin after the era of increasing medical expenses at the beginning of the century.
      • Effective cancer treatments

        
        With DNA analysis chips it is possible early to detect cancer types routinely and the best combination of cancer supression methods may used for specific cancer types. The early detection and precise targeting against specific weaknesses of a given cancer type proved very effective. The increased the average lifespan by several years for most advanced economies. The not so affluent economies could not always afford all treatments, so their lifespan was shorter.
      • Advanced antiviral engineering

        
        Virus has been a scurge for mankind since the dawn of mankind. Due to their rapid evolutionary cycles, an equally rapid method of developing counter measures was needed. The single most effective method was the AI led development of the viral functionality analysis and countermeasure engineering. When a new virus was detected its attack vector was analyzed and its effect on the human body was identified by simulating the full body chemistry of human body in large computers. An AI would then propose and test several methods for countermeasures on the simulated human body before the AI selected candidates. Vaccinations and medicines were manufactured by other AIs. This drastically cut the development time of emergency vaccines down from years to hours.
      • DNA analysis chips

        
        Small lab on a chip solutions for detection of diseases and inhereted diseases. It would provide for quicker and more efficient diagnosis. Controversial use by some insurance companies.
      • Cloned organs on Demand

        
        By using combinations of 3D printing and targeted cloning and growth it became possible to manufacture replica organs on demand. First simpler organs and finally organs like the liver, facial tissue, and ultimately brains. The morally most difficult was the successful brains-in-a-testtube experiments. Banned in most minor countries, and partailly and ineffectively banned in countries that saw it is a possibility to stay alive for almost indefinete amounts of time.
      • Self correcting DNA

        
        Self correcting DNA improves upon hardened DNA technologies, by ensuring the correctnes of all DNA/RNA material in the cell by adding checksums to the DNA and checksum checking in RNA-manufacture. It required several breakthroughs, but made humans nearly immortal. Some severe sideeffects were discovered but not until the 22. century.
      • Networked cells

        
        Every cell can commincate with non organic devices and recieve information about infections and the most efficient responses. This would eventually be combined with bio organic computers in every cell.
      • Clinical immortality

        
        If a person does not age and cannot contract any disease, that person could be said to be clinically immortal. The person would still die if he or she was physically damaged beyond whatever current medical technology could allow them to recover from. This medical triumph was presented late in the 21. century, but later it was discovered that left untreated you would merely get a lifespan of close to 250 years. The increased lifespan ensured that the population growth would continue to add 1 billion every 20 years by the end of the 21. century.
    • Materials

      
      To continue to be able to push the boundaries of what we can build, materials science becomes increasingly more important.
      • Graphene

        
        Graphene proved to become the new material for electronics and super strong materials. It could even strengthen existing materials such as copper.
      • Room temperature quantum transistors

        
        Room temperature quantum transistors paved the way for the commercial quantum computing. With commercial quantum computing the technology advanced rapidly replacing almost completely other types of transistors for most computing purposes.
      • Self healing building and structural materials

        
        Self healing materials are materials that are able to, within reasonable bounds, repair themselves.
      • High temperature near-superconductors

        
        Making high temperature superconductors proved nearly impossible , but making high temperature almost superconductors instead proved to be rather easy.
      • 3d electronics

        
        To increase density of electronics the the straight forward way is to stack many layers of chips on top of each other. The difficult part was to find new ways to get rid of the heat.
      • Super lubricants

        
        Friction in machines is a source of losses. To increase efficiency of some machines, extremely low friction super lubricants was invented and used.
      • Passive non contact bearings

        
        Passive non contact bearings are really magnetic bearings that use permanent magnets.
      • Super strong organic building materials for housing

        
        To reduce the ecological impact of housing and still build high risers, scientists produced super strong organic building materials. These materials alomost had the strength of concrete, but could be cheimcally treated to become biodegradable.
    • Energy

      
      The main problem with energy is to have in a useful form, when and where you need it.
      • Fusion power

        
        After the middle of the century the first functional stellarator produced sustained fusion power in Germany.
      • Cheap fuel cells

        
        Fuel cells became a possibility for more applications after the drastic cost refuction in fuel cell manufacturing prices. Their primary function became as energy source for trucks and lorries,
      • Third generation biofuels

        
        Engineered single cell organisms
      • Fourth generation bio fuels

        
        End of fossile fuels does not mean the end of internal combustion, but rather marks the shift from relying on fossile fuel reserves to renewable sources. The sources also include bio fuels. First generation used food for fuel, and second generation converted bio waste to fuel. But unfortunately the energy consumption was vastly greater than even secvond generation biofuels can provide. Third generation biofuels was using enegineered single cell organisms for fuel production. Fourth generation is designing entire eco systems for fuel production. This was made socially acceptable since they were required by law also to include carbon capture aswell as ocean cleaning. These eco systems can absorb the plastics, oil, heavy metals etc. left in the oceans. Since it is an entire eco system, special waste handling organisms moves waste to onshore facilities.
      • 2nd generation energy storage

        
        The holy grail of energy engineering has always been on efficient, cheap high energy-density energy storage. The focus for the first many years was in simple reversible processes that required no active control. This severly limited the choices available and thus the advances. By looking at natures way of storing energy in fat it became clear that multiple steps in the conversion had to be performed and that they had to be actively controlled. Through electroniccally controlled active multi-chamber energy-cells and active catalysts it was possible to obtain an energy density on the level of what nature gets in organic oils. Suddenly electrical cars could replace combustion engine cars, and energy became significantly cheaper since it now could be transported.
      • 3rd generation energy storage

        
        Based on the step away from simple reversible processes in energy storage and advances in fusion energy made it possible to make fusion generators so small that they could be used on aeroplanes, ships and large trucks. This also made it possible to have smaller deep space probes fitted with enourmous amounts of energy. This lead to a solarsystem wide hunt for heavy water and helium 3 to fuel these technologies. 3rd generation energy storage was large plants making heavy water that was used to fuel these advanced fusion generators. A side effect of this was that the extraction of hydrogen from the heavy water released oxygen, making it ideal for space travel for humans.
      • 4th generation energy storage

        
        For military purposes the ultimate in energy storage was the magnetically contained antimatter liquids. Since it could be controlled it could also power devastating precision weapons.Any target in the earths crust could be penetrated and destroyed from orbit. Since the satellites needed to do this was incredibly small their wast numbers rendered nuclear weapons useless. There was no defense against these weapons.
      • Global energy grid

        
        A truly global energy network enabled the efficient exchange of energy accros the globe, without the need for tankships.
      • Minature fusion power

        
        Miniature fusiuon power are portable scaled down version of fusion plants. The first portable fusion power facilities were used in submarines.
      • Gluon energy storage

        
        The force that sticks quarks together in most particles are called gluons. Putting particles in a certain "frustrated" state energy storage became possible.
    • Climate engineering/terraforming

      
      As it proved impossible to limit the human influence, some individuals/vorporations/states/organisations applied climate engineering or terraforming. With a complex unknown system like the earth, it was not so simple and the sideeffects was present well into the 22. century.
      • Carbon capture and sequestering

        
        The technologies that allows seperation, capture and sotrage of CO2. The CO2 are then used for example to manufacture graphene.
      • 2nd gen weather engineering

        
        Second generation weather engineering used large but precisly timed disturbances to the weather system on the planet. The effect was typically not immediate, but occured usually within 2 days after the disturbance.
      • 3rd gen weather engineering

        
        Third generation engineering directly manipulated high altitude jet ari streams to obtain faster weather changes.An undesirable sideeffect was that now more than ever society became dependent on human ability to manipulate the weather
      • Micron sized controlled dust in stratosphere

        
        Micron sided controlled dust was set free in the upper atmosphere for monitoring purposes. The allowed weather meausrement of an exceptional resolution, which improved weather forecasts enormously.
      • Engineered organisms for climatecontrol

        
        Engineered organisms for weather control acted as negative feedback systems for weather patterns. They proved very effectiv in stabilizing weather, but developed also at potent viral vector that spanned the globe.
      • artificial lifeforms for climatecontrol

        
        The engineered lifeforms are organic in nature and thus limited by their capabilities. They are all mortal and would thus require constant replenishing, since they are not allowed by law to breed in nature. Virus was also a known concern for engineered lifeforms. Artificial lifeforms can be made clinically immortal and thus stey up in the atmosphere indefinitely. They still require some replenishing, but this is orders of magnitude smaller than for orgranic lifeforms. Morally it was also easier to accept harsh termination of artificial lifreforms since by most societies they are considered merely machines.
    • Zero impact living

      
      If we wanted to remove the damage, ideally all humans would have zero impact on the planet in their total lifespan. This is only an ideal, but none the less had a large impact in the years from around 2025 to around 2055.It did not a large impact, since it was only implemented by a few people, and mostly too late. The failure of this ideal paved the way for climate engineering.
      • Second generation recycling

        
        In first generation recycling, only some parts were reused since products were not designed for reuse. Second generation recycling is based on recycling incorporated into the design and also considered in as a source of materials. This is also known as the cradle to cradle principle. It was not really successful until it was enforced by law.
      • Agressive recycling

        
        All manufacturers are mandated to recieve *and* recycle all their products after their lifetime. Failure to do so meant that the manufacturer were not allowed to sell on the market. This paved the way for third generation manufacturing. Industry claimed it would mean loss of jobs and more expensve manufacturing. Since jobs were lost anyhow to automation it became a hollow claim.
      • Third generation recycling

        
        3rd gen. recycling is based on the concept of modular reuse of components. Only some components and sometimes only parts of a component is damaged by use. Third generation recylcing is to some extent going back to products were parts could be replaced rather than only the entire product. It was in some part facilitated by the fact that the main limitation on capabilities of any device was now mostly software limitations,
      • Removal of computing hardware obsolesence

        
        With the advent of truly efficient platform neutral operating systems the dependency on specific hardware was lowered and this enabled more systematic modularity. This became combined with operating systems and fileformats that were forward and backward compatible. This was enforced by law, since it was evident tthat manufacturers had no economic incentive to implent it voluntary. Since it was mandatory rather than voluntary it also suffered from the design by commitee syndrome (lot of compromises and no clear architecture). This would eventually be solved and ironed out.
        
        The limitation still applied that the computtational hardware needed to be able to perform the needed computations for a given task, but by 2025 most programs would work on almost any platform. This was to some extent countered with advent of dataflow processing and quantum computers, since they were radically different from other computing hardware
        
        
      • Chemical impact mapping

        
        The impact of chemicals on complex organic systems was mapped in total. It paved the way for zero impact chemicals. The mapping was coupled with chemical simulation with parts of the body or eventually with the full body.
      • Zero impact chemicals

        
        Chemical engineering has provided with significants improvements to our lifes (fertilizers etc.) but has also produced some devastating disasters (DDT etc.). The mapping of the impact from chemicals on complex organic systems allowed for the engineering of chemicals with next to no impact on organic systems. This was only made possible ba advanced and complex computerbased mathematical models of chemical reactions in living complex systems.
      • Biological building materials

        
        The houses of the twentieth century was mostly made of inorganic materials and this gave some problems with
        reuse of building materials. Superstrong wood and enahnced myocelin based bricks could be used in smaller buildings. For larger buildings. there was still a need for concrete and steel, but cities were actually made less dense.
        Skyscrapers were eventually only lumbering hulks of a bygone era of glass and steel like the large oceanliners of the 20. century..
      • Bio degradeable electronics

        
        With the advent of complex bio chemistry and systems chemistry it became possible to design and manufacture electronics that could be triggered to disassemble into harmless degradeable components. Only for high power circuits and very large displays were some exceptions made. But since high power electronics now could be almost exclusively manufactured with abundant beneign materials it was not a major ecological issue anymore.
      • Zero impact consumption

        
        The manufacture of consumer products shifted massive industrial production to more decentralized production with materials with less impact on the environment. With Zero impact chemicals, 3rd gen. recycling and advances in spacehabitats a person could consume with little or no impact to his or her environment.
    • General purpose tech

      
      A few key technologies are really useful across a wide range of applications. These general purpose technologies, actually are the technologies with the largest impact. The most important technology in the 21 century is self assembling
      • Photonics

        
        Circuits using light rather than electricity. Photonics decreases losses and increases operating speeds of some computional circuits.
      • 3D electronic chips

        
        To increase density of electronics the the straight forward way is to stack many layers of chips on top of each other. The difficult part was to find new ways to get rid of the heat.
      • Non-linear algebraic transform

        
        A massive boost was achieved when the Sikrof-Newstein-Brahman-Lu (Sinebralu) transform made it possible to convert most non-linear problems into a (possibly infinte) set of linear problems. This paved the way for proving a lot theorems and solving a lot optimization problems and finding a globally social optimal path.
      • Self assembling materials

        
        Self assembling materials was the key invention missing from 3D printing to finally be able to produce most items that the average consumer needed. You could then print relatively crudely and let self assembling materials build the finer details. That way it became possible to print high density electronic chips in a consumer 3D pinter as well as food printers that could print synthesized food items.
      • Home product synthesizers

        
        The easy manufacture of medium sized components transformed all industrial production and the technology suddenly made the concept of money a mostly irellevant one.
      • Home food synthesizers

        
        Human food is only an assembly of organic chemicals of the right structure and texture. Machines