Earth 2200 -- life in a Star Trek world
June 12 2008 / by futuretalk / In association with Future Blogger.net
Category: Space Year: Beyond Rating: 5
By Dick Pelletier
What will life be like in 2200? Of course, nobody can predict
the future with absolute certainty that far ahead; however, by
multi-tracking technology advances and mixing reality with a dash
of imagination, we can create a plausible scenario of what life
might be like 192 years from now. 
2200 citizens enjoy intelligence-multiplied a trillion-fold over 2008 biological brains. During the last 150 years, no one has experienced aging, unwanted death, or poverty; and in 2200, more people make their homes in space than on Earth.
The world was astounded in 2050 when NASA/EU probes discovered life on a planet five light years away. Inhabitants of this faraway world were sending similar probes to Earth during this same time period; each planet detected the other’s signal and both civilizations experienced their first contact with intelligent alien life.
By 2075, utilizing newly-developed wormhole messaging systems, we had exchanged numerous communications with our new friends from planet “Darth”. We discovered many common interests as both worlds had recently experienced huge intelligence growth, which resulted in the transformation of their species into non-biological beings. It became obvious that cooperation would yield benefits to both worlds; thus Earth and Darth were first to join what would one day be known as “The Federation”.
As early as 2050, most humans sported non-biological bodies with powerful minds. Those who remained “biological” often found themselves struggling to find happiness and success; so by 2075, nearly everyone had switched to the stronger, but still considered to be human, non-biological body. The few conservatives who still resisted this technology eventually died out. (cont.)
By the 2090s, humanity had achieved Type I Civilization status, able to utilize all planetary energy, prevent violent storms and earthquakes, and travel in near-light-speed spacecraft powered by ramjet fusion engines.
The first physical meeting with Darthenians took place in 2100; each planet had launched fusion-powered ships ten years earlier with five citizens aboard, to rendezvous halfway. For aesthetic reasons, nanobots morphed bodies into images attractive to both species.
Although 2.5 light years away, digital wormhole communications, developed from collaboration between the two worlds, allowed each planet’s Internet to present live pictures of this historical meeting to enthusiastic populations; with only a 30-minute delay.
From 2100 to 2150, combined searches by Earth and Darth discovered many new life forms; none advanced enough to warrant visits, but realizing that our galaxy is teaming with life prompted further cooperation.
In 2160, Earth was nearing Type II status and began constructing the “Dyson Sphere”, a concept proposed in 1959 by astronomer Freeman Dyson as an efficient way to access all of the sun’s energy. Nano-replicators created special tiles, and nanobots placed them in a wide arrangement encompassing the Earth and the sun.
Completed in 2180, the Dyson Sphere captures all of the sun’s solar power, filters out harmful space material by changing its molecular structure, and provides 252 quadrillion square miles of habitable space inside the sphere for colonization. This futuristic project has created new rain forests, exotic life forms, and a ranch-in-the-sky vacation home for every citizen.
In addition to harnessing star power, Type II Civilization scientists created anti-matter drive systems that allow vehicles to stretch and squeeze space; creating faster-than-light “warp speed” travel, which will enable explorations deeper into the galaxy.
Many dream of one-day achieving Type III status when better understanding of superstring theory will help harness the “dark energy” in the universe enabling travel, not only outside our galaxy, but also to different times.
Will this radical future happen? Forward-thinkers believe it certainly could. If society becomes enthused with positive images described in scenarios like this, our “magical future” could become reality sooner than we think. However a more important question is, will I still be alive to celebrate my 270th birthday in 2200? If life extension gurus have their way; I have a shot at it. Comments welcome.
Comment Thread (6 Responses)
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Dick, I really do hope you live to celebrate your birthday in 2200. And here is my wish for your 270th birthday – I wish we’ll never discover any advanced extraterrestrials. Let me explain. So, in 2200 you are a virtually immortal super intelligent being. So you probably don’t care about silly things like your “ranch-in-the-sky” anymore, because you can have experiences well beyond anything we can imagine now. You also don’t need aliens to give you cure for cancer or flying saucer designs. There is nothing they can teach you that you don’t know or will eventually know now that you are not constrained by short life span. You don’t worry about what will happen in 10-20 years anymore, BUT you do worry about what will happen in 10-20 billion or maybe 100 trillion years. You realize that eventually energy will become pretty scarce resource in the universe. And those damn darthenians will realize that too. Unfortunately in this case it will be zero sum game, even if they are willing to share, whatever they take reduces amount of stuff available to you.
Posted by: johnfrink June 12, 2008
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Johnfrink, thanks for the bd wish; however I see the future unfolding in more positive ways.
I do not believe stamping out death will impede my interest in the future. Vacations in space will be fun; as will interacting with newly-formed ET relationships.
And most physicists, including Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku to name a couple, believe that other universes exist and that one day humanity will discover how to visit these exotic places and scope out our future habitat when this universe runs out of gas.
With an infinite number of new universes, there will be plenty of home planets to go around. Although some future thinkers believe that in a few hundred years or so, most intelligent species will learn to exist without physical bodies, and will not have any need for matter of any kind including a planet to call home. We may only need a universe to roam around in.
Comments welcome.
Posted by: futuretalk June 12, 2008
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“I do not believe stamping out death will impede my interest in the future”
I did not say it will. I’m just saying that most activities that you find exciting or important will not seem the same to a “trillion-fold” more intelligent immortal being. For the same reason we do not share many common interests with ants or fish.
Posted by: johnfrink June 12, 2008
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I see what you mean. Well, the future will be strange and my slow biological thinking machine of today may not be able to even imagine many of our activities of tomorrow.
But I sure find it enjoyable to try.
Posted by: futuretalk June 12, 2008
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haha, I like your implied analogy, jf – we are to future humans as ants and fish are to current-day humans.
Posted by: Marisa Vitols June 12, 2008
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I agree that our consciousness, self-identity and system will be a very foreign place in 2200, especially if the acceleration horse continues to run strong even for just a few decades. Even then, I’d argue that our life-system may still desire to continue evolving/developing, expanding and learning – especially if we realize that we’re competing for resources/information/phase space with other civilizations all over our multiverse. In this case I can imagine that we’ll want to either merge forces with other nearby life, to quickly outgrow them, subsume them, or to agree to remain neutral for strategic purposes. Our choice will depend on what we have learned about the nature of the universe, how we see certain possibilities and what we’ve become. I do think, though, that we’ll be forced to continue evolving as fast as possible.
Posted by: Alvis Brigis June 13, 2008
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