Predictions
I am writing a new book, this time a novel, attempting to project existing social, political and technological trends to their logical conclusion. This is a science fiction story, happening at the end of the 21st century, describing a futuristic society in which computers and robots take care of ALL production and distribution and the population, while living in comfort and abundance, became aimless without a role in their own welfare. It raises the philosophical question of what human happiness depends on.
A small preface summarizes what had happened before. Here it comes.
Prologue
The 21st Century started badly for America and, indeed, for the whole world. The 9/11 attack threw that country into a rage it had not experienced since Pearl Harbor. It was a major shock to the national psyche. As John le Carre wrote soon after: “The United States of America has gone mad.” They had to hit back hard - first at Afghanistan, then Iraq and finally Iran. Failure to accomplish the objectives of these costly wars, coupled with overreaction and propaganda, led to the election of a most unconventional president. In his first year in office, he did more damage to the environment, to democracy and to social justice than any previous Republican had in two terms.
Meanwhile, weather conditions due to climate change continued to deteriorate at an accelerating pace. Killer hurricanes and tornadoes swept over the land with increasing frequency; forest fires and draughts burned entire states; the sea level rise and tsunamis drowned coastal cities. Due to these conditions building codes were changed to mandate the construction of reinforced structures that could withstand hurricane-strength winds. By the end of the century most citizens lived in such apartment buildings. Single family homes were not safe any more.
Then, international tensions reached a crisis. Fearing North Korea’s boast that its missiles were able to hit the US mainland, the American president ordered a pre-emptive nuclear strike. As predicted by most military experts, saturation bombing could not destroy all of North Korea’s weapons. From caves hidden deep in the mountains, the remaining Korean command launched a vengeful nuclear attack on South Korea, Guam and Japan. Hundreds of millions died and the Japanese and Korean industrial machinery was destroyed. The fallout poisoned and killed many millions more; it made huge areas in and around these countries unlivable for decades.
Horrified by what they had done, Americans tried to mitigate the damage. The president was impeached and delivered to the UN court to be tried for war crimes. The Democratic administration that replaced his government sponsored an international agreement to limit their arsenal to tactical nuclear weapons that were effective only on the battle field and would not cause wholesale destruction of cities. All nuclear capable countries accelerated research in the ‘pure fission’ weapons technology that did not require a fusion trigger - the cause of deadly fallout. The agreement was signed by all nuclear capable countries but never fully implemented.
While politically and environmentally the US declined, two segments of the economy flourished: automation and alternative power generation. Totally automated factories sprang up all over the land; artificial intelligence catapulted robotics into the realm of science fiction. Research integrating all areas - biology, medicine, and food processing - produced startling results. The first synthetic meat factories were soon followed by dozens in every city; the energy sector’s green technologies surpassed fossil fuel sources. In 2035, the first industrial scale fusion generator came on line, pouring cheap, practically unlimited power into the nation’s electrical grid. This overloaded the already fragile delivery systems, resulting in frequent breakdown, which prompted state governments to encourage decentralization. Local, independent generators gradually became the standard model.
With automation and corporate bankruptcies, unemployment reached levels never seen before: entire job categories, including white collar occupations, disappeared one after the other. Nobody was safe any more, even service industry professionals could become redundant from one day to the next. The federal government was forced to introduce guaranteed basic income for all citizens. That measure forestalled open revolt, but people were restless and angry: they demanded action that would put them back to work. No such action was feasible.
By 2050, food production was totally automated. Clean, efficient factories synthesized meat and large-scale hydroponic operations provided fruit and vegetables locally, eliminating the need for transport. Ranches, orchards and market gardens were abandoned; their erstwhile owners joined the migration of farm workers to the towns, swelling the stream of people forced out of coastal cities, overwhelming the smaller communities’ resources. To provide adequate housing for the influx, municipal governments contracted the building of residential low-rise complexes. This huge construction boom temporarily eased the unemployment pressure.
There were compensations for giving up the individual family home. The new buildings were computer controlled, maintained and serviced by efficient robots. Each apartment had a built-in entertainment center, with 3D holographic viewers, unlimited video games, communication stations to connect resident to the whole world and interactive educational programs for the children.
While these changes took place in the USA, the rest of the world did not fare as well. International conflicts, regional wars over resources and population displacement were wide-spread, due to deteriorating climate conditions and the increasing desperation of vulnerable countries. The disappearing glaciers in the Himalayas reduced the water flow in the Indus Basin, destroying agriculture in India and Pakistan and causing mass starvation. The long-standing dispute between the two countries over these shared rivers finally erupted in open war that quickly escalated into a nuclear exchange, with millions killed. China and Russia intervened on opposite sides and were soon themselves in direct military confrontation. Of the two giants, the American administration sided with China. That resulted in a nuclear exchange that devastated Russia and wiped out the major cities of the U. S. The population of both countries were reduced by half, their infrastructures were in ruins. Death rate from fallout by this time was minimized, because nuclear weapons technology had evolved to the point where most weapons were pure fusion bombs, triggered by matter-antimatter explosion.
Telecommunication systems, transportation networks, electrical grid were out of commission. No central governance or control was any longer possible, and there were no resources to replace them. Inconsequential cities and towns that had escaped were on their own. Since most of these already had their own energy generation and industrial capability, the world’s most powerful nation became a scattered collection of independent city states with populations of 20-100,000.
One such city was Oroville, California, population 24,000. The town was in desperate situation after the war. The shockwave from a nuclear detonation high above the Sacramento valley, due to interception by an anti-ballistic missile caused major damage. Most modern buildings, including the automated factories, power stations, newer apartment complexes escaped unscathed, but unreinforced buildings collapsed in ruin. Most of the valley was one big pile of rubble. Bridges were down or badly damaged, roads covered with thousands of tons of debris, many section washed away by flooding from breached levees.
The municipal government had been able to provide all necessary services to its citizens before the war but accommodating a fresh influx of survivors required Draconian measures in conservation and resource allocation. All remaining industries, businesses were expropriated, the citizens still living in individual houses were moved into reinforced apartment buildings. Currency supply ceased with the collapse of federal government: money lost its meaning. Increasingly, the oversight of material resources, of dependable production and smooth distribution, became operations too complex for human agency: in due course, administration was delegated to a central computer complex. Production, distribution and policing were all handled by specialized and humanoid robots. Government itself became obsolete.
A small preface summarizes what had happened before. Here it comes.
Prologue
The 21st Century started badly for America and, indeed, for the whole world. The 9/11 attack threw that country into a rage it had not experienced since Pearl Harbor. It was a major shock to the national psyche. As John le Carre wrote soon after: “The United States of America has gone mad.” They had to hit back hard - first at Afghanistan, then Iraq and finally Iran. Failure to accomplish the objectives of these costly wars, coupled with overreaction and propaganda, led to the election of a most unconventional president. In his first year in office, he did more damage to the environment, to democracy and to social justice than any previous Republican had in two terms.
Meanwhile, weather conditions due to climate change continued to deteriorate at an accelerating pace. Killer hurricanes and tornadoes swept over the land with increasing frequency; forest fires and draughts burned entire states; the sea level rise and tsunamis drowned coastal cities. Due to these conditions building codes were changed to mandate the construction of reinforced structures that could withstand hurricane-strength winds. By the end of the century most citizens lived in such apartment buildings. Single family homes were not safe any more.
Then, international tensions reached a crisis. Fearing North Korea’s boast that its missiles were able to hit the US mainland, the American president ordered a pre-emptive nuclear strike. As predicted by most military experts, saturation bombing could not destroy all of North Korea’s weapons. From caves hidden deep in the mountains, the remaining Korean command launched a vengeful nuclear attack on South Korea, Guam and Japan. Hundreds of millions died and the Japanese and Korean industrial machinery was destroyed. The fallout poisoned and killed many millions more; it made huge areas in and around these countries unlivable for decades.
Horrified by what they had done, Americans tried to mitigate the damage. The president was impeached and delivered to the UN court to be tried for war crimes. The Democratic administration that replaced his government sponsored an international agreement to limit their arsenal to tactical nuclear weapons that were effective only on the battle field and would not cause wholesale destruction of cities. All nuclear capable countries accelerated research in the ‘pure fission’ weapons technology that did not require a fusion trigger - the cause of deadly fallout. The agreement was signed by all nuclear capable countries but never fully implemented.
While politically and environmentally the US declined, two segments of the economy flourished: automation and alternative power generation. Totally automated factories sprang up all over the land; artificial intelligence catapulted robotics into the realm of science fiction. Research integrating all areas - biology, medicine, and food processing - produced startling results. The first synthetic meat factories were soon followed by dozens in every city; the energy sector’s green technologies surpassed fossil fuel sources. In 2035, the first industrial scale fusion generator came on line, pouring cheap, practically unlimited power into the nation’s electrical grid. This overloaded the already fragile delivery systems, resulting in frequent breakdown, which prompted state governments to encourage decentralization. Local, independent generators gradually became the standard model.
With automation and corporate bankruptcies, unemployment reached levels never seen before: entire job categories, including white collar occupations, disappeared one after the other. Nobody was safe any more, even service industry professionals could become redundant from one day to the next. The federal government was forced to introduce guaranteed basic income for all citizens. That measure forestalled open revolt, but people were restless and angry: they demanded action that would put them back to work. No such action was feasible.
By 2050, food production was totally automated. Clean, efficient factories synthesized meat and large-scale hydroponic operations provided fruit and vegetables locally, eliminating the need for transport. Ranches, orchards and market gardens were abandoned; their erstwhile owners joined the migration of farm workers to the towns, swelling the stream of people forced out of coastal cities, overwhelming the smaller communities’ resources. To provide adequate housing for the influx, municipal governments contracted the building of residential low-rise complexes. This huge construction boom temporarily eased the unemployment pressure.
There were compensations for giving up the individual family home. The new buildings were computer controlled, maintained and serviced by efficient robots. Each apartment had a built-in entertainment center, with 3D holographic viewers, unlimited video games, communication stations to connect resident to the whole world and interactive educational programs for the children.
While these changes took place in the USA, the rest of the world did not fare as well. International conflicts, regional wars over resources and population displacement were wide-spread, due to deteriorating climate conditions and the increasing desperation of vulnerable countries. The disappearing glaciers in the Himalayas reduced the water flow in the Indus Basin, destroying agriculture in India and Pakistan and causing mass starvation. The long-standing dispute between the two countries over these shared rivers finally erupted in open war that quickly escalated into a nuclear exchange, with millions killed. China and Russia intervened on opposite sides and were soon themselves in direct military confrontation. Of the two giants, the American administration sided with China. That resulted in a nuclear exchange that devastated Russia and wiped out the major cities of the U. S. The population of both countries were reduced by half, their infrastructures were in ruins. Death rate from fallout by this time was minimized, because nuclear weapons technology had evolved to the point where most weapons were pure fusion bombs, triggered by matter-antimatter explosion.
Telecommunication systems, transportation networks, electrical grid were out of commission. No central governance or control was any longer possible, and there were no resources to replace them. Inconsequential cities and towns that had escaped were on their own. Since most of these already had their own energy generation and industrial capability, the world’s most powerful nation became a scattered collection of independent city states with populations of 20-100,000.
One such city was Oroville, California, population 24,000. The town was in desperate situation after the war. The shockwave from a nuclear detonation high above the Sacramento valley, due to interception by an anti-ballistic missile caused major damage. Most modern buildings, including the automated factories, power stations, newer apartment complexes escaped unscathed, but unreinforced buildings collapsed in ruin. Most of the valley was one big pile of rubble. Bridges were down or badly damaged, roads covered with thousands of tons of debris, many section washed away by flooding from breached levees.
The municipal government had been able to provide all necessary services to its citizens before the war but accommodating a fresh influx of survivors required Draconian measures in conservation and resource allocation. All remaining industries, businesses were expropriated, the citizens still living in individual houses were moved into reinforced apartment buildings. Currency supply ceased with the collapse of federal government: money lost its meaning. Increasingly, the oversight of material resources, of dependable production and smooth distribution, became operations too complex for human agency: in due course, administration was delegated to a central computer complex. Production, distribution and policing were all handled by specialized and humanoid robots. Government itself became obsolete.
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