Friday Farsight

Will humanity choose to outsource the life process? Will that mean a new era of liberation, or of alienation?

Does separating gestation from the female body resolve the ethical conflict between the sanctity of life and a woman's right to control her own biology? Or just complicate it?

Read the two predictions covered in this episode:

• Human Artificial Womb (8 wk+ ectogenesis)
• Complete Human Artificial Womb (ectogenesis from conception)

Humans dominate most of the Earth's surface because our survival depends on it. Or does it?

Will biofactories one day produce all the food we need? Does the land then return to wilderness? What is life like in a high-tech civilization that supports rather than exploits the ecosystems it inhabits?

Read the two future scenarios covered in this episode:

• Society Decoupled from Ecological Domination
• Real Estate in the 2090s

The dream of flight. It has captivated humanity for millennia. Missing from most of these dreams, though, is taking off your shoes and getting patted down by a TSA agent.

Is the mythic vision of flying solo, free as a bird, at last almost upon us? Or will the laws of thermodynamics keep one foot planted firmly on a corner of your cape?

Read the three predictions that contribute to this episode:

• Mass-market Personal Aerial Vehicles
• Flying Carpets in 2045
• Flying Carpets Never

This is not a Biblical tale of the Second Flood. Nor is it a tale of our sun phase-shifting into a red giant that swells with the ejecta of helium fusion until it burns all the water off the face of the earth, thus... un-asking the question.

Rather, we consider whether the most likely outcome is a thoroughly anti-climactic steady state achieved via green energy innovations, economies of scale, global cooperation, and/or some other plausible development.

Read the full prediction: Global Warming Resolution

We feel certain that humanity will settle outer space -- a lifeless, hostile void -- and yet we have made little attempt to build cities under the ocean, where there is wildlife, water, oxygen, and mineral riches that are not hurtling a dozen miles per second far outside Earth's gravity well. Is our excitement about outer space no different than Alvin Toffler's paean, in 1970's Future Shock, for the "frontier spirit" of a coming "New Atlantis" -- "adventure, danger, quick riches... fame" -- leading to "ocean-oriented subcultures" and "mystical sects [who] celebrate the seas."

Find out in this week's episode, where Biff and Betty consider when humanity might have the technologies to build an O'Neill Cylinder -- a space station large enough to have its own weather and a landscape mimicking the surface of the earth -- as well as what might motivate us to make such an enormous investment.

Read the full prediction: First O'Neill Cylinder Construction

Sounds crazy, but people are working on it. We have cybernetic prosthetic limbs. We have make-believe neural tissue running on servers and chatting with us in the voice of Pee-wee Herman. Can it be too much longer before the machinery of the brain, too, falls prey to our understanding?

Read the full prediction: Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication

A purely digital economy would be a purely controlled economy. No one would be playing outside the game, making deals with briefcases full of dollar bills.

But do we want people making deals with briefcases full of dollar bills? Aren't most of us sound citizens already perfectly comfortable paying for things with a tap of a card? Cash seems to pass through our hands less every year. Some countries are even working to eliminate it.

Does that mean a cashless society is almost upon us? How will we think differently about money once we can no longer see or touch it?

Read the full prediction: Digital Currencies Replacing Paper Currencies Worldwide

Just checked the Doomsday Clock from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and it reads 85 seconds to midnight, the closest to disaster it has ever been, yet the idea of a nuclear war seems more far-fetched than ever. We've just been waiting too long, maybe. Seen that movie too many times.

What if we're wrong? More than once, the steady judgment of one person has prevented retaliation during the false alarm of a nuclear strike. Boris Yeltsin in 1995. A Russian naval officer during the Bay of Pigs. What if next time our leaders are, oh, impulsive?

Where am I going with this...? Oh, yeah, but we can already shoot missiles out of the sky. How far are we away from truly effective missile defense, and what will this mean for the seemingly chronic rivalries of the nuclear powers?

Read the full prediction: Comprehensive Continent-scale ICBM Defense Systems

Extrapolating from today's U.S. government policies, AI has a vision for a changed world order in the 2040s. Who will come out on top? The Kingdom of Denmark?

Read the full scenario: Geopolitics in the 2040s V2 - Aug 2025

Faster-than-light spaceships could be coming as early as 2100, or... not? A second prediction in the database says FTL travel is impossible.

How can Strategic Farsight publish both predictions? Which should we believe?

Read the optimistic prediction: First Faster-Than-Light Spacecraft

Read the pessimistic prediction: The Impossibility of Faster-Than-Light Spacecraft