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Meanwhile, on Earth; A timeline of Earth in the Ilion-verse
Topic Started: Jun 28 2016, 08:53 PM (1,281 Views)
malicious-monkey
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I've been holding all this in my head, and need a place to work out the state of the Earth during all the Ilion happenings. Most of it takes place in the 22nd century but to get there I need to start with today and move forward. And because futurism isn't really my forte, I'll need your help.
Edited by malicious-monkey, Jun 28 2016, 08:54 PM.
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Thylacine
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So are you looking for ideas of the most plausible future events? If you are then behold: http://futuretimeline.net/. Honestly one of favorite websites, I spend hours reading through it. It's quite comprehensive and very interesting.
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whachamacallit2
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I've personally found that mattystereo had a very intriguing look into the 22nd century. Obviously you should make your own timeline, but perhaps there's some aspects of his world that could be interesting.

In particular, I think there may be a few things worth noting:

1. We probably are going to suffer from climate change to some degree or another. Even in the best case scenario, this century is going to hurt in that regard. That doesn't mean doom and gloom, but tie it in with how the world looks and operates.

2. Cultures and political movements will undoubtedly change, but it won't necessarily be for what we consider the better-or the worst for that matter. It's probably likely that there will be things that we'll say "Oh that's good" and others that cause us to recoil in horror.

3. I personally doubt that technology will advance the fastest in the exact same field as today. If the overly eager rocket tech fiasco of the 50s has taught us anything, it's that the fastest developing field will probably hit diminishing returns before we get to the theistic portion of those extrapolations.
Edited by whachamacallit2, Jun 29 2016, 06:04 PM.
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Dr Nitwhite
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whachamacallit2
Jun 29 2016, 05:48 PM
3. I personally doubt that technology will advance the fastest in the exact same field as today. If the overly eager rocket tech fiasco of the 50s has taught us anything, it's that the fastest developing field will probably hit diminishing returns before we get to the theistic portion of those extrapolations.
I have to agree heavily here. I recall reading in an old book that must have been from the late 90's to early 2000's that was under the impression that lunar and martian missions would be easy and commonplace right now. Looking further back, at War of the Worlds, we saw huge, imposing... water tower looking things (which look completely silly to us today. Just look at the old artwork an you'll see what I mean). At the same time, everyone thought we'd be living of of pills by now. Each society predicts for the future what they are currently on track for, and this often changes. Even if we do develop tech X, it is often years or even decades off the assumed creation point and is may be looked at as a cool gizmo or parlor trick (take futuristic watches of the 1900's that where basically smartwatches, now look at smartwatches). Things like AI comparable to humans might end up here, or virtual reality or any number of things. It's a difficult thing to predict, the future.
Edited by Dr Nitwhite, Jun 29 2016, 07:03 PM.
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malicious-monkey
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2. Cultures and political movements will undoubtedly change, but it won't necessarily be for what we consider the better-or the worst for that matter. It's probably likely that there will be things that we'll say "Oh that's good" and others that cause us to recoil in horror.

I will definitely need help with this. Global politics is not my thing; luckily we have Lamna

Quote:
 
3. I personally doubt that technology will advance the fastest in the exact same field as today. If the overly eager rocket tech fiasco of the 50s has taught us anything, it's that the fastest developing field will probably hit diminishing returns before we get to the theistic portion of those extrapolations.

This is kind of what I hoped for, since I am aiming for space missions that feel like modern spaceflight but with just enough tech improvement to make them possible.

Quote:
 
I have to agree heavily here. I recall reading in an old book that must have been from the late 90's to early 2000's that was under the impression that lunar and martian missions would be easy and commonplace right now. Looking further back, at War of the Worlds, we saw huge, imposing... water tower looking things (which look completely silly to us today. Just look at the old artwork an you'll see what I mean). At the same time, everyone thought we'd be living of of pills by now. Each society predicts for the future what they are currently on track for, and this often changes. Even if we do develop tech X, it is often years or even decades off the assumed creation point and is may be looked at as a cool gizmo or parlor trick (take futuristic watches of the 1900's that where basically smartwatches, now look at smartwatches). Things like AI comparable to humans might end up here, or virtual reality or any number of things. It's a difficult thing to predict, the future.

That's an interesting point. We've seen that with 3D movies too, tech that was exciting for two seconds, laughed at for a few years, and then snuck up on us when it became practical enough for common use. One thing I predict will follow this path is self-driving cars. People are interested now, but it will take a few years to get to that critical point where we can safely put them on the road and people will buy into it like it was always meant to be that way. In the mean time, it will be "that thing Google tried to do" but couldn't get to market. Also, I have ignored advanced AI, but cannot do so for long. It's pretty much inevitable, and will have a huge effect on society. The question is what we do with it when we have it.

But the cars will have to wait, because there is an event that is set in stone, and may feature in a novel in the future. This event is the outbreak of Universal Phage, the most disruptive event in the 21st Century. I'll get into more detail shortly.
Edited by malicious-monkey, Jun 29 2016, 09:55 PM.
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Universal Phage

We talk a lot about antibiotic resistance, about what we can do to slow its advance. Agricultural reform, following the doctors' instructions, development of new antibiotics - these were not enough for 21st Century Earth. 2028 was the first year on record since 1919 to see a population decrease. Yes, widespread contraceptive use and other forms of population control played a significant role in slowing growth, but it was the bacteria that pushed the global population into actual decline.

Being human, the citizens of the 2030's would not go down without a fight. Treatments once considered too dangerous to even dare conceptualize began to emerge in full splendor from the cocoon of academia. The most effective of these was developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was called Universal Phage, and was a powerful and dangerous tool indeed.

The idea of solving antibiotic resistance with a single drug may seem preposterous. It is preposterous. To call Univeral Phage a "drug" would do a great disservice to its ingenuity. The Phage was more like a nanomachine. Its base design resembled a simple bacteriophage but it had the ability to read the human immune system and modify itself to attack any bacterial intruder. It contained materials not found in any living thing or virus. It was, essentially, a new form of life.

(to be continued...)
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lamna
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I will definitely need help with this. Global politics is not my thing; luckily we have Lamna

One thing that I would include, that I feel would be interesting, is a Caliph. I don't mean all Islamic nations inexplicably uniting into one super state in some right-wing nightmare fantasy. I mean that Islam has been without a Caliph for almost a century now, and things are a little rudderless. I think it's reasonably likely that within the next century or so we'll see a generally recognised Sunni religious leader emerge, equivalent to the modern pope.

The map of the world, probably won't change in a century. Some small unions may happen (Kosovo and Albania, Romania and Moldova, the Koreas) as might some independence movements (expect these only in democratic nations, or in nations that collapse. In strong, autocratic states, no chance. Tibet ain't breaking away any time soon) but I doubt we'll see continent wide unions popping up.

The EU and AU are the only such organisations where such a goal even seems possible, and well, we've seen how shaky the EU can be in the last month. Everyone else, ASEAN, the Commonealth, Arab League, the UN, all just places for people to squabble and waste time talk.

Hmm, China is definitely going to be really important but I don't know if calling them a superpower is going to be accurate. Unlike the USA or USSR, China has minimal interest in force projection. They are more interested in soft power and present themselves as a partner with no nasty lingering taint of colonialism. Think of how Japan and Germany operate, then scale it up.

Here is a collection of cliches you might want to read.
http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php?id=alternate_history:fh_cliches

Probably a good idea to have some promising now future tech turn out to be either not super practical (as supersonic airliners were) or just have nobody want to buy into them, despite the tech being there (like airships after just one or two burst into flames). Maybe a horrible accident with space tourism kills that in its infancy? If it's not already dead...
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Anyone mind if I sit in on this and glean some ideas? I'm doing some writing on future-y tech myself and would like to take notes. :")
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malicious-monkey
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The only geopolitical stuff I've already mentioned or hinted at in writing is:

After North Korea collapses, it merges with China.
A civil war somewhere in Northern Europe, which was hit especially hard by the phage
Canada and USA are still basically the same
The existence of superdense cities in China (ex. Zhangzhao), although overall population is lower

Most of this can be changed or reverted easily. Thanks for the link lamna. I'm glad none of the more egregious cliches have made it in, but I mostly owe that to me being chickenshit about making drastic changes to the future.

Technology and enviroment tidbits, other than space:

Most cars are self-driving. People can own a car that they can summon at will (it usually parks within 15 minutes of the owner). There are more carparks and less need for street parking, as cars can just drop people off. They can also pick kids up from school. People who drive their own cars are the same sort of people who drive stick today.
People still use smartphones. I can't imagine how you can improve their basic design except to make word processing less tedious (wasn't I just kvetching about this in the other thread?)
Computer screens are built into a lot of things, like tables in coffee shops, libraries, and home offices. They can be cheaply replaced if broken. People plug their phones into them or access them wirelessly.
There is large scale agriculture. We can brew nutrient vats but people still want real produce and meat. Vat-food is relegated to niche diets and specialized uses like military rations and aid to developing countries.
We did a pretty good job restoring wildlife in a lot of places. The rainforests never recovered but many other habitats returned with careful management and a decline in the human population mid-century.
Global warming has slowed, but its effects are still felt by all.
There are feral rhesus monkeys in California. There is a story behind this and I'll just leave it at that until it is written.
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lamna
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After North Korea collapses, it merges with China.

A nice change from standard unified Korea. It is something people are worried about in Korea. DPRK, collapses, China steps in to restore order, never leaves.

China has been working to present Goguryeo, which ruled present day North Korea and parts of Manchuria as a Chinese state, rather than a Korean one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goguryeo_controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Project_of_the_Chinese_Academy_of_Social_Sciences

I'd recommend you have a situation like Israel in Palestine, rather than direct annexation though.
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A civil war somewhere in Northern Europe, which was hit especially hard by the phage


Of course civil wars can break out anywhere, a couple of fault lines you might want to consider. One, Russians in the Baltic. Lots of the Baltic countries don't want them there, lots of the Russians feel marginalised, and lots of them don't even have citizenship. You could see pogroms, or Latgale or other Russian dominated areas trying to break away.

Two, the divides in Britain are fairly obvious, and three perhaps the Finns and the Swedish Finns start fighting?
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specialized uses like military rations and aid to developing countries.
Military rations these days make a real effort to be nice. Nutrition and shelf life the most important thing, but nice stuff is seen as important for morale.
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I definitely think it could be interesting if instead of the "Eurabia" trope, you made some European nations get a horrid backlash against immigration and, well... pogroms ensue in many nations. It would also give you some fuel to cause potential civil wars.

Also, lamna might disagree with me, but I could imagine that some developing nations that aren't doing so hot may end up splitting apart, especially with that Universal Phage or the antibacterial pandemics.

Also, are you sure that you don't want any real change with the US and Canada? That seems a bit saddening.
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lamna
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I don't think it's impossible for nations to split up, indeed some should. But I doubt most will. The world has a vested interest in keeping everyone in there borders, nobody wants another Yugoslavia, but it could still happen.
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whachamacallit2
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Ah, then I think we're in agreement. It could be funny (in the sad way) to have Kurdistan form, but then fall into a vicious civil war due to political tensions.
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lamna
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This might just be a flavour of the minute and could easily change in a hundred years, but it seems we are moving to a less polarised world where ideologies are less important. Everyone trades with each other, and keeps their nose out of everyone's internal business.

I doubt NI is going to remain part of the UK forever. Demographics are against it, in the long run, I suspect they will leave and go join ROI, hopefully without The Troubles II: The Unionist Strike Back.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/619-is-ulster-doomed-scenarios-for-repartition

Russia long term is going to continue to try and maintain and expand their control of the Near Abroad. I don't think too many annexations are in their future though. Crimea was a real shock. Normally they are happy with puppets. Heck, Transnistria are practically begging for annexation and Russia ignores them.

You might also see a East African Union form, but it's taking its time, mostly because everyone is wondering how much sovereignty they would maintain, and would there be internal landgrabs.
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