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[arcibalde]

I see humans as fundamentally good.

Really? Errrr i can't say i can see that. We wouldn't be in mess in what we are now if that was true. 842 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. 1% of Americans hold 40% of all money in US. Good? Fundamentally good? No, people only knew what good is just chose to do opposite of it. In all our known history how many years we had without wars? 200?
Fundamentally we are lowest than animals. We annihilate each others, we kill others for petty reasons or no reason whatsoever. God knows what would happen if we didn't have laws and rules and punishment (jail time).

If we, somehow, got means to travel all over space instantly, we would become true plague of universe     You know, stories that alien mothers talk to their children if they are naughty like: "Sweety if you dont listen to mommy and daddy big bad human will come for you at night". I really hope we don't go further from our solar system UNLESS we fundamentally change in way of thinking about others. 

[Gotcha!]

@Muchoman798: About the colonizing of other planets, I hope you mean planets in our own solar system. If not, then you're way too optimistic about the idea that humans find a way to move through space fast enough to reach the next solar system within several human lifespans. Star Trek makes it look easy. Star Trek is Science Fiction.

And then what? Every planet is different. There is no planet like Earth out there. Oxygen is toxic, yet we evolved in such a way that we can breathe it, and even need to breathe it. There are a zillion bacteria on this planet, most of which we're completely immune for. Bacteria even use us to live in, helping us digest our food. Other planets have different rules, different evolution and thus different bacteria. Bacteria that would probably down-right kill us.


The carrying capacity of humans on Earth has already been reached long ago. Who gives an arse that you can fit half the world's population in Rhode Island (I find that hard to believe by the way), it's not about how efficient we can store people. It's about the resources they use up.
We have too many cows and other animals walking around in order to feed us, and they do not grow inside apartment buildings. Their farts destroy the planet's atmosphere. Food doesn't grow in apartments either. Imagine the increasing amount of land needed to grow food on. And land needs to 'rest' once in a while. You can't just plant food over and over again on a single piece of land.
We have a growing amount of factories and power plants poluting the air and atmosphere. These things aren't solved by efficient human housing in large cities!

Meanwhile, Forests are still disappearing at a rapid rate, coral reefs are dying, wild animals are pushed into small habitats where they just cannot survive, because humans need the space. Certain fish are becoming hard to find and there's plastic floating in our oceans, with a surface span of France and Spain together.
I can go on forever about other things humans screw up. But I won't, because, frankly, it pisses me off.

We're screwing up the planet and it's a matter of time before we're passing the threshold. Scientists have recently predicted that it might already be too late.
But do we see changes? Politicians are not interested, as long as their own pockets are filled. Banks? Hahahahaha. Oil companies? Keep on drilling and pocket filling! These people are currently ruling the world and they're sitting high and dry, having loads of money and have an easy life. Who cares about the future? They're living it up right now and when *** hits the fan they'll be dead anyway. Let our children sort it all out.

First: People need to wake the hell up and stop making babies.
Second: Governments need to get their heads out of their arses and do serious effort in researching and implementing alternate energy sources, as well as getting rid of non-bio degradable plastics.
Why is it taking so slow? (Duh. Oil companies are profitable. And together with banks they pretty much own the planet.)

Also #1: Some humans might be fundamentally good, but they're outnumbered ten to one by people who only care about themselves and/or people who are just plain ignorant. They live in their own small worlds and can't see or don't want to see the bigger picture.
Also #2: Humans lost their instincts a long time ago. There is not an animal in the world that destroys its own habitat like we humans so efficiently do.
I'm sorry to drag the cliche'd Agent Smith into this, but he's right, we behave like a virus.

[Megas]

Actually, my answer to the OP was dead serious.  Take it or leave it.

[TJJ]

HCI is the bottleneck to human advancement at the moment.
We've got a global network operating at near light speed, many billions of silicon processors operating at GHz+, yet the speed we humans interact with this system can be measured in bytes per second.
Eliminate this bottleneck and scientific progress will accelerate at an unimaginable* rate.

*that isn't a figure of speech; the intelligence of an unhindered network comprising billions of human minds would be by its very definition be beyond the comprehension of a single mind.

[Gotcha!]

@Megas: I am definitely going to leave it, only saying that religion is another thing that is keeping technological advancement back, not to mention certain religions seem to applaud people getting as many kids as possible. -_- Crap, no, I am not going to leave it. I still hope you're kidding, because, and I really want to say this as nicely as possible, if you're serious about what you said, you should visit a therapist.
Religion was created by men, clever men, to control the masses. Nothing more, nothing less.

And now I'll go fight the urge to go offtopic and rant against religion.

[Debido]

@Gotcha! I agree with everything you said, but if the world voted on there being something 'super natural' out there, overwhelming the answer is yes. Most people think that we're strange.

If there was a vote on there being a Judeo-Christian god and the whole 9 yards of lakes of fires, then only about a 1/3 would likely agree with Megas...at that I'm not sure all of that 33% would agree with the interpretation.

I completely respect Megas' opinion, even if it's completely wrong. Anyway, I'm leaving religion(s) alone.

[LazyWizard]

Let's leave religion and attacks on others' beliefs out of this discussion, please. That's a path we really don't want this forum to go down.

[HELMUT]

Let's leave religion and attacks on others' beliefs out of this discussion, please. That's a path we really don't want this forum to go down.

Actually religion's influence on humanity's future would be a very interesting debate because space nuns with bolters and THE EMPRAH but could devolve quickly into a category 5 sh*tstorm. So yeah, let's come back to the main topic.

I see humans as fundamentally good.

Really? Errrr i can't say i can see that.

Bad persons? Nah, just ignorant and scared of everything. That usually led us to do very reckless things which are counter-productive to the preservation of our species. That doesn't make us bad, just... Stupid?

Humans lost their instincts a long time ago. There is not an animal in the world that destroys its own habitat like we humans so efficiently do.

Hundreds of thousands of years aren't enough for a species to evolve, or at least not by much. We still fear, and fear is the most basic instinct of a living being, it help us stay alive.
Humanity's society and its environment evolved faster than our organism and as such we aren't perfectly adapted to the environment we created. Our world is a world of logic and reason where our instinct and emotions are parasite that handicap us. It's one of the reasons that we won't be able to go to space soon, because it's an environment completely alien to us and adapting it to our need will be very, very complicated.

Rather than modifying our environment to suit our needs, i think a better way would be to adapt directly to our environment. Research in genetic and artificial intelligence seems the way to go. Eventually our knowledge of our organism will help modifying it to suit our needs. At first it will probably be superficial like "everyone get a bigger penis!" but eventually we'll get ride of things we don't need for something more useful. It will definitely not be easy, because fears, religions, racism... The usual self-preserving instinct against something unknown.

Humanity is changing its own environment, sometimes voluntarily (cities, internet, etc...) or not (just read Gotcha's post) but it won't matter in the end, because what natural evolution take millions of years to change for us, we'll learn to change it in a few days. And then, eventually, humanity, which will probably only be "human" by name then, will perhaps go to the stars. We still have a very long way to go though.

Who know, maybe your grand-grand-grandson will be a Human Zerg?

[Linnis]

First of all, thinking about anything about the future, you have to set aside your current predisposition and look at things from an objective point of view.

Is fossil fuel ruining the earth? No, our carbon footprint so far is so very minuscule, the global warming is real, global warming as a result of human carbon emissions is a political game (a lie). Thats my view, you may think me wrong, I don't want to debate this.

As humanity and space, humans will leave earth? Will we find an other planet to live on? Thats not a question because we don't need to live on a planet.
 (so far the research on the ISS tells us so)
(tho people born in space will never be able to set foot on a planet without a wheelchair of sorts)

Living on a space stations using local planets and asteroids for physical material production and repair is easy.

Plants can be grown using recycled *** and feces and together with chemically synthesized fertilizers.
plants grown in radiation shielded domes in space.
Water is easily recycled and is plenty is all space bodies.

Energy can easily be gathered via mass solar panels and nuclear plants in space.

Where solar energy's problem lies in its space and location requirement, and washing the dirt and *** off the panels, where as in space you just have to occasionally replace or fix a panel where a minute asteroid made a small hole in exactly the right spots.

Construction of such is easy as space(location) is no problem, and a lack of gravity means construction logistics is easy.
In space, personal space is simply restricted by how big your station is and amount an group of people can maintain to a safe level. Also we grew up in a open sky environment, I would imagine kids generations growing up in space stations would adapt, and what would beat floating down a massive city space complex in your space suit, where there are tons of people and its not crowded.

Entertainment via "space internet" is cheaper due to no need to run any sort of land lines, a tight beam directly to an other information hub has virtually no interference and no need to launch expensive satellites outside a gravity well, or run expensive and hard to maintain wires.

Recycle and maintenance will be majority of human jobs, so our space descendants might be weak, lanky and long jointed paranoid kleptomaniacs.

Earth in the future might totally become a "tourist location" like the whole planet is a wild reserve.

Why do you want gravity on a space ship? without gravity an interior space can have more usable surface, heavy lifting is now called slow lifting. Why are you still holding your pad in your hands, just let it float in front of you while you do other things with your hands.

Safety? Is all the transmitted disease via animals and insects, motor accents (crashing "cars" in space, you must be blind AND lucky).

Tho only problem might be the all mighty space radiation making most of us infertile, the universe's way of population control. Tho we can always freeze our sperms and eggs in an heavily shielded fridge.

If you read recent space novels and literature, our picture of human's future has changed from 100 years ago. 

It all starts when we start getting farms and factories going in space, then it will explode exponentially.

[Linnis]

Also you might think space inst safe for people in live in.

Compare that to earth, safety is always being improved.

Imagine the safety of humans 2000 years ago, imagine the safety of workers when we just started building skyscrapers and industrial factories.

In the long run, space is not much different then earth. You trade vacuum for gravity, both are blessings and curses.

[Linnis]

Also if you are interested, there is a popular "down to earth" series called Leviathan Wakes. Its your standard hero story ***, but the science is good.

[ValkyriaL]

There is an edit button yuno.

[Aratoop]

I'd say as long society has the profit-based mentality, we won't ever see the light of stepping on another planet than moon. Humankind will perish within 1000 years.

 Even with this profit-based mentality, it's expected to land on mars within 50 years, at most. Plans are for 2020-2030. Just wanted to clear that up.
  
Also, it was said about 100 years ago that man will not reach the western frontier in 1000 years. The western frontier being the west coast of america. It was said it was impossible to fly in a heavier-than-air craft. It was said it was impossible for man to go to the moon. Now we say it's impossible to go to another star, or to colonize another planet. With current technology, it's impossible to go to another star unless we throw in all the money we have, and all countries unite. But at the turn of the 20th century it would be impossible with then-technology to build the internet, or build an aeroplane.
  
Sure, we have problems. We may all die form nuclear war, but that is unlikely. No one wants to fire one, and no one is stupid enough to fire one as of now. We have the problem of space. There isn't enough space for all the farms, and all the houses in the way we have them. But we can build up. Vertical farms are a possibility, even though we have difficulties (I mean like towers with farms stacked on top of each other).
Global Warming is a problem, too. But we're at the tail-end of our fossil fuels. If we continue as now, we will have used them all up in 100 years or so. As they become more and more scarce, they'll become more and more expensive. countries that need to buy oil, gas and coal for their energy will inevitable turn more and more towards renewable fuel sources.
  
And not just renewable. If we can get thorium reactors well, we will see an increased usage in nuclear power. Thorium is cheaper, since there is more available. the nuclear waste has a half-life of 500 years, not the 500,000 of uranium (although it cannot be used to make fission fuel, like uranium can). India and china are really pushing to get these reactors to work. In southern france, there is a nuclear fusion plant being built. It will be tested in 2016, and should be fully operational in 2020, if all goes well.
  
In the next 100,1000, 100000, 1000000 years, what will man do? I have no idea. Technologies are advancing massively. Just as we reach the end of Moore's law due to the uncertainty principle, quantum computers are making an appearance. We are learning more every day about long-term space travel from the ISS. As antibiotics are reaching the end of their life, we will see nanotechnology take hold. Humans have been around for around 100,000 years or so. Cities have existed for around 7000 years, probably more. And we have advanced so far. What will the next 7000 years hold? Who knows? But we sure as hell will have colonized another planet by then. Humans are remarkable at finding solutions.

[Linnis]

Now we just need to harness the energy of empty space right?
Or create positive and negative energy from nothing and use them separately right?

Then we can create enough energy to bend space and transport our spaceships. and if a such a reactor fails, we will have an other universe within our universe. COOL!


Or humanity has no future, all our atoms, forces, and motion trough time and space are all a simulation on a "computer".
----Simulation theory BAM!

[dogboy123]

Meteor hit is overdue, super volcano eruption is overdue, super tsunami is overdue and over top of that "our" space program is taking backwards ever since we make first step on Moon. Beside that i heard/read (somewhere, don't know where) that our brain aka IQ is going full speed backwards, so average dude from like 2k years before would be much smarter than average dude now  

So, all in all, we got few natural Armageddons just waiting to happen and we don't get smarter. Don't think we are going anywhere    And if we manage to dodge all that i don't think we can survive our natural dumbness  we are expert in exterminating each other.

Asteroid impact cannot be "overdue" it's just random, because objects in space don't lose their velocity unless another force acts upon them, two rocks could have collided and a killer asteroid broke off and is headed our way now. Or it might be blocked or pulled by something else millions of light years on it's path to Earth, We just have no way of knowing until it gets closer.