What do you think does the future hold for us?

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

Same shit, different day.

[Kavagrad]

They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.

Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.

[Velkaralia]

The US government going bankrupt from being unable to pay off its massive and growing debt, triggering a collapse of the global economy. Climate Change destroying thousands of dollars worth of infrastructure and rendering dozens of species extinct. Millions will lose their jobs and livelihoods. A crisis of meaning in western society will result in increased suicide. Global overpopulation will be a huge issue. The power of the state will continue to rise. Insane maniacs will program A.I. to carry out terrorist attacks and fight wars.

But hey, we'll put a man on Mars.

I forgot my favorite two:
-50 years from now no one will remember President Trump anywhere than we remember Harry Truman today.
-Millennials will consistently slander their kids, generation alpha, as being lazy slackers who will upend society.

[Esternial]

I dunno.

Nobody knows.

Doesn't that just make you anxious?

Makes me anxious.

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.

Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.

Climate change won't kill us, unlike Communism.

[The Black Party]

They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.

Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.

Climate Change isn't real, unlike Communism

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.

Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.

Climate Change isn't real, unlike Communism

Climate change has done more than communism, because real communism hasn’t even been an idea since the 1800s. Climate change is real, although most the damage we’ve done isn’t too recent. If someone did do communism, I wouldn’t be scared. What’s the worst that a country with no actual military do? A society with a weak militia has nothing on us. Severe weather does.

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

They told us that death was a preferable alternative to communism.

Well, climate change is gonna let us find out.

Climate Change isn't real, unlike Communism

You got that backwards.

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

Climate Change isn't real, unlike Communism

You got that backwards.

Just because it doesn’t exist in practice doesn’t mean it is nonexistent in theory.

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

You got that backwards.

Just because it doesn’t exist in practice doesn’t mean it is nonexistent in theory.

It doesn't physically exist and never has, except of course when we as a species were living as hunter-gatherers. Once we found better ways to live, communism became obsolete until some fringe radicalists got it into their heads that the Neanderthals had the right idea, culminating in the creation of a fantastical ideology which serves no purpose but to be exploited by the power-hungry to obtain power.

[Bassoe]

Realistically? Three plausible options:

Collapse -
We run out of vital natural resources before we have the technological capabilities to supplant them. Since all the theoretical measures for workarounds like powersats, asteroid mining, etc require preexisting infrastructure and resources to get started, there's nothing to un-collapse out of and humanity remains permanently stuck at neolithic to medieval tech levels until a cosmological Outside Context Problem* finishes us off.

She cut herself off because Gorky was speaking. "You can change the past."

That's scary stuff, Willy! We've done that once or twice by accident," Ra Chen said. "Anyway, what would you change?"

"Right after the first use of a thermonuclear bomb, there were experiments with thermonuclear rocket motors in North America Sector. We've got nuke rockets now. We could leave designs on some lab table in the Industrial Age for the locals to copy."

"Why bother? Like you said, you've got them already."

But they had the wealth. Ra Chen, if they'd have nuke rockets then, they could have built an orbital solar power system for what they spent on cosmetics! With ten years to work, and for no more than the price of perfumes and lip goo and stuff to shape their hair into topiary, they'd have had free power from the sky and a fleet of spacecraft left over at the end!

"Now, we're living too close to the edge. Too much farmland turned to dust and blew into the sea over the centuries. Too little sunlight gets down through the industrial goo. Today that same price would but about ten million lives. People starve, or they freeze in the dark, when Bureaus divert power from the cities. We lose thousands of lives when we launch a Forward probe, and those are cheap. The Industrial Age, then was when we should have moved. They put twelve men on the Moon and then went home for four hundred years!"

"I know considerably about the Industrial Age," said Ra Chen. "I've been in it. Hundreds of millions of people with thousands of insanely different lifestyles, all of 'em eleven hundred years dead. You'd have to get that kind of a mob moving all in one direction to persuade them to put a permanent base on the Moon instead of using perfume and lip goo and soap ... and sunblock, which isn't just a cosmetic. Are you really that persuasive, Willy? Go ahead, persuade me. But tell me this first. If you did change the past, how would you get the credit? The SecGen's memory would change too. You'd have nothing to show but a huge bill for electricity."

"You thought of it too?"

Ra Chen barked laughter. "Everyone thinks of changing the past! If it weren't for temporal inertia we'd have exterminated ourselves once already, remember, Svetz? And maybe other times he never told me about."

Totalitarianism and technological singularity-
One group develops a means of creating sane, loyal superintelligence** or some other Outside Context technological advantage which gives them an indefatigable monopoly of force. Unfortunately, the people working towards these technologies*** really aren't the sorts of people I'd trust with sufficient firepower to curbstomp the rest of the world on a scale more commonly associated with turians in first contact war spite threads. The result is cliché cyberpunk dystopia ruled by technocrats**** backed by robotic police/enforcement drones entirely loyal to their owners and capable of putting down riots/resistance activity of any scale.

Asked in a 2011 New Yorker profile whether the kinds of life extension technologies he was investing in might exacerbate already grotesque levels of social inequality, Thiel’s response offered a glimpse into the ethical simple-mindedness of his techno-libertarianism: “Probably the most extreme form of inequality,” he said, “is between people who are alive and people who are dead.”

“I know you find this morally challenging,” he said, “and I respect that. I wouldn’t dream of hiring someone who thought these were trivial issues. But if I don’t do this, someone else will. Someone with far worse intentions than mine.”

“Really?” Her tone was openly sarcastic now. “So how, exactly, does the mere existence of your project stop this hypothetical bin Laden of AI from carrying out his own?”

Daniel was disappointed; he’d expected her at least to understand what was at stake. He said, “This is a race to decide between Godhood and enslavement. Whoever succeeds first will be unstoppable. I’m not going to be anyone’s slave.”

Julie stepped into the elevator; he followed her.

She said, “You know what they say the modern version of Pascal’s Wager is? Sucking up to as many Transhumanists as possible, just in case one of them turns into God. Perhaps your motto should be ‘Treat every chatterbot kindly, it might turn out to be the deity’s uncle’.”

“We will be as kind as possible,” Daniel said. “And don’t forget, we can determine the nature of these beings. They will be happy to be alive, and grateful to their creator. We can select for those traits.”

Julie said, “So you’re aiming for übermenschen that wag their tails when you scratch them behind the ears? You might find there’s a bit of a trade-off there.”

Unsuccessful technological singularity-
Armies of Khan Noonien Singhs with master race complexes, paperclip-fetishizing terminators, technological advancement decreasing the entry barriers to building doomsday weaponry, all of the above simultaneously fighting each other, etc.

Conquer the temptation to create specimens that are superior in every way. The danger of such monstrosities being turned against you is too great.

How dare you, Zheng! All this is my work! I created you!

And IIIIIII am superior to you. Beeee proud while you still haaaave the capacity.

Ideally, two options:

Optimistic technological singularity-
Against all odds, the winners of Daniel Cliff's arms race turn out to be benevolent***** and their creation establishes utopia for everyone, not just themselves.

Sigh

If we'd let Krishna just get on with it, we could be living in some kind of paradise by now.

Isn't that a terrible thought?

This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours. Obey me and live or disobey me and die. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my beck will be seen the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with the fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: Famine, over-population, disease. The human millennium will be fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride... Your choice is simple.

Democratized post-scarcity manufacturing and space colonization-
Unlimited resources and industrial capabilities combined with perfect nanotechnological recycling of materials theoretically make a space program practical using otherwise only modern technology. Rockets are expensive, but if the only limit you have on their numbers is how much scrap metal you can feed to your nanoforge, you can build as many as you need. The default unit of civilization is the mobile space habitat, containing a minimum breeding population of humans, backup copies of humanity's total knowledgebase in the forms of the internet and every book anyone ever scanned in an ipod-sized ludicrous abuse of moore's law and the bootstrapping von neumann infrastructure to build anything it has the raw materials for including the means by which to harvest said raw materials and further habitats. The final, long-overdue, well-deserved ignominious defeat of any dream of centralized control of all humanity results. People will scatter to the cosmic winds. Try as they like, no tyranny will stand a chance at controlling everyone when people have a literally infinite number of places to flee. There is a reason it is called Globalism. Because its level of power is limited to this globe. People can break the system just by wandering out into the wilderness, you think you can keep it in effect in a universe where a dissident can board a vessel, set their sails to the cosmic east and never be forced to interact with you again?

If you’ve got to dream,” Kerry urged him, “dream about our future in the halo. Planting humanity on a hundred or a thousand new snowballs when we find them. New worlds scattered too far apart for any new breed of Sunfolk or Holyfolk to exploit and destroy them.

“Wait a minute,” Judy said. “We’ve only been gone for two days, and it wasn’t looking that bad when we left. What the hell have you people been doing?”

“Fleeing for our lives,” the Frenchman replied. “Since Monsieur Meisner gave everyone the hyperdrive, we have all been waiting for bombs to appear over our cities. Until now, the threat of—how do you say—of mutual assured destruction has prevented war, but once our enemies build colonies elsewhere, mutual destruction is assured no more.”

“So you’re rushing to build a colony of your own,” Judy said.

“Yes.”

“Thereby triggering the very war you’re trying to avoid.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Allen said, his voice filled with the same disdain he’d shown Carl Reinhardt back on board the shuttle. “As soon as people see that there’s room enough for everybody—”

“They will strike first to prevent their enemies from establishing a presence outside their control.” That was Tippet.

“They—the United States wouldn’t,” Allen said.

“Of course they would,” the Frenchman replied.

“It is the logical thing to do,” Tippet said. “Once your enemies escape your grasp, you have no more influence over their actions. Their beliefs and their way of life will spread unchecked. If you truly consider them enemies, then the most logical course of action would be to eradicate them before they can escape.”

“But… but…” Judy felt him quiver beside her in the sleeping bag. “That’s insane!”

“Perhaps,” Tippet said. “But it is the most logical course of action for beings who cannot subvert their enemies as we do.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” Allen shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with everyone? Nobody has to fight anybody ever again! That was the whole point of this whole goddamned thing.” He pounded the side of the tank with his fist. “The logical thing to do is to spread out until we’re not in each other’s faces anymore. There’s more than enough room! People should be dancing in the streets, but everyone who even hears about the hyperdrive seems hell-bent on making the absolute worst of it at every turn.”

Judy put her arms around him, as much for her own protection as to comfort him. In the dark, he couldn’t see where he was swinging his fists.

The Frenchman said, “We understand reality. The frottement—the friction—between nations is not always about land. It is often the idea. How do you say—the culture.”

Judy muttered, “Yeah, right. We’re going to snuff ourselves because I say tomato and you say what? Pommes frites?”

The Frenchman laughed softly. “Pommes frites are what you call French fries,” he said. “And you serve them in your despicable fast-food restaurants as an insult to our national cuisine. To a chef, that is cause enough to go to war.”

“All right, bad example,” she admitted, “but still. We’re not going to wipe out the planet to keep food snobs from getting a toehold somewhere else, and you’re not going to bomb us because we eat fried potatoes, are you?” She slid out of the sleeping bag and began feeling around for her clothes. It didn’t look like she would be sleeping again for a while.

The accented radio voice said, “Perhaps not. Who knows what madness lies at the root of our own government, much less someone else’s? But we have been ordered to carry at least one egg out of the nest just in case. We were supposed to establish our colony far enough away that we would not be found, but we obviously didn’t go far enough. We will not be so conservative on our next attempt.”

“You’re not going to try it again, are you?” Judy asked.

“We are. And this time we will go across the galaxy. Let you American spies try to find us then!”

“We’re not spies, and we don’t give a flying f—”

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said. “We must now recover our landing party, and then we will go. Adieu.”

“And is that so important?” he said bitterly, feeling his voice thicken. “Such a big deal? To talk some machines into taking you along to the stars with them, like pets getting a ride in the car? Make sure they leave the windows open a crack for you when they park the spaceship!”

She started to blaze angrily at him, then struggled visibly to bring herself under control. “That's the wrong analogy,” she said at last, in a dangerously calm voice. “Don't think of us as dogs on a joyride. Think of us instead as rats on an ocean-liner, or as cockroaches on an airplane, or even as insect larva in the corner of a shipping crate. It doesn't matter why they want us to go, or even if they know we're along for the ride, just as long as we go. Whatever their motives are for going where they're going, we have agendas of our own. Just by taking us along, they're going to help us extend our biological range to environments we never could have reached otherwise—yes, just like rats reaching New Zealand by stowing away on sailing ships. It didn't matter that the rats didn't build the ships themselves, or decide where the ships were going—all that counts in an environmental sense is that they got there, to a place they never could have reached on their own. Bucky Bug has promised to leave small colonizing teams behind on every habitable planet we reach. It amuses him in a fond, patronizing kind of way. He thinks it's cute.”

She stared levelly at him. “But why he's doing it doesn't matter. Pigs were spread to every continent in the world because humans wanted to eat them—bad for the individual pigs, but very good in the long run for the species as a whole, which extended its range explosively and multiplied its biomass exponentially. And like rats or cockroaches, once humans get into an environment, it's hard to get rid of them. Whatever motives the AIs have for doing what they're doing, they'll help spread humanity throughout the stars, whether they realize they're doing it or not.”

“Is that the best destiny you can think of for the human race?” he said. “To be cockroaches scuttling behind the walls in some machine paradise?”

This time, she did blaze at him. “Goddamnit, Charlie, we don't have time for that bullshit! We can't afford dignity and pride and all the rest of those luxuries! This is species survival we're talking about here!” She'd squirmed around to face him, in her urgency. He tried to say something, even he wasn't sure what it would have been, but she overrode him. “We've got to get the human race off Earth! Any way we can. We can't afford to keep all our eggs in one basket anymore.

* Asteroid impact, radiation wave from a nearby supernova, the sun going red giant, trappistian Dark Forest RKKV, etc.
** Transhuman, tame AGI or some combination of the two.
*** Bioengineering isn't exact. In the process of creating superhumans, you'll end up with a bunch of failed test subjects, or in more direct terms, horribly deformed dead babies. Unless you have the power and lack of ethics to just ignore this and the inevitable public outrage, so much for your augmentation program. Only a leader who doesn't care about a bunch of innocent victims or public opinion and knew they'll remain in power long enough for a long-term investment like waiting for successful superhuman babies to grow old enough to be of use would do so. A dictator in other words.
**** Who're also all bioengineered superhumans, to the point where even if their dictatorship was somehow overthrown, their descendants would still end up running the world in a meritocracy.
***** Or their creation is benevolent and refuses whatever role they'd planned for it.

[US-SSR]

Death, misery, pizza

Eat, drink, wash, fold.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Lower standards of living, longer working lives in duller jobs. Most people experiencing being migrants at some point in their lives.

[Page]

I'm afraid that freedom will die, but I hope I'm wrong. I've come to the terrifying realization that most people will accept oppression as long as it is implemented in tiny increments. If the government tried to start a 1984 type of regime over night, people would revolt. But if we slowly become 1984 one policy at a time over the course of 100 years, then freedom could be snuffed out.

[The Blaatschapen]

I'm afraid that freedom will die, but I hope I'm wrong. I've come to the terrifying realization that most people will accept oppression as long as it is implemented in tiny increments. If the government tried to start a 1984 type of regime over night, people would revolt. But if we slowly become 1984 one policy at a time over the course of 100 years, then freedom could be snuffed out.

We're like frogs in a pan of water that is slowly being heated

[Forlania]

We will be unable to stop our effect on global climate change until it is essentially "too late."
This does not mean life will cease to exist, but, it will mean a change of climates worldwide, different species adapting to their environment and insects possibly evolving to be intelligent enough (certain species when using their collective intelligence) to pose a moderate threat to humans.
Of course that is more long term.

In the short term it means human lifestyles will radically change as we are also forced to adapt to the new seasonal weather conditions in different habitated zones around the world. A reduction in human population is probably as many of current food sources will no longer be sustainable or viable in this new world. This may result in anything from technologically advanced, environmentally friendly small nation states, to larger slum-like nations that revert to slightly more traditional ways of living (especially in already under-developed nations).

[The Biggles Syndicate]

Well, I feel we'll have some hard times and corruption, but pull through. The space program will get to the Moon and Mars, and as we are ready for the first space habitat the newest degenerate trend or hyperactive celebrity draws the public's attention again, gets the space program shut down for good, and basically screws us over. Then the sun will eventually become a red giant and burn up the Earth.

[New Kirrania]

Humanity will cease to exist in decades unless we do something about it NOW

[Major-Tom]

In the very near future, Friday. So I got that going for me.

[Stellar Colonies]

We'll blunder into crisis after crisis until:

1. We wise up.

2. We destroy our capabilities to advance and waste away in a resource-depleted wasteland.*
*Multiple wastelands if said collapse comes after we expand beyond Earth

3. We destroy ourselves outright.

4. Some natural event or outside power will do #2 or #3 for us.*
*Unless we meet something else that's really patient and benevolent, in which case they'll force us to do #1.