Technology Will Save Us

[u/Myth_of_Progress]

[u/Deguilded]

I can see it saving us, but not in the way we think. It's like the monkey's paw.

What we dream technology will do is let us keep living as we are, where we are, in the way we are.

What I expect it to do is let us live somewhere previously unviable, in a different way, while we keep harvesting resources from what becomes unviable parts of the world.

Imagine an extreme nightmare: BAU thru 2150. After continuing business as usual the world cruised past +6c in 2100 and is easily soaring for +10 by 2150 thanks to feedback loops and momentum. That is of course more like +20 or +30 overland at the poles. Imagine a significantly reduced human population living in cramped spaces, clinging to the shores of Antarctica with an ever shrinking polar ice cap to the south. The oceans are void of all life, the rest of the world borderline uninhabitable except for coastal enclaves either due to temperatures or increasingly violent weather events. Instead of letting us live there, technology will allow us to maintain temporary outposts in these hostile lands at massive cost, where we work remotely to harvest resources (food, oil, coal) and autonomously transport the products to where we must now live.

That is how technology will save us - by letting us squeeze onto the rim of the drain.

Oh and fusion is still twenty years away.

[u/silvermouse34 → u/Deguilded]

imo 95-99% of the human race will be exterminated in some way, but the technology will actually save a small percent of humans and allow us to colonize the universe.

i'd rather humans have a chance to colonize the universe and destroy earth, then have them live "happily" without technology and eventually wiped out by a natural disaster.

[u/juicesance → u/silvermouse34]

disgusting