Cloning, and other forms of reproduction

How are babies made?  Simple enough, female and male, egg and sperm.  It’s worked that way for jillions of years, right?  But all of that may change in the next decade, in two possible ways…

(1) Human Cloning

Do we have the technology to make a living human clone right now?  YES.  After Dolly the sheep, and quite a few other mammals, we can certainly clone a person.  Have we done it yet?  Apart from one aborted try in 2004, probably not.

Will we?  I would guess that the answer is yes (regardless of the laws in many countries against such a thing), but not how one might think.  We won’t have the crazy dictator cloning himself.  Instead, we’ll have a clone born to help save the life of a “sibling”.  We may never hear about such a thing, though, since disclosure would lead to prosecution.

(2) Non-traditional reproduction

By this, I mean male-male or female-female reproduction.  Are we there yet?  No, but we’re pretty close.  Ten years?  Possibly.  Thirty years?  Definitely.  I would bet somewhere in Europe, with some publicity.  Remember Louise Brown, the first “test-tube” baby?  But this will be a little different, with publicity for the doctors, but privacy for the parents, due to threats on the life of their child.

Hairstyles

Hairstyles come, and hairstyles go, but they do follow a pattern.  Straight or minimalist hair, then add a little body to get it wavy, then go all out and pouf up that do!  Then back to straight, as girls rebel against poufy hair.

Below we have:

1900s-1910s: big hair, per an ad
1920s: straight (bob) - Louise Brooks
1940s: wavy - Heddy Lamarr
1950s-early 1960s: big hair - Dusty Springfield
Late 1960s-early 1970s: straight hair (at Woodstock)
Late 1970s-early 1980s: wavy hair (the flip) - Farrah Fawcett {and more facial hair for men, a la Frank Zappa}
Late 1980s-early 1990s: poufy hair - Madonna
Late 1990s-mid 2000s: straight hair - Jennifer Aniston
Late 2000s-2010s: wavy hair - Katy Perry {and heavy facial hair for men, a la Zach Gallifinakis or Casey Abrams}

The prediction for 2020?  Big poufy hair again!

Food, Glorious Food!

Unlike batteries (energy for our toys and tools), food (energy for us) is one product where we should expect significant advances on quite a few fronts over the next century.

Food Production

The biggest changes to food production in recent history have been the Agricultural Revolutions.  First came the Agricultural Revolutions in Europe from the 1700s to the 1900s that spread to rest of the western world.  Still, the majority of the world faced periodic starvation, until the Green Revolution (1940s-1970s) in Mexico, India, the Philippines, China, and other countries.  The massive increase in world food output has limited much of the threat of mass starvation to some countries in Africa (where the Green Revolution has been less successful), poor countries after natural disasters, or isolated cases of poor governance, often due to totalitarian governments (Cuba and North Korea in the 1990s).

The biggest driver of world food production increase in the near future will be due to three factors: the continued propagation of Green Revolution ideas across the African continent, improvements in desalinization technology, and the spread and eventual acceptance of some higher-yield and stress-tolerant genetically modified (GM) crops.  Farther into the future and we start looking at more novel ways of creating food: vat-grown protein (open question: would vegetarians eat this?), kelp ponds, vertical farming.

Crop Terrorism

Unfortunately, food production can be disrupted through relatively small efforts.  (Remember the California fruit fly?)  If terrorist organizations survive the military and ideological wars, they may branch out from bombing buildings (high shock value, but low strategic value) to attacking crops (high strategic value).

Individual Diets

One new concept in the world of nutrition is that of an individualized diet, based on a person’s genetic profile.  Sure, we knew that some people were lactose-tolerant or lactose-intolerant, but now we are finding out that there are many more food categories that are better- or worse-tolerated by people based on their individual genes.

As individual DNA-testing becomes for genetic diseases becomes common, we should expect to see this testing branch out, with personalized diet profiles (a.k.a. "nutrigenomics") as the logical next step, probably within the next few decades.  For only a few hundred dollars, you can find out if the reason PB&J always makes your stomach upset is due to the peanut butter, or due to the bread.

My Battery Is Dying Again...

In the last 60 years we’ve seen amazing advances in computing, communications, gaming, and entertainment.  Recently we’ve even seen the trusty old light-bulb get a facelift (as CF or LED bulbs).  But all of these are dependent on power, and if you’re going to unplug from the wall, you have to have a battery.

How much has battery technology improved in 60 years?  Well, sure, they’ve gotten smaller, and we have a lot more options in rechargeability, but we’re near the limit.  Ultimately, a battery is a device that stores electrical energy as chemical energy, and there’s only so much chemical energy you can get out of an object of a particular size.

Unless we can make mini nuclear power plants the size of a D-cell, don’t expect much improvement on the battery side of things any time soon.  There is no Moore’s Law for batteries, sorry.  Longer battery life is really dependent on (1) less energy usage/wasteage from a device, and (2) getting energy or recharges from other sources, such as wearable solar rechargers, motion charging similar to some watches, or even a little mechanical energy from the user.

Chinese Relatives, or the Death of the Chinese Uncle…

Welcome to the People’s Republic of China!  One child per family, please.

Since 1979, much of the urban population of China has been restricted to having just one child per family.  What has this done to family relationships in China?  By the 1980s and 1990s, there were a generation of schoolchildren without brothers and sisters.  In the 2000s, Chinese children were born without aunts and uncles, and cousins were nowhere to be found.

By the 2020s we’ll start seeing urban Chinese children without great-uncles and great-aunts, and even second-cousins will be nowhere to be found.  When these children think of “family”, it will only be of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  I found a nice website with 102 categories of relationships in the Chinese family; by the 2020s, 76 of these will be obsolete in urban China.

And so we say goodbye to the Chinese Uncle, and the extended family as a part of the Chinese psyche.  And hello, to a country of only children.

Fecal Transplant

“You’re kidding, right?”  No, I’m not.  Turns out you can cure people from some pretty serious intestinal infections using feces (yes, “ewww” factor and all) from a healthy “donor”.  The key is not a single bacterium, but more a competitive culture of dozens of different bacteria, keeping each other in check.

Expect the concept to be expanded significantly beyond donated feces to a standardized competitive culture (already in use in livestock), and then possibly to skin infection treatment, anti-acne creams, and maybe even mouthwash and shampoo!

Still in its infancy though, and there are quite a few sham probiotics out there that are either useless or harmful.  Wait for the scientific testing to catch up with it.

Future Attitudes

Kind of a weird topic for most futurists, eh?  We talk about global warming and cybernetics and colonizing Mars, and we even talk about future demographic changes.  But what about the attitudes of the people going through all these changes?

Measuring “attitude” is a bit less precise than measuring something like population or GDP, but some social scientists have found some repeating cycles that explain quite a bit about national moods and perceptions of external events.  (Note: even though I’ll be concise, it’s a little bit of a walk from here to the full theory, but definitely worth coming along.)

First, quite a few historians noticed that the history of the United States seems to have some very large “external” type events at fairly regular intervals.  The American Revolution (1770s-1790s), the Civil War (1860s), The Great Depression and WWII (1930s-1940s), and now 9-11 and The Great Recession (2000s-2010s).  Every 70 to 80 years there seems to be a large crisis, we all have to pull together, and hopefully it turns out well.

Strauss & Howe, and Cycles

Standing on the shoulders of some earlier research, William Strauss and Neil Howe dug into the data into great detail.  One of the things they found was that about halfway between these “Crisis” times, there seem to be large-scale internal upheavals, sort of a spiritual “Awakening” of the population.  In the 1820s-1830s there was the “Transcendental Awakening”, with Utopian communities, early feminism, the founding of Mormonism, Thoreau and Emerson, and the foundation of abolitionist societies.  The “Third Great Awakening” of the 1880s-1900s saw the beginning of Christian Science, the establishment of the Salvation Army in America, and the Restoration Movement in Christianity.  In the 1960s-1970s, we saw the anti-war movement, the new feminism, rock-n-roll, more Utopian communities, and wide-scale drug usage.  Again, the timing was every 70 to 80 years.

Looking deeper, they found more historical cycles: times of economic growth but social restrictions and stagnation (think of the post-Civil War reconstruction of the 1870s, or of post-WWII 1950s) leading into the Awakening, and times of failed wars, social fragmentation, decay and skepticism (think of WWI and Prohibition in the 1910s and 1920s, or of the first Gulf War and the Culture Wars of the 1980s-1990s).

Generational Personalities

Importantly, they also found four “generational” personalities: a pull-together, let’s-win-this-thing “Civic” group (think of the young men enlisting for WWII).  Civics are followed by a caught-in-the-middle “Artisitic” generation (think of the beatniks and 1950s feminists and civil rights workers) who shape the upcoming Awakening.  Next come the “Prophets”, those young idealists who want to tear apart society and reshape it in their own vision and who grow into visionary leaders (the Baby Boomers).  In the shadow of the Prophets are the “Nomads”, those dumped-on, low-expectation kids who grow up skeptical, wary, and ultimately very efficient and worldly and good at making things happen (think of the Lost generation of Hemingway who ended up as critical sergeants and colonels in WWII, and the Gen-X “slackers” who are now hard-working middle managers).

Predictions of the Future

What does this mean for our future?  We’re currently in Crisis mode:  9-11, War on Terror, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Arab Spring.  Boomer leaders and Gen X managers and Civic-minded youth willing to pitch in and work together, while Artist children are raised by their Gen-X parents.  Sometime in the next decade or so, we will move on to Gen-X-style leadership: social restriction and economic growth (and possibly a new push to space like back in the 1950s), with Civic Gen-Y managers, Artistic young adults sowing what at first seem harmless seeds of a little rebellion, and spoiled Prophet children.

Twenty years or so after that (maybe in 2040?) the Gen-Y Civics will come into power, and will be befuddled by their teen and young adult Prophet children, who seem bent on tearing society to pieces (based on the ideas of Artists from a few years back), while middle-aged Artists are stuck in between.

Then in 2060 or so, social decay and skepticism and failed wars set in again, with Artist leadership.  Problems that should be addressed (Germany in WWI, or Iraq and al Qaeda in the 1990s) are instead delayed, building up to the next big Crisis…

Hmmm… are you sure these guys are right?

Well, here’s what they wrote in their first book, Generations:

 “Suppose authorities seriously suspected that a band of terrorists, linked to a fanatically anti-American nation, had smuggled a bomb into New York City…  Boomer leaders in their sixties...would exaggerate the threat…and tie it to a larger sense of global crisis.  Unifying the nation as a community, these leaders would define the enemy broadly and demand its total defeat – regardless of the human and economic sacrifices required.”

They predicted (in fact hoped) that this crisis wouldn’t hit until around 2020, but their description is a pretty accurate one for 9-11, and Boomer President George W. Bush.

(By the way, they published this scenario in Generations in 1991.)

Check out the sites and the books (Generations and The Fourth Turning), I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the future or history.

Future Religiosity

Whither the future of religion?  Well, there’s three quite large forces at work here, two for more religiosity, and one for less.  I’ll do the “fors” first, then the “against”.

(1) For: Demographics of Religiosity

This one’s simple: the more religious you are, the more kids you have.  The highest birthrate state in the USA?  Utah, and their heavy Mormon population.  Highest birthrate groups in the USA?  Amish and those following the Quiverfull movement.  Highest Jewish birth rates in Israel?  The Ultra-Orthodox.  Which Muslim women have the most children?  Those who support Sharia law.  Among all groups, the more religious are outbreeding the less religious.

 (2) For: “The Great Sort”

In 1900, we all read the same newspapers.  In the 1950s, we all watched the same evening newscasts.  But in the new millennium, the New Media and the Internet have made “selective news” possible.  If you’re against logging, you can read anti-logging blogs, get anti-logging newsfeeds, even read anti-logging magazines.  With Fox News, and NBC’s counterpunch with MSNBC, the Right and Left no longer have to listen to each other’s viewpoints.   Christians listen to Christian news, Muslims get Muslim news, and so on… everyone’s preaching to the choir.  And studies have shown that if you only hear confirming viewpoints, your own confidence in your correctness rises.

So now ultra-religious families don’t have to expose their children to viewpoints that conflict with their own just to obtain news or entertainment.  With home-schooling and religious schools, outside influences can be minimized even as children are raised in secular societies.  Assimilation is becoming a thing of the past.

(3) Against: Easy information

However easy the internet makes single-view newsfeeds, it also makes alternative viewpoints available at anyone’s fingertips, with just a few clicks of the mouse.  And with enough alternative views, some will ultimately be extremely well-researched and convincing.  Most young adults leaving the nest will explore the internet in one way or another, and will eventually be exposed to viewpoints that well-meaning parents had hoped they would never see.

Outcome:

Which will win out?  Trends toward secularism depend on quality of arguments, ability to disseminate those arguments, and education of children against supernaturalism.  Trends toward religiosity depend on counterarguments, prevention of dissemination of contradictory ideas, and outreach to the disaffected through “missionary” type work.

Current trends in the USA and Europe are toward more secularism, BUT… that trend may be limited to the deconversion of those without strongly-held beliefs.  At some point, the trend may reverse itself, and the far-higher birthrates of the religious may take over.

One final tidbit of food for thought:  there were about 15,000 Amish in 1900.  By 2010, estimates had the Amish population at 249,000.  At that birthrate, we’ll have over 4,100,000 Amish by 2120, over 1 out of every 200 Americans.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

He's everybody's favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  But he's not just a guy with a telescope, he's a former President and Chariman of the Board of the Planetary Society, he served on two presidential commissions on space exploration (appointed by George W. Bush), he writes books and columns, and he's even a favorite on The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.


He's shaping our science curriculum and our view of space.  Heck, he even demoted Pluto and named "Manhattanhenge"!  If you don't know who he is... you should.

Global Warming

Global warming:  one of the most divisive left-right issues of our time.  Let’s have a look:

The left fringe screams at us… “The sky is falling, and soon!  We must do something now or we’ll all perish!  Only 10% of global GDP, and we can save the entire planet!  Ban light bulbs!  Ban cars!  There are no other solutions!”

The right fringe counters with a rather incoherent set of statements… “Um, (1) No it’s not, there is no evidence of global warming whatsoever, and (2) even if there is, it’s not conclusive, there’s still scientific disagreement, here’s our list of 100 scientists who disagree, and (3) okay, so even if 99% of actual climatologists agree, we can find 5 who faked their research, and (4) even if you just look at the real research, there’s no evidence that it’s caused by man, and (5) okay, so maybe some evidence links global warming to mankind, the earth can heal itself so who cares, and (6) even if all of our other statements are wrong, what’s the matter with warming up Canada and Alaska a little bit?”

So what’s the problem with a little political screaming?  Well, all the noise keeps us from getting to the real issue, and to some real solutions.

First, a short primer on global warming:  the Earth is getting warmer.  Much of this is due to the actions of man (pollution, burping cattle, clear-cutting of rainforests, over-farming).  Some variation is also due to natural solar cycles.

Regardless of the underlying cause, global warming could bring us much more trouble than warmer summers in Saskatchewan.  If the ice cap on Greenland melts, we could see the possible interruption of thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic Ocean.  Such an interruption might be almost like turning off a switch: there one day, gone in a few months or years.

Without warm surface water in the North Atlantic, the west-to-east winds traveling from Canada to Europe go from wet and warm (why Rome has weather like Florida, and not New York) to cold and dry.  Scandinavia and Scotland would freeze.  Crops throughout Europe would fail.  It’s happened before for other reasons (1816 was known as the “Year Without a Summer”), but when it’s due to the interruption of thermohaline circulation, the effects can last for hundreds or thousands of years.  The Earth took over 100,000 years to recover after a similar event , the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum.

So the threat is real, and there’s a lot of pieces of evidence that we’re near or past the tipping point already (clathrate gun, anyone?).  But is the solution really radical rethinking of all of our usage of fossil fuels right now?  15%, or 10%, or even 5% of global GDP spent on this is not politically possible, barring imminent individual deaths.  It just ain’t gonna happen, people.  And sticking our heads in the sand and pretending it isn’t happening, or claiming the Earth will fix itself, that’s just as bad.

So what do we do?  Boats and squirtguns.  Really, not kidding.  It's called Cloud Reflectivity Enhancement.  Ocean-going boats, spraying ocean water in the air, creates clouds.  The clouds absorb heat and reflect sunlight remarkably well, and the cost would be measured in billions (with a B) instead of trillions (with a T).

But…  the left won’t have it, because it doesn’t change our habits, and doesn’t change the cause.  And the right won’t do it, because they won’t spend billions (with a B) on something they swear isn’t happening in the first place!  This political Catch-22 won’t likely be broken until it really is too late.  Sadly.

Peter Thiel

First in the biography list of people you should know about:  Peter Thiel.  Chess prodigy, co-founder of PayPal, venture capitalist behind Facebook, gay, Libertarian, supporter of journalists, opposer of multiculturalism, supporter of seasteading and singularity research and life extension, member of the Bilderberg Group, he doesn't fit into any kind of neat category.


But like him or not, he's a big player in what's to come.

Kurzweil and Singularity

Raymond Kurzweil is undoubtedly brilliant, but his prediction that we will reach singularity in 2045 (with artificial intelligence so much smarter than humans that it can improve itself) suffers from the same flaws as predictions of flying cars in the 1950s.  It turns out that flying is orders of magnitude more complicated than driving, and not just the next step in personal transportation.  Moonshot in 1969 gives us outposts on the rings of Saturn by 2009?  Again, the devil’s in the details, and the same goes for artificial intelligence.

Will we get there?  Most certainly.  But 2045?  In my opinion, that’s too soon, too many devils waiting in the details.  We might build something that can reliably pass the Turing Test 99% of the time, but we won’t outpace ourselves (at least on the inventiveness scale) until some time later than that.  2085?  2125?  2165?  These sound a little more reasonable to me.

Welcome!

Welcome to Blog Future Blog!  This blog will explore our shared future, covering topics as diverse as technology, climate change, culture, demography, transportation, energy, religion, medicine, and politics, all with an eye towards where we are going, be it ten years from now or a hundred.

Sometimes we’ll throw out full arguments about what’s coming, and sometimes we’ll just point you to something you should know about.  We’ll even mention a few of the movers and shakers who are busy creating our future right now, people whose names you should know.

Will there be opinions?  Sure, but Blog Future Blog carries a promise of open-minded, rational analysis of the issues, where new evidence is always welcome.  So browse, learn where we’re going, and add your voice to the discussion.  Send us a topic or a question if you think it fits, and we’ll do what we can to provide an answer.

Thanks again for visiting!

Michael Toreador  (blogfutureblog(a)gmail.com)