HIGH PROBABILITY OF CERTAINTY
Saturday Jan. 5, 2019
Looking forward or backward as far as we can dream or recall, reminded by photo albums, books and digital storage – re-examining lives and outlook, family, world history, geology and increasingly looking all the way back to that big bang.
‘Before earth existed’ the science is just educated guesswork, but looking forward is always just guesswork. From b-bang until today we have a grasp of it all, but future is mysterious as our very ancient past.
This time of year the media world is rife with predictions of economics, climate and forecasts of which athletes will have good years. Trend watchers advise what you’ll be wearing later this year and next. Political watchdogs and talking heads predict the next election cycle in every country. Technology gurus forecast innovations which make the Jetsons look old-school. Medical writers forecast the best of times and the worst of times depending on what lurks within your DNA.
Odd, is it not, with all our knowledge and tools to gaze back to birth of our planet, looking forward we can’t reliably predict or have expectations with certaintude (noun ~ the high probability of certainty)?
Some predict based on expertise and tea-leaf reading. Everyone guesses (or wishes) based on their beliefs with little support from facts or qualitative data analysis.
100 years ago in 1919, just after ‘the war to end all wars’ and before the depression, anyone predicting our lives today would have surely been locked up, drugged or lobotomized because so much would have been too-far beyond imagination, too-far beyond the furthest stretch of facts and data – yet we just call it progress.
So, 100 years from now in 2119, what will life be like?
I’ll ‘thought-port’ myself to Paris for lunch, to the ‘new New York that just opened on high ground in Ohio, then off to a beachfront resort in Tasmania for dinner and then I’ll stay for a hot sunny holiday.
It’s a great new vacation spot – very popular for Mars colonists on-leave because their climates are now so similar. Best-selling product will be the ‘sleep cap you wear named Brain Pillow’ which does tomorrow’s work for you while you sleep. It produces a full report when you wake up, the latest building product will be houses with walls which convert to ‘full screen’ or ‘wall colour of your choice complete with masterpiece art’, changeable on demand for interior or exterior applications. Outdoors, you may want to make your home invisible by turning your full screen walls to ‘simulate neighbourhood landscape’ which lets you hide everything but the steam coming out your chimney.
Latest breakthrough will be conversion of oilsands and carbonates into food and zero emissions clean burning fuels that can be tele-ported without pipelines – just use the app on your voice activated wrist device. World government (replaced the UN after the referendum) have adopted a single currency, a single language and ‘everyone votes on everything law’. You vote via voice activated wrist devices (deaf people have to type in they’re vote). Every disease will have been conquered. Doctors will be largely obsolete ~ just use the app on your wrist device to diagnose and solve all medical problems. Amputees without wrists however are out of luck.
There will be no weapons, no conflict – everyone is at peace (some media pundits suspect there is something in the water). Couples will only marry if they are planning children – then they’ll stay together but there might be affairs …
Most hospitals will have been converted to ‘clean room factories’ where robots manufacture things we need, everyone will have luxury housing and the world sandcastle building competition in the Gobi desert has been replaced by a an even bigger-better one called Trump-Riyadh Resort. It really is the greatest!
Some hospitals will become ‘growing new parts’ facilities. I know I’ll be 167, living in my ‘simulated paradise’, enjoying my latest ‘grown from my own cells’ knees and face I had installed over the weekend.
The Nobel Prize for Peace, replaced by the Nobel Prize for Entertainment, celebrates the best new idea of the year. All 28 billion* of us are eligible to be nominated AND we all must vote. Those who don’t vote will have their hands amputated above their wrist device. *[earth is livable now that Antarctica and Greenland have been developed as high-density housing projects]
Will I really live to be 167? Yes, there is a high probability of certainty as long as I stay out of traffic.
P.S. in case you were wondering what happened to boundaries between countries when world government was instituted, the worldwide famine of 2069 brought everyone to their senses that science must prevail, that actually listening to A.I. rather than fighting it was the better course, though Fox News are still promoting a conspiracy theory that robots put something in the water …
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How would I sign up to receive the daily quotes you so wonderfully post, GC, Calgary, AB
NICE TO MEET YOU
Excellent Mark... Best wishes for this new year!, TL, Calgary, AB
