[SargeK]

Most Utopian futurists make the same mistake. They assume that all society(ies) progress more or less uniformly together.

The truth is that the more technologically advanced, the more stratified they become. An elite emerges who master the technology and the systems, leaving the other 90-95% in the dust.

Then they become extremely specialized, spoiled and decadent. They forget what it was that made them great and the whole thing falls down and gets swallowed in barbarism. Another dark age, and then another great civilization emerges. How many times has this pattern repeated itself in the brief 35,000 or so years since the rise of Homo sapiens?

[Strk321]

The bigger mistake is that futurists can’t imagine the future except from their own perspective. Like on the original Star Trek where you’re supposed to suspend belief long enough to assume that women are sporting 1960s haircuts in the 24th century.

Or to cite another period TV show, The Jetsons where the writers seem to have envisioned huge advances in transportation that never did materialize yet were completely unable to foresee similar development in computers (which in The Jetsons are depicted as being huge room-sized dealies with tape reels)

[Nowhere Man]

Then they become extremely specialized, spoiled and decadent. They forget what it was that made them great and the whole thing falls down and gets swallowed in barbarism. Another dark age, and then another great civilization emerges. How many times has this pattern repeated itself in the brief 35,000 or so years since the rise of Homo sapiens?

Despite modern advances, in reality, the majority of human beings on the face of the Earth live in the same conditions they always had for hundred or even thousands of years. What is ironic is, IIRC, the astronauts aboard Apollo 11 just before they refired the third stage to go to the Moon, they were able to see the fires that villagers were using as they orbited over Africa. Nicobar Island near India has a tribe of people who still live as they did 40,000, or so, years ago. After the 2004 Christmas quake and tsunami, an Indian military helicopter flew over the island and the people there attacked it with spears. They probably thought, "big bird, feed village for many moons." B-)

I sometimes wonder if we had an advanced civilization on par with that we have now in the past and perhaps a couple of times.