Future Tech Tree: 2000-2300

Some more creative futurology here. Anybody a fan of the civilization games? Or nearly any real-time or turn-based strategy game? You’ll notice they usually have ‘tech trees’ detailing exactly what technologies you need to research to produce better units, buildings or abilities. The civilization series had some of the most sophisticated ever produced. Here’s the ‘Middle Ages’ section of the CIV3 Tech Tree for instance-



Now I know tech trees are ussually only for games, but I think they’re often a good approximation for how science advances. An old game I’ve sometimes played is ‘Galactic Civilizations’, which starts in 2178 and has a complicated future Tech Tree you can find here-

http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpowdrell/techtree.htm

So, what am I building up to? Well partly inspired by the GalCiv tech tree (or perhaps frustrated by it, as its quite fanciful and doesn't take itself too seriously, much to my annoynace) here’s my future tech tree prediction for the next three centuries. Its just an intellectual exercise, but I find this stuff quite interesting. Google any terms you don't understand, even wikipedia has some pretty decent science articles.

P.S. the numbers refer to the rough number of years it takes to research that technology, so each image below should take about a century to get through.

By the end of this century I reckon humanity will be using mainly fusion power, constructing and maintaining a wide variety of things at the molecular level with nanobots and that social networking will have progressed to the point where we're basically communicating with each other constantly though what could be called 'telepathy'. We'll have recently started building space elevators, have access to trillions of times the computing capacity that we do now and our life expectancies will have been greatly increased.

By 2200 all humans will have the oppurtunity to be biologically immortal or even download their conciousness into a computer. We'll be building our first starships, initially unmanned or controlled by individuals who've downloaded themselves into computers and powered by antimatter or large-scale 'beam propulsion' and the terraforming of worlds like Mars and Venus might be well underway.

So there you have it. I'm predicting that by the end of the 23rd century much of humanity will have melded with machines and the rest, of their own choosing, will have decided they aren't yet ready for such a drastic change, though most will probably still be greatly enhanced and biologically immortal. We'll be manufacturing our first black hole powered starships capable of approaching light speed, designing our first Dyon Swarms (though they would probably still take millenia to build) and have the ability to create or destroy planets and stars.

Of course all this could be utterly wrong and fanciful. Only time will tell.