One vision of the next 50 years takes the human race to the brink of extinction as global warming increases and the world’s oceans begin to rise dramatically. Whole nations will disappear under the sea, and the resulting economic and social dislocation will lead to a severe “die back” of the human race. The entire planet will enter a long dark age, the end of which we cannot see.
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| Nanotechnology & Cancer (a future cure) |
Another vision of the next 50 years has medical science finding a cure for death and science developing an array of creative solutions to the challenges facing the globe, many of them growing out of exciting developments in nanotechnology. The human race will begin to move off of Earth in growing numbers and make use of the resources of our whole solar system. We will enter a golden age, the end of which we cannot see.
Visionaries of both stripes point to current developments and say, “See, it’s inevitable…” whichever “it” they believe in.
More likely, what we will see in the next 50 years is something of both. The waters will rise but not as high as the gloomy visionaries envision and hard times will continue for hundreds of millions of people and many nations, but we won’t enter a new dark age either. Nanotechnology will meet some challenges we face and create others. Medical science will continue to lengthen our lives and improve the quality of life for us as we live longer, but the benefits will not be accessible to all people equally. The wealthy will live longer and better. The poor won’t.
Meanwhile, sadly, we will continue to fail to develop the spiritual technologies long, long available to us that can truly transform life on our planet. Our Christian vision of the Kingdom of God—when peace, justice, & compassion will reign—will remain a vision. That may sound gloomy, but it isn’t. We have been pursuing the Kingdom for 20 centuries, and we will still be at it another half-century into the future. And that is a good thing.
If you are interested, by the way, in the potential of medical nanotechnology, you might find this article worth a look.
