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Millennium 3000 Scenarios - Excerpt from theState of the Future at theMillennium
 
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Brief background on the study
 
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The Scenarios:
 Scenario 1. Still Alive at 3000 Scenario 2. End of Humanity and the Rise of Phoenix Scenario 3. It’s About Time Scenario 4. The Great Divides Scenario 5. The Rise and Fall of the Robot Empire Scenario 6. ETI Disappoints after 9 Centuries 
Brief background on the study
 The Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University incooperation withThe Foundation for the Futureconducted a special study on collectingforeseeable factors that might significantly affect the future of humanity in the next 1000years. Those factors were rated by the panel of thefirst roundof this study as to: a) howplausible it is that the factor will influence the human condition 1000 years from today;b) assuming that the factor does occur, how important its effect might be on the humancondition; and c) ability of human intervention such as policy and/or funding to affectthat factor’s trajectory. Round 1 also asked about the factor’s likely trajectory,benchmarks of its development, and some possible unexpected or low probabilityconsequences. These views were used by the authors, Jerry Glenn and Theodore J.Gordon, to construct six draft scenario sketches to the year 3000.The secondand finalquestionnaire asked for participants' additions, edits, corrections, and comments on thesescenarios. They were also asked to list a fundamentally important question or two thatarises due to the scenario. The results are included in theState of the Future at theMillennium. 
Scenario 1. Still Alive at 3000
 Even though we understand how to work with the forces of nature, unlike ourenvironmentally destructive past, we do not yet know how to provide human security forall. The integration of bio- and nanotechnology with artificial intelligence and our moreenlightened worldviews provides the basis of life for 10 billion people on Earth and 50billion in space. Although few would prefer to go back to the kinds of dangers we faced40 generations or a thousand years ago, we still have major challenges ahead.Civilization’s complexity and the diverse lives within it render the old Information Agemeasures of income, intelligence, physical abilities, and social status meaningless in the
 
year 3000. Although our lives on Earth and in space are by no means perfect, we havemade it through cyber and biological wars, natural disasters, mass migrations, and newdiseases that threatened to wipe out humanity a number of times over the past thousandyears.By the twenty-second century the greenhouse effect had leveled off. Nanotech reducedthe per capita drain on the environment. Architectural design improved energyefficiencies. Vaporization of seawater by pressure techniques made abundant fresh water.Fossil fuels were replaced by a combination of space solar power and nuclear fusion onEarth and in space. Nearly 20% of energy also came from wind, ground-solar, andgeothermal sources. Electromagnetic beams or super batteries transported most energy.These in turn have since been replaced by today’s energy systems relying on themanagement of the structure of mass, made possible by scientific breakthroughsimpossible for most to comprehend a millennium ago.Although it was never quite clear whether technology proceeded faster than our ability tocontrol it, we were unable to prevent the use of nanoweapons, genetic sabotage, andvarious forms of biological and information warfare. Ancient hatreds from unresolvedconflicts occasionally burst forth with enough allies in a variety of powerful places to getadvanced weapons to cause serious damage. Fortunately, foresight and technologyassessments with species-wide feedback created enough counter measures that we arestill alive today. Global codes of ethics with economic and military enforcement powersscrutinized by public cyber media probably deterred many dangers as well. However, thepossibilities for new kinds of diseases from anomalies among natural mutations, artificialbiology, and biological weapons leave us all a bit uneasy even today.On the brighter side, inherited diseases of our ancestors no longer exist. They wereeliminated by human genetic technology after several generations of research andcontentious public debates in the early third millennium. Parents who wanted the best fortheir children in the early twenty-second century drove the next step of geneticengineering toward enhanced intelligence and other features.The genes that influenced a range of brain functions were identified during the earlytwenty-first century. Low intelligence, like poor eyesight, was considered a geneticproblem and was treated. Based on this success, many parents crossed borders to taketheir children to countries that legalized intelligence enhancement, causing othercountries to allow the practice—with an important addition. They added the requirementthat genes influencing compassion and related behaviors be checked and coupled with thetreatment. As a result, human ability to deal with complex and unexpected problems wasgreatly increased, as was our foresight, reaction time, and compassion.The trade-offs between enhanced memory and the speed of learning are under continualreview, since our abilities in both areas are constantly evolving. The efficiency and ethicsof improved brain-computer interfaces verses genetic engineering to increase individualand collective intelligence have also been debated for centuries.Ecological and fundamentalist religious groups who resisted genetic enhancement finallyaccepted the value of increased intelligence, health, and more ethical behavior made
 
possible by relatively minor genetic modification and individually tailored foods.Unfortunately, they gave in too soon. Unforeseen new kinds of diseases and geneticweaknesses were added to the human gene line and passed on to later generations.Although cosmic rays have also been doing this throughout evolution, direct humanintervention had broader and faster impacts, which seemed more menacing. Even moreworrisome was genetic sabotage. Like computer viruses that polluted cyberspace, thespread of genetic errors polluted the human gene pool. This contributed to unanticipatedspeciation within our genus. Although international treaties on global ethics were ratified,constant vigilance was necessary to prevent the use of this technology to create slavecultures and bioweapons over the past thousand years. Fortunately, we can detectproblems in vitro and prevent their propagation.Biological intelligence, artificial intelligence, and network intelligence were increased orenhanced in parallel by constantly adding new heuristics to force the incorporation of wisdom and global ethics in all systems. In the pre-global brain era, few people had manychances to use their intelligence for humanitarian purposes. Today we are all sointerconnected that the right use of intelligence is constantly questioned, making theancient dialectic of wisdom and intelligence very much alive today. Waste of any sort -including of good ideas and human talent - has become recognized as a sin. If an ideawas not accessed by the right person for the right reason at the right time to make animprovement, it was considered to be a waste, a kind of reality pollution.Increasing human intelligence by education, training, and nutrition became significantlyaugmented by genetic engineering. Both individual human and collective intelligence hadincreased and become so interconnected with technology that it could no longer bemeasured as an individual capacity. Although individuals with individual perspectivesstill exist in the year 3000, as sort of an ongoing synthesis, the continual intensity of complex interactivities with so many people and artificial intelligences has blurred thedistinction between the individual’s capacity and the capacity of that person’senvironment. With so much to draw from among each individual’s set of interactions,each person became more unique rather than similar. External protocols were in common,but a person’s subjectivity became far more unique than our ancestors’ of thousands of years ago. Each millennium, humanity has become a richer diversity of minds, whilereinforcing much of the underlying spiritual commonality.Most historians agree that global ethics would have evolved eventually as part of theprocesses of globalization, space migration, and environmental security efforts, but thefact remains that the rich-poor cyber biowars and then the series of earthquakes thatdestroyed several megacities in the mid-twenty-second century accelerated progress inglobal ethics by engendering unprecedented global compassion. At the same time, thenumber of trans-religious-philosophical dialogues increased rapidly. These dialogueswere careful not to create a global theocracy, but to support the development of manynew worldviews, which improved the climate of decisionmaking for better policy forimproved human-environmental dynamics and addressing poverty.All these developments created the conditions for protocols of civilization and inter-human standards, first enshrined in a variety of international treaties that provided thepolitical stability that lead to the prosperity we enjoy today. Some governing systems
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