Eastern Oklahoma Mensa Predicts the Millennium

by David Means

Tulsa, OK -- January 26, 2001 -- Now that the world has actually entered the twenty-first century, and begun the third millennium of the Christian calendar; the members of the Eastern Oklahoma branch of American Mensa have pooled their brain power and made a series of predictions concerning the future, grouped into several categories. Which of these various possible scenarios we have extrapolated for the new millennium will actually occur depends to a certain extent on chance and on factors currently both unpredictable and unknown.

Technology Predictions

·        In light of the speed with which computer technology took hold in the latter half of the 20th century, it is quite safe to say that it will become a dominant, almost self-evident feature of the 3rd millennium.

·        In the first half of the 21st century, we will see computers involved in a much larger share of our personal and business lives. In the home, our entertainment devices -- stereo, television, CD, DVD, and game machines -- will become integrated with the home (and hand-held) computer, as will our answering machines and phones. This integration is already occurring, almost faster than it can be predicted.

·        Within two decades, people will no longer need to maintain personal libraries of CD and/or DVD discs, as every possible movie, musical performance, and game will be available to buy or rent by downloading off the Web in a few seconds, at any time.

·        Almost all business-to-business commerce will be conducted via Internet quite soon, and consumers will also purchase an increasingly wide variety of items through this method. The number of retail stores will be reduced but not die out, because consumers will want to physically test and handle certain products they buy; and they will also want the option of making a trip to a store to get a given product right now.

·        More and more ordinary devices in the home, office, and workshop will have tiny, one-chip computers built into them, making them more “intelligent”. By the middle of this century, people will spend their lives surrounded by an invisible network of miniature computers, all exchanging data, in what is known as ubiquitous computing.

·        By the mid-to-late 21st century, computers will be a mature technology, and there will be no significant, “revolutionary” advances for a while -- unless non-standard logics actually allow useful mathematical results. In the 1960’s, non-standard logics allowing more than two truth values (“fuzzy logic”) were developed, but as yet, the results have been of interest predominantly within the field of logic itself. A new mathematics based on multiple truth-values might develop at some point. If so, it is likely that computer technology would also be revolutionized, at least in terms of inner efficiency.

·        There have been several recent developments in biology and biotechnology which should have a very strong impact on at least the first half of the millennium. We are only beginning to delve into manipulation of genes in animals, specifically mammals and human beings. While the moral resistance will be high, it seems unavoidable that we will ultimately perform some sort of self-evolution by manipulating our own genes. (See Medical Predictions, below.)

·        As more people are able to afford traveling by plane, the extra load will severely strain the aviation infrastructure. It has been predicted that one billion people will be flying annually by the year 2010, which is guaranteed to overwhelm the current  system. Airlines will be forced to abandon the hub-and-spoke concept for more direct point-to-point routes in an effort to relieve congestion at the major airports.

Climate Predictions

·        Throughout Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history, polar icecaps have been present less than five percent of the time. The planet’s current climate is actually an anomaly -- from the geological perspective the entire Ice Age has been a temporary cold snap -- so the process of global warming is actually bringing the Earth back to its “normal” state. It is still not clear how much of this is man-made and how much is a natural process.

·        The melting of the ice caps and world-wide shrinking of glaciers will return much fresh water to the moisture cycle. The ocean levels will rise, slowly inundating coastal dwellings and cities. How much is flooded depends directly on how much of and how fast the ice caps melt, and at what rate the ocean levels rise.

·        The net effect of global warming will be an expanded Equatorial Climate Zone, which will shift the other zones closer to the poles, with the consequent shrinking of the Polar Zone. Depending on how far north the Temperate and Tropical Zones shift, the southern tier of the United States may no longer experience a quarterly cycle of seasons, but may instead be subject to two seasons: rainy and dry.

·        Another consequence of this climatological shift will be a change in the crops grown at different latitudes. One example of this is areas that currently grow mostly corn will be forced to shift over to cotton, okra, peanuts, and other crops which are better able to withstand the warmer temperatures which will eventually become the normal there. Major corn production will shift to Canada north of the Great Lakes; and wheat will be grown as far north as the Arctic Circle. California and Florida will no longer be the major sources of North America’s citrus fruit, as much of the continent will be warm enough to support citrus orchards.

·        With the Earth’s atmosphere gradually heating up, more energy will be available for storms. As the global climate undergoes this change, we will see more, larger, and more violent storms of all types around the world.

Science Predictions

·        The combination of nano-machines and microscopic computers will lead to incredibly tiny self-directing devices (“microbots”), which will have a host of applications in manufacturing, research, and medicine.

·        Geological scientists will still be struggling to reliably predict both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions when “The Big One” hits the San Andreas Fault sometime in the next twenty to thirty years. The release of pressure there will cause an increase of tension elsewhere in the Pacific tectonic plate, and another large earthquake -- probably along the Asian or Alaskan side of the Pacific rim -- will occur before the end of the century.

·        Depending on the type of fault and where it moves, there is a possibility of a tsunami resulting from an earthquake/seaquake along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. A really severe quake could produce a tsunami as tall as half a kilometer (1,500 feet) when it reaches shore, which will have the possibility of traveling up to fifty miles inland on low-lying coastal areas. Many Pacific coastal cities will be utterly destroyed, causing trillions of dollars of damage and millions of deaths. The global economy will be devastated and could take a decade or more to recover.

·        The possibility of an asteroid or comet striking the Earth during this millennium is so small as to be negligible, and will therefore not be discussed in these predictions.

·        Relativity and quantum mechanics seem to have manifested more of a scientific than a technological transformation, but the basic form of the next scientific revolution is clear: Either the speed of light is not actually constant; or it is constant, but it is possible for matter to exceed the speed of light. Unfortunately, right now we have little or no technology capable of allowing research into objects traveling close to light speed. Once technology reaches the point that we can make numerous accurate observations in this exotic regime, the premises of Einstein’s theory are likely to fall, and we will have a scientific revolution analogous to Einstein’s advance over Newtonian mechanics.

·        Recent research indicates that it may soon be possible to transmit information (but not send objects) faster than light. By mid-twenty-first century scientists will be regularly sending and receiving faster-than-light messages. By the end of the century we might be able to use similar devices to “look backwards” through time and possibly even view the “Big Bang” as it happens.

·        Since the rapid progress of space travel in the 1960’s, we have advanced much more slowly than many people imagined, so the earliest we might establish a true “working colony” outside the earth’s orbit would be roughly 100 years, and it will probably take longer than that. The driving force for establishing an extra-terrestrial colony will be the discovery of some vital natural resource which is in short supply on Earth and which can easily be extracted from the other planet’s surface and cheaply transported home. Economics and the profit motive will decide whether humans ever live on other planets. (This supposes that humans will not be genetically engineered to live on other worlds.)

·        Assuming basic economic prosperity during the millennium, there will be enough spare cash for space travel to continue. By the year 2500, one of two scenarios will be operating: Space travel could still be more or less exotic, with a new landing on a planet or moon once in a while; or we could have a significant portion of the human population living outside earth’s orbit.

·        Sometime in the second half of this millennium humans will travel beyond our solar system. The deciding factor for this type of exploration will be either discovering something warranting the enormous costs required for space travel, or finding a way to make long-distance space travel inexpensive. It is still unclear whether space travel will have a truly significant impact on future society.

Medical Predictions

·        In two to three decades, surgeons will be routinely installing microchips in humans to help regulate the function of various organs and glands, which will allow us to control a host of mental and physical problems such as depression, diabetes, schizophrenia, heart arrhythmia, manic-depression, and so on. By mid-century, criminals and the mentally ill who are judged to be a menace to society will have court-ordered operations to implant chips in order to control their anti-social behavior.

·        Microbots (see Science, above) will be inserted into human bodies as miniscule maintenance personnel with pre-programmed tasks, such as clearing arteries of plaque; repairing torn ligaments; clearing blood clots; excising tumors and cysts; repairing valves; monitoring and adjusting bone density; contraception; and a host of other jobs.

·        Barring a breakthrough in human organ regeneration, by mid-century bioengineers will have developed implantable electro-organic (“bionic”) replacements for ears and eyes, giving hearing to many deaf and sight to many blind people.

·        The current trend of over-prescribing and misuse of antibiotics has allowed resistant strains of diseases such as tuberculosis and gonorrhea to become well-established, making treatment impossible. In the coming decades, many other communicable diseases will also develop resistance to antibiotics, and medical research will be unable to keep pace by developing new drugs. These resistant diseases, combined with rapid world-wide travel, will cause a series of virulent new plagues to repeatedly sweep around the globe.

·        The rapid expansion of the AIDS virus in third-world countries, especially in Africa and south-east Asia, will cause suffering and death on a vast scale. Native peoples’ adherence to voodoo and shamanism will exacerbate the problem by blaming the symptoms on evil spirits, curses by their enemies, or bad karma, thwarting the use of effective medicines and preventive measures. Some areas in Africa and Asia will resemble Europe during the height of the Black Death (1348 - 1350): there will not be enough people living to care for the ill and bury the dead; causing whole towns and villages to be abandoned by the survivors, who will then carry the virus to new sets of victims.

·        An unfortunate side effect of the spread of AIDS in the third world is the tremendous increase in the number of orphans. Infected parents are often forcibly removed to camps or hospices to prevent them infecting anyone else, and the children are left behind to fend for themselves. Those children that do not die are straining their country’s resources allocated for orphans because there are so many -- currently millions in Africa and southern Asia, and the number is rising daily. This problem will only become worse in the future.

·        As the structure and inner workings of the human genetic code becomes increasingly plain, someone somewhere is going to start trying to produce superhumans (“Human Being 2.0”). The temptation will be too great once we have clear knowledge of the genetic basis of both mental and physical prowess.

·        Due to the widespread moral repugnance towards genetically manipulating humans, progress will no doubt be slow at first, but by the end of this century we will already have made some attempts to do this. Ultimately, it will be very hard to resist the prospect of a creating a single individual boasting a combination of Stephen Hawking’s mental abilities, Michael Johnson’s athletic skills, and Mozart’s musical talent.

·        We cannot say who will be the first to create enhanced humans, but once someone does, any country that resists following suit will ultimately go under, since even a small elite of superior individuals will have immense advantages over others: They will be the driving force behind nearly all further scientific and technological advances; not to mention their greater abilities in managing their own countries’ economies and political systems, and their ability to manipulate those of the “un-enhanced”. (Stephen Hawking himself has predicted that an “improved” human race will exist by the end of this millennium.)

·        It is not clear whether the ultimate consequence of this will be the “optimization” of entire populations, or a social stratification with specialized skills programmed into a select group prior to birth; our opinion is that most likely it will be the latter. It would not be surprising if, two or three hundred years from now, the average I.Q. of those who have been genetically engineered is the equivalent of 200 or higher on our present scales. (The current average is defined as 100.)

·        Once these superior humans are in control of the political systems of their various countries, it would not be surprising if they make it illegal for non-enhanced humans to reproduce, in the interest of “improving the race”.

Economic Predictions

·        Over the next half-century, the nations will continue to stratify into two distinct groups: the technological haves and the have-nots; and the economic gap between the two will continue to widen.

·        This expanding economic gap will cause the third-world countries to feel left out of the struggle for wealth and power, which will cause much resentment towards the countries that are already technologically advanced. More and more of each third-world country’s Gross National Product will be diverted to weapons acquisition for combat with their neighbors over the natural resources needed to expand their economies. Thus, much manpower and materiel will be squandered in a downward spiral of war and death.

·        Western nations will occasionally intervene to halt this bloodshed and provide humanitarian aid. However, the third-world combatants will perceive these efforts as a patronizing interference in their internal affairs, or will be suspicious of the Westerners’ motives; and might temporarily band together to drive off their common enemy. In any case, unless the technological “haves” perform miracles and change the regional economic and social situations, the underlying roots of the conflicts will remain, causing the “have-nots” to resume warfare as soon as the Western interloper has left.

·        By the end of this century, the most valuable natural resource will not be gold, silver, diamonds, metal ore, coal, petroleum, or any of the other traditional industrial necessities, but instead will be potable water. As the natural aquifers and other sources of pure water are depleted, the few that remain will increase in value astronomically. Those who control the sources of drinkable water will ration its use and dictate its distribution.

·        As clean water becomes scarce, there will be two approaches to obtaining additional drinking water. The first involves the application of technology to purify water that is marginal. The second approach involves “mining” the water frozen in the world’s glaciers and the polar ice caps.

·        As water use becomes more restricted, the current land utilization in arid regions will change, and much currently-productive land will revert to the semi-desert it originally was. (A good example is the intense irrigation of normally arid parts of the American West, especially California.) As less water is available for agriculture -- or the price becomes astronomical -- many of the farms, orchards, and vineyards located in naturally dry valleys around the world will be forced to cease operation. With fewer agricultural jobs available, the pool of unemployed migrant and menial laborers will expand, adding to each nations’ welfare burden.

·        With a limited amount of water available, many large cities around the globe will be forced to restrict their expansion. There will be a conflict between allowing more people to move in (or be born) to increase the tax base, or bringing in more manufacturing plants to create jobs for the unemployed residents. In all cases, daily water usage will be rationed, and heavy fines -- and possibly imprisonment -- will be levied on violators.

·        Societies based on a Keynesian free market combined with a parliamentary democracy have established themselves as the most viable forms of national organization under modern conditions; in fact, the free market economy has gained almost universal acceptance. While some nations are attempting to combine a free market with more rigid hierarchical political structures -- such as China and some other Communist/Socialist countries -- in the absence of major social change the Chinese model will be unable to compete economically with Western-style democracies.

Social Predictions

·        It is doubtful that a free market can, under current conditions, be fully reconciled with a strongly centralized government such as a pure monarchy, dictatorship, or aristocracy. However, biotechnology could change all that. If we indeed start creating specialized human beings, those with the appropriate talents will no doubt be running both businesses and governments, so it is quite possible that Western society could shift towards an aristocracy based on superior intelligence and ability.

·        In the U.S., an aristocracy would develop much more subtly, and it is conceivable that, one or two centuries from now, voting rights could be restricted to “competent” individuals -- i.e., only those of reasonable intelligence. Since the IQ of the members of the elite group(s) at that time could be as high as 200 on our present scales, they could easily set a minimum equivalent to our 150, which is approximately the top one tenth of one percent (0.1%), currently. We have in the past adopted various requirements for restricting voting rights (must be a property owner, white, male, 21 or older, grandfather clauses, poll taxes, etc.), and while something like this prediction seems hardly conceivable now, a lot can happen in any society in a century.

·        While the threat from weapons of mass destruction seems less acute after the end of the Cold War, the breakdown of the old Soviet Union may have actually increased it, at least in the sense of isolated usages of nuclear or biological weapons by Third World terrorists capable of purchasing such technologies on the black market. We expect that during the next few decades there will be numerous instances of terrorists using weapons of either type, possibly completely obliterating some major U.S. or European city. Biological weapons can cause wide-spread death and disease, and there is even a slight possibility that the entire human species could be destroyed, rendering any further predictions of human history moot.

·        However, unless the human race is eradicated, such problems will not exert a major impact on civilization as a whole. The world will certainly suffer some nuclear and/or biological terrorism, and the immediate consequences will be horrific. But, from the perspective of the next 1,000 years, these will be only minor setbacks and not cataclysms. Progress will continue.

·        The developed countries are so interlocked economically that war between any of them would be mutually destructive, and that trend will continue to deter open conflict between industrialized nations. Moreover, the world has come to recognize that with an increasingly intertwined global economy, individual well-being is dependent upon the well-being of all. This recognition has led to regular coordination of policies between the governments of all significant economic powers (G7 summits, OPEC meetings, etc.).

·        Slowly but surely the Third World will also industrialize, and it is in the interest of developed nations to encourage this as a method of maintaining peace. The more dependent undeveloped nations are on their neighbors, the less likely they are to make war on each other. As this industrialization occurs, the centers of economic and political power may shift significantly. Countries creating new, modern infrastructures (Singapore, Malaysia, etc.) will have advantages over those developed in the 20th century, which require significant maintenance, diverting funds from their efforts to modernize.

·        While most of the current economic and political power bases will shift, there will also be moderate unification over the next few centuries. Not to a central world government, but possibly something like a stronger U.N. as international moderator. There could even possibly be a single global currency sometime in the next two centuries.

·        If the Earth’s population maintains its current rate of expansion, and no disaster or plague causes a massive die-off of humanity, then the number of people to be fed will eventually exceed the planet’s available food production capability, and many third-world and semi-industrialized countries will be beset by famine. By 2030 India will have surpassed China in population, both having over one billion citizens each; and both those countries -- plus more in Africa and southeast Asia -- will have difficulty adequately feeding their citizens. However, this is a self-limiting problem as the excess population will simply starve to death. Since more people than necessary for a food/population balance will die during a famine, there will be a few years where there is a slight food surplus; but the population will soon overshoot the limit and the cycle will start over.

·        Many of the poorly educated will be pushed to the fringe of society where they will only be useful for menial tasks; they will realize what has happened to them and will resent being marginalized. These economically disadvantaged people will draw themselves together in an effort to make their voices heard. These groupings will be mainly along ethnic lines, and those who believe they are being ignored will resort to violence to bring notice to their plight. If this cultural clustering is combined with religious zeal, it will become the root of numerous jihads and frequent ‘ethnic cleansings’ (by whatever name).

·        A large increase in militant religious fundamentalism, some Christian and Hindu, but the majority Moslem, will cause a strong escalation in the number of world-wide acts of terrorism over the next few decades. At the present time the major instructor of terrorists is the Taliban of Afghanistan, which is sending trained men all across southern Asia and Indonesia. Their purpose is to destabilize and eliminate current governments, of whatever type, so that a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy can replace them. This is the region where the majority of the twenty-first century’s fighting and terrorism will occur. (America actually contributed to this current spreading of militant Islam by supplying the Afghani resistance fighters with advanced weapons and training to withstand the Soviet invasion and occupation during the 1980’s.)

·        It is possible that, by the end of the twenty-first century, the nations of the world will be aligned in three major socio-political groups: The Western, democratic, technological haves, which crave natural resources; the Middle Eastern, theocratic, technological have-nots and emerging nations, with raw materials to sell; and the Far Eastern nations, with differing governments, a mix of haves and have-nots, whose major exports will be a combination of raw materials and cheap labor. (This is roughly similar to the situation postulated in George Orwell’s 1984, only a century later.)

·        Internally, American society will become somewhat Balkanized and certainly more violent, but our terrorists will generally be home-grown and frequently grouped by similar cultural backgrounds and personal beliefs -- white supremacists, black supremacists, religious separatists, anti-government activists, anarchists, eco-terrorists and modern Luddites, etc. There will be more and larger acts of terrorism as each group tries to make a bigger statement than the last: witness the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, which was followed by the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The number of fringe groups and loonies is increasing and more and bigger targets are waiting.

Predictions about Tulsa

·        Despite the best efforts of the city leaders, they will be unable to revitalize downtown in the same fashion that Oklahoma City did. OKC was able to turn Bricktown into a trendy area because there was nothing like it anywhere in the city, and some sort of upscale district was desperately needed. Tulsa will never have anything similar to Bricktown because we don’t need it: We already have two trendy areas -- Cherry Street and Brookside -- and the metro Tulsa population base is too small to support a third such area, making efforts in that direction economically marginal.

·        The local water source will continue to deteriorate in quality due to out-of-state pollution in the watershed of the supply rivers. As north-west Arkansas continues to industrialize, we Tulsans will either have to accept a higher level of pollution in our drinking water, or seek a Federal solution to curb the upstream economic expansion.

·        Tulsa has become a Mecca for nation-wide telemarketing call centers due to the central location and lower cost of living. Over the next ten years the structure of these call centers will be reconfigured for greater efficiency by shifting their thousands of employees to a work-at-home situation. This will greatly expand the work-at-home opportunities in Tulsa and surrounding counties.

Overview

While the prophecies above lean strongly towards “doom-and-gloom”, there are a number of bright spots and reasons for hope, which may mitigate much of the negative impact, and may even eliminate some of the worst predictions:

·        Technology is improving the predictions of volcanic eruptions, and new engineering designs are minimizing damage from earthquakes.

·        Improved weather and climate models are bringing better understanding of the forces affecting our atmosphere, allowing earlier and more accurate warnings concerning tornadoes, hurricanes, and other severe weather.

·        Medical science is advancing rapidly and finding more cures and better preventive measures against disease. We are closer than ever to cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, AIDS, and a host of other conditions.

·        Despite the high human birth rate in certain regions, the average global birth rate is decreasing slowly, postponing eventual famine and perhaps allowing for biological solutions to the potential food shortage via genetic crop engineering.

·        We are in the Age of Information, where knowledge can be quickly and easily shared with colleagues around the globe, facilitating research and technological advancement.

·        Computers continue to increase in speed, shrink in size, and decrease in cost, making access to the global Internet available to more people every day.

To sum up, this new millennium will be an age of increasingly sophisticated technologies, but also a time when the human species, for better or worse, will redefine its nature and organization. We will be capable of manipulating the genetic structure of all terrestrial life forms, and we will eventually do it. As a result, the human species could, as Nietzsche predicted with a somewhat different slant, give way to a species of super humans. Within a few centuries, genetically enhanced people will be making the world’s political and economic decisions, as well as making the vast majority of scientific discoveries and technological advancements. This development might result in political transformations away from democracy, but it will not threaten the peace of a global economic and political network. The center of power may very well shift to the Far East, where the highest percentage of the world’s population will reside. By the end of this  millennium, these power centers may be somewhere off-planet, or even outside of our solar system.

Our Very Last Prediction

The vast majority of people will continue to incorrectly refer to the year 2000 as the start of the twenty-first century and the third millennium, instead of the last year of the twentieth century and second millennium. But, since so many people will be counting it wrong in the same way, it probably won’t make much difference.