Living in the Year Million

When we read about the history of our past or news of current events, we know what our cities like and how we live our lives but what if...

When we read about the history of our past or news of current events, we know what our cities like and how we live our lives but what if there is a history of our future? What if we envision what our future world will be like? Will it be a good one or a page taken from a dystopian sci-fi movie?

National Geographic's new documentary series has envisioned a brave new world where the way we live may not be what what we think will be. Our future may not be written yet but it is depicted as thrilling and even frightening as our greatest technological creations may be our greatest enemy that will eventually destroy us all! Future technologies will dominate in our descendants' lifetime that it will integrate itself on humankind.

Year Million is a distant future but the series has uncovered every aspect of future technology that will have a profound effect on our future lives - both good and bad.

In our search for immortality, we will develop advanced technologies that combines engineering with the neurosciences so that we become Gods by creating an exact and even better duplicates of our selves with robots and androids controlled by sophisticated artificial intelligence that will eventually trump the most brilliant minds in our history. We will see a future where AI-controlled beings become indispensable collaborators to our very own existence or destroy the way we are. All our creation, progress and advancement will eventually lead us to a singularity where the evolution of the human species will be at a crossroad.

There will be a time wherein advancements in genetic engineering will make it possible to live forever by removing ageing in us through various means from a "fountain of youth" serum to full-scale human organ 3D printing. What is the price to pay if we become "immortals"? Will ageing become a thing of the pass and we forever lose the essence of being human?

With the exponential advancement in graphics and computing power, we will be able to leave our physical body and become someone what we truly want to be with the help of VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) technologies. Soon, our thoughts and consciousness will be uploaded to a limitless cloud space. More of our "human activities" will be digitized as everything will be transferred to virtual spaces thereby providing us profound experiences with our new online personas and transforming how the world around us works. Our reality will be just a "dream-like" state inside our own digital consciousness.

The revolution has just began ever since the Internet has transformed all aspect of our modern culture so that it will reach to a tipping point where human communication will lose its essence as everyone will be telepathic with the help of neural prosthetic embedded in our head. The moment we think about something, the other person will know it by then instantaneously. Privacy by then will be a thing of the past!

We know that our natural resources is limited and soon we are bound to run out of water, food, oil and all the vital elements needed to run a modern human society. This overconsumption brought about by exponential population growth will bring us to a breaking point where we have to find new engineering solutions to solve our resource scarcity or perhaps go to other planets in search for viable source of these much needed resources. Worse comes to worse when everyone on Earth will have to move out to another planet light years away to recreate our life there. In this case, we may have to play God and terraform a new planet to reflect Earth's image. Will this have unintended consequences if done on Earth? Is a human-centric view of the universe still valid or are there other beings looking to find us instead?

By the time we leave Earth, it will be destroyed as the Sun reaches the end of its lifetime. We may have to be like the Puritans in the Mayflower and transfer millennia of human progress to an alien landscape. We have to venture into the unknown just as what Ferdinand Magellan and all the great explorers did in the past. It is always been in our human spirit that will lead us to new lands and so we are destined to spread out of our horizon. Will we be able to find new forms of life similar to what we see on Earth or is it the other way around? Perhaps, science fiction will become reality in the end. Only time will tell!