you make some very good points, jhwegener.
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...not a single person yet, as far as I know, live in space (have permanently settled there), an only a few parts in a billion people have visited space, as commonly understood(there may be some question about definitions of "space"). And I think that to a lesser degree being the case with Antarctica too.
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Agreed. But it's very early days for both, and isn't it exciting to be alive as the very first steps are happening?
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About the future: I have a little suspicion that this century will be very different from those imediately before, exactly when it comes to "human expansion" on those fields we use to regard it as nearly self-evident. One such field is settled territory. One may ask if this may actually decline many places.
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No argument there...especially when the tide comes in...and there are many examples of cities, and even civilisations, that were abandoned or lost ...but, over the course of human history the trend has been one of increase, and unless there is a major catastrophe (all-out global war, pandemic disease, sudden climate shift, mass extinction event, etc) I expect that increase will continue, with population increases in some areas outstripping population decreases in others.
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I think a lot of predictions for the year 2000 have been falsified, and my impression is those tended to exaggerate human the speed of many developments.
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Right on!
Some of us do tend to be a bit ambitious when it comes to 'predictions'; that's why I'm prepared to be >gulp!< humiliated in 2100...
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Available resources, which in many cases might decline. Production of many kinds of goods (here I am not on familiar ground. but can nearly all groups of people continually increase their consumption and is it desirable?)
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An excellent point, jhwegener!, and a scary one...one of the historical scenarios that leads to war...
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Even for tecnological development one may ask if the speed of change will perhaps slow sometime, or in some respects have done so already. (here one example:the speed of movement. In the last years, the fastest passenger plane has been buried,namely the Concorde, which had been in the air for many years - 25(?) or so).
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Yes, indeed...the poor Concorde...suffered from bad marketing; the ticket prices were so much higher than conventional jet aircraft that only the richest would use it...one crashed with no survivors...when the wealthiest people fear for their lives, markets crash and companies collapse...but no matter how many 747s, 767s, DC10s, etc crashed with no survivors, we keep climbing into them and they keep flying...I think (imagine/dream/hope?) we'll see new generation supersonic passenger aircraft, with more affordable ticket prices...eventually.
