Considering the history of our country and culture and its changing over the last century or so, and considering the current state of our country with regard to the issues of immigration and the economy, what do you see happening with our culture in general for the next century or so?

I ask because of hearing various people I work with speaking their opinnons of immigration, it seems that were at an important crossroads. consider these examples:

1. The recent events surrounding the proposed resolution of singing the anthem in english only
2. The last 15 years the spanish language has had in influencing our economic decisions (from bi-lingual menus and advretisements to ESL programs in our schools).

I'm feel like Im seeing more and more similarities between our culture and hte Roman empire just prior to its decline. The world is changing, wether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. It seems that we have no choice but to adapt our culture to these global changes if we as a civilization wish to endure beyon the next century. However, in that adaptation, do we not lose what we would consider our culture today?

Your views on this would be appreciated.

5/1/2006 2:59:40 PM

it is so sad that we lost the culture that existed 150 yrs ago (racism, slavery, sexism, etc. etc.)

5/1/2006 3:02:20 PM

5/1/2006 3:36:08 PM

Superpowers rise, superpowers fall. It's the one constant in world history.

5/1/2006 3:42:58 PM

^ NAME ONE, SMART GUY.

5/1/2006 3:45:43 PM

egypt, greece, rome, china, britain

and don't forget about canada

5/1/2006 8:13:29 PM

Shit will be completely different in 150 years.

5/1/2006 8:24:49 PM

Quote :

"Jax883: I'm feel like Im seeing more and more similarities between our culture and hte Roman empire just prior to its decline."

God I can't figure out if that sounds more like a dumbass liberal or a dumbass conservative...

"oh noes, teh world is going to end omg omg !!1" 

5/1/2006 8:27:08 PM

Computers will be vastly smarter than people in 150 years. It'll be pretty cool, most likely.

5/1/2006 9:05:40 PM

the edomites will totally have won

5/1/2006 9:28:57 PM

Don't talk about the long-term ramifications. We need cheap lettuce today. That's all that matters.

5/1/2006 9:43:48 PM

It will be revealed that the only reason the mitten was invented was because something cute was needed to rhyme with kitten.

5/1/2006 9:49:59 PM

you know how when you read history books like spain and portugal were like world powers back in the day?

well thats gonna be the us in like 150 years

5/1/2006 10:05:05 PM

we're all going to live in areas with the population density of our larger metropolises

with big solar farms out in the rural areas

5/1/2006 10:35:59 PM

You're seeing similarities because you get your history from Television and stupid shit like that sounds good.

There's nothing distinctly similar between the US and Roman Empire.

5/1/2006 11:14:52 PM

Rome wasn't built in a day, nor was in toppled in a day

the Vandals and Goths came in over several hundred years, took seats in the senate (some granted by Julius Caesar himself), and became a part of the population long before the empire fell

and in the grand scheme of things, it was a relatively painless fall. not to mention, while not a world power, Italy is still a first world country.

whats most important is the behavioural inheritance that the Romans passed on. the Angles inherited and used the Roman ethos with the greatest impact, and added their own elements in the equation of being a superpower. thus Rome never really fell.

5/1/2006 11:51:15 PM

As most things have been covered:

Quote :

"I'm feel like Im seeing more and more similarities between our culture and hte Roman empire just prior to its decline."

Such as? Last I checked the Presidency hadn't quite yet siezed parliamentary power, so to the best of my knowledge we are still in the days of the early republic (pre-Caesar, time BC). Of course, that assumes such a comparison makes sense, which I don't believe it does, but it can be fun to play along

[Edited on May 2, 2006 at 12:09 AM. Reason : .,.]

5/2/2006 12:09:25 AM

language wont matter. in the next 20 years technology will be developed (and well in place) to make language barriers non existent

5/2/2006 12:20:46 AM

Quote :

"^ NAME ONE, SMART GUY."

even though I agree with you, I'm gonna play the asshole and say...

USSR

pwnt


as for 50 years from now, English as official language, reduction to elimination of immigration laws (back to unrestricted immigration but all incoming undergo week long program/background check), strong movement toward fuelcell powered vehicles (heavy transport as well) using petrol cracking tech, increased number of Pyro-metallurgical Fuel Cycling nuclear power plants or conversions to them resulting in the shutting down of oil and natural gas electrical plants, first powerful voices about restructuring legal and tax code.

150 years from now, fuel cell powered vehicles via solar powered H cracking from biochemical sources (runs on garbage), restructured legal and tax codes in effect reducing beaurcratic overhead, lessening burdens on the prison and legal system as well as the IRS, Nuclear power provides almost 70% of power demands with advanced coal systems, geothermal, solar, and wind techs filling in the rest, strong movement toward a north american government including, Qubec, Canada, Mexico and the US (at 52 states).

[Edited on May 2, 2006 at 1:28 AM. Reason : projection]

5/2/2006 1:18:19 AM

^ Wow. You are one heck of an author. (everyone from here-on out should read Arab's post)
Where do you get 52 states? Are you combining the various new-england states?
Also, we will not lift restrictions on immigration until the rest of the world modernises, something that will not happen in Africa until the 100 year mark, possibly not until an external force invades and occupies the continent (possibly South Africa for an internal solution).

5/2/2006 2:16:53 AM

^

But think of how good we'd be in the olympics.

5/2/2006 2:21:48 AM

I used to "know" AI would play heavily in our future, but I'm starting to have my doubts. At this rate, it's going to be another couple decades before we even have the technology to start playing with large, highly-inteconnected virtual neural networks in real time. It's a bandwidth computing problem, mostly, and cache isn't the answer. Processor interconnects and memory need to increase in speed by many orders of magnitude (while they have been increasing much more slowly than core clock speeds). As I understand it, there's also no (non-theoretical) reason to assume that simulations of biological neural networks are even Turing-computable: if spacetime turns out not to be quantized then it's a possibility that biological neural networks function as real computers (computers with infinite floating point precision), which would make their simulation a higher order of computation than a Turing machine can execute in finite time.

In 150 years? I could see all of our fancy microcircuitry becoming the Grecian fire or Damascene steel of the next dark age. A craft whose artisans were so few and secrets so guarded that incomprehensible artifacts and folklore will be its legacy.

5/2/2006 7:19:05 AM

Quote :

"In 150 years? I could see all of our fancy microcircuitry becoming the Grecian fire or Damascene steel of the next dark age. A craft whose artisans were so few and secrets so guarded that incomprehensible artifacts and folklore will be its legacy."

ohhhhh yeaaa, keep talking, mmmmm

5/2/2006 10:22:49 AM

Quote :

"Where do you get 52 states?"

guam and puerto rico.

5/2/2006 10:25:43 AM

Quote :

"...restructured legal and tax codes in effect reducing beaurcratic overhead, lessening burdens on the prison and legal system as well as the IRS..."

What precedence do you have for seeing any governemnt turn less bureaucratic, rather than the other way around?

5/2/2006 12:04:26 PM

What you guys are doing, and what people tend to do when predicting the future, is to create a world that is an exaggerated version of now. Today we have computers - tomorrow we will have REALLY smart computers! Today we have immigrants - tomorrow we will be 90% immigrants!

In the science fiction craze of the 50s, everyone thought that 2000 would be a bigger, shinier version of 1955. The future imagined by writers had humans exploring space but continuing to record documents on microfilm. In these stories things changed, but not really. People are terrible at predicting things they should've seen coming.

Let's take the cell phone, after all, it's just a smaller, portable version of the phones that have been around for 100 years. But nobody saw that coming. Instead everyone thought that the future would have video communication - a two way TV that sits in one place just like the phones of the day.

The truth is that life changes in ways that are very difficult to forsee. Think of a hundred years ago, how different life was then and how nobody could have possibly imagined the events to come. Two world wars, the Civil Rights movement, the digital revolution. How could someone in 1906 or even 1956 predict the influence of the Internet when personal computers were unheard of.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try, I guess it's a fine way to pass the time. But you'll be wrong.

5/2/2006 12:50:16 PM

within 150 years, matter transport:

-will reinvent the energy markets
-will make some commodities supply chains super-efficient
-will drastically reduce world hunger
-will not be used safely on living beings

5/2/2006 1:54:49 PM

^^ that's very well said

the funny thing about the future is that we may be coming on a technological lag

so, 100 years from now may very well be basically the same as today, technologically speaking

5/2/2006 2:11:11 PM

Quote :

"so, 100 years from now may very well be basically the same as today, technologically speaking"

Bullshit. The law of accelerating of returns ain't a myth. We'll have plenty of nanotech and AI in 100 years.

5/2/2006 3:15:43 PM

no way.

we're gonna see a marked flattening of the innovation curve. Not only is technology going to prove to be self-limiting (by empowering corporations/government to restrict innovation), but when innovation is actually possible/permitted, it will prove to be extremely difficult to synthesize the increasing amount of information needed to advance to that next exponential checkpoint.

5/2/2006 3:31:09 PM

Well Nerdchick, to say that they would be wrong... is quite a mistep. Arab13 is merely deducing a future from things he knows now. It is not only right to build on these deductions, it is encouraged by all fields of science. It is, however, very unfair... to set limits on what cannot be determined yet, which... is what you just did. So let's stop talking in circles... the main point of this thread, which gets my seal of approval, is to poke eachother's brains.

[Edited on May 2, 2006 at 4:08 PM. Reason : -]

5/2/2006 4:05:20 PM

let me ask you

is today very much different that 50 years ago?

5/2/2006 4:07:23 PM

Nanotech research is going on right now, is mapping of the human brain. There's no reason for it to stop.

Quote :

"is today very much different that 50 years ago?"

I didn't post on TWW much back in the 50s... Yes, it's different. Computers are better, phones are better, games are better, weapons are better... etc.

5/2/2006 4:16:19 PM

Quote :

"is today very much different that 50 years ago?"

by far, yes!

productivity, knowledge, and communication have all improved by orders of magnitude

5/2/2006 4:29:25 PM

Quote :

"But think of how good we'd be in the olympics."

hahahahaha

5/2/2006 4:32:14 PM