It remains to be seen if we have a future; many people think that as a result of the massive amounts of pollution produced over the last 100 years the environment will collapse within 25 years or so. The pollution we have produced could be a sign that we have spent too long in this stage and it is time to move on to other ways of doing things, or perhaps that we have tried too hard and moved too quickly, that humans weren't ready to take on the role of gods.
Doom stories apart, if the earth's continues to support us for long enough I believe that we will evolve into responsible beings, able to control our power and use it wisely. We must learn this.
I think the Internet is a extremely interesting development of the last couple of years. It is transforming commerce and communication in ways which could not have been imagined by most people only 10 years ago. In another 10 years who can tell what will happen? As computing power and bandwidth increases it is feasible that virtual reality will become possible. I could be sitting at home while working with my colleagues in a virtual office complex on the other side of the world. We could talk to each other just as we would in real life, take coffee breaks together, and have lunch together in a virtual park, complete with wind, rain, birds and so on. For that matter, why not move the virtual office out into the park, wouldn't it be much nicer?
Once virtual reality progresses to the point where the virtual and the real reality are just as believable, many people will 'opt out' of the real one, because in the virtual reality you can have anything you want, be anything you want, if you can program it into the reality. In this (real, here and now) reality I can't afford to buy a digital camera, but in the virtual one I could just make a camera. The only things people will need in the real world are shelter and food, the virtual world will provide everything else. Work done in the virtual world can pay for food and shelter in the real one. All the businesses in the world (except the ones that make VR possible) will have no customers, because all the customers will have left the reality that they are in. I suspect that the business world will do it's best to stop VR becoming a 'reality' by any means necessary; similar to the Church a few centuries ago, trying to hang on to an old, dying system by persecuting 'heretics'.
In this virtual world we will be gods in the truest sense of the word; we will be able to create anything out of thin 'air', we can instantly be anywhere we like, talking to anyone. If we like we can throw lightning around like Zeus, or ride a flaming chariot across the sky like Apollo. Humans will be the creators of a whole new reality, just like gods were; we will have moved from being gods on earth to being gods on earth and the whole of reality (virtual, reality that is).
I am not saying that virtual reality is what I think will happen, it's just an idea. Perhaps this trend towards becoming gods will show itself without the help of technology...
Previous
Overview Prehistory Egypt/Greece/Rome Industrial Revolution Now Future? Feedback