12 Events That Will Change Everything (interactive)
The folks over at Scientific American have created a fascinating interactive article.The web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created by Zemi Media.
The events include a polar meltdown; extra dimensions, a nuclear exchange, discovering alien intelligence, creating life, room temperature super-conductors, machine self-awareness, cloning of a human, a massive pacific earthquake, fusion energy, a deadly pandemic, and a major asteroid collision.
From the editors:
"The best science transforms our conception of the universe and our place in it and helps us to understand and cope with the changes beyond our control. Relativity, natural selection, germ theory, heliocentrism, and other explanations of natural phenomena have remade our intellectual and cultural landscapes. The same holds true for inventions as diverse as the Internet, formal logic, agriculture, and the wheel.
"The best science transforms our conception of the universe and our place in it and helps us to understand and cope with the changes beyond our control. Relativity, natural selection, germ theory, heliocentrism, and other explanations of natural phenomena have remade our intellectual and cultural landscapes. The same holds true for inventions as diverse as the Internet, formal logic, agriculture, and the wheel.
What dramatic new events are in store for humanity?
In the article, we contemplate 12 possibilities and rate their likelihood of happening by the year 2050. Some will no doubt bring to mind long-standing dystopian visions: extinction-causing asteroid collisions, war-waging intelligent machines, Frankenstein's monster. Yet the best thinking today suggests that many events will not unfold as expected. In fact, a scenario could be seen as sobering and disappointing to one person and curious and uplifting to another.
In the article, we contemplate 12 possibilities and rate their likelihood of happening by the year 2050. Some will no doubt bring to mind long-standing dystopian visions: extinction-causing asteroid collisions, war-waging intelligent machines, Frankenstein's monster. Yet the best thinking today suggests that many events will not unfold as expected. In fact, a scenario could be seen as sobering and disappointing to one person and curious and uplifting to another.
One thing is certain: they all have the power to forever reshape how we think about ourselves and how we live our lives."
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