Future History: Resource Usage

I’m prompted by Amanda’s comment to think about the trends in resource usage and their effect on the next several millenia of our history, at least as I’m projecting for use in my writing.

Future History: Computing

As one might expect—since my degree is in computer science—one of the minor areas (sub-themes, if you will) that I touch on occasionally in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation, is alternate-universe computing. I like to speculate as to how computers and the ecosystem of ideas around them might develop if a few dozen people from our generation, including a handful with some trained insight into the inner workings of the technology, get dropped into a culture for whom “the Internet” was something to read about in yearly diplomatic or intelligence briefings, if that. And how that development would change symbiotically with the use of applied metaphysics.

But I’ll write more about that later. Today I’d like to talk about how, for the purposes of that part of the Shine Cycle which are set in our own future, I project computing will develop in our world over the next several centuries, and what sort of impact it will have.

Future History: Space travel

One trend I’ve projected in my future history for my fantasy series-in-preparation, the Shine Cycle, is a continued development of our understanding of the universe, creating and benefitting from improvements in spacecraft.

Future History: Introduction

A few events of my fantasy series-in-preparation will take place in our world. Because of this, and my determination to get everything “right” and ensure everything is consistent, I’ve been developing a projection for the future history of Earth.

I’ve tried to credibly extend present trends into the future, but mostly I’m just trying to end up with something noteworthy happening in each period of time, and with everything moving toward the end of all things. I plan to continue my outline of projected future history through the next thirteen centuries or so, with an event or two every decade.

Most of this won’t get used directly in the Shine Cycle, so I’d most likely be amenable to someone else borrowing it for his or her own writing, or wanting me to include his or her own projections as part of my background. (I asked for your ideas a few months ago.)

In the coming weeks in this space on Mondays (the regular “Shine Cycle background” spot), I’ll occasionally write about specific events or trends in the future history, like I’ve been writing about places and features of the world in which most of the story is set.

Future History

While most of the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation, takes place in an imagined universe with its own history, and a few other “pocket universes” with their own histories, there are a couple of places in the story where our universe, and in particular Earth, become centrally involved.

But because these interactions take place in our future—in some cases the relatively near future, in one case much farther—I need to have some general idea of what the future will be like when the story comes back to Earth. So I intend to make a pretty general “outline of history” from the present to a little after A.D. 3000. I have a few ideas that I want to include, but I thought I’d ask my readers. Do you have any ideas about what my speculative “future history” should include?