Since I still don't have any more ideas for neat stories or actually intriguing topics to talk about I'll do some more self-indulging and say some words about my hopes for the future. These hopes will mostly be technology related since that's the area I'm most interested in.
For one I'm expecting that prosthetics is going to make major advancements. I'm very hopefully that we will be able to replace limbs almost seamlessly at some point within my lifespan. Achieving full limb replacement would be a huge help in a lot of areas and could even lead to interesting research results in related areas like nerve-controlled interfaces and so on.
A huge improvement in artificial limbs is something that I'm expecting to happen. If I go further into the territory of uncertainty and wish-fulfilment, I am desperately hoping that not only limbs, but also organs can be replaced with artificial reproductions without major issues in the future. Another interesting area related to this is the growing of organs, which has seen some nice progress in recent years, but I think being able to engineer organs would be a much more intriguing endeavour.
Going even farther into fantasy land I wish for full-body prosthetics. Which is to say that you can somehow transplant your brain or consciousness into a completely artificial body. Being able to do this would have massive consequences for human life in all sorts of ways. First and foremost it could mean a hugely increased lifespan, relief for severely disabled people, not to mention the practically limitless possible applications the ability to directly control non-humanoid bodies would have. Now, I realise that this is already far into science-fiction territory and I don't realistically expect this to happen within my lifespan or ever at all. It is possible, at least from my very limited understanding, but I'd still deem it rather unlikely.
So yeah, cybernetic enhancements to the human body are one of the things I'm very excited about as the possibilities for improvement they present are vast. Otherwise I'm hoping that we can find and apply solutions to the waste, energy and exhaust problems that we're already facing today. I'm actually rather disappointed that this still has to be a hope rather than a reality, since the biggest chunks of these problems could already be solved with the technology of today, the main problem is that politics and economy stand in the way of it and I'm not sure when those two are going to open up for the step forward.
Another medical/health-oriented hope I hold is that we can get the human population and birth rate under tight control and if possible significantly reduce it. In my opinion we already have too many people living on this earth today and if we can't get ourselves to compensate for this by being more efficient, the least we can do is not increase the problem further by placing even more humans on this miserable speck in the galaxy.
Going back into fantasy land, if not for full-body prosthetics, I hope for fully humanoid androids. Now, this is in no way a novel idea, but again as with the prosthetics the applicable areas for such an invention are incomprehensibly large. Generally though this approach is going to make way for the only solution to all the problems of mankind: First, replace counterproductive people with android equivalents without the negative traits. Second, repeat this step until no more humans are left. Personally I see absolutely no issues that could arise with this plan and I would gladly be replaced by a less dumb version of myself. Not to mention I would be a freaking robot, I can't even begin to explain how awesome that would be. But I digress.
Getting into problems that affect people more directly now, I really hope that people will lose this completely insane and detrimental attitude towards work. I'm talking about the attitude of working over-time every day and giving in all of your mental capacity and time towards your job simply because you think it's expected of you. That is an insane mindset to have and it is destroying everything. It is destroying you, your productivity and everyone else as well. Because people let themselves be treated like complete turds like this, companies are going to expect it. Hell, they already do, I've heard enough insane stories about it. And then what happens is that because it has become an expectation, almost everyone will have to abide it, making it only worse and worse. I really wish that this attitude will fade and people will start to stand up for themselves and their right to their own life outside of the job. Not only because it's destructive, but also because giving your mind off-time is actually going to increase your productivity. Being well rested in both mind and body is going to get better and more work done than constant overtime ever could.
Now that I've ranted about work ethics, I'm going to blab about another attitude that bothers me a lot: Stop being so concerned about what's healthy or not. Yes, there are a lot of obese people around nowadays, but that's no reason to go into the completely opposite side of insanity and focus so much on what's supposedly healthy or not. It's doubly bogus to me because the human body is such a complex organism that varies so much from person to person that it is literally impossible to make such sweeping statements about what is or what isn't healthy. You need to figure out for yourself what is best for you and yourself only. Quit trying to establish your measly superiority over other people by telling them they supposedly don't eat healthily. It's nothing more than a dumb farce so people can talk shit about each other without having any real basis for their claims. Sure there are things we can objectively, medically say are healthy or not, but in the overwhelming majority of cases these are not the kinds of things people talk about when they chatter about ‘healthy’ food.
Last but not least, I will close this rant off with the hope that Radiance won't completely suck and that people besides myself will actually be able to profit off of the hundreds of work hours that have gone into it and its related offspring projects.
If I can I'll try to come up with another topic to grumble about to make up for the lack of an entry yesterday. Maybe I'll even get a story idea, that would be nice. Or perhaps I'll rave about how much I love Dürrenmatt. We'll see what the future holds in store.
Written by shinmera