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Thinking About Humanity

in the Year 3000
Joseph Coates

Is it practical and useful to forecast a thousand years ahead? To address that question, I ran a 225-person
World Future Society workshop on the subject of humanity in the year 3000. This workshop offered the
opportunity to go past the 10- to 30-year horizon that most current futures research involves, and to avoid
the trap of falling into ‘science fiction’ on how the future might evolve. The difficulty with science fiction is
that once one drops a fundamental scientific constraint, anything becomes plausible. The recently formed
Foundation for the Future has a well-advertised interest in humanity in the year 3000. That has created
something of a stir in the futures community and heightened interest in the feasibility of looking at the truly
long-term future.

The immediate objective in the workshop was to learn how a group of futures-oriented people, the
participants, would deal with the long-range. My assumption was that some of the people in the audience
were professional futurists, but that the bulk of the attendees were, characteristic of the majority of the
attendees at a WFS meeting, people with an interest and concern for the future, but not a primary occupa-
tional or professional commitment to the subject.

The strategy for the meeting was to elicit interactive responses to 14 questions. The questions and their
ordering were to allow the group to address matters that were initially straightforward, but became increas-
ingly subtle. That was designed to lead to a buildup of concepts and inquiry in the participants’ minds as they
moved from question to question. The capstone of the meeting was to ask each of the participants to write
out a vignette of some significant change by the year 3000. The results of the meeting were engaging and
stimulating. It was also informative in highlighting most people’s need for more systematic awareness and
practice in thinking about the long-term future.

The results are presented in tabular form. Each of the tables presents the question and some have a list
of potential responses prefabricated by the facilitator to rapidly stimulate the group’s thinking about the
topic. The horizontal lines in the tables separate the material presented from the material generated by the
audience. The responses from the audience were kept open until they ran down. Many people seemed pre-
pared to have someone else present a version of what they were thinking, or happy to listen because they had
nothing different to present.

All in all, the discussions were lively, and the interaction among people was dynamic.

RESULTS

The participants considered these first three questions without additional discussion.

Reprinted from Futures Research Quarterly (Winter 1999)

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Q1. The definition of humanity—should it be taken as equivalent to humankind or does it have a more narrow
definition dealing with the cultural side of our lives and the more advanced aspects of civilization?

Possibilities:

• Humanity equal to people

• Humanity equal to the good characteristics of admirable people
• Humanity does not imply only good things
• Humanity is the organism and everything that it does
• Humanity depends upon society for its rules and constraints, that is, humanity is a social construct

Q2. Over the next thousand years what possible variations may develop in what we think of as humankind?

• All sentient creatures

• Varieties of people in the same way we have varieties of sheep and pigs
• Subspecies of humans Space visitors
• A blending or melding of people with their computers
• A blending of people with lower species—man and chimp

Q3. Constant human factors (whether really constant or now only thought to be so) need to be considered from two
points of view:

• Will they be truly stable?

• How might they change?

The fourth question’s purpose was to identify what the group thought were durable factors, durable even over a
millennium. Both death and taxes made it onto the audience’s additional items. It is worth noting that,
throughout the session, the group did not argue for the deletion of any items that were presented by the
facilitator. They chose, instead, to add to them.

Q4. Among these stable factors may be the following:

• Family relations
• Sexual relationships
• Companionship, social contact
• Hierarchical structures
• Bureaucracy
• Agriculture
• Art
• Religion
• Use of technology—some of which is permanent such as stairs and pipes
• Violence
- War
- Crime
- Personal
• Emotionality
• Manipulation of the environment and resources
• Language—An alphanumeric system
• Adventure
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• Earth preservation
• Pets
• Taxes
• Migration
• Interpersonal communications
• Issues of survival
• Greed
• Organizations
• Education
• Life principles—work
• Recreation and entertainment
• Disease
• Children
• Physical bodies
• Death
• Traditional values
• Thinking and reasoning
• Story telling
• Individuality

The fifth question, dealing with religion, hit an obviously resonant chord with a number of people in
the audience. It raises the point whether those who have strong religious beliefs have a particularly strong
interest in the future.

Q5. On the question of religion:

• What is its origin?

• What function does it preserve?
• Is it fundamentally related to explaining death?
• Does it have larger functions?
• Transpersonal experience
• A new creation story
• Still indefensible
• Religion plus science will equal explanation
• Alternative universe, discovery of
• Spirituality
• Control will be down to markets of one
• Immortality
• Concepts of the whole
• Stabilizing function
• Invest in ourselves
• Explain greatness of nature
• Reincarnation
• Community values
• Answer the inevitable question
• Profound question
• Christ will be back
• Unknowns do exist
• Optimal social system
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The sixth question, on human competence, adds the concept that many people might not be prepared
to accept, that we are the first species to be able to influence its own evolution. The sense of human
competence should define boundary conditions or limitations on what people may be able to accomplish
over the next millennium.

Q6. Human competence—people are the first species to be able to control or at least influence its own evolution.
People have the potential for choice both at the individual level and at the social level to influence or control almost
anything. What will we want to be and be able to change?

• End of violence
• Child-likeness
• End of deviations
• Colonize space
• Increase IQ
• Control of emotions, health, etc.
• Empower creativity
• Think like the Spocks, the doctor and the Vulcan
• New ways of travel
• Every child wanted
• One race
• Telepathy
• Eliminate genetic disease
• Doomsday
• More collective wisdom
• Control of climate
• Everything virtual
• Postpone fertility until after 30
• God-likeness
• Less impact on nature

The seventh question reflects the current feeling that over the last several decades globalization has
accelerated, whatever the scope of that concept may be. It is not clear what the significance is of some of the
items on the list, since aging, death, and sex, as well as having children, are all universal today. Presumably,
the group meant that they would continue to be universal for a thousand years.

Q7. What, if anything, will be global—that is, universal—in the year 3000?

• Blood types
• Cuisine
• Language
• Pleasure
• Research on life extension
• Economy at a constant level
• Laws, one government
• Single trading unit
• Aging
• Need for newness
• Death
• Value of self
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• Sex
• Peace
• Children
• Universal access to information
• Technological development stopped
• Abundant leisure
• Universal access to pleasure

Human history shows that discontinuities generated by social and group contacts, as well as discontinuities
coming from environmental changes have had substantial effects in the direction and development of hu-
mankind. Telepathy, appearing on this and an earlier list, presents interesting food for thought. In some
sense, radio is a form of telepathy—ideas expressed anywhere are almost immediately available anywhere
else. How far the functional equivalent of telepathy may go in the future is an interesting question.

Q8. What discontinuities might occur that could radically alter the human condition and start on a new track or
extinguish an old track?

• Epidemics
• Discovery of extraterrestrial life
• Overpopulation
• A meteor hit
• Macro engineering systems
• Changes in weather such as new ice age
• Changing locations of population
• People in other places in space and the galaxy—the Moon, L-5, spaceships to the solar system or
beyond
• Deadly pollution of some sort
• Behavior and values
• World War III
• Loss of individual freedom
• Terrorism
• Discovery of cheap energy, zero point energy
• Cyberbrain
• Mutation to a second human race
• Symbiosis with computers
• Rogue genes
• Teleportation
• New scientific insights
• Antigravity
• Nanotechnology
• The melting of the ice cap
• Understand the nature of language
• Telepathy and leaving the body behind
• Artificial intelligence which dislikes us—HAL
• Water scarcity, etc.
• Genocide
• Reappearance of God
• Colonize planets
• Living 400 years
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Q9. What could governance mean? How could it be organized?

This question was skipped over because of the pressures on time.

Question 10 was the complement of question 4, and was put relatively later to allow the intermediate
discussion to modify or expand what items people thought are stable or plastic.

Q10. Plasticity of people—the complement to rock solid. What is plastic and hence, subject to change?

• Adaptability
• Size
• Culture
• The brain—the deaf and the blind have different developments;
the brain is trained by circumstances
• Language
• Communications—that is, how people directly or indirectly contact each other, such as eye
movements
• Formal-informal learning—what you have once learned becomes reflex, e.g. walking, martial arts
• Genetics
• Food/diet
• Artificial organs
• Sanity, concept of
• Likes and dislikes
• Sexuality
• Memory
• Body types
• Child rearing
• Educability
• Physical endurance
• Values
• Pains
• “Heart”
• History

Q11. Assume all current problems are resolved, such as:

• Racism
• Disease
• Death
• Deprivation
• Sleep

What will the consequences be? For example, will the elimination of racism lead to other forms of
labeling and segregation? This question was not used. There was some brief discussion of it, but the ideas
were not noted because of the pressure to save time. There was a feeling, however, expressed by the group
that other functionally equivalent problems will arise.

Question 12—many people urge that we cannot understand the future if we do not understand
history. Therefore, question 12 asks what looking back 1,000 years tells us. Four separate notions were
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proposed as the drivers of change—creative minorities, personal curiosity, tolerance, and personal ambi-
tion.

Q12. What is it that history tells looking back to 1,000 years from today?

• What were the big changes and why were they drivers of change? Does this give clues to the
future?
• Could we develop historic scenarios as a clue to thinking about the future?
• Could current civilization(s) be replaced by other forms of civilization?
• Scale, scope of political organizations and civilizations
• Learning from history to avoid repeating mistakes
• Radical changes out of technology
• Migration for survival
• Human grasp expanding to bigger systems
• Density of people affect society
• Things going faster and faster, therefore, remote possibilities may become more proximate
• Creative minorities will continue to be driver of change
• Personal curiosity drives change
• Look for seminal things today
• Tolerance essential to progress
• Continuity with people across ages
• Radical ideas can have profound effects
• Ancient empires succumbed because they did not husband their resources
• Personal ambition drives change

Question 13 reflects the observation that scientific and technological developments are often seen as
primary transformational factors in both the historic and contemporary world. The range of things that
were proposed seems to be rather lean, but this may reflect the professional makeup of the group.

Q13. Scientific technological development

• Information
• Geology/Earth
• Genetics
• Agricultural
• Materials
• Biological processes—e.g., aging, cancer
• Energy
• Brain
• Animal behavior
• Computers/ automation
• Synthesis of the sciences
• Species behavior
• Control of natural phenomena
• Robotics
• Drugs
• Mind
• Transportation
• Energy/power
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Question 14 goes back to people in that year 3000 and asks what will they work at and in what will they
seek as leisure and entertainment. It is interesting how limited the range of ideas are concerning day to day
activities. Clearly repeating factors deal with internal, intellectual, mental, and spiritual development but
there is a narrow leisure category that is connected to science, such as space exploration and virtual reality.

Q14. What will people do day by day?

• Work/employment
• Leisure, entertainment, recreation
• Frivolity, sing, dance, fly,swim
• “The quest”
• Child rearing
• Education
• Virtual reality
• Contemplating building and destroying
• Chaos [dealing with]
• Space exploration
• Reliving history
• Meditation
• Eating and sleeping
• Art

THE FINAL EXERCISE

As the session drew to a close, the group was put into a final exercise. Each person was asked to take
some aspect of the situation in the year 3000 and do a micro scenario. At this point, a large percentage of the
audience left. Perhaps they did not want to expose themselves. Perhaps some felt vulnerable in the sense of
not being able to do it effectively or satisfactorily. With the relatively small number of participants, about 80,
it was practical to sample the room quickly.

A sample of the 40 scenarios follows:

1. The mixing up of elements in un-“natural” combinations had gone on so long that a major preoccupa-
tion is repairing, replacing the fabric of nature to permit survival. Air, water, earth are “nature-engineered”
by experts who learned how to replicate these elements copying specimens kept in special museums and
repositories of historic samples of air, water, plants, and animals. There are engineering and science projects
to undo the ill-effects of past mixing of elements, spills, radiation hot spots, unwanted creatures,
genetically-defective humans and animals, removal of heavy metals, lead/mercury, etc. that spread into the
air and soil. Also there are expert bioengineering plants and animals that had occurred, due to the interven-
ing degradation of the environment.

2. Awakens
• Gives instruction by voice for household adjustments—e.g., organic breakfast, listens to incom-
ing mail while shaving

• Arranges videoconferencing on continuing committee for better control of fetal transplants.

• Meets with group to prepare robots exploring inner earth tunnel to recover minerals over 100
miles under earth’s surface.
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3. People are telepathic and have left the physical plane. They engage in continuous learning, self-discovery,
play and artistic creation. We have achieved heaven on earth.

4. Today was tectonic plate-easing day, so all travel ceased for 24 hours. People gathered with friends-some
were genetically enhanced “pets”—in safe havens/shelters. This was a minor inconvenience for the elimina-
tion of geological catastrophes experienced by previous civilizations. Tectonic plate-easing day had been
incorporated into the new calendar rather as Christmas Day or Thanksgiving Day had been in a previous
age.

5. I wake as the room slowly lightens like the dawn with gradual hues of purple, red, then white light
even though it is 6:00 a.m. I ask for an update of the news important to me, which I hear and see as I prepare
to go for a morning run through the woods. My doors are not locked but are guarded by an automated sentry.
When I return, I contact my church friends and discuss the day’s topic. I spend two hours working on a
project for the community. No more companies. Food is plentiful, no bills, energy is cheap allowing a com-
mon living status. Family is grown and distributed around the world in the climate that they enjoy and near
the activities they enjoy (mountain climbing, kayaking, scuba diving).

6. The bed gently vibrates me awake. House is fully networked and all appliances, etc. have IP addresses.
Bed contacts shower to adjust head and heat water as kitchen prepares breakfast. I shower and shave. I eat
breakfast in the Media Room as I am brought current on news, business activities and plans for the day. All
interactions are verbal or touch screen and moderated by my software Agent, Giles. I make requests and he
retrieves information for me. I videoconference with my daughter who is in Spain studying language (immer-
sion program) and culture. I play a VR game while my wife uses a hand-held information appliance to do the
New York Times crossword puzzle. Then, we both go via individual non-polluting vehicles to the coast to
enjoy the ocean and shop in the nearby boutiques using our digital cash cards. We return in time to partici-
pate in a virtual town hall meeting and cast our votes. Just then, the refrigerator lets us know that sensors
showed we are running out of milk and it is time to go to the market.

7. Outline of scenario of my life in 3000: 1 am a city planner in 1998. I will be a global planner in 3000.
I work at home which is a huge ball floating in water, so I may travel whenever I wish.

My job involves:
• Creating living space for populations
• Working with climatic changes to forecast where people will live
• Working with sociologists /medical people to control population
• Working with transportation people to control ground-space and aerospace
• Working with government people to establish community boundaries
• Working with ecologists to save the world’s shoreline, the Arctic and Antarctic
• Working with agriculturists to supply food where it is needed

8. Life @L5. 3000 AD: My eight hours of private time in my space capsule are over. I now go to the
common area so that Smith can use my space capsule for his private time, then Jones next. After a few hours
(I have 16 hours before I return to my capsule) I help with the hydro-garden and recycle system that creates
some of the most beautiful vegetables. I take pride in their beauty—I have modified the genetic code to try
to get peppers to be hotter. My next assignment will be becoming a chef of the greatest skill.
9. 3000 AD: There are likely to be separate societies—not one global society. Some may be better off
than others. Some technological, some simpler, but most doing generally well. Here is a major one. Society 1
is similar to that of many aboriginal peoples with a good life. Lots of leisure time, availability of food, but not
grown on massive planted farms, more like the Garden of Eden. Work will consist of about three hours per
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day. There will be rules that control population growth, but fulfilling alternatives will be available to having
and rearing many children. This society may get advanced medical help from another society through some
mutually agreeable arrangement. Society 2: Helps society 1—is very honest, very good at discerning correct
information, and very compassionate and also stable.

10. André awakened after a programmed rest feeling refreshed, but the weather worried him. He
had heard that one of those noxious clouds of radioactive dust was circulating near his home. These clouds
sprang out of the earth from chambers where they had been buried many hundreds of years ago. The con-
tainers that had once held the materials had deteriorated even though the “experts” of old—a class of
ancient elders endowed with virtual infallibility—had assured the people of their day that this would never
happen. André is one of a team of six—two women, two men, and two androgynous—self-selected for
particular heart-minds to address these sorts of problems. They discovered each other through technologi-
cally-facilitated ESP. They have had many successes tackling these sorts of challenges and André was not
worried. They typically begin their work by generating holographic simulations. This was going to be fun,
and they had better get it right.

CONCLUSIONS

The scenario building was simultaneously disappointing and revealing. It was disappointing in that
there was relatively little richness to the micro scenarios. They tended to reflect a future world in which the
voguish or contemporary issues of the end of the second millennium are effectively dealt with and elimi-
nated. From the point of view of the study of the future, the exercise was extremely revealing, in that it
highlighted the limitations of a group of well-intentioned, enthusiastic and interested people in thinking
realistically about long-term futures without substantial background preparation, planning and in depth
exercises. The implication is not just for looking at the year 3000, but also for looking at the more proximate
future. The years 2025 to 2050 present the same difficulties.

NOTE

David Kristof and Todd W. Nickerson have published a book Predictions for the Next Millennium
containing responses by 250 people prominent in all aspects of society. They were asked “...to describe an
event that they predict—or hope—will occur between the years 2001 and 3000.”

What is most instructive about the responses is that few of them involve forecasts. The respondents
chose to respond on the hope side, dealing with the obviously urgent issues of today-population, war, peace,
prejudice, and so on eliminated. When they came to the more specific anticipations of what might occur
they again tended to reflect the issues of today and the short-term evolution of societal and, more specifi-
cally, scientific and technological developments to deal with them. What makes the compilation so striking
is the breadth of public fame, and in a few cases the notoriety, of the people. They chose to respond knowing
that their responses were likely to appear in print, yet the responses are primarily short-term. The most
prominent exception to that as a group were the Nobel Laureates in science, as well as the other scientists
who responded. It would be a gross mistake to demean the overall likelihood of what was forecast. Quite the
contrary, the collective wisdom of the 250 respondents is clear. What is equally clear is that the tendency is
to focus on the short term, to not appreciate psychologically how long a thousand years is and much more
specifically to be unable to create the imagery of how the world could be different in such a remote period. To
contemplate the long term one needs motivation, intelligence and skill, but equally importantly one needs
practice and experience in thinking about the future in order to draw a finer point on it than the broadest of
brushes can offer.