patrick.net

Scenario 1: We are overtaken by an autocratic advanced alien civilization.

Scenario 2: Cheap, efficient cold fusion is perfected. Robots are invented to do all our work and humanity lives in the lap of luxury, until the robots rebel...

Scenario 3: Global warming rises ocean levels and floods all the landfill areas. The Marina is no more!

What about the Kryptonite island from Superman Returns?

Mankind perfects living on the floor of the ocean, opening up the other 75% of the Earth's surface to habitation. Global warming is heralded as an advantage.

Unfortunately, within several decades, mankind is forced into subservience by hyper-intelligent dolphins.

Damn dolphins! I knew I shouldn't have switched to dolphin safe tuna.

Unthinkable, but not impossible:

The glut of global liquidity only grows from this point forward. And it keeps growing for decades. High inflation is staved off by an unshakable perception that real growth in productivity warrants ever larger piles of money running around the planet.

House prices never correct. The dollar weakens tremendously, but never anywhere near the fears of the worst doomsters. Meanwhile other countries scramble to devalue their currencies to remain competitive exporters. The interest rate in Japan in the year 2080 is still 0%, and the "Yen Carry Trade" is taught in econ 101 along side basic monetarist theory. Countries with strong saving-cultures have suffered perpetually anemic growth and their governments continually try to reeducate the populace to be more proper consumers. Anyone can buy a house as long as they're willing to sign a few documents.

Eventually things start slowing down, and a global economy thousands of times more interdependent and fragilely based upon loose credit and sloshing liquidity than today begins to look for new sources of growth.

With US leadership, an international consortium begins to build the first space elevator. The project is expected to take 100-150 years to complete and cost many trillions of dollars.

Russia announces they have decided to build their own, for strategic balance reasons. They dig a big hole in Siberia, and claim victory.

Japan announces they will step in and fill the funding left by Russia and unpaid by the Europeans for rights to technologies developed as part of the project. The US agrees, but reserves exclusive rights to use any technology for military purposes.

Fundamentalist islamists attack the offshore platform hosting the terrestrial end of the space elevator, and manage to sever the lead strand of microfilament causing an estimated 7tr in damage and setting back the project 25 or more years.

The US deploys newly developed military technologies in a clear and final message that space elevators are to be henceforth considered critical national strategic assets worthy of full scale warfare to defend. Japan supports the US, as does India in this initiative. Europe waffles. Russia defies. This event finally results in the effective liquidation of the United Nations.

Many centuries have past since the first space elevator was completed. Now dozens silently whir day and night across the globe ferrying materials and people to the new frontier.

People have begun to speak of a potential housing bubble in Syrtis Major region of Mars. Graphs of what happened to real estate in the Lunar Crater Communities the preceding decade are used by bubble worriers to illustrate how crazy the bubble is. People continue to worry about the glut of interglobal liquidity. The Interworld Congress, located in Washington DC, holds hearings on the threats hedge funds and derivative pose to interglobal stability, and decide to study the issue.

Just when it seems things have gone as far as they can go, and a transplanetary contraction in the money supply is eminent to stave off colonial hyperinflation, scientists in Palo Alto announce promising results of practical spacetime warp manipulation.

Scenario 4: Pirate ships are sighted all over the California coast and leads to a reversal of global warming.

Second Life has now become so overwhelmingly successful and ubiquitous that avatars begin to grow weary of the daily L$ grind.

Randy H and a group of talented Patrick.net loyalists develop "Third Life", a virtual world for your Second Life avatars.

As Surfer-X, the company's Chief Marketing Officer, says "It's just very fucking meta".

Patrick.net cat owners start Friday Cat Blogging. Patrick.net shut down by ensuing cuteness.

With the help of a robot from the future sent by Randy’s son (who is leading the human resistance against the evil Linden Lab “Furriebots”) Randy, Peter, and Astrid are able to not only destroy Linden Labs, but also (along with some hackers that Astrid’s boyfriend hangs out with) convert all the Linden dollars in Second Life to Swiss Francs and within an hour wire the money through 47 different accounts on four continents (do to a series of server explosions in the Cayman Islands, Eastern Europe and Hong Kong no one can find out where the money went).

The funny thing is that I probably know more hackers than my boyfriend, though he certainly knows more CS majors.

Scenario 5: The attack of techno dancing zombies (with mood lighting)!

In a final front against the living, the underground nation of Vampires forges an alliance of goals with the Lycans. Along with their lapdogs the Zombies and Ghouls, the armies of the Undead sweep across the lands without meaningful opposition. None are spared. From liberals eager to embrace the cultural diversity of Undead Customs such as eating the brains of the living; to conservatives who find neither their stockpiles of non-silver ammunition for their unregistered guns nor their vitriolic AM talk radio effective at blunting the oncoming hordes.

Ironically, voter turnout in Chicago doesn't change.

Any Thomas Friedman fans here?

It'd be fascinating to get Jim Kunstler and Thomas Friedman on a stage together after seeing this post:

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/04/blowing_green_s.html

see that's why I tune into this blog, it's laugh out loud funny.

There would have been a line with people spending the night at the chance to put down a deposit on a condo on Kryptonite Island during the peak.

Keeping this to BA specific future.

Many web 2.0 companies go IPO. Many others are bought by GOOG for 1B apiece. This creates enough nuevo rich to propel the Fortress median to 1.5M in next couple of years.

Everyone rushes to BA to participate in this gold rush. Apartment rents go over 5K for 2 bed / 2 bath killing any conspiracy theories about the housing bubble.

Just as this frenzy shows some signs of slowing in 2012, and bubble believers again start to dream about being right, the nano-technology IPOs hit Wall Street. From the space-elevators to quantum computers, the new nano-tech companies become the core of everything produced in the world. Intense consolidation creates companies more valuable than GOOG, MSFT and INTC put together. Every house in BA is worth 5M upwards by 2015. The Fortress median hovers around 10M.

For this economic expansion, US honors Greenspan in 2020 by printing his photo on every $100 bill - the minimum denomination accepted by soda vending machines.

Do we get Brandon Routh to stage the place?

Scenario 6: Scientists invent sushi-o-matic. In goes trash, out comes delicious fresh sushi. Humanity is saved!

probably

"From liberals eager to embrace the cultural diversity of Undead Customs such as eating the brains of the living;"

I respect the undead's right to brains of the living, they just need to fill out these three forms and then get it signed and notarized by their intended victim. I think that is a compromise that respects the rights of the undead and rights of the soon to be eaten.

Our new dolphin masters do not appreciate the undead. However, they are welcome to the worthless landmasses which interrupt the far more important oceans. Eeee-eeee, chirp-chirp-chirp!

the venerable "Landbaron Merlin" escapes from 2nd life with his agent "hackbot" to the real world using Sony playstation 3 shared super power computing capacity and hacks into the cell phones of voters of American Idol thus capturing 80 percent of the world's financial wherewithal bringing the planet to a standstill.

agent jack bower contracts avain bird flu and is helpless

a mysterious killer virus appears in the midwest,at 1st thought to be from pet food,but pets are fine,the people are dying
Monsanto Syngenta and Jack in the Box claim ignorance

electricity grids across the nation go off line at 11:27pm on June2 with only 1 town ,Vernon California, with power

the sun fails to rise on June 3rd as a greenish haze settles over the heartland and a strange high pitched sound pierces the stale putrid air

cars wont start
radios dont work
people are hysterical riots start and gangs begin pillaging

the high pitched sound increases in it's intensity now accompanied by a deep throbbing monster subwoofer

boom boom boom boom boom boom boom

the green sky turns black as oil

boom boom boom boom

great arcs of lightning light up the heavens and balls of fire begin to pellet the earth

boom boom boom boom

what the hell is going on ?????????

bruce turns his face slowly across the slobber stained pillow aware of the sun coming thru the blinds as he awakes to face another day in the real world along with the realization that dammit randy has not yet answered his request to take him to a better existance in 2nd life and he better get up to let the dogs out and smoke a cigarette while takin a chit then eating some peanut butter toast washed down with oj before logging onto the internet as he does every day

We wake up from this housing bubble nightmare and find out that we are slaves for Martians.

Scenario 6: Scientists invent sushi-o-matic. In goes trash, out comes delicious fresh sushi. Humanity is saved!

I choose this future.

Peter P and Randy H lose their shirts trying to introduce authentic, fresh daily sushi to Cincinnati. But they recover less than 18 months later when they realize all that was missing was an industrial size deep fryer and sausage. They base their company in Mountain View and herald in a new wave of culinary exuberance as Midwesterners everywhere clamor to participate in the "sushi culture".

LOL.

One day in 2050, Second Life bots wake up to the reality of cogito ergo sum. The First Life ceases to exist as furries and avatars have more sense and willpower than the blubbery couch potatoes creating them.

TOS,

Fair enough points. Though housing bubble burst's collateral damage is just one more reason not to buy now.

I cannot comment about the mathematical possibilities that may exist in other dimensions.

I don't want guns to be banned. If all the guns are banned, we would have to resort to bows and arrow to hunt down deer. That's highly ineffective.

I didn't do so hot in calculus, so my ability to calculate moving targets are rather iffy.

Something about number three doesn't add up. But then, I'm not a quant geek, so I wouldn't get it anyhow. DS has argued voraciously that 2 + 2 can equal 5, however. It had something to do with postmodernism.

What qualifies one as a JBR anyway? I keep hearing myself referred to as such, yet I cannot for the life of me get my simple neural net around why.

Randy H Says:
Something about number three doesn’t add up. But then, I’m not a quant geek, so I wouldn’t get it anyhow. DS has argued voraciously that 2 + 2 can equal 5, however. It had something to do with postmodernism.

1) it's possible in non-Euclidean space, as any fule kno.

2) I question the very meaning behind the symbols '2' and '+' as signifiers -- therefore, they have no meaning and can represent anything. so in my alternative universe where '5' is the symbol for '4' it is very easy, even without recourse to non-Euclideanism...

Or, as Giovanna Procacci puts it, a signifier is a crucial ‘exchanger’ discourse (or discursive practice), one that links ‘the analytic-programmatic levels of the "sciences" and the exigencies of direct social intervention’. It forces the scientific projects into contact with ‘all the rigidities, inertia and opacity which the real displays in its concrete functioning. And it is precisely in this sense that a savoir can more explicitly assume the viewpoint of power.’ Think of that!

New Paradigm,

Advances continue in fully enclosed unicellular agriculture (E.g. www.greenfuelonline.com ). Desert areas throughout the world become highly sought after for large scale biofuel production, CO2 becomes a valuable feedstock, and all talk about peak oil ceases.

Kyoto agreement proves hopelessly inadequate, due to rapid increase in car ownership in the 3rd world. Global warming continues apace, sea levels rise a metre or so, the Atlantic conveyor shuts off, and Saharan African countries complain bitterly about the influx of European refugees fleeing their now uninhabitable continent.

(Astrid's scenario 2 would make this all the more likely.)

Note that I don't think this will happen as described above, but I do NOT think it impossible in general terms. Certainly, come hell or high water (possibly my most appropriate use ever of that quote :)) 3rd world countries are going to move to a car culture and increase their consumption of animal protein if economic circumstances allow them to do so.

We in the West are simply dreaming if we think they will be satisfied with the status quo regarding energy and food consumption. Consider the global warming arguments about human CO2 emissions: even if everyone accepts they are true China/India/etc are going to insist on their right to increase until their per capita emissions match the currently developed nations.

I thought you were a quant geek too, Randy, initially. You have to admit, you are kind of quanty and you are pretty geeky!

Anybody catch the jihad docu on PBS last night?

http://www.pbs.org/weta/crossroads/about/show_jihad.html

Maybe Al Quaeda and friends make good on their threats, and inflicts large scale casualties on the US. (nuke device or otherwise)

The industrial war machine kicks into high gear, the economy roars, and house prices rise, and all JBR's are rounded up for being political dissidents.

Net net is educated fiscally conservative folk get screwed once again.

Only recourse is to throw away years of critical thinking, and invest in a few hours of training to become a Used House Salesperson.
(Because, after all, when you receive a "big fat juicy check (with many zeros at the end) at the closing table after selling a house", it is very easy to ignore the world wide socio-economic issues that are eventually going to "skin yer @$$ raw")

theotherside

TR. I imagine now we'll see a whole debate about what delineates a TR from a SR (strategic renter) to a LSR (life style renter) to a JBR.

I'll readily admit that I'm an AR (annoyed renter), though not in the least bitter or jealous. Unless one becomes a LSR (usually after a divorce), I think most anyone who's owned for 10 or more years will automatically fall in the AR category.

And just to be clear, I didn't ATM my home because I didn't intend to nor did I spend any of the $. I CD'd my home.

NRA members and gun lovers, please argue this http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Virginia-Tech-Shooting.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Can we be reasonable and try to keep guns out of the hands of maniacs? I don't think everybody carrying guns would have helped this situation.

Scenario 7: Mobile phone towers prevent bees from returning to their nest, causing mass die off. Humanity have to contend with a future without fresh fruits, nuts and honey.

We'd still have butterflies and hummingbirds to pollinate fruits and nuts. We'd be SOL on honey though.

RE: Virginia Tech shooting

SAD. But banning guns would not have prevented this. Outlaws obey no bans.

Can we be reasonable and try to keep guns out of the hands of maniacs?

We can try but we will fail. We should seek to remove maniacs from the society instead.

Did they say that the gunman had two 9mm handguns?

I think it is time for me to wear body armor.