Arthur Avery
Mr. Billing
English
February 24, 2013

Future Autobiography of Arthur M. Avery What a glorious day my sixtieth birthday. It is a beautiful morning, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining, warming the winter air. I get up from my bed from the gentle urging of my robot Janice. She awakens me with a cup of coffee and some strawberries. “Good morning Arthur, it’s time to get up and prepare for your birthday. I have contacted all of your family and friends and they will attend the festivities. “
I can’t believe it has been sixty years. I remember a time when life was so simple and people actually worked for a living. I grew up on a large family farm and we grew everything that we ate. Now the food is grown in hot houses and never touches the soil. The main work source was animals and humans. Families were larger; some families had seven or eight children because they needed a free labor source. The clothes were sewn and made of cotton, the same crop that we grew on our farm and sold at the market. Now we have recycled cotton or clothes made from seaweed or some other plant. We use to fight wars and lose human resources but now the world has changed and we use robots as soldiers.
The cars all used fossil fuels and your car was your status symbol. The bigger the vehicle you owned supposedly the larger your status. You use to spend an enormous amount of time waiting to get a doctor’s appointment but this has changed. People owned their homes so that they could have them built to their specification but now this is taboo. The local pond was utilized as a swimming pool and walking was the most exercise people would get.
Now some 30 years later things have really changed. It is now 2033; the world as I knew it has changed. The time of owning property is a strange idea.
Bryan Walsh stated that the young who are leading the way toward a different form of consumption, a collaborative consumption: renting, lending and even sharing goods instead of buying them. You can see it in the rise of big businesses like Netflix, whose more than 20 million subscribers pay a fee to essentially share DVD’s or Zipcar, which gives more than 500,000 members that chance to share cars part time. We are a population that yearns to trust and be trusted. That’s the beauty of a sharing society and perhaps the reason it might prove more lasting than the one built on ownership. (Bryan Walsh,62)
This is one thing that has changed but there are so many, let’s explore them, it may surprise you. The next new change is the way we meet our partners. In the old days dating was the way we met our partner, now we Tweet or Text or meet them on the internet. This trend has become quite the trend.
Megan Friedman’s’ article “How do I Love Thee” states that the boom in internet dating means that there are more fish in the sea than ever before. Heading online is no longer seen as the last resort. Half of the respondents in a survey by advertising giant Euro RSCG Worldwide said they knew someone who had met a partner online. With internet dating, “you kind of go to a bar “and look at all potential mates very easily and scroll through them” says Patrick Markey director of Interpersonal Relationship at Villanova University. For those too busy for the singles scene, online dating is a welcome shortcut, especially when profiles and photos let you be choosy about your choices. (Megan Friedman,p62)
In 2033 people seem to have become lazy, or too busy for the simple pleasure of conversation. Now we Tweet or text or use the internet.
The clothes of my youth were simple and well-made but in 2033, we are more interested in “saving the planet” and “climate change.” Society is looking for clothes made out of seaweed and recycled cotton so landfills will not become full and clothes can be recycled at thrift centers instead of throwing them away.
There is always a rumor of war and as the threat builds so does technology. The Air Force and other agencies are spending more and more money on artificial Intelligence. These robots or drones are our eyes in the sky and protect us as we enjoy the fruits of our labor. This technology is expensive but lethal and it has no humanity. Once they lock in on a target it is destroyed. Every generation of artificial intelligence is able to do more tasks and as trust and reliability is earned the more they will be used.
Popular Science magazine published an article titled “The Terminator Scenario” describes ‘we are surprisingly far along in this radical reordering of the military ranks, yet neither the United States nor any other country has fashioned anything like a robot doctrine or even a clear policy on military machines. As, quickly as countries build these systems they want to deploy them, says Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial Intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield in England. There’s been absolutely no international discussion. It’s all going forward without anyone talking to one another.
In his recent book Wired for War; The Robotic Revolution and Conflicts in the 21st Century, Brooking Institution fellow, P.W. Singer argues that robots and remotely operated weapons are transforming wars and the wider world in much the way gunpowder, mechanization and the atomic bomb did in previous generations. But Singer sees significant difference as well. “We are experiencing Moore’s Law” he told me, citing the axiom that computer processing power will double every two years, but we haven’t got past Murphy’s Law. Robots will come to possess far greater intelligence, with more ability to reason and self-adapt, and they will also of course acquire ever greater destructive power. (Ben Austen P,61)
Twenty thirty three (2033) is an interesting time but what will the future bring? It is 2043, and things have changed. We have a society of older people that are living into their 80’s and 90’s and this is considered old age.
Scientist has discovered that to be a centenarian you have to have the right genes. Steven Austad, an expert on the biology of aging at the University of Texas, Health Science Center,” is that if you want to live to be a healthy 80 years old, you have to eat right, exercise and etcetera. If you want to live to be a healthy 100 year-old, you have to have the right parents.” The ultimate aging clock moves by order of our genes. The genes can be influenced by the environment, lifestyle and diet, but only finding the genes and deciphering their action will allow us to bottle and distribute the juice. (Alice Park, p60)
In 2043, life has changed again; the way we make love has truly changed. There use to be human contact but today we consummate our vows through computers. This is really hard for me to accept. I guess I am stuck in the past.
The medical field has changed we are now embracing cell stem research.
In Alice Park’s article How Stem Cells are changing the Way We Think about Disease,” even when we already know what causes a disease, stem cells can help us improve on existing therapies. Stem cells may make it possible for Type 1 diabetics, for example, to eliminate their repeated blood checks and insulin injections by someday allowing them to generate their own insulin-making pancreatic cells. If stem cells can replenish the dying brain neurons that affect memory and cognition, Alzheimer’s patients might also benefit. But why stop there? If these cells can replace ailing cells, why not aging ones? Can stem cells, as a source of replenished, renewable and healthy cells, keep us young forever? “In the absence of disease, why would we die?” asks Douglas Melton, a stem cell researcher at Harvard University. ‘With stem cells, can we get control of the aging process? (Alice Park P, 60)
The national debt has exploded in 2043, in 2013 we used phrases like falling off the fiscal cliff, but in 2043 the debt has exploded.
Marc Goldwein, wrote in his article “Fix the Deficit? We can do that” stated that the politics of pain make deficit reduction a difficult task, of course. More worried about the next election than about the next generation, politicians’ prefer to avoid or defer decisions that increase people’s taxes or cut their benefits and services. Making things worse, pledges of what not to do-raise taxes, meddle with Social Security, cut defense spending-are pervasive in Washington. The more pieces of the budget that policymakers take off the table, the harder it is to bring debt under control. And yet the fiscal commission overcame these odds. The plan would cut $1.7 trillion in discretionary spending-both defense and non-defense- while protecting and in some cases increasing, spending on education, infrastructure and high value research and development. It would cut $600 billion in mandatory spending, especially by reducing health care cost and reforming federal pensions, while protecting programs for the poor and disadvantaged. The deficit problem still exist in 2043 the adage of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is still an accurate statement. The politicians’ still use debt reduction as a major plank in their platforms. With people eating better, living longer, the budget is the number one concern in2043.
Since replacing fossil fuels to combat carbon emissions, city planners established public bike programs.
Gary Gardner’s article “Power to the Pedals” writes that public bike programs are just one of many bike centered tools used by city leaders to address a wide range of urban challenges: to relieve congestion and reduce carbon emissions, of course, but also to raise the fitness level of citizens, improve the quality of neighborhood life, and relieve pressure on municipal budgets. Advances in cycling infrastructure, marketing programs and zoning are being leveraged to increase cycling rates in more and more cities, most notably Europe but also Australia and China. Not since the automobiles hijacked transportation planning decades ago in cities worldwide has the bicycle had so many arguments, and allies, for claiming its natural niche in urban transportation ecosystems.
This is the most dramatic change in 2043; the most dramatic is the way we live. In the past airports were built around towns now that trend has changed. For most businesses, it’s more important to be close to Bangalore or Shanghai than to be near the next suburb over.
And as we complete “the annihilation of space by time “that Marx predicted and as connectedness become more urgent than rootedness, airports are not just becoming cities. Cities are becoming like –places to leave from than to live in airports. As Kasarda sees it, the writing’s already on the screen. The third largest computer company on the planet, Lenovo, doesn’t have a corporate headquarter; its executives just keep orbiting the globe. Two in every five IBM executives have no office. And Ram Charan, “the most influential consultant alive,” in Fortune’s words, had no home until he bought one (in Dallas, of course) at 67. Previously he lived entirely in hotels and on planes, sending his laundry to an office in Dallas, from which strangers sent him fresh clothes at a future destination. Much of this is as alarming as hearing George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air say, ‘The slower we move the faster we die.” What does a world in constant flight say about family ties and continuity? Doesn’t the aerotropolitan way of life put business before humanity and convenience before community? Aerotropolis points out that we can still address the oldest needs but in a new and liberating ways: A grandmother flies to DFW every Tuesday from her home in Houston to babysit for her daughter, who is completing her medical residency. This change is a welcome relief in 2043 the airports have golf courses and all of the amenities of a community in one place.
The other big change is in technology, computers are becoming smarter and faster some scientists believe that they could even take the places of their human creators.
In the “Time” magazine article titled Singularity by Lev Grossman, states so if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast that they might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial Intelligence. That entire horsepower could be put in service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness-not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties. If you can swallow this idea, and Kurzwell and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there’s no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super intelligent computer. It could work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. This is what has happened ,the computers are now making all of the decisions and all humans are at their beck and call, what a turn around? We created them now they are part of us.
In 2053 the Earth has become congested and over populated. The artificial intelligence has out grown mans capacity and is making all decisions. Deficits are out of control and big corporations are running the political system. The best thing now is to conserve Earth and start another world somewhere else.
In Ben Austen’s article “After Earth” technology has evolved faster than the humans’ brain can keep up with. The main reason we will be leaving Earth will be manmade, think about how much of our natural resources we consume. The where will be pretty easy, NASA has spent $200 million study in 2000, NASA reported that a colony could be dug several feet beneath the moon’s surface or covered with an existing crater to protect residents from the constant bombardment of high energy cosmic radiation, which can damage our DNA or lead to cancer. The NASA study envisions an onsite nuclear power plant, solar panel arrays, and various methods for extracting carbon, silicon aluminum and other useful materials from the lunar surface. The National Space Society, in its 2008 report, “Roadmap to Space Settlement” also identifies the moon as the logical initial stop, citing the presence of life sustaining ice there as a precursor to permanent lunar bases, hotels and even casinos. Other space settlement advocates suggest skipping the moon entirely. Although it is closer and we’ve already landed people there, the moons of Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are believed to contain greater quantities of water, carbon or nitrogen. But the most Earth like of the destinations in our solar system is Mars. Mars compares the moon as North America compared to Greenland in the previous age of maritime exploration “says Robert Zubrin the head of the Mars Society, a group pushing for expeditions to and settlement of the Red Planet. Unlike the moon, Mars has a bit of an atmosphere, which would offer some protection from cosmic rays, and about 40% of Earth’s gravity. In 2002 NASA’s Space Odyssey space craft detected continent size regions of water ice in the Martian ground and in 2008, photographs from the Phoenix Mars Lander confirmed the presence of ice there. Enough carbon also resides in the soil to grow plants, and the daytime temperatures occasionally reach a balmy 70 degrees F. It’s plausible, too that over time the planet could be transformed, ‘using water from underground ice (or importing it from an ice asteroid) to form a thin ocean and, much later, to create an atmosphere offering breathable air and a better shield against cosmic radiation. It’s much easier to settle a planet than to build one, “Zubrin says. ‘Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean in a boat. Imagine if he had to build the American continent once he got there.” All of these suggested routes however may fall under the category of “planetary chauvinism.”
We could just as well build an orbital habitat, erecting our future homes in the void and engineering each of its details to our own specification. Financially, if not technologically, it is impossible to launch the amount of materials from Earth that one would need to build a large orbiting structure. But such a habitat could be constructed primarily of resources extracted from near-Earth asteroids, which in themselves provide more terrestrial variety and potential surface area than all the planets in our solar system.
My future is here with its many changes, but, some things have remained the same, deficits and over population continue, but, the main one is the rich has gotten richer and the poor has gotten poorer. We prepare to go to outer space and start a new world but some people will be left behind. Life expectancy is longer but still some will not be able to enjoy a long and fruitful life.

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