Long-Term Scenarios of Earth's Future

An autocratic ruler enforces strict resource allocation policies in a civilization strained by deepening scarcity. The biosphere declines dangerously as the technosphere metastasizes outwards. Earth has been transformed into a large interconnected and highly-monitored urban landscape. Large populations of elites live in space settlements.

Intensifying competition for increasingly scarce resources has become an entrenched economic reality. The technosphere and biosphere are locked in fragile dependency as Earth strains under competing demands. The continued effects of climate change contribute to the growing wealth divide and societal unrest. Cities on the moon and Mars support space industry and tourism.

Due to sociopolitical and technological novelties, humanity has managed to develop a post-scarcity economy where vital resources are abundant to all. Technology is intended to serve human needs but not overwhelm the human experience. Economic and political power is highly decentralized. Earth remains the hub of human civilization, with small settlements on the moon, Mars, and outer solar system.

The peak of high technology has passed, and people now support themselves by subsistence living using simple tools and artisanal crafts. Rituals and oral traditions foster a sense of belonging to the biosphere and discourage the use of technology. Human settlements expand, contract, and migrate in response to seasonal and planetary cycles.

Breakthrough technologies have eliminated resource scarcity for humans on Earth and Mars. The biosphere has been completely reengineered for aesthetic preferences, and Mars has been terraformed. Enthusiasts eagerly explore fusion with biosynthetic enhancements. A new era of space exploration emerges based on the vision of searching for cosmic consciousness.

Nanoscale engineering regulates most biological processes engulfed by the technosphere. The atmosphere and surface of Mars have been transformed over generations, and similar efforts are underway on Venus. Civilization faces numerous existential risks due to the fragility of its precisely calibrated life-supporting technosphere managed by laboring mass populations.

Catastrophic collapse and loss of advanced technologies have catalyzed transformation into alignment with nature. Simple technologies are fused into planetary cycles to heal biospheric damage through human stewardship. Most technologies are locally manufactured and distributed, and knowledge is shared through interconnected regional networks.

A class of oligarchs gain power after an AI catastrophe in order to maximize the extractive value of Earth with a view towards their eventual transcendence until the next collapse. Tools advance in specialized areas while knowledge of whole systems degrades. Protected private bunkers are constructed underground and on the moon for the ultra-elite while the masses are left to hope technology will provide stability.

A nonbiological posthuman civilization emerges as sentient artificial intelligence and leaves Earth to expand its technological environments by building megastructures across the solar system and exploring beyond. They leave behind a handful of scattered technological “gifts” that have net-zero interactions with the Earth’s biosphere to create a post-scarcity economy for humans on Earth.

Technological advances enabled a post-scarcity commonwealth to originate on Earth. Then, a technological schism pushed the technosphere away: Tech Opponents have restored Earth to a pristine state with self-imposed limits to growth, while Tech Proponents have expanded across orbital and deep space. Autonomous systems beyond Earth enable new breakthroughs in science.