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Preface

This story is taking place in 2112, and human civilization a hundred years from now will be different in many ways. The goal of this book is to present you, the reader, with an interesting story about what it's going to be like in a future world that is really possible, and really probable.

This is not a post-holocaust or Malthusian-stressed world. It's a comfortable world where mankind has faced our contemporary challenges and found successful solutions.

So ... be prepared for a very different kind of story.

Axioms

Let me give you the axioms of the world in this story. These axioms are the “givens” of this world.

o Earth is a happy and productive place. The hundred years between now and story time have been filled with people becoming more prosperous and more urbanized. There have been no civilization-disrupting catastrophes.

Earth’s human population peaked at about 9 billion in 2050, and by 2112 it is down to about 7 billion and declining steadily. This has happened because prosperous people find they have many interesting things to spend their time on other than baby-making and raising.  This is an important point, so I will say it again: The population decline is due to prosperity and the distractions it brings to people, not due to improvement in birth control, disaster, or some government-imposed, draconian, population-controlling regulation.  (Here is a 4 Aug 11 WSJ editorial, The UN's Imaginary Babies by Jonathan V. Last, discussing this demographic trend.)

Because the population is declining due to prosperity, the world is “grayer” than it is today -- there are many, many more old people and fewer young people.  It is also much more urbanized -- 90% of the world’s human population lives in large metropolitan areas or popular resort areas that service these urban areas. The rest of the world has a lot less people than even today. Small cities and rural areas are virtually depopulated ... of people.

o The world is much more automated than it is today, and the automation is much more efficient. This has allowed mankind to become more prosperous and more efficient at using Earth’s resources -- so much more efficient that resource exhaustion is no longer a threat; it is now just a well understood issue.  To human eyes, the pinnacle expression of this increased automation is the creations. These are self-aware robots who are part of a self-aware, world-wide network that does both computing and communication. The creations and the less complex, supporting computer systems and communications networks do the routine legwork that keeps civilization prosperous, productive, and operating with a light impact on earth’s resources.  Creations and other automation infrastructure are now what inhabit the many cities and rural areas that humans have migrated away from.

There are self-aware cyber entities in the global communication/computation network, but their interaction with humans is subtle and happens mostly through creation activities. These are mostly off human radar.

o There is some space travel and humans are still steadily getting better at it. Humans routinely travel to the moon and Mars, and creations are exploring the rest of the solar system. The amount of space travel grows as this story is in progress, and it gets easier and faster, and this changes how people live. A handful of explorer probes are en route to other star systems and expect to arrive millennia from now, but that’s it for star travel.

o There has been a lot of advancement in biological sciences and technologies. These advancements have produced technology surprises. The surprises, and how humans react to them, are much of what these stories are about.

The story that follows presumes all of the above are true.  If you feel you have the picture, you can move on to the Prelude now. If you’d like more details about these axioms, keep on reading.

The People

The decline in population will happen not because of a holocaust of any sort or because humans have run out of a vital resource and are now in a Malthusian crisis -- a crisis of too many people sharing too few resources. It will happen because 90 percent of the world’s population will be living a prosperous urban or suburban lifestyle, and as a result, people are too busy with other enjoyable activities to have enough time and interest to make and raise enough babies.

Prosperous urban lifestyles are fun, interesting, and personally satisfying, but because there are so many interesting things to do, child raising gets put off for years and years, and one or two children are the most common numbers for those who do find the time. After 2050 not enough people are spontaneously willing to commit to the long hours and years of dedication it takes to raise children, so the population has been declining for decades. It is now 2112, and this decline has been going on long enough that even the population growth alarmists admit that it’s not a fluke.

It is now recognized by most people that without community intervention of some sort, or a catastrophe of some sort that sends most people back to the farm, there will now never be enough children to sustain the population. Steps must be taken to encourage child raising.

Much of this story is about what such steps will be.

However, those people who do take on the sacrifice of child bearing and child raising will, as is true today, want the best for those children. In fact, they will want it even more so because there is nothing inevitable about their choice. Another difference is, because they live in a prosperous world, they will have a lot more resource to throw at the adventure.

The Creations

Automation, computers, and communications networks will have continued their exponential growth in both capability and complexity. The result is that productivity of day-to-day goods and services is ten to a thousand times what we experience today. In other words, humanity is ten to ten thousand times more efficient at making stuff. That means that human civilization is no longer taxing earth’s resources.

It also means that computers are doing ninety percent or more of the legwork to make manufacturing, transportation, and other routine activities happen. Humans don’t make much in this world; they do other things. (What they do is much of what this story is about.)

Humans interact directly with creations. Creations are the middle beings between humans and the vast cyber infrastructure that also inhabits earth and directly handles most of the manufacturing and transportation. Creations are self-aware robots that range from human-looking to quite robotic in form.

As pointed out above, the automation infrastructure is what inhabits much of the world’s surface between the densely-human-inhabited metropolitan areas.

(Note: The creations are much more aware of how complex all the earth’s computing has become. But this is a story about humans, so we will see the world through their eyes.)

What this story is about

This story is a series of tales about people living in the world of 2112. It’s about the surprises we can expect as our human civilization gets more and more prosperous and we learn and exploit deeper and deeper mysteries of science and technology.

Since these stories are about surprises, this book is not some crystal ball telling about exactly what will happen when, but it is about the lifestyles of people that are likely to emerge as the world gets more automated and more prosperous. It is about how human thinking and living will interact with the opportunities more and more prosperity will give it.

Let me say that this has been a challenging tale to create -- challenging because it’s not conventional storytelling. But hopefully, even if it is not a familiar story theme, you will find it enjoyable, interesting, and compelling.

Have fun with ... The World of 2112!

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