Originally Posted by
perdition79
It's more like a 99.999% chance that we step back 15,000 years. We very briefly hit Type 1 on the Kardashev scale for a few nanoseconds in the last century, and we had to detonate thermonuclear weapons to do it. In fact, we have regressed quite a bit. We no longer have supersonic passenger flight, we are to revert from space shuttles to space capsules in under a decade, our data transfer abilities are limited by switching technology from the late 1960's, market communism has replaced capitalism, and either Marxism or fascism will soon replace our last shreds of democracy. Even our produce has lost over 40% of its nutrient value, for the sake of green-revolution fueled population growth. Not to mention that in under a decade, natural gas supplies will go into terminal decline, which will rapidly make chemical fertilizers unavailable at any price. It's a simple overshoot scenario, which will play out over the next few decades.
We are well on the path to destroying ourselves, and humanity has a tendency to follow the path of least resistance. A "Star Trek" future seems less likely than a "Mad Max" future at this point.
I agree with you that this will probably be the likely path, although we can't say for sure. There may be some breakthrough in technology (such as fusion power, or breakthroughs in computing and other areas) that could keep us on the right track.
As of now, our future looks bleak. I don't think we ever even came close to touching the Type 1 threshold. When a civilization has reached Type 1 status, they can harness ALL the power from the planet (oceans, atmosphere, land, and the immediate influenced area of the earth's magnetic field). We are simply not there, and are still a stretch off. Our progression has been pretty linear with exceptions of the age of computer technology, which gave us a short spike on the curve. As we stand, we are about 0.7 on the scale, and our progress is starting to have a flatter slope, which isn't good, meaning we aren't even progressing linearly any more like we were in the 20th century.
Here is the chart to give you an idea:
In my personal opinion, I think we as a civilization are not tolerant enough of others to be able to globally unify. There are countries still developing and some areas of the world that want nothing to do with the progress of our civilization ("points to the Middle East"). That became all too clear in 2001. If we cannot resolve our social and political issues, than we are not going to make it as a civilization because we'll just end up destroying ourselves. It's a shame. It's kind of interesting to think that if you use the Drake Equation, we can calculate that there should be tens of thousands (perhaps millions) of advanced civilizations in our galaxy, yet the galaxy hasn't shown us any evidence of that. This could be due to the fact that they never made it to a Type 1 civilization. The transition from Type 0 to Type 1 is the most dangerous and rare transition for a civilization. If we can make it, the future of humanity (baring some extragalactic catastrophe) is set to succeed.
I agree with perdition79 that we are on the downward trend, but it's not 99.9% (it fluctuates all the time). Futurism is difficult to calculate, and we don't know how new advanced in technology will boost our civilization in the coming decades. That's why I said 50/50. If there are no new breakthroughs and we can't come to a resolve over our issues and intolerances as a civilization we are doomed (we may not totally destroy ourselves, but we could become stagnant in our evolution). If somehow we can manage to pull the world together (which at this point isn't very likely), humanity will have a very bright future.