Quote: Original post by Horatius83
1) No sufficiently advanced (and large) civilization has wastelands. Large affluent populations require huge amounts of resources to support themselves, that means using every inch of land to support that population.

What about, say, Death Valley? Are you envisioning cities covering every inch of non-arable land?

Quote: Original post by Horatius83
One might argue that with Nanotech you can just synthesize it all, but remember that you can't make something out of nothing, you still need elements to assemble into more complex shapes.

Is there some reason why the matter from waste products couldn't be re-arranged into useful objects?

Quote: Original post by Horatius83
(So even in the future you can't turn lead into gold)

We can do that now, it's just not cost-effective.

Quote: Original post by Horatius83
2) The world has already seen two secularist cultural revolutions, one was an utter failure (Soviet Union) the other was an failure until they accepted capitalism (China), the fact is secularist thinking is not necessarily a sign of advanced civilization, "scientific thinking" can be just as stupid and contemptable as religious dogma.

What about the Enlightement/Renaissance? I think most people would agree that that worked out pretty well.

Also, "scientific thinking that is "as stupid and contemptable as religious dogma" isn't scientific at all; calling it that would simply be propaganda.

Quote: Original post by Horatius83
(Look up phrenology, or eugenics if you don't believe me)

Phrenology is not scientific. It doesn't use the scientific method. It's just astrology for heads.

It's a mistake to group eugenics with phrenology; eugenics is simply selective breeding, which works fine, i.e. you can raise the occurence of certain traits in a population.

Quote: Original post by Horatius83
3) I think the unification of different cultures is already happening, you notice that EVERYONE wears jeans, Japanese culture is increasingly on TV and movies,(Chiaki Kuriyama in Kill Bill vol I, yeowza!) and you can't cuss at Americans in spanish because they know what you're saying. I don't think a common culture would come out of a revolution, but though years of subversive things like clothes, TV, and the internet.

So far, this seems to happen only to pop culture; deeper values (such as women's role in society) seem to be more intact, though perhaps a bit diluted...and of course, this may change rapidly.

Quote: Original post by Wavinator
This is a good point, but what about a reversal of the premise: How much power does it take to run a nanobot versus "macroscale" objects like a construction crane or vehicle? I'm assuming that nanotech is still being developed as things are declining, hence the "quiet revolution." I'm assuming that it doesn't make it to the consumer, but military / government uses go ahead anyway (as they always would, population be damned).

Well, my point is that nanobots might be able to perform miracles resource-wise, turning wet clay into a starship, or getting rid of nuclear waste, but those aren't (from what you described, at least) the primary problems in your setting.
On the other hand, they still require energy, which *is* in short supply.
They might be efficient enough that they could replace "macroscale" construction, but there wouldn't be this urgent need for it in your world, would there? Sure, it'd be handy, but it wouldn't solve their most urgent problem.

Maybe it'd make more sense to swap a few events around? Make the great nano-breakthrough first, and *then* you can have the energy crisis and collapse of civilization. It seems much more plausible that nanotech would be developed in the first place if it happens when the world actually has the resources to develop it, and you could even tie the two events together together, saying that nanotech opened up so many new opportunities for everyone to build everything, that it caused the energy crisis.
When everyone can build spaceships, computers and buildings out of nothing more than energy plus whatever random materials they have lying around, they'd most likely end up sucking a lot of juice, turning junk into gold... ;)
You could even make it a widely available technology, so even "normal" people become capable of constructing a yacht or mansion for themselves, at least for a brief time, until their excesses bring the entire system down (excessive use of power, and lots of opportunities for those stray hostile nanos to evolve)

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It's hard to gauge what near collapse and radical change would have done. I was thinking, though, that maybe, as with the 1960s movements, the majority of people are silent and inert. They go with the flow as long as it puts food on their plate. This would somewhat balkanize the arcologies, which might not be a bad thing for conflict and narrative options.

Agreed. That was kind of my point, actually. Most people will just go along quietly with whatever seems to be the default. I doubt you'd get any mass movement towards a radical new culture, but if the few powerful embrace it, average people just go with the flow, letting things happen without actively fighting for or against it. Just living with the way things are.

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[smile] All it takes is one visionary leader and you can put a man on the moon. Nobody else has done that, so I don't think it overly unfair to imagine a Green-leaning president revitalizing an isolationist America into restoring its train network, precisely for many of the reasons you site.

Well, my point is that America would by far be the country to get the least benefit from improving its mass transit infrastructure. As such, wouldn't it be more likely they tried another approach to revitalizing the country?

Actually, this could become your excuse for the arcologies. Mass transit is impossible in America, due to the spread out population and large distances involved. Private transportation (cars, primarily) is getting too expensive. What do you do to pull through?
Move everyone to smaller, more compact cities, where you don't have to spend 3 hours on a train just to get to the nearest shop, of course.

It would also open up the possibility that it's a primarily American phenomenon. Maybe you could still have European countries with higher population densities and smaller distances, who manage without these megacities (through efficient mass transit? ;))

Maybe it's just me, but I think it'd also add a very intriguing twist to the history, given that today, the US sees itself as the pinnacle of personal freedom and liberty, but then it might just end up forcing its population to move into specially constructed arcologies, restricting it's citizens in a lot of ways, pioneering new ways to keep your population under control under conditions they probably aren't too happy about, while the rest of the world might be able to get by without such drastic measures.
Might just be me, but I think that would definitely add some flavor to the world.

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Yeah, it might not work, but much depends on how rigid you believe the parameters are.

Yeah, of course. I can only go by what you've posted here. Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, and making all the wrong guesses... ;)

I suspect you may add to the picture the fact that in the next ten to fifteen years, most countries in the world will band together and try to enforce on the US a "do-or-die" threat on ratifying the Kyoto agreements AND putting them into place. The overpopulation triggering the heat-raise, plus the increased demand in energy, will create an extreme tension on the international scene. It is most likely that renewable energies will get the upper hand in energy producing in or about the same period.You can also imagine a new way of using the Sargasso Sea, through floating solar panels first, coupled with eolians, and then with a sort of giant Petri box, in which new engineered algaes will photosintethize sunlight, reproduce and create electricity through the process.

Then, I'd like to know why, or how, the nanotech first came into existence? I know for a fact that we can produce nanotubes, so far, which can be used to create no-resistance cables. And I know that scientists are thrivins to create the first quantum computers. But I don't think the public will get them before 2020, if ever. And then, I don't think nano-machines are currently regarded as feasibles. The most sensible project I came across is one which will include proteins instead of metal, and create molecular-intelligent-life. And this is what scares me the most. Maybe this is what succeeded, but only after the first metallic draft happened, and then the molecular semi-intelligent lifeforms came into existence, and out of control, wrecking havok everywhere, because they had been wrongly engineered. Whatever remains is what they haven't touched. Maybe you can find a reason for the nanites not to have attacked the people, but the land and infrastructures instead? Maybe they have been developped as a weapon, like a mean to disolve the equipment of the enemy without killing him? A sort of clean weapon which will disarm him, forcing him into submission? But the equivalent of a Tchernobyl cloud came into existence and spread it much further than was originally planned, going twice around the earth, and destroying most of the Eco-system in the process? This could happen in about 2 months, sending 4/5th of the global population back into Stone Age...

By the way, let me tell you that, if I ever read a sci-fi book in which the author admitted that he knew no answers to all the questions he raised, even refusing to hand down possibilities leading to the answers, well, I would throw the book away. Failing to explain EVERYTHING is a major failure in a world-building. Granted, your reader, or player, doesn't have to KNOW everything, but YOU, as creating god, DO.

Beware, I have a habit of being painfully honest (Well, truthfully stating my OPINIONS) - to the point of being a downright asshole and a pric. But here's my two hundred cents:

Well...

Based on your original premise, Wavinator (Making 2105 as different from 2005 as 2005 is to 1905) I'd say that anything severe is going to throw you off. 2005 is 1905 with a more powerful America, computers, and a few wars in the history books. How much has the population of the world grown? Things haven't changed in a pseudo-scientific cyberpunk kind of way. In fact, the majority of people still aren't computer savvy. The world isn't that different, you still have many of the problems of the 20th century today. Healthcare is better, and the world is better off today - but the changes aren't earth-shatteringly significant. One hundred years from now, we'll have the same national boundaries with a few changes (likely in the middle east) better technology, and more interaction with the moon and space. Nothing really big and amazing, just different. Really and truly, the biggest things to happen in the 20th century were WWII (Which really was the rise and fall of Nazi Germany - everything pretty much went back to normal (Borders of countries, etc.) afterwards.) the creation of computers and the nuclear bomb. However, how much have WWII and the Nuclear bomb affected our lives today? The vast majority of people only know WWII and nuclear bombs through the news - nothing significant to them. Computers have changed the way we do things - but not in a paradigm shifting way. We don't really do impossible things with computers - just the same old in a different way. Telephones allowed for instant communication. You couldn't browse the web - but people still managed to get information. Computers have really made the things we've been doing easier - the things that we never did before computers are still in their infancy (Computer games, Instant text messaging (ironically less useful than voice communication in reality), Online TV, Everything Internet).

Naturally, given this information, 2105 would be painfully boring. But that's probably what it will be like, baring the end of the world. Then again, if we manage to kill ourselves, nothing will be left to make a game out of...

Also, the world has not had 'Secularist' revolutions. The Soviet revolution was not communism - it was a totalitarian system that was called communism. Naturally, communism is prone to problems (It works on the assumption that you should treat everyone exactly equally. People are not equal, despite lots of ideological bullsh*t), but it was not really ever used as it was supposed to be. Furthermore, science is not religion, and is not as liable to the flaws therein. Science is not an organised faith-based oligarchy. Look at the definition of science. The act of determining what is; confirming reality. Science is not as prone as religion is to bias due to the type of establishment that science is. But back to 'secularist' revolutions. China and Russia had what were supposed to be communist revolutions. Of course, neither country actually established communism (Equality? Hah. It was a farce and a cover up over totalitarian dictatorship). Capitalism works alot better than communism - and democracy is alot better than totalitarianism. Now, of course, the fact that China and Russia's 'communist' revolutions failed has no attachment to each regime's anti-religious stance. They failed due to economics - not due to this fact. Also, to add to the conundrum, a 'secular' revolution really defies logic and science. Forcing people to believe a certain concept is a pillar of religion - not science.
But, I digress. The circumstances you described, Wavinator, far outstrip our past century of history. In fact, you'd have to go back a millenia or two to find such drastic changes. The ingrained roots of our current society (Religion and Business) will shape the future. Business holds more promise of capsizing the world. Religion often lets loose conflict - but rarely can attest to unbalancing the world situation. Slowing progress? Yes. Bringing about armageddon? No. Now, you didn't point to religion as the cause, but the point is that your future is dependent on a string of possible but implausiblities (pardon my blatant opinionated soundy-ness). To get the world you describe, it would take some massive growth of technology in a post apocalyptic growth starved world. It doesn't fit. You'd have to have humanity discover some really easy way of advancing technology even in an infertile environment. But that would counteract history and all the knowledge we have of how things really play out in the universe. It doesn't seem likely, much less in only 100 years. The type of change that you depict would involve everything that is currently true about the world being wiped away and rebuilt in the timespan of a century.

I dunno, but it seems kinda cyberpunky and cliche. But, you did say you were aiming for phoenix rising, so I suppose its just about right. I'm personally tired of the entire cyberpunk future, but that's just me.

Quote: Original post by Nytehauq
Beware, I have a habit of being painfully honest

This I appreciate, actually. I'm not trying to win a pulitzer, but am trying to create something consistent and imaginative enough to be engaging.

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Based on your original premise, Wavinator (Making 2105 as different from 2005 as 2005 is to 1905) I'd say that anything severe is going to throw you off. 2005 is 1905 with a more powerful America, computers, and a few wars in the history books.

Okay, pardon me for going history buff on you, but this leaves me agape. We are so radically different from 1905 as to be culturally incompatible! Look at gender expectations, race relations, the relationship of the individual to the state, suffrage, the massive expansion of the Imperial Presidency, the vast rise of corporate power, the rise of mass communications and mass advertising, the freedom and massive cultural changes wrought by the automobile, the impact of nuclear weapons on military doctrine (trench warfare? Maginot Line?), etc., etc., etc.

Look at plastics industry, the chip industry, miniaturization and the Internet's impact on society and tell me that life is not faster, more complex, and more diverse than it was 100 years ago. As James Glick talked about in his book Faster, we're experiencing both rapid acceleration in technological change and an increasing massification of technological infrastructure, with the results being that the origin of problems that impact our lives must be increasingly solved by bureaucracies or not at all.

In 1905, nobody could bring down a World Trade Center. In 1905 building something as tall as a WTC was impossible, let alone cramming it full of 10s of thousands of people. The citizen's role in war, and the concept of population focused terrorism was also quite alien to most of the world. Individuals simply didn't have the power, and while there were certainly rebellions and resistance movements, we had yet to shake off ideas of fealty and gentlemanly combat. (btw, I'm aware of atrocities, I'm talking about permissions and perception).

I'm not sure how you can say that splitting the atom, overthrowing imperial ethics and developing quantum physics, nuclear medicine, massive industrialization and urbanization, space travel, nuclear war, and genetic research (among other things) is a small change.

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How much has the population of the world grown?

Worldwide, the most massive accelerations in population occurred in the 20th Century, with the advent of petroleum-based fertilizers and farm automation. The modern tractor allows one man to do the work of what took dozens upon dozens 100 years ago.

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Things haven't changed in a pseudo-scientific cyberpunk kind of way.

Cyberpunk describes the tone of the society, so this is not the issue. But in terms of science, it I could resurrect Jules Verne he might beg to differ!

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In fact, the majority of people still aren't computer savvy.

Worldwide, or in the US? If define computer as "cell phone," ATM machine, etc., even the worldwide figure drastically changes.

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The world isn't that different, you still have many of the problems of the 20th century today. Healthcare is better, and the world is better off today - but the changes aren't earth-shatteringly significant.

Hah! Just try to live the life of a single female mother of two in 1905, or a black male with the aim of being a General in the US Army, or a (known) Jew looking to be a state senator. Try bopping from Tokyo to Shanghai to Beijing on business and getting back to your family within a few days. Try teaching evolution at a local school, or staying out for drinks and dancing until four in the morning. I could go on forever!

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One hundred years from now, we'll have the same national boundaries with a few changes (likely in the middle east) better technology, and more interaction with the moon and space.

Sure, I think this is more likely than anything. In fact, I don't think the human race is really ever going to make it off this rock because we're surrounded by the equivalent of lifeless volcanic wasteland where nothing grows and one mistake can cost you your life. There's no money in colonization, and as it stands now we can't get people off fast enough to make any difference in the worldwide population numbers. Keep in mind, I wasn't writing our TRUE future, I was writing a possible future.

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Nothing really big and amazing, just different.

The decline of manufacturing and shift from atoms to bits is probably going to create the most radical dislocation. The West is in for a severe drop in standard of living if globalization and transnationalization of corporations continues as it has been going.

I do think you underestimate the potentials with cloning, embryonic stem cells, nanotech, the internet and automation, though. Drastically.

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However, how much have WWII and the Nuclear bomb affected our lives today?

Both have shattered our concepts of safety and naive faith in human nature. We're far less innocent on average.

As to the bomb, people know it through cancer treatment and a whole host of spinoff technology. And its development has served to deepen the polarization between the left and right, galvanized a peace movement, and steeped a generation in nihilism (which may have had untold effects on the culture given that it arose concurrently with the AIDS epidemic and drug abuse, though I can't prove that link)


Anyway, much more to say but this is far too long already and I'm running out of steam. I think you drastically underestimate who we were in the 1900s. But I do appreciate the perspective.

Quote: Original post by Wavinator
In 1905, nobody could bring down a World Trade Center. In 1905 building something as tall as a WTC was impossible, let alone cramming it full of 10s of thousands of people.

So? Then they could do the same thing on a smaller scale. You could still construct buildings, and you could also blow them up. The main difference there is that today we can make bigger buildings, and we can make them go boom in more different ways.

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The citizen's role in war, and the concept of population focused terrorism was also quite alien to most of the world. Individuals simply didn't have the power, and while there were certainly rebellions and resistance movements, we had yet to shake off ideas of fealty and gentlemanly combat.

That's not true. There have always been people targeting civilians to achieve their goals. There's also always been civilian casualties in war. If anything, we're only now starting to move away from that.
The whole "gentlemanly combat" business was an ideal back then, just as it is today.

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I'm not sure how you can say that splitting the atom

How much have that changed my life? Without that invention, we'd have to rely more on other power sources, yes, and maybe some technological advances would have been slowed or wouldn't have happened at all, but how much of a *direct* impact does it have on my life? I still don't go around splitting atoms in my home when I'm bored. ;)

Quote: overthrowing imperial ethics

Have we done that?

Quote: massive industrialization

They had that back then as well. Today it's just had another 100 years to grow, but industrialization really characterized their time, not ours.

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space travel, nuclear war

Again, how much direct effect does that have on our lives? When was the last time you went to the moon again?
How often do you have to hide in underground bunkers because another nuclear war has broken out? Yes, both those events accelerated a lot of things, but they haven't really changed my life directly.

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How much has the population of the world grown?

Maybe this is just me, but I don't think he was talking about the size of the population, but more about how much the population have grown up. How much more mature, intelligent or sensible are we compared to 100 years ago?
Do we think in a fundamentally different way?

Of course a lot of things have changed in the last hundred years, but it's nothing compared to the changes you want to happen in the next 100 years. We haven't had any advanced comparable to your nanotech, we haven't seen anything that could turn the world so effectively upside down.

More importantly though, you don't really have any explanation for that accelerated progress. As Nytehauq said:

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To get the world you describe, it would take some massive growth of technology in a post apocalyptic growth starved world. It doesn't fit. You'd have to have humanity discover some really easy way of advancing technology even in an infertile environment. But that would counteract history and all the knowledge we have of how things really play out in the universe.

You have some serious explaining to do if you expect people to accept that all of a sudden, the world collapses, but despite that, people manage to make such amazing technological advances. [wink]

Quote: Original post by Spoonbender

Quote: Original post by Wavinator
In 1905, nobody could bring down a World Trade Center. In 1905 building something as tall as a WTC was impossible, let alone cramming it full of 10s of thousands of people.

So? Then they could do the same thing on a smaller scale. You could still construct buildings, and you could also blow them up. The main difference there is that today we can make bigger buildings, and we can make them go boom in more different ways.

I think you're making a linear extrapolation where a geometric one is called for. The power of the individual, historically speaking, is rising geometrically (and a lot of that power began with the development of firearms and explosives in the past couple of centuries).

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The citizen's role in war, and the concept of population focused terrorism was also quite alien to most of the world. Individuals simply didn't have the power, and while there were certainly rebellions and resistance movements, we had yet to shake off ideas of fealty and gentlemanly combat.

That's not true. There have always been people targeting civilians to achieve their goals. There's also always been civilian casualties in war. If anything, we're only now starting to move away from that.
The whole "gentlemanly combat" business was an ideal back then, just as it is today.

There's no point in getting into a drawn out debate, but AFAIK LIC conflict emerged as a widespread strategy after World War II. There was no such thing as "global terrorism" in 1905.

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I'm not sure how you can say that splitting the atom

How much have that changed my life? Without that invention, we'd have to rely more on other power sources, yes, and maybe some technological advances would have been slowed or wouldn't have happened at all, but how much of a *direct* impact does it have on my life? I still don't go around splitting atoms in my home when I'm bored. ;)

Can't answer that question unless I know whether or not you're an Amish dude with internet access.[lol] Our understanding of the world and the universe, how to build things, how much we pay in taxes, and a host of other areas would be different if we'd never gained an understanding of atomic physics.

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Quote: overthrowing imperial ethics

Have we done that?

Yup. Now it's all about economic hegemony.

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Quote: massive industrialization

They had that back then as well. Today it's just had another 100 years to grow, but industrialization really characterized their time, not ours.

What has been the impact of that growth?

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space travel, nuclear war

Again, how much direct effect does that have on our lives? When was the last time you went to the moon again?
How often do you have to hide in underground bunkers because another nuclear war has broken out? Yes, both those events accelerated a lot of things, but they haven't really changed my life directly.

You're using the Internet, so I'd wager it directly affected you, because of DARPA defense funding and accelerations in computing. [wink]

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How much has the population of the world grown?

Maybe this is just me, but I don't think he was talking about the size of the population, but more about how much the population have grown up. How much more mature, intelligent or sensible are we compared to 100 years ago?
Do we think in a fundamentally different way?

It depends on what you decide to use as a metric. How do you measure maturity, intelligence (non-IQ I'm assuming), or sensibility?

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Of course a lot of things have changed in the last hundred years, but it's nothing compared to the changes you want to happen in the next 100 years. We haven't had any advanced comparable to your nanotech, we haven't seen anything that could turn the world so effectively upside down.

I disagree. Transportation, computers, telecommunication and the corporation have turned the world upside down.

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More importantly though, you don't really have any explanation for that accelerated progress.

I guess I take computers and nanotech to be an inherently accelerating effect, based on what they can do. The computer can model reality in greater and greater detail, and the nano can execute on that model.

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You have some serious explaining to do if you expect people to accept that all of a sudden, the world collapses, but despite that, people manage to make such amazing technological advances. [wink]

Well, put it this way. Part of the world collapses, and the world reorganizes and keeps on going. So the near equatorial regions are in better shape than places closer to the poles, due to climate disruption, ozone thinning, nanotech war, limited nuclear war between India & China, etc.

Quote: Original post by Wavinator

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So? Then they could do the same thing on a smaller scale. You could still construct buildings, and you could also blow them up. The main difference there is that today we can make bigger buildings, and we can make them go boom in more different ways.

I think you're making a linear extrapolation where a geometric one is called for. The power of the individual, historically speaking, is rising geometrically (and a lot of that power began with the development of firearms and explosives in the past couple of centuries).

....

Can't answer that question unless I know whether or not you're an Amish dude with internet access.[lol] Our understanding of the world and the universe, how to build things, how much we pay in taxes, and a host of other areas would be different if we'd never gained an understanding of atomic physics.

(Gonna lump these two quotes together because it basically deals with the same issue, and I don't want to keep wading around in this topic.)
Agreed, we've learned a lot of things, which allow us to do stuff much more efficiently than we did back then. But as I said above, how much of it has truly penetrated into our everyday lives? Our deeper understanding has allowed us to replace horces with several faster kinds of transportation, telegraph has been replaced with internet, and so on. Definitely progress, but it's essentially just "more of the same, better, faster and cheaper". Is any of it a revolution comparable to your future invention of nanotech?
We had long-distance communication a century ago as well. We also had other kinds of transportation than walking. Today it's just better/cheaper/faster. And yes, that has opened a lot of doors, no doubt about that. But it happened as a gradual process, some kind of continuous interpolation, whether it's geometric or linear or something else.

It's still basically just exaggerating the traits we found in 1905. We're better at most things today, but there's very little truly *new*, very little that completely turned everyday life upside down. Lots of slower, more subtle revolutions, but is there anything compared to what you're suggesting for the next 100 years? I'm not sure, maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But I don't think it's as clear cut as you initially made it sound.

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There's no point in getting into a drawn out debate, but AFAIK LIC conflict emerged as a widespread strategy after World War II. There was no such thing as "global terrorism" in 1905.

There wasn't much "global" anything in 1905. Back then, the world was, more or less, Europe and to some extent, the US, so "global" just wasn't a very important concept. Hence the names "World" War 1 and 2.. But there definitely was terrorism and war targeting civilians. Again, we're just better at it today [wink]

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More importantly though, you don't really have any explanation for that accelerated progress.

I guess I take computers and nanotech to be an inherently accelerating effect, based on what they can do. The computer can model reality in greater and greater detail, and the nano can execute on that model.

Assuming they get the chance, yes. But you also say almost directly that they won't get that chance, that the established world basically collapses. That sort of thing usually has a devastating effect on such things. How many billions would Intel be able to pump into faster CPU's if no one could afford to buy a new PC? They'd grind to a halt. If they were lucky they'd be able to avoid going backwards to simpler chips.
Or how many scientists can you afford to put into work on a deeply theoretical field like nanotech in a world with no money and no energy? (Ok, a bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully you get the point. In times of crisis, people tend to prioritize short-term survival/success, which means they won't start working on revolutionary new technologies which may never work out, and if they do, surely won't benefit anyone in this decade.

I guess I have two problems with this. First, there's what I've been saying, that I just don't find it very plausible, and second, I just get that itchy "It could have been so much better if only they'd changed these few details in the story"-feeling. The fact that it's so close to being a really cool story makes the implausible bits seem even worse.

I mean, as it is now, you've got a lot of technology that needs explaining as well as a worldwide collapse. That's weak. You're basically saying that both are going to happen for no particular reason. People may have no money or energy, but they're going to keep improving their hyper-advanced technology. And before then, everything may seem to go fine, but they're going to have a collapse anyway.

Why not let them explain each others just by swapping them around on the timeline? The accelerating technological progress gives the world widespread nanotech and everything, but in the end causes the collapse. (People start using nanotech for everything, either undermining the economy or draining all available power, depending on your preferences. In either case, once nanotech is available to Joe Average, he won't give it up just because a few doomsayers are whining about the end of the world, and so, the disaster will essentially be inevitable)

After the collapse, people still have nanotech, but the technological progress will have halted or slowed drastically for a while. People may just (barely) be able to keep the old levels of technology, but they won't able to continue the insane progress. Problem solved. [wink]

what exactly are we going for here? are we talking about an RTS, RPG, action/adventure, or a futuristic MYST?

Quote: Original post by ClonedPrince
what exactly are we going for here? are we talking about an RTS, RPG, action/adventure, or a futuristic MYST?

None of them. We're talking about the FUTURE. OUR future, not the story of a game.