2100 AD

[Condottiere]

Political integration is a core requirement, in whatever form it takes; local elites will tend to resist that, without either elite capture and/or political socio economic incentives, which only an established political entity can provide.

 

[Werner]

Political integration is a core requirement, in whatever form it takes; local elites will tend to resist that, without either elite capture and/or political socio economic incentives, which only an established political entity can provide.

Is a core requirement for what? I'm not saying there would be. Basically what I'm saying is that each inhabited continent will have a dominant power. Today, those dominant powers are the United States for North America, Brazil for South America, China for East Asia, Germany or Russia for Europe, Egypt or South Africa for Africa. That is five continents, the other two continents are Australia which is also a country, and Antarctica which has no permanent residents. I figure in about 80 years or a human lifetime from now, that isn't going to change much. It's possible that in 80 years North America might be politically unified as a single nation, and it's also possible that it won't be, perhaps the dominant power in North America will be Canada of Mexico, or perhaps it will remain the United States, so lumping these countries into power blocs helps me to avoid making such predictions, and also a way to avoid arguments with indignant Canadians and Mexicans on this site.

I'm not sure where India is going to be. It has over one billion inhabitants, so maybe I'll include it as a sixth power block, there is India the country and there is India the subcontinent, the Subcontinent of India includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, as well as the country called India. I think in the future the Indian Ocean maybe dotted with artificial islands where citizens of India live, India is quite a crowded place after all, I think around the mid century India will catch up with the other power blocs in its space settlement activities, as India has quite a large population, and unlike China it does not impose restrictions on how many children a family may have. I think we can expect a lot of Indian settlements on the Moon, Mars, and in Cis Luna space.

 

[Vile]

You might consider thinking of the "big idea" behind your setting which can be used to describe it in an elevator pitch. In other words, emphasise what's unique or different about your idea of CE 2100 compared to others.

 

[Condottiere]

They say geography is destiny; also mentioned for character.

African geography doesn't lend itself for unification, and to become a regional hegemon there would need a wide spectrum of capabilities, beyond just military force, and even then it appears to be sub regional.

 

[jcrocker]

...so lumping these countries into power blocs helps me to avoid making such predictions, and also a way to avoid arguments with indignant Canadians and Mexicans on this site.

Are there a lot of indignant Canadians on the site? Tsk. They could get their guild cards revoked.

 

[Werner]

You might consider thinking of the "big idea" behind your setting which can be used to describe it in an elevator pitch. In other words, emphasise what's unique or different about your idea of CE 2100 compared to others.

1) it's not a disutopia
2) it's not post apocalyptic or apocalyptic
There is no looming disaster. No runaway greenhouse effect, the ecosystem is not collapsing, the Earth is not becoming uninhabitable forcing people to move into space.
3) no Megacorps are taking over.
4) it is not a dark future or a disguised critique on contemporary society.

I haven't decided what wars would take place, the timeline consists of technological advancements and migrations, though I imagine there will be frictions between the various powers, there may be proxy wars, perhaps some colonial term wars, perhaps some settlements want independence from their colonizers, or perhaps some colonies are run by corporations and some people in them don't like corporate rule.

There may be some AI in this setting, if so it isn't a common thing, a human level AI is a disrupter, the AI comes as late as possibly it can be, it is an experimental prototype if it exists at all.

It is kind of a blank slate generic future based on what I think is most likely to happen over the next 80 years, we can add some other stuff, like alien artifacts perhaps. And there is the Starship Prometheus, it has stayed in contact with the Solar System over its entire journey, it is entering a star system with three stars and three habitable planets, one of those planets is most promising and they named it Prometheus, a size 7 planet but denser that Earth, has about 1 Earth gravity on, its surface, 50% water coverage, and has huge deserts, and a dense atmosphere, about 10% oxygen but since it has 2 atmosphere of air pressure at its surface it is breathable by humans. The climate is dry compared to Earth, the oceans are saltier than Earth's oceans, and the metal content in the planet's crust is higher, and their are ruins and alien artifacts, the first artifacts by the Ancients in fact, the crew is trying to decipher the language, the arid environment of the deep deserts have preserved a lot of artifacts and they are estimated to be 200,000 years old.

 

[Vile]

It's probably not that important if it's just for your own gaming, but you seem to be defining your setting mainly in terms of what it's not. It might make it easier to grasp if you can think of some important things that it is. Hostile (also by Mithras), for example, is the future as imagined in the 1980s.

Prometheus seems like an obvious candidate for a Big Idea in your setting, but is it really a big element for PCs - i.e. do they get to play there, or is it background information only while they play in our Solar System?

If you're really trying for a more-or-less plausible near future game I think AI would play a much bigger part. It's already growing at a frightening rate, with lots of industries rapidly moving over to it - law, logistics, transportation, even military applications. I can see the value of keeping AI out for gaming-fun purposes, but I'd consider a "low AI" future as an alternative reality.

I hope I'm not coming across as nit-picking, I am genuinely interested in seeing how you develop this.

 

[Werner]

It's probably not that important if it's just for your own gaming, but you seem to be defining your setting mainly in terms of what it's not. It might make it easier to grasp if you can think of some important things that it is. Orbital 2100, for example, is the future as imagined in the 1980s.

Prometheus seems like an obvious candidate for a Big Idea in your setting, but is it really a big element for PCs - i.e. do they get to play there, or is it background information only while they play in our Solar System?

If you're really trying for a more-or-less plausible near future game I think AI would play a much bigger part. It's already growing at a frightening rate, with lots of industries rapidly moving over to it - law, logistics, transportation, even military applications. I can see the value of keeping AI out for gaming-fun purposes, but I'd consider a "low AI" future as an alternative reality.

I hope I'm not coming across as nit-picking, I am genuinely interested in seeing how you develop this.

I think low-level AI could be useful in constructing megastructures such as a pair of counter-rotating O'Neill cylinders, a lot of the actions in such a construction project will be repetitive and robots will be working from a set of instructions and a blueprint of the colony, they have limited common sense and do not deal with unexpected situations very well and require human intervention to sort them out, but most of the time such unexpected situations do not occur, so the robots act as a labor force multiplier instead of a labor force replacement.

This might be because of technological limitations of the software, or it might be because of regulations limiting the level of AI intelligence so that human labor is retained. So full-fledged strong AI might be a black market item due to public fears of strong AI taking over, so AI is limited to repetitive mundane tasks that humans are unwilling or unable to do. For example the number of human construction workers required to build an O'Neill cylinder would be in the millions, but with AI, the human construction force only numbers in the thousands, thus reducing the costs to make space real estate affordable. There is also Basic Income that most governments provide their citizens, and any employment or investments provide income on top of that.

Corporations and private businesses are taxed to provide for those Basic Income payments. The Prometheus has a full-fledged strong AI called "Prometheus", he didn't exist at the beginning of the voyage. The Prometheus Starship has a full fledged computer chip production facility on board, which they keep updated with downloads from the Solar System, and they have industrial 3-d printers to print the parts of their microchip production facility, and they download the latest software, some of it is illegal, including a bottled strong AI program named "Athena" that even "Prometheus" is afraid of.

 

[whartung]

I think low-level AI could be useful in constructing megastructures such as a pair of counter-rotating O'Neill cylinders, a lot of the actions in such a construction project will be repetitive and robots will be working from a set of instructions and a blueprint of the colony, they have limited common sense and do not deal with unexpected situations very well and require human intervention to sort them out, but most of the time such unexpected situations do not occur, so the robots act as a labor force multiplier instead of a labor force replacement.

By the time it gets to this level, it would not be considered "AI" any more.

Every time a segment of "AI" become mature, it gets a new name, is "just software" and "AI" moves on to the next level.

Today, "Machine Learning" (ML) has usurped "AI", as "AI" moves forward to something else.

Machine Learning is much better understood, and is being used all over the place. Notably things like self driving cars, but also drug design, financial trading, environmental science, etc.

While it's a hot commodity of research now, much of it is in optimizing the established fundamentals. Machine Learning isn't particularly new, what's recent is the data and computer capacities to make it worth while.

We've had ML since forever, most user facing in fields like speech recognition and Optical Character Recognition technologies -- stuff we've had since the late 80's at the consumer level.

But hardware held all of that back. Now, less so.

But when folks talk about "AI" today, they mean ML, and "AI" is dropping off in favor of just talking directly about ML.

So, anyway, whatever will be driving those bots building the space habitat, it won't be "AI". It will be some established field of autonomous remote device technologies, or something like that.

 

[Werner]

By the time it gets to this level, it would not be considered "AI" any more.

Every time a segment of "AI" become mature, it gets a new name, is "just software" and "AI" moves on to the next level.

Today, "Machine Learning" (ML) has usurped "AI", as "AI" moves forward to something else.

Machine Learning is much better understood, and is being used all over the place. Notably things like self driving cars, but also drug design, financial trading, environmental science, etc.

While it's a hot commodity of research now, much of it is in optimizing the established fundamentals. Machine Learning isn't particularly new, what's recent is the data and computer capacities to make it worth while.

We've had ML since forever, most user facing in fields like speech recognition and Optical Character Recognition technologies -- stuff we've had since the late 80's at the consumer level.

But hardware held all of that back. Now, less so.

But when folks talk about "AI" today, they mean ML, and "AI" is dropping off in favor of just talking directly about ML.

So, anyway, whatever will be driving those bots building the space habitat, it won't be "AI". It will be some established field of autonomous remote device technologies, or something like that.

Giving it a different name doesn't change what it is. When people feel uncomfortable about talking about talking about something, they often change the label and pretend it is something else they are talking about.

 

[Condottiere]

Going by recent developments, we can scale and accelerate machine learning, by just adding more and faster computing capacity.

The next stage might be programming more sophisticated algorithms that can bypass sheer brute force.

 

[Vile]

The Prometheus has a full-fledged strong AI called "Prometheus", he didn't exist at the beginning of the voyage. [...] and they download the latest software, some of it is illegal, including a bottled strong AI program named "Athena" that even "Prometheus" is afraid of.

This is what I mean about points that make your setting unique. All your other points are fine, and I could see myself gaming there, but this tidbit is what makes me want to know more. How big a deal is the Prometheus (and it's AI) in your setting? Are the PCs in the Solar System, or with the Prometheus?

What is the human species' relationship with the concept of AI? It seems to be a healthy fear from what you wrote, but is that universal or do different blocs have different attitudes? Of course I would expect governments and the shadowy quangos behind them to have their own ideas about the value of self-aware machines - this touches on the fact that in the Real World the fears of the public rarely prevent new technology being brought in. COVID-19 track & trace, for example, has removed many strongly held privacy concerns overnight in many liberal societies, and we willingly let untold numbers of strangers into our personal lives via our smart phones. So another aspectof AI a setting could explore might be the creeping insinuation of the same into peoples' lives in spite of their commonly-held fear thereof.

Anyway, keep the background details coming!

 

[Werner]

This is what I mean about points that make your setting unique. All your other points are fine, and I could see myself gaming there, but this tidbit is what makes me want to know more. How big a deal is the Prometheus (and it's AI) in your setting? Are the PCs in the Solar System, or with the Prometheus?

What is the human species' relationship with the concept of AI? It seems to be a healthy fear from what you wrote, but is that universal or do different blocs have different attitudes? Of course I would expect governments and the shadowy quangos behind them to have their own ideas about the value of self-aware machines - this touches on the fact that in the Real World the fears of the public rarely prevent new technology being brought in. COVID-19 track & trace, for example, has removed many strongly held privacy concerns overnight in many liberal societies, and we willingly let untold numbers of strangers into our personal lives via our smart phones. So another aspectof AI a setting could explore might be the creeping insinuation of the same into peoples' lives in spite of their commonly-held fear thereof.

Anyway, keep the background details coming!

Okay, this setting is a version of the OTU with a different timeline, there are extraterrestrial humans out there, the Jump Drive hasn't been invented yet, the maneuver drive hasn't been invented yet, there are three habitable planets in the system, one of which is destined to be the system's main world because of its proximity to a small gas giant and due to the relative abundance of precious metals in the planet's crust. Planet Prometheus orbits Alpha Centauri B. Athena is the second habitable planet in the system, it orbits Alpha Centauri A and it has a population of native extraterrestrial human, Proxima does not. The Athena humans have a native tech level of 2, their planet is divided up into a number of kingdoms, empires and wilderness areas, their technology is pregunpowder and they have sailing ships, windmills, watersheds, and domesticated beasts of burden and food animals. The ecology of Athena is very EarthLink although the planet lacks a moon.

The third planet is Aurora, that is the planet we know as Proxima b and it orbits Proxima Centauri along with Proxima C - a sub-gas giant. Proxima C has an atmosphere which contains hydrogen along with helium and a high concentration of deuterium along with the usual abundance of helium-3. The gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri B is named Polyphemus after the fictional planet of the same name in the Avatar series, and of course after the cyclops encountered by Odysseus in the Odyssey.

 

[whartung]

Going by recent developments, we can scale and accelerate machine learning, by just adding more and faster computing capacity.

"Just".

We're already peaking in this area. The current trends are focusing on power efficiency, but the underlying systems aren't getting much faster.

The next stage might be programming more sophisticated algorithms that can bypass sheer brute force.

There are some fundamental information theory issues at play here. This field is maturing quite quickly and the curve is flattening. It's more about finding new applications for the current technology.