A Thousand Words
I posted a video on Friday, February 8th, 2019 in which I talked with my young friend, Collin, about, among other things, our expectations concerning technology and the future of technological civilization. Collin expressed the opinion that technological progress will continue and, in spite of some potential rough patches, that humanity would "keep going up." I don't recall shooting down the idea of perpetual progress in that video, but I do harbor some doubts, and I guess that showed through in my expression, because YouTube user Apjooz posted a comment asking:
"What development do you think would need to happen for you to shift your thinking in terms of decline? Like what trends would start to convince you that maybe Colin's right and we'll keep going upwards instead of declining."
My answer turns on who the "we" in your question refers to.
I'm concerned that whole sectors of employment are either being automated out of existence or exported to countries with lower wages, fewer worker protections and lax environmental regulations, something that modern information and communications technology makes possible. Instead of freeing people from onerous labor, the benefits of this transformation are going to a tiny minority while the middle class that took form in the so-called "West" in the post-war boom years of the 20th Century evaporates into a growing class of people who will fail to do as well at their parents did.
Ask a technophile about that and they'll tell you that, historically, new technology and automation created more opportunities for paid labor than it destroyed. That might be true, but that doesn't mean that the person whose livelihood is destroyed will find new work that will allow him to benefit from the technological "progress" that disrupted his old way of making a living. He may not be qualified to do the new sorts of work, or he may not be in the right place to participate in the newly created employment sectors.
What comfort should a 17th century agrarian peasant take from that idea when the commons on which he once farmed for a living is enclosed to raise sheep to supply wool to an increasingly mechanized textile industry? Perhaps he migrates to a city where he finds work in a mill or factory. The working conditions are dangerous, and injured workers are discarded without compensation. The man grew up in a rural village where he knew everyone. Now he lives in an overcrowded and squalid slum in the city where he is surrounded alcoholism, violence, abuse, disease, prostitution, human predation and the host familiar social ills associated with the concentration of poverty. As he toils in low light for long hours, watching other workers, many of them children, injured and killed and replaced without so much as a moment of silence to acknowledge their sacrifice, how seriously should he take the idea that it's all good because his great, great grandchildren will own smartphones and work as baristas, cashiers, and house cleaners? Does that guy count among the beneficiaries of the industrial revolution?
Suppose you tell a Neanderthal that she and all of her descendants will die out leaving the world to homo sapiens who will multiply and populate the Earth to an unimaginable density. Instead of struggling with hunger and exposure to the elements, they will suffer from obesity, diabetes and the other so-called diseases of civilization. She and everyone she knows will be long dead by the time this happens, and in fact her species will soon be extinct, but the successor species who will build cities and eventually build machines that will leave the solar system, will carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA. Does our Neanderthal then count in the "we" who will master technology and set out toward the stars?
What's a really hopeful outlook for our future? About the most optimistic vision offered in popular fiction is the Star Trek future where people routinely travel in faster-than-light starships. Everyone has access to first-rate healthcare, clean and secure housing, satisfying work, and endless varieties of nutritious and delicious food from a replicator mounted in the wall. The holodeck can recreate any historical environment or any far-flung or fantasy location. The lucky inhabitants of this prosperous future society can learn from the great minds of Earth's history as well as from those of a thousand extraterrestrial cultures.
But between our present and the Star Trek future stands nuclear war and a struggle between augmented humans and the unmodified majority that will claim millions of lives. The prosperity we know today will give way to squalor and deprivation that will seem like the end of the world to the people living through it. Nobody alive today will see the Star Trek future, and only a tiny minority will have descendants who make it through the coming population bottleneck to roleplay as Sherlock Holmes or Captain Proton on the holodeck of an interstellar vessel. Does that count as a bright future for the people who will die in the coming wars and the lean times to follow?
Who counts as "we?" From my perspective, "we" must include me and my children at the very least. Since Apjooz asked the question, he or she must also count as a member of the "we" who will enjoy continued technological and social progress. Given that definition of "we," here are a few developments that would suggest to me that "we" will enjoy a bright and prosperous future:
The carbon content of the atmosphere stabilizes and starts to move back toward pre-industrial levels.
The number of species lost to extinction each year slows dramatically.
The Gini Coefficient, a statistical measure of economic inequality, stops climbing and begins to fall in rich and poor countries alike.
The prison population in the United States decreases to pre-Drug War levels.
Politicians, tech executives, and thought leaders acknowledge publicly that the wealth gains created by information technology have mostly been captured by a tiny oligarchic elite. They would then need to propose some means by which to include all humans as stakeholders in the glorious high-tech future.
If any three of those five developments manifest in my lifetime, I will probably join the technoutopians and agree that the future of technological civilization is bright.