Remember the 60's,70's and 80's? I was too young in the 70's to really have been able to first hand experience life as it was back then, but I am pretty confident that I am accurate in stating that it was an extremely exciting time. It was the time of freedom, hippies and self expression. It was the time of a post war arms race where the most powerful nations on earth flexed their muscles. It was the time that computers came out of the dark ages and became accessible to the average Joe. People were excited. Energised. Hopeful. We landed a man on the moon. We created the personal computer. Science broke new ground every single day. Medicine allowed people to live beyond 50. Even science fiction predicted that in 2001 we would be travelling amongst the stars. Antibiotics, gene theraphy etc. boosted our life spans considerably.

However the 90's, '00's and 10's proved otherwise. During the 90's and 00's Moore's law held strong, but in the 10's it slowed down. For the past 10 years we have been hovering around 1-3GHz for CPU speed. Increases in performance are harder and take longer. 18 Months are no longer mandating doubling of performance. The amazing Concorde plane was grounded in 2003 when people decided they were not economically viable and unsafe. That means our air travel is as advanced as it was in the 60's. No progress. With NASA shutting down its space shuttle program, space exploration has been set back to the dark ages. Funding is now redirected to global warming, healthcare, sustainability etc. It is believed that by 2050 global warming will reach a point of no return causing major damage to many coastal regions and change our general climate, wreaking havoc with agriculture. Bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics due to doctors overprescribing the drug. What we once could treat easily is becoming harder every day. The Hubble Telescope ran out of funding - most likely one of the greatest scientific astrological tools we have ever built, and the James Webb telescope is also running into serious budget concerns. If cancelled, it will dramatically reduce our ability to research space and the origins of our universe.

Our freedom is threatened by the emergence of terrorism. War was a breeze - there was some conflict, nations sent their troops and while they fought their battles, science got a tremendous boost as this was funded by military needs to reign supreme. Today terrorism is the new enemy, since 9/11 our freedoms have been reduced to ashes. There was a time when it was considered inappropriate behaviour to pat down a 10 year old girl at an airport screening station. Today millimetre wave scanners violate our privacy, and do not even think about trying to board a plane with a cellular phone that has a flat battery. You will be denied entry to the plane.

We can no longer look forward in excitement and hope to a future which promises space exploration, advances in technology, self learning machines, fast intercontinental travel and the crucial ability to be able to continue life off world in case of an extinction level event - due to global warming or an asteroid or something else...

It feels to me like the world has followed a bell curve up to the 2000's, and is now on the other side of the peak quickly accelerating towards a new dark age. You see many post apocalyptic movies these days, but I think they all got it wrong. It will not be an asteroid, nuclear war, artificial intelligence or alien invasion that sends us back to the dark ages.

I think we will be us regressing to a point where we will be unable to adapt to a dynamic, changing universe. We will not have the toolset to fight off microscopic invaders, to find a new home should we exhaust Earth's natural resources, or to better our way of living. It is clear that we are not following a sustainable growth pattern. More people were born in the past 20 years than in the 4.4 billion years leading up to 1900. At this rate we will exceed 10 billion people by the turn of the century.

I am saddened to say but we do not have a bright future any longer. We have lost that in the past 3 decades. And knowing humanity, this will not change anytime soon.