A Virtual Visit to a Sustainable 2050

There is a new very advanced virtual reality system that just came out (almost like the holodeck on Star Trek). The “reality” it simulates is generated by a cross between a real-time systems simulation model of the biophysical environment, an agent-based personality simulator (a super-Sims), and an advanced “future search” consensus building system. It basically allows participants to create a future world that represents their overlapping hopes and dreams, tempered by the constraints of human nature and biophysical reality. Assumptions about these constraints are programmed in (by mutual agreement of the participants) at the start of the session. For our session, we agreed on a set of what we considered to be realistic assumptions, both about people and the rest of the world, that embodied the latest scientific research findings. We did not assume any major technological breakthroughs but rather assumed historical rates of technical change. We also assumed that people would not be fundamentally any different than they are now but that the environments (both physical and social) that they lived in would be very different…