houses in the deep future?

[coppercone2]

What do you think the interior of a home will be made of in say 20,000 years if humanity survives.

Can you imagine something like sheetrock being replaced?

[BravoV]

20.000 years ? How bout just a small glass filled with liquid ?

[coppercone2]

that looks like shit

[daqq]

We can't guess at what kind of innovations will be common in houses 20 years from now, much less 20k years.

It will either be a clay and straw hut, should civilization implode (but humanity survive) or something so awesome that we can't imagine it now. Or a Borg like cube.

[Mr. Scram]

It's not even a given humans are still humans in 20000 years time and that's before weighing things like intentional DNA manipulation. If we don't even know what creature we're talking about it's hard to talk about its living quarters.

[tszaboo]

Can you imagine something like sheetrock being replaced?

No respectable person lives in a wooden shack. Didn't you guys in the USA read the three little pigs story?

But honestly, 50 years ago everyone thought that all houses will be prefabs block of flats, and it will come from the factory. And now all those are occupied by low income people, and they stopped building them, because they are pretty bad, not liveable.
It will all depend on how much disposable income people will have, and how many people inhabit the planet/region, and how much of the planet we ruin.

[tautech]

Built mainly of logs, low cost, very low manufactured input, low total cartage costs, strong, warm and last for many generations.
Labour and knowhow is mostly all that's required.

[Psi]

- There will be no internal wall framing. Houses will be made from single big sheets of material that can change from 100% transparent to any solid color on demands, or become a live full color pixel display.
  Most the daytime it's in transparent mode since it feels nice and open-plan.
  Mostly at night the walls are opaque but the roof is transparent as people want to see the stars in bed.

- The materials are nano-coated in a way that nothing will stick to them. So they never get dirty. Anything that lands on the roof/walls gets washed back to 100% clean whenever it rains.

- Minimal home cooking facilities. Pretty much everyone will go out to dinner because it's so much more efficient to cook larger volumes and more enjoyable to go out to dinner.  (Food can still be delivered for a romantic home dinner etc.)

- Homes will either be powered by some tiny fusion like device, or 90+% efficient solar panels built into the construction materials. (Perhaps when the walls go opaque they convert light to energy)

- The internal walls will be easily to rearrange on demand if you want bigger/smaller rooms.

- No wall sockets for power/data connections are needed, all devices will be wireless, self powered and last a long time.

- Almost every home will have multiple rooms for home-office use because many people will work from home.
The work is not what we would consider work today and only 3-4 days a week. It's more like everyone does their hobby as their work.
People who work from home are still in an 'office' like environment with other people but usually the other people are there 'virtually'.
e.g. a wall of your office might become a huge 20k resolution display that mirror to someone else's wall that you're talking to. As if the wall was not even there and your two rooms were joined.

- Faster than light communication is possible so there is no communication lag.

[Rerouter]

Either underground, because we really screwed some things up

A given would be a structure able to meet our needs of somewhere to sleep, store food/water, and possibly possessions / tools

As for what may converge out of that kind of timeframe, I foresee very complex organic / synthetic compounded materials, e.g. to open pores to maintain a temperature / humidity, change its albedo in response to seasons, and composed of small enough clumps that its about as easy as gyp rock to ship / fit.

There is already a lot of research projects out there for gyp-rock alternatives that are not as bad for the lungs of the people installing it. same for stone benchtops

That or we go the full extreme route, fungi based plastic housing, you make a scaffold, drip it with a nutrient, an extremly fast growing fungus replaces it with a plastic like compound, you come back for fine finishing, and for demo you just crack it apart and use another fungus to revert it back to the nutrient.

[Halcyon]

Realistically, I see the divide between "rich" and "poor" being significant, to the point where you can no longer just become rich through working hard; you would need to have some stroke of luck (lotto etc...).

Owning real estate will be reserved mainly for the rich, unless you're willing to live and work 3+ hours away from a major city. Those working low to mid level jobs will probably end up renting in some kind of subsidised housing (paid for by the Government or the companies they work for). Country areas will boom.

Those that have already over-capitalised in these new housing estates near cities where every house is just a small, cheaply built, cookie cutter home will either end up losing their house to the bank or the whole area will basically turn into slums; high crime rates etc... Property values will drop significantly and they won't be able to afford to sell without making significant losses (in turn being unable to borrow again for another home).

Driving a car will become a luxury.

Education levels within our schools and universities will fall. No longer will top universities be reserved for the high achievers, thanks to "equality" and "quotas", just about anyone will be able to complete a post-graduate course, provided they have the money to pay for it.

Australia's average internet speed will still be at 40 Mbps.

[BravoV]

that looks like shit

Dont worry, by that time, you will see whatever you needed ... wanted .. err .. desired to see.

After all, the machine that supports you can properly bias your brain's input nerve ends to what ever you desired, regarding whether you realize it or not. 

So regarding the house you have imagined and dreamed to live in, no big deal.   

[Psi]

Australia's average internet speed will still be at 40 Mbps.

 

[SiliconWizard]

20.000 years ? How bout just a small glass filled with liquid ?

Why bother with real, biological brains when a few large companies will already have AI to completely replace human brains. 20 000 years from now? Will biological life even exist anymore?

[edy]

In 20,000 years lets see...

1. catastrophic global warming unless we change our ways
2. melting ice caps/hotter temperatures changes population geo-distribution
3. over-population and denser living increases disease epidemics
4. increasing pollution, toxic environments
5. possibly fallout and radiation from severe nuclear wars
6. food shortages, synthetic foods, maybe Soylent Green

Sounds like the prequel to Planet of The Apes. 

If we even survive 20,000 more years as a species we will probably be living in underground bunkers that can withstand crazy weather events, probably high in the mountains, not the coasts which will be flooded by rising sea levels (at least until the levels stabilize and establish new stable coasts). We will have to have solved a whole pile of issues by then, like renewable energy sources, over-population issues, food supply, global warming, etc. We may look a bit like the Borg... everyone will be implanted at birth with some biochip-interconnected interface to access all the world's knowledge and be part of the collective.

Alternative to the dystopian future, we may also imagine that we manage to responsibly tackle these issues:

1. over-population trend (which in itself will kill our planet for everyone or lead to massive wars, famine, disease, ecological destruction, pollution, etc)
2. once populations plateau and remain at a sustainable level, energy resource stability

Basically all components of our planet, from environmental, energy, food, etc... have to come to a sustainable level based on the technology available. The system will have to remain in BALANCE and any change in population or behaviour of people or other activity that perturbs the balance will have to be offset by an EQUAL AND OPPOSITE technological or behavioural change to continue balancing the system, leading to sustainability.

For example, if there is a trend to start building wooden houses again, we would need to plant trees to sustain the increased demand on wood (and also compensate for the reduction in Carbon sequestration that trees provide and oxygen production). If there is a limit to how many trees or how fast they grow, there would need to be a quota on number of trees that can be culled, and number of wooden houses that can be built. Same goes for everything. That would also be a sort of dystopia ruled by some master sustainability A.I. to protect and preserve Earth, as it would restrict many of the freedoms we enjoy today.

[Red Squirrel]

The earth will be so overpopulated that only the big CEOs and other rich head honchos will be able to afford houses or property.  Most people will live in tiny apartments in super large sky scrapers 200+ stories high.  They will be "smart" and integrated with everything.  The air pollution will be too high so most activities will be spent inside these buildings which will all be interconnected and airtight, and there will be "air locks" where you get to your car if you are fortunate enough to own one but most people will rent cars and there will be rental pods everywhere you just put in your credit card or flash your phone (or even your hand as you might have a "chip") and it opens the door to get in and when car door closes the airlock opens and you go on the road.  Self driving cars will most likely be the norm, if, required by then. Once out of the airlock it will mostly be bridges/tunnels going between buildings.  You won't really see any forests or anything it will all be buildings and infrastructure all around.

I imagine by then they may discover different building materials for inside and out  so things will probably be drasticly different in that regard.  I imagine lot of prefab stuff inside and out like plastic panels etc.   It will look kinda like the inside of a Dreamliner, lot of futuristic looking plastic/resin panels.   The concept of owning normal land and being able to DIY build things will be a foreign concept as well since building code/regulations will be ridiculous by then.  Heck I see this in the next couple 100 years let alone thousands.  Not gonna be a fun time.

[MT]

TWO/NWO people have claimed we ( well, rather" them", rich self proclaimed peddo elite) have said they are on the
brink to upload themselfs into the web so in 20 000 years time houses is no more since by then everyone is uploaded.

I by the way then have been dead for about 19 995 years already, so i'm rather down loaded into the ground, the old climate friendly way!

[Red Squirrel]

I do wonder how uploading yourself to a computer would work, since you're not destroying your brain in the process so there would be two copies of your consciousness.  When/if the brain is destroyed will your consciousness just "transfer" to the uploaded one or will the uploaded one work independently.  I can't really see how it would work but it's an interesting thing to ponder as to if it's possible or not.

[edy]

I do wonder how uploading yourself to a computer would work, since you're not destroying your brain in the process so there would be two copies of your consciousness.  When/if the brain is destroyed will your consciousness just "transfer" to the uploaded one or will the uploaded one work independently.  I can't really see how it would work but it's an interesting thing to ponder as to if it's possible or not.

I think it would just be a "branch" point and you would continue to operate in BOTH brains. Each of your copies would think it was the original and it would think the OTHER one is the copy. As each brain then gathers different sensory inputs and processes things differently, the brains would diverge and may evolve to behave differently over time. Perhaps personality would be similar, and reactions based on a similar experience/memory would be similar. However, each copy would function as a distinct consciousness. The interesting bit would be when the branching first occurs and each BRAIN would swear it was the original, like it wants to retain exclusivity and originality, not accepting the other as a copy. We like to think we are unique.

[Richard Crowley]

- There will be no internal wall framing. Houses will be made from single big sheets of material that can change from 100% transparent to any solid color on demands, or become a live full color pixel display.
  Most the daytime it's in transparent mode since it feels nice and open-plan.
  Mostly at night the walls are opaque but the roof is transparent as people want to see the stars in bed.

Anybody remember this?....

[KL27x]

Realistically, I see the divide between "rich" and "poor" being significant, to the point where you can no longer just become rich through working hard; you would need to have some stroke of luck (lotto etc...).

This has always been the case. You cannot get rich simply by working hard, and working hard has very little to do with getting rich.

It is the job of people who are rich to get and keep everyone else working, because it is better for everyone, including themselves. That's the job of the 1%. That's their work. If the 99% have the ability to gain a little more for working a little harder, then so much the better, so they will continue to work. But giving the majority of the population the ability to "work" so hard they "escape" into early retirement is not in the world's best interest. Someone has to take care of all these "independently wealthy" people who have "worked so hard" and are now spending their monopoly money idly. If the average person won the lottery, he would stop working. If wealth were more equally distributed, there'd be a larger percent of the population sitting around telling the smaller percentage of poor people what to do. The parasite will be a larger burden, and the illusion of freedom would be that much harder to maintain.

The earth will be so overpopulated that only the big CEOs and other rich head honchos will be able to afford houses or property.  Most people will live in tiny apartments in super large sky scrapers 200+ stories high.

Population control fail. In this scenario, the big CEOs are very generous, indeed. The more reasonable response of the 1% to such severe loss of population control would be to instigate war and genocide. Under severe enough living conditions, people would rather just kill other people and/or themselves. It's in our nature. If we ever get to the point where we can't stomach killing? We better learn population control.

[Rick Law]

10,000 years ago, we were exiting the last ice age and entering our present inter-glacial period.  In 20,000 years, good chance we would be into the next ice-age.  You think Siberia is cold now, wait 20,000 years.  Northern Europe, northern America, and northern Asia will resemble present day Antarctica.  So, whatever we are in now, we wont be then.

But, I think by then we would be virtualized.  We would be bits and bytes in a world we programmed.  As technology advances, there are less and less reasons for us to stay physical.  Some of us while virtualized but would have connection to the physical world - so in practice, those minds would be the minds of the robots working in the physical world and maintain the physical machines on which we exist.  The vast majority of us would be purely an "information being".  We each can live in whatever house we can imagine.

[Halcyon]

Realistically, I see the divide between "rich" and "poor" being significant, to the point where you can no longer just become rich through working hard; you would need to have some stroke of luck (lotto etc...).

This has always been the case. You cannot get rich simply by working hard, and working hard has very little to do with getting rich.

I completely disagree. Of course it's not *just* about hard work, there is a lot more to it. People who start their own businesses for example (and it doesn't have to be a huge company). There are countless examples in just my local area of people who start their own businesses and are extremely successful, everything from coffee shops to experts who install wireless networks.

We all have a different definition of "rich". To me, if you can afford to completely pay off your house(s), afford the nice things and live a comfortable life, I'd say you're in the top 10-15% of the population.

[KL27x]

There are countless examples in just my local area of people who start their own businesses and are extremely successful, everything from coffee shops to experts who install wireless networks.

Owning/operating a business doesn't meet my definition of rich. You're still a working stiff, unless it's a business that runs itself.

I know a guy that retired a millionaire in the 80s, when a million was worth something. All he had to do was stand in one spot for 30 years, tending the counter at his convenience store in podunk, nowhere, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. This worked in his favor, saving him $$ over the years on buying new shoes. He claimed he wore the same pair since 1940.