Posthumanity: Anticipations of the Next Historical Era

Anatoly Karlin’s idea of The Age of Malthusian Industrialism (hereafter, AoMI) is the hypothetical future which will emerge given no dramatic, world-changing technological breakthroughs: no artificial intelligence comparable with that of humans, no anti-aging tech, no or minimal genetic engineering of humans. There will no doubt be further technological advances, solar panels will get marginally more efficient, crop yields will increase, but nothing so dramatic as to shock anyone alive today, or even a decade or two ago. The world continues as it does and future generations live as most humans have throughout history: with minimal technological change during their lifetimes. In this scenario, natural selection goes to work to bring fertility back above replacement-level, and continues to act in this way until the world reaches it’s true carrying capacity, this assumes there is no population control measures sufficient to prevent it. The world becomes “Malthusian,” as it was throughout most of human history.