A third-grade elementary school student said, "I think cars in cities will fly like airplanes after 2040"; "Trains also fly like cars, which is similar to the speed of airplanes"; Rockets are higher and faster.
It seems that the obsession with speed has been deeply implanted in the hearts of children. Perhaps, on the one hand, this is because a little boy is naturally obsessed with speed, which reflects some universality of human psychological world. The reason why people advocate speed is that people can surpass themselves and make up for their physical deficiencies by imagining speed. On the other hand, it is related to our education and the knowledge that children can access now. In our existing knowledge system, if human beings encounter any problems, one of the solutions is to increase the speed.
For example, people encounter traffic jams when they travel, and transportation is in short supply. The solution is to build more and faster roads. There are more and more means of transportation, faster and faster; Driving all kinds of vehicles is getting faster and faster ... finally, the traffic problem comes down to the problem of speed and time.
Another middle school student's imagination is related to space. Compared with primary school students, he proposed another dimension. His thinking is more complete and systematic, and he even drew a picture. He said that when there is not much land in the city, there are two ways out: to build a city of the sky and a city of the sea. The design of Sky City is in the shape of a hand with five fingers. There is a circular pipe between your fingers and an elevator in the middle. Electricity, oxygen and food enter through pipes, and human waste gas and garbage come out from them. The city of the sea is inhabited only by people. The whole city is in the shape of an apple, and there are dozens of undersea stations beside it. All food supplies and oxygen are transported from land, and carbon dioxide and garbage are discharged to land. In other words, when human behavior leads to crowded and cramped space, the solution is to continuously expand the space up or down, and then leave garbage and waste to the earth.
This child is very imaginative. At the same time, it must be admitted that his imagination actually reflects the knowledge state of our adult world, and we really solve the space problem according to this idea.
Scientists are optimistic about the future of mankind. They believe in the power of science and technology, such as toffler, the author of The Third Wave. According to this school of thought, all kinds of problems of human beings and the earth can be solved by creating more advanced scientific and technological means, and human beings have enough wisdom to face these problems.
The other is ethics. These people, represented by the club of Rome, are pessimistic about the future. In the first research report "The Limit of Growth" published by 1972, they predicted that economic growth could not last indefinitely, because the supply of human natural resources was limited. They not only designed the "zero growth" countermeasures, but also predicted that a worldwide disaster was coming.
The confrontation and debate between these two views has continued until now. Recently, the famous physicist Hawking made an amazing remark. He said, "Because of the selfish and greedy genetic code carried in human genes, human beings are plundering the earth day by day, and resources are being exhausted bit by bit." The earth will be destroyed in two centuries, and the only way for human beings to survive in the future is to emigrate to other planets.
This is an alternative imagination of the future.