I thought this thread would be more fun than this, extremism has ruined even pondering the future online. I'm thinking about AI controlled society, post scarsity where we discover a theory of everything in our life times and bend the laws of the universe to our will where we live eternally or possibly after realising we are in a simulation and it can be controlled easily from within and five posts on Trump is mentioned. I give up.

Tbf, human history has shown that things never get better or are only good for a certain period of time. That's just human inclination and has been for thousands of years.

I'm even 99.9% certain of your more optimistic approach of what the future holds, mankind will find a way to ruin it for the majority. Because, that's what humans do and have always done. There's no recorded piece of human history that has led us to believe the contrary.

1. Will we ever reach the stars?

To answer the question.

I see two paths, that are at complete opposites. 

We're struggling a lot with sustainability. We're seeing ecosystems disappear. I think there's a lot of room for a not so rosy future. Right now in particular it feels like a lot of economic spaces are pushing back. It's harder to get a home. A lot of luxury items are getting more expensive. Wealth is being consolidated in the hands of extremely few. 

But I'm also optimistic, that when the chips are down, people will do whatever it takes to do the right thing.

I think for better and for worse, humans are capable of incredible things. And it frequently feels like we oscillate between things getting better and getting worse, and right now I am hoping we are in the getting worse phase, before we get to the better phase.

Depends on what the limits of the universe are and we haven't found them. Right now, no, even if we could incubate or extend our lives to take interstellar trips there is always the radiation from deep space that no-one seems to ever really discuss, we are protected here by earth's magnetosphere, good luck building a ship that'll mimic that. But I'm sure many people asked will we ever cross the ocean and were proven wrong by bold people on wooden boats not even protected from the malnutrition occurring in their bodies. 

Every 80 to 90 years indeed. I think there is truth to the Strauss-Howe generational theory and we are in what they call the fourth turning, we get through this "Winter" and there will be spring on the other side. A golden time akin to that of the boom after WW2. ...it's just we have to face a likely disaster in the mean time and the stakes are higher than they've ever been. The whole planet is at risk as well as us. 

The future looks to be heading for increasing inequality.

First there is the energy and water crisis, next to climate change making things more difficult.
Then the advancements in gene enhancements, the elite will literally be able to make elite babies.
With AI and robot advancements, we could get to a stage where the elite doesn't need the plebs anymore.

Nuclear fusion can solve the energy crisis, but it will be expensive and controlled by those with money to fund fusion power plants.
Desalination plants powered by nuclear fusion can solve the water crisis, yet again, it will be controlled by those holding the money.
AI as well, corporations will be going against each other to produce the 'best' AI.

So what happens to the common people, addicted to their social media, mostly blind and deaf to what's going on around the world. For now the world still runs on consumerism, which needs people making debts. Yet at some point Capitalism will reach a dead end.

No idea what comes next. A Star Trek Next Generation type future would be great, but no idea if humanity can get there. Of all the problems in the world to solve, greed is still left going unchecked. The root cause of all current problems.

It's basically the thread you don't wanna participate in if you truly believe that we basically did most of the missteps needed to think we're directly heading to some kind of soft boring technocracy dystopia where we accept that none of us will truly live any semblance of privacy, being unable to meaningfully connect with others because social media could completely replace the way we interact overall and/or present ourselves to others, losing most of our authenticity in the process.
And let's not talk about how some places are going through an economic disparity between the big corporations and the people. It's insane how it has gotten this bad since the 2000's ...

Anywoo, let's believe that positive change is something we can strive for even in desperate times, needed ones cuz otherwise ... Hmmm ...

"The more things change, the more they stay the same".

I wonder what Kojima thinks?

We are in era for a while now of what we dutch would call 'Maakbare Samenleving'. It's a bit hard to explain the phrase in English, but it comes down to a sort of social engineering or engineering society. It's based on the idea how much is needed to have an optimal society at a given time at a given place. Then give a certain authority (e.g. government) more or less power to carry out the social engineering by either stick or carrot, represented in rules and laws. Essentially the more or less of it is the traditional way to look at the left/right political spectrum.

Traditionally the ask for more or less of it can be linked to population density. The higher the population density is in a certain region, the more people support a larger authority body (e.g. bigger government) to make sure society keeps functioning. This is why high population areas tend to be political left leaning, where low population areas are right leaning. This can be viewed the world over.

Automation of farming and food processing has let to population growth and population centralization towards high density population areas. The number of mega cities is increasing as are their size. This is leading and will continue to lead to bigger government involvement in the every day lives of people. I say this not as being something positive or negative, it's simply the result. But obviously bigger government needs bigger funding and therefore taxation of income and consumption will increase. Putting pressure on the economic viability of the system.

With growing tensions, because of resource management the world over, governments have always sought to install overarching authorities to manage disputes. From the League of Nations to the United Nations or the creation of the European Union as examples. This is essentially a centralization of power with the aim to solve regional or global problems. And with growing global concerns of resource management, these centralized entities will seek to increase their influence on the population. Essentially increase social engineering or engineer society from a higher authority. Now this is in itself not in bad fate, but comes with a problem.

With rules and laws set increasingly by a higher authority, e.g. Global laws vs. European laws vs. Dutch laws, the distance between the citizen and the law maker increases. The citizens eventually will feel disenfranchised, lose thrust in their governments. Making the system of representative democracy been shaken to its bones.

The big question is how government authorities will respond. If the regional or global challenges are deemed big enough, then centralized authority will not backtrack. It will conclude that a high level of regional and global social engineering is necessary to solve global problems. It's probable that the stick will get more used then the carrot. With dwindling citizen trust in government, government would want to increase control for its programs to work. We already see an example of this in China's Social Credit Scoring system. It's one-child policy it has some years ago is another example. I fully expect something like Social Credit Score will be implemented some time in the future in the 'West' and then globally, one bit at a time.

The outcome in the end will be one of two:
1) Global authoritarian rule will be successful to avoid Global conflicts over limited resources. The prize to pay is we live in 1984.
2) Global/Regional authoritarian rule will not be successful, because rejected by a large enough population mass. This will de-centralize power back to local governments, but make any Global programs fail, Global tensions rise. Eventually, the prize to pay is war and the decimation of 1/2 the population. A big reset.

Pick your poison.

Until that time comes though, I just enjoy my life as good as I can playing great games