Descriptions of Each Below
Neo-pastoralism with Antibiotic Characteristics:
Humanity rejects most elements of modern technology. The global population decreases to a level more in line with the natural carrying capacity of the world; this is often cited as around 500,000,000. Organic / naturalistic agriculture is the primary lifestyle, but some elements of modern technology (including antibiotics) are retained for the purposes of reducing suffering.
19A0s Vapor Futurist Corportism:
Corporations have dominated the social power structures and humanity exists for the purpose of the bottom line. Technology further progresses in the entertainment and consumer industries but large scale projects to further humanity’s understanding of the universe are stifled.
Fiction: Cyberpunk, Bladerunner, Brave New World, etc.
Voluntarist Post-agrarianism:
Society degrades into small tribes scattered throughout the planet which adopt their own belief structures and cultures. Most tribes will be either hunter gatherer or agrarian with different level of adopted technologies.
Fiction: A lot of post-apocalypse fiction falls into this system after the events of the story resolve.
Neo-nomadic Modular Post-urbanism:
Society retreats into a variety of large mobile vehicles or fleets of vehicles capable of housing towns and even small cities. The mobile cities travel from location to location harvesting resources as they go. Cities may come into direct and violent conflict with one another as they compete over limited resources.
Post-scarcity Neo-Victorian Perma-academia:
Automation takes care of all necessary life and maintenance processes. Without the need to work or produce money, the social hierarchy organizes to emphasize academic and artistic talent. Most humans live in a university super town and become a PhD level philosopher, scientist, and/or artist.
Fiction: Rarely depicted.
Art Deco Trains-centrist Secular Messianism:
Automation is viewed as a Messianic force and humanity steps back to allow most if not all major social and economic decisions to be left to the machines. Art Deco is for aesthetic.
Fully Automated Luxury Ruralism:
Automation runs all economic activity. People abandon cities to live in spacious rural environments. Economic freedom allows most people to reconnect with nature and take on rural activities as hobbies.
Interplanetary Colonial Homeostasis:
Humans expand to other planetary bodies in the solar system. High investment is put into colonies as an extension of Earthly governing bodies and projection of their power into the new territories of the solar system. Colonies eventually become self sustaining and cut the umbilical cord to the Earth.
Fiction: The Expanse series
Post-mortality Gamer Technocracy:
Society retreats into virtual worlds designed to maximize dopamine addiction. The bodily needs are rejected as a gradual integration and eventual transference of consciousness from biology to the digital.
Fiction: Ready Player One
Benevolent Gothic-styled Cyber Thearchy:
Humanity has become so dependent on automation that they have reverted to worshiping automation as a benevolent God.
Fiction: Destiny game series
Cybernetic Neo-predator Mind Transfer:
Human consciousness has been transferred to predatory robotic bodies, typically to support a war effort or for entertainment.
Fiction: Old Man’s War series
K-selective techno-Darwinian Exitism:
Warfare becomes a norm for humanity. Either due to intra or inter-species conflict, humanity undergoes extreme Darwinian pressure to innovate the most power weapons of war or go extinct.
Fiction: Starship Troopers, Old Man’s War series, Forever War.
Dyson Sphere Aestivation:
Humanity build a Dyson Sphere to support countless digital worlds which human consciousness is uploaded to. After the construction of the Dyson Sphere, all technological advancement or exploration of the cosmos is abandoned in order to pursue the digital Heavens of the Dyson Sphere.
Interplanetary Arcology Monumentism:
Humanity spreads across the stars, terraforming and constructing planet spanning cities. A lot of potential diversity within this idea.
Fiction: Space Opera genre
Panspermia Re-enactment Society:
Humanity sees it as their mission to seed life across the cosmos.
Fiction: Forerunner of Halo Universe.
Post-Clarkian-singularity Thaumatarchy:
Technology advances to the point of individual consciousnesses having what people would see today as the power of Gods.
And if you liked the above, here’s an interesting video covering a few other potential future societal systems.
I’m thinking that as society gradually gives more managerial power to AI and retreats into virtual worlds there are going to be some bizarre micro-governments which emerge across the various servers. In some ways it could be a “Cambrian explosion” for systems of government. What comes out the other end will probably be something we can’t even imagine today.
