Biological hominids descended from modern humans will be the keystone species of biomes loosely descended from farms pastures and cities optimized for symbiosis and matter/energy flow between organisms, covering large fractions of the Earth’s land, for tens of millions of years. In special cases there may be sub-biomes in which non-biological energy is converted into biomass, and it is possible that human-keystone ocean-based biomes might appear as well. Living things will continue to be the driving force of non-geological activity on Earth, with hominid-driven symbiosis (of which agriculture is an inefficient first draft) producing interesting new patterns materials and ecosystems.
Bah, I’m always doing that. I have clusters of related suspicions which I put down in one big chunk rather than as separate possibly independent points.
If I had to extract a main point it would be the first bit, biological hominids descended from modern humans existing tens of millions of years from now with their most obvious alterations to the world being an extension of what we have begun with agriculture.
Yes, as hominids have been for more than a million years. An expanded toolkit though, even compared to today (though its possible that not all of our current tools will have the futures many of us expect, in the long run). Good manipulation of electromagnetism alone is having very interesting effects that we have only really begun to touch on, and I expect biotechnology and related things to have interesting roles to play. All of this will have to occur within the context of ecological laws which are pretty immutable, and living systems are very good at evolving and replicating and surviving in many contexts on this planet.
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Biological hominids descended from modern humans will be the keystone species of biomes loosely descended from farms pastures and cities optimized for symbiosis and matter/energy flow between organisms, covering large fractions of the Earth’s land, for tens of millions of years. In special cases there may be sub-biomes in which non-biological energy is converted into biomass, and it is possible that human-keystone ocean-based biomes might appear as well. Living things will continue to be the driving force of non-geological activity on Earth, with hominid-driven symbiosis (of which agriculture is an inefficient first draft) producing interesting new patterns materials and ecosystems.
Upvoted because it is much too specific (too many conjunctions) to be true. Even if many of them sound plausible.
Bah, I’m always doing that. I have clusters of related suspicions which I put down in one big chunk rather than as separate possibly independent points.
If I had to extract a main point it would be the first bit, biological hominids descended from modern humans existing tens of millions of years from now with their most obvious alterations to the world being an extension of what we have begun with agriculture.
Are you imagining these human descendents will be technology using?
Yes, as hominids have been for more than a million years. An expanded toolkit though, even compared to today (though its possible that not all of our current tools will have the futures many of us expect, in the long run). Good manipulation of electromagnetism alone is having very interesting effects that we have only really begun to touch on, and I expect biotechnology and related things to have interesting roles to play. All of this will have to occur within the context of ecological laws which are pretty immutable, and living systems are very good at evolving and replicating and surviving in many contexts on this planet.