The future?

1cmanny1 wrote:

I see you're in a good mood.

I have my fingers crossed for human instrumentality.

In the future we are doing to be hearing a lot about SEIs (superempowered individuals). Most people are now unfamiliar with the term but they will soon get sick of hearing it. The underlying problem is that technology improves so too does the destructive potential of individuals and groups. Back in medieval times if you asked a knight if he could kill a dozen men single-handedly he would have laughed and told you that no warrior is that good. Now anyone could accomplish that without breaking a sweat armed with a machine gun or large vehicle. In the 9/11 attacks a small group of men killed thousands, something that would have once required an entire army. We will soon be living in an era in which people can illegally download a copy of smallpox and use a stolen device from a lab to recreate it in less than a day or modify nanotechnology to do really nasty things. How we deal with that kind of threat whilst preserving any kind of liberty at all will be one of the fundamental challenges of the next century. SEIs will become the single biggest threat to society. After all, even enemy states have a stake in preserving the world and humanity, but that is not necessarily the case with these small factions. You a have a potential situation when any random person can kill thousands whilst acting entirely on their own.

So, supervillains then.