It seems pretty unusual to say that the life of a Roman era subsistence farmer is only superficially different from modern life:
Society doesn't change very much except in superficial ways. Daily life is more or less the same.
But if so, then what features make the agricultural revolution a 'new future' or big change but not the industrial revolution? Relative to the Roman Empire today:
Why was agriculture a bigger deal? Farming did not increase average wealth or provide amazing capabilities in everyday life (it was often bad for height, life expectancy and other per capita physiological measures). It rooted people more tightly to the land (but transport changes have been enormous, as discussed above). It increased population and population density dramatically, as has happened since Rome. It changed typical government structures (as has happened recently) and activities. It increased construction (but modern cities and structures are better, bigger, more numerous).
I don't see the distinguishing feature.
By and large, the coming century is viewed by future history as not particularly unlike those that came before.
Historians already view the last two hundred years as drastically unlike the previous thousands of years.
Intelligence amplification doesn't happen or doesn't yield generally useful results.
Why would intelligence amplification or robust AI qualify as fundamental changes if the changes since Rome don't? We have much larger, better fed, better educated populations for more geniuses to appear among and incredible tools to enhance their productivity and communication. We have also been changing genetically in response to the changed selective environment of agricultural civilization. Smarter humans would still have heads, use language, eat, have sex, and so on, so why would that be a fundamental change? They might have different jobs and leisure activities, but we differ from the Romans in that way. If increased wealth, life expectancy and technology didn't count in the past then why would further gains from inventions of more intelligent people count?
The intelligence explosion doesn't happen. AI continues to advance in much the same way that it has for the last several decades. More human-capable tasks become automated, but in slow and predictable ways.
By the same token, what changes from AI would count as fundamental?
but these metrics strike me as fundamentally lacking in the context of hedonic treadmill theory.
Would super-anti-depressant drugs or gene therapies that made people have very positive affect for extended periods cheaply, and without serious side effects or effective legal restrictions, count as fundamental where all the post-Rome changes don't?
...Why was agriculture a bigger deal? Farming did not increase average wealth or provide amazing capabilities in everyday life (it was often bad for height, life expectancy and other per capita physiological measures). It rooted people more tightly to the land (but transport changes have been enormous, as discussed above). It increased population and population density dramatically, as has happened since Rome. It changed typical government structures (as has happened recently) and activities. It increased construction (but modern cities and structures are be
What, in a broad sense, does the future look like? We don't know, and while many have historically made predictions, the track record for such predictions is less than impressive. I have noted that there appear to be two main types of view about the future-- the "new future" and the "business-as-usual future." In order to simplify this discussion, let's restrict it only to the coming century-- the period between 2013 and 2113.
The "new future" is, generally speaking, the idea that the coming century is going to be very different from the present; the "business-as-usual future" is, generally speaking, the idea that the coming century is going to be very similar to the present.
Here are some characteristics of the new future:
Here are some characteristics of the business-as-usual future:
Reference class forecasting seems to indicate that the business-as-usual future is quite likely. But as we know, this is far from a textbook case of reference class forecasting, and applying such techniques may not be helpful. What, then, is a good method of establishing what you think the future will look like?