Choices seem balanced between the optimistic — End of History — and pessimistic — Peak Oil, Population Bomb, and so on.

On the optimistic side, I nominate “Singularity” — the notion that technological progress is accelerating and that some time within the life time of many of us here, we will reach this kind of Star Trek utopia of mastery of matter and energy through the Warp Drive, Transporter, and Replicator that will mark the end of Capitalistic striving because there will be complete freedom from want.

I am talking about people who take nanotechnology seriously in the form of Drexler’s Assemblers (the Star Trek Replicator I was talking about).