Man...I did all that work on that kick ass post on the 1st page...now you guys are gonna drift it all off into laalaa land..
. I like Sci-Fi as much as the next guy, really. I'm a huge Trekkie. I'd honestly love to see our technology get there some day. I just don't think it's likely.
Why? Human greed. Even in the face of a world ending disaster Greed will be a factor. Some people, Presidents, High Up Government Officials, will be spirited away the most remote and best dug-in locations to try to ride out the worst. The majority of the human population will left to die or to try to survive on their own without the governments tech or support...aka...they'll die.
It will take a Collapse of ASTRONOMICAL proportions to totally collapse the system so that we no longer value things on "money" and "greed" and instead work towards a more "Unitarian" goal. Being American I have always been a consumer, another cog in the industrial machine, a worker drone/zombie. It sucks. You can't say the word "Communism" here though without throwing everyone who's been brain washed with money into a panic though. I'm not talking about Stalin's brand of Communism. I'm talking about "Star Trek's" brand of communism. Of course they have magic technology that can make food and building materials out of thin air, and we don't. Most likely we never will. Some things on Star Trek are theoretically possible, but a lot of it (according to our current understanding of physics) is not and never will be no-matter how far our technology advances.
I would like to hope that maybe in a few hundred more years, being able to take apart matter on a molecular level and putting it back together as what-ever we wanted would be possible. When you think about it though, with our current understandings, that very same "Food Replicator" could split enough atoms at once to make a Black Hole. Which is Humanity most likely to use it for? Making Food, or making 100 Atomic Bombs go off At Once? Hmmm...as soon as someone is full, then gets pissed off, there goes everything in a hundred light year radius. That's only one example of what we could do with Star Trek technology.
As much as I'd like to hope and dream that the technology that we need today, and the Responsibility to use it wisely, would come in time to save us....chances are it won't. We use up resources and move on to the next resource until there's nothing left. You know what other organism in nature does that? Cancer. Viruses. Bacteria. What does that say about us? I honestly think we'll destroy ourselves, sadly. I'd like to think our technology will save us, but I don't see the advancements we need coming fast enough.
Unless maybe, Maybe, those technologies were to be driven into need by World War 3 (WW2 saw the birth of many technologies we never would have thought of in time). As we all know though, that will be a push button war where Millions all over the globe will die. In the world that's left over after that, no one might want to live.