The future is a delicate construct, something that is barely real, just a later now. Still, we have no say in what it's like, just as we have no say in the events of the past. What defines "futuristic"? How is something futuristic any different from something that is unlikely?
These are 12 possible human futures I've compiled; the advantage of the present is that we have room to let these lucid realities coexist.
1.
It is the year 10,000 AD and humans have evolved into telepathic knights.
2.
Luxurious, elliptical star-ships crewed entirely by uploaded personalities ferry people back and forth from one end of Universe to the other. The voyages take millennia; entire generations elapse on the ships, no one living long enough to know that there's nothing at the end of the journey. Those who live to each the end, we'll call "The Deciders." Over and over again in the history of this future, The Deciders make a vow of secrecy and turn around. No one remembers who built the ships.
3.
All people can choose from a variety of endless and beautiful worlds which all slowly but inexorably lead to vaster expanses of consciousness, both in the physical universe, and beyond, but the choice, once made, is final.
4.
It is the year 10,000 AD and humans have evolved into clouds, frozen into infinite loops of deep thought, stretching light years across. There is no such thing as "one." There is, neither, any such thing as "all." There is nothing outside of the clouds; they are the totality of existence.
5.
Animals have developed their own form of language. The poetry written by bears is devastating and complex. Humans have returned to a feral lifestyle on the land without much provocation.
6.
The root structures of ancient trees cover the Earth. I am the only person left. All other creatures spurn me.
7.
After a galactic ice age, humanity has emigrated to the only habitable space left in the Solar System: a series of barren mountain peaks above the Martian snow line. Traveling between them takes months of arduous huddling on conveyor belts which move slowly, miles above the surface of the planet. Nothing grows anywhere and we have adapted to eating minerals.
8.
This one's easy: there is no future.
9.
It turns out that the things we think are irrelevant have concrete repercussions. My decision between granola and muesli this afternoon causes eternal and poignant wars in a future far too distant for me to comprehend.
10.
In the future everything is bright blue and helpful. A sort of childishness has overcome us.
11.
Assuming that the Universe is expanding, we reach a point of total capacity, after which point the Universe begins a process of quiet collapse. All events of human history unfold backwards; language, once inverted, gains a second layer of meaning, although nobody could possibly know about it. This collapse is just a reversal of the last collapse, and so on, ad infinitum. Presumably, other such systems exist.
12.
All that remains of the world is a village made of water under the earth, inhabited by intelligent plants, and ruled by a sacred computer.