that technology and progress are going to keep going forward in a more or less linear pattern for thousands of years, after only a few hundred years precedent is a _huge_ assumption. The number of ways progress can slow, be stopped, or reversed, are many - asteroids, viruses, calderas, wars, catastrophic scientific accidents, severe climate change, and of course the influence of governments, both repressive or ineffective, or lack thereof. I sincerely hope progress continues forward but at the same time when I think of "1000 years from now" I can't help but think the planet might be a dystopian wasteland by then.