2070: The Second Renaissance

2070 CE:

After decades of work, the Flood has finally come to an end, though the damage will take centuries to fully repair, and parts of the world may be forever scared by the half a century of rising tides.

In early 2026 the world saw the birth of a technological messiah: the fabricator. A Nano scale factory, this single device made it possible to engineer anything on a molecular level, eliminating almost all design constraints beyond that of the human imagination. This device made ultraconductors a reality, cold fusion practical, and enabled the discovery of faster than light travel.

Across the globe new supranational entities are coming together, forming a world of continent spanning civilizations. Only some of these are capable of interstellar travel, though all can reach space.

Democracy is global, save for a few rare places where authoritarianism persist. Governments have seen their power drastically diminished as online forums have made representative government on the state and local level obsolete.

Most countries capable of space travel have become Four Tier Republics, inserting a new layer of government between provincial and federal, however Japan has recreated the Empire to administer their vast interstellar colonies, augmenting the Emperor into a near-omniscient being capable of partitioning his consciousness across the vast reaches of space and observing the collective status of his Interstellar Empire.

War between humanity has vanished, though terrorist and fringe groups drive the presence of domestic military power. The concept of an economy has become more of a measure of production rather than consumption, as the most common "job" is that of the freelance engineer (social, chemical, mechanical, etc).

It is a freer society than any other time in history; freer from government, corporate tyranny, from war, from want, and from fear. It is the height of a new era of ideas and creativity, this is the Second Renaissance.