In the vein of how we would watch Star Trek and think about the future of mankind as living on space ships, interacting with different planets. What did civilizations throughout time record on the subject?
Hey, about a month ago a question was asked that was relevant, I believe:
It has about 60 responses. And so many of them are great.
A sampling of some of the works mentioned:
Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627)
Descartes' Discourse on the Method (1637)
Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit (1795)
Aristotle's Politics:
"So any piece of property can be regarded as a tool enabling a man to live, and his property is an assemblage of such tools; a slave is a sort of living piece of property; and like any other servant is a tool in charge of other tools. For suppose that every tool we had could perform its tasks, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if - like the statues made by Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus, of which the poet says that 'self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods'- shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plucker play a lyre of their own accord, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves."
13th c. monk, Roger Bacon, has a work attributed to him (controversially) called Letter on the Secret Workings of Art and Nature, and on the Vanity of Magic with the following quote:
First, by the figurations of art there be made instruments of navigation without men to row them, as great ships to brooke the sea, only with one man to steer them, and they shall sail far more swiftly than if they were full of men; also chariots that shall move with unspeakable force without any living creature to stir them. Likewise an instrument may be made to fly withall if one sits in the midst of the instrument, and do turn an engine, by which the wings, being artificially composed, may beat the air after the manner of a flying bird.
Here is a link to the FAQ relavent
To add a couple of my own:
H.G. Wells' Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought
Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century -- a lost work of his, only discovered in 1994. This is a seriously well-thought out look into the future.