The following quote is by Nick Bostrom of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute:

Quoted Text

The future of humanity is often viewed as a topic for idle speculation. Yet our beliefs and
assumptions on this subject matter shape decisions in both our personal lives and public
policy – decisions that have very real and sometimes unfortunate consequences. It is
therefore practically important to try to develop a realistic mode of futuristic thought about
big picture questions for humanity. This paper sketches an overview of some recent attempts
in this direction, and it offers a brief discussion of four families of scenarios for humanity’s
future: extinction, recurrent collapse, plateau, and posthumanity.

The entire article can be accessed via the following link:
http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/future.pdf