Time: Near Future(negative)

However, humans seem to have a disposition for killing each other, a trait I've found rather obnoxious as it's set technology back decades or centuries countless times in our history. What wisdom did the library of Alexandria hold? What could the Roman Empire have accomplished with railroads and airplanes? The "Future" could have been now, but I guess the best I can hope for is that we don't screw it up with some WW3 nonsense. A hundred years from now we'll be flying to work, have moved off planet, or have nuked each other into the stone age (realistically more like iron age, but that's not an established dramatic idiom).