Amen to that.
You mean like 2190’s style “death rays”?
Sorry…
Nah. The Dutch Social Security System is so good, that our homeless have to put in a LOT of effort to stay on the streets. They practically have to fight the continuously offered help by the authorities. And we’ve still got some homeless people.
A Dutch writer once said that we should be VERY wary of any government that claims to be able to radically eradicate poverty. Most likely, they will end up in really heavy censorship.
Political and moral dogma being used to sway “popular opinion”.
“Wow. I had read about this, but I just didn’t get it. You really do live in a society where the will of the people, as shown by mass vote, can be overturned by a politically appointed judge? That’s amazing.”
And I don’t think there will ever be a true “cure” for homelessness. Even in such places as the rigidly controlled economy of the Soviet Union they had homelessness.
Personally, I think they would be amazed that we had gotten so close to being a space going society and then just stopped, for no good reason.
I’d have to say burning hydrocarbons.
“You people have an advanced society that’s totally dependent on a finite resource for manufacturing-- it’s your most versatile material, virtually none of your industry can function without it, and you burnt most of it as fuel before you started seriously looking for new alternatives or even putting those that you already had into widespread use? What the…?”
Factory farming is pretty harsh, but it’s nowhere near as self-destructive as burning petrochemicals.
Yes, in the future, every single decision will be made via nation-wide voting. Precedent will cease to exist and major legal principles will be overturned regularly. This will ensure that the future is full of progress and stability.
Sex for reproducing.
I think he’d be amazed that there was art & literature that wasn’t the exclusive property of a coropration.
And stunned that people were permitted out of their barracks at night.
And shocked that people were permitted to quit their jobs.
And confused by the idea of “human rights”.
The Future is not necessarily bright, children.
“Children”?
I love it when someone patronizes an entire group of people on the internet. It’s so refreshingly original… :rolleyes:
Sorry, it was all this painfully chipper optimism we’ve got in this thread.
It reminds me of Romper Room.
“Distopia”, people. Think: “Distopia”.
Likewise, the sheer number of unwanted or unexpected pregnancies.
You mean “Dystopia”? Yeah, I suppose that’s possible. But don’t you think it’s a bit more pleasant to think about the future as a better world? Unless, of course, you mean it as a rallying cry or call to arms.
Still, seems a bit dramatic to me. Besides, we’ll all be worm food by then… 
Sort of off the subject, but do you think that we currently live in the best of all possible worlds? How Panglossian of you. Looking at history, we probably live in the LEAST barbarous times. But do you really think that it’s all downhill from here?
In any case, what’s implicit in the question is that society continues to evolve for the better.
leander --thank you. My spelling was, indeed, incorrect.
Jackknifed Juggernaut --if the premise of the thread is false, it’s false. Things do not always get better. And, if you’re on top, there’s no place to go but down.
Democracy.
“Your culture chooses your leaders and policies not by the exceptional few with the aptitude, the training, and the experience in making decisions, but by a majority of the average, mediocre population of mere civilians?”
Paperclips. The people from the future can deal with everything else in our society, but paperclips make them freak out. I don’t know why. They won’t talk about it.
Amen to that. Except instead of “better”, I’d use the phrase “more liberal.”
Although I think by now one has to expect that whenever this question is asked, answers are going to pour in stating that we’ll all be living in a Brave New World, happily submitting to the UN world government, eating only vegetables (or an advanced synthetic dietary matter that conveniently meets all of our nutritive needs in pill form!), wearing our white jumpsuits, each treating all other members of the Global Village with kindness and tolerance, participating in random orgies while all children are raised by the glorious State and assigned jobs to which they are best suited based on their genetic profile and which best allow them to serve the Greater Good of Humankind. So naturally our fearless time-traveler will laugh (or curl his lip in disgust) at the fact that we have incarceration, meat-eating, religion, or a lack of same-sex marriage.
Although I think it’s silly to attempt to predict the future, just to be different, I’ll posit a ridiculous radical Vision of Tomorrow in which when we run out of fossil fuels, we’re all going to have to go back to pre-industrial revolution ways of life, living like the Amish, farming for subsistence, which is going to necessitate a return to much more traditionalistic social mores. So I’ll say that our time-traveler will be shocked at legal abortion. Although since he comes from an Amish future he won’t have a time machine to begin with. 
How about: our expectation of privacy and anonymity. The idea that we can do things SECRETLY, do things that no one will ever find out about.
In the future ubiquitious sensors, wireless networking, and cheap data storage will mean that everyone will have the equivalent of dozens of video cameras and microphones tracking their every move. This probably won’t lead to a totalitarian state, because no one could possibly monitor billions of people, they’d have to monitor each other. And these same video cameras and microphones can be pointed at the proto-totalitarians too. How can the secret police use universal surveillance to monitor everyone if everyone can use universal surveillance to monitor THEM?
No more scandals when politicians are discovered doing bad things…because they will be discovered in real time. No more unsolved violent crime, because it will be trivial to discover the perpetrators. No more police misconduct when every citizen has video evidence of every police interaction.
Will this turn us into a nation of sheep, as the forbidden things we used to do in secret will now be revealed for all to see? Probably not, since universal evidence of how people really behave will probably destroy our current mores and social expectations. Is a vengeful society going to punish minor transgressions ruthlessly? Probably not. Why bother, when everyone is doing it? Why not just change the laws to allow those minor transgressions? Can the boss really fire you for goofing off at work when you have a video camera on him, showing that he spends most of his time at his desk spacing out?
So…people will be able to do what they want, and everyone will know what they are doing, but they won’t care very much. Our current worries about our privacy being violated only makes sense when the privacy violation is one way…when someone knows what we are doing, but we don’t know what they are doing. If you know that I pick my nose, and I know that you pick your nose, no one is going to make a big fuss over nose picking.
So the most shocking thing about the early 21st century was the expectation of anonymity, the horrible things that people were able to do because of anonymity, and the demand for anonymity despite those horrible things. Shocking how people wanted to avoid responsibilty for their actions.
I would hope religion.
I rather suspect that it will be a long time til the really Wrong things about humanity start to be Righted. So if someone showed up from 300 years in the future, I expect theyd have tales similar to our own of the injustices and violent clashes of their time. Just with more destructive weapons.