I’m taking this idea from a short piece in The Atlantic
My predictions are that folks in 2065 will:
[ul]
[li]Wonder why gay marriage was such an issue[/li][li]Shake their heads at how barbaric our drug laws/“War on Drugs” (drugs will be legalized)[/li][/ul]
probably will be critical that we didn’t do more about global warming
People will be surprised that people 50 years in the past thought that the present time would be a utopia where all their personal Big Issues had been resolved.
I half agree with Jennshark and half with Smapti.
Yeah, they’ll wonder why we were so obsessed with gay marriage…but they’ll also be suffering through their own era’s big divisive issue, which will bring them woe and mutual enmity. Maybe a manned Mars mission: “Why should we throw away all this money?”
They’ll have solved some of the problems that vex us…but they’ll be suffering pretty badly from their own problems. Some of them will even wish they were living back in 2015, when everything was peaceful and serene!
That anyone thought a non-white president was a big deal.
That we were ‘driving’ cars? Driving like in sitting behind a steering wheel making sure we don’t hit someone.
Why anyone ever thought low-rise trousers looked good.
…seriously, though, they’ll probably be way too busy trying to survive in a heavily polluted and globally warmed wasteland to do more than curse us occasionally.
This question really means, “What stance do you hold, today, that you assume everyone will eventually agree with you on?”
That anyone ever, seriously thought Spiderman was better than Batman.
That in the year 2001 there was debate about how to say the year.
Nobody ever thought that.
It often does, so I’ll offer one that I don’t agree with, but I see coming:
People will be incredulous that abortion was legal at all. Abortion will be outlawed completely. Unwanted embryos may be extracted surgically and frozen for future pregnancy treatments…but only if you have the money to pay for it. Which is really a work around to get an abortion, but you’ll have to pay annual storage fees to keep your “baby” frozen “until” you choose to implant it and bring it to term. If you’re poor, you have the same back alley illegal abortion options women have always had, but you’ll be charged with child abuse and murder and jailed if you’re caught.
I donno, I may be amused about some things from 50 years ago, but am not incredulous about it. It anything, I’m nostalgic. I understand the way things where.
The question changes a great deal based on the age of the person you ask.
I’m amazed that today, pretty much everyone has their own personal phone number, and ‘long distance’ charges are a thing of the past. You can be contacted any where in a number of different ways. And that (in first world countries) most have this device the size of a pack of playing cards that would put any library to shame.
People will be amazed how little human nature has changed. Some things will become unfashionable or polite-society anathema, as smoking and overt racism have become over the last 50. Other things will change not whit one. Us/Them thinking and elites will be with us always. Ditto the poor.
Many *tres moderne *things today will seem pretty quaint 50 years hence. Like Space Age furnishings and architecture do today.
People always want to assume vast changes in the years ahead. The truth is tiny changes in the basics, and moderate changes in the trimmings.
Here’s a post I once made in a similar thread
College history professor in the year 2285:
"Yes, class…it’s really true…Back in the 21st century, society treated everybody equally!
Weird, isn’t it?
I mean, yes, we have to realize that their medical science was so primitive that they didn’t have much choice…But still, they had already made some progress. They had started to understand their own DNA and they even had a primitive form of psychology.They knew that some people were criminals, yet they insisted on letting those same criminals out of prison, even after repeat offenses.
Their primitive experiments showed that males and females score differently on their crude tests of mathematical reasoning, and that certain races scored differently on standardized IQ tests.They didn’t know why, yet their scientists refused to investigate.
And so, if some radical had suggested using what we today know as standard DNA correction, they would have simply refused to listen to the idea.
Of course, they didn’t know as much as we know now, about how the weak the unimproved brain is until you fix it with our simple medical procedures. But even using the few facts that they had to work with, they ignored the results of their own experiments. They even accepted eyewitnesses as reliable testimony in courts of law!
We modern folks in the 23nd century of course can laugh at them, because we have real medicine.
We design our children properly from the start, of course!
So, starting with the newborn’s first brainscan, we know how they will grow up. Can you imagine putting Alpha children in the same classroom as Deltas? Well, back in the 21st century, the government not only let them sit together, they let them mate each other!!!
But let’s not judge the poor people of the 21st century too harshly…At the time, they thought their medical science was sophisticated enough , and so they didn’t realize how they were basing their weird social attitudes on simple ignorance."
Class dismissed. But as you leave, … try to imagine that in this same classroom, there once sat students from the 21st century, with brains so weak that they had to study hard and re-read the material several times before they learned it."
oops–my apologies…the above post is about the far future, a couple centuries from now. The OP asked about 2065. Sorry. :smack:
People will be appalled at the way we endagered our children.
Evolution of child rearing:
1950’s: Parents are free to decide how to raise children-- kids over 6 are allowed to walk to school alone.
1990’s : Parents are afraid of appearing irresponsible. Only kids over 12 are allowed to walk to school alone
2015 : Parents are afraid of getting arrested: only kids over 15 are allowed to walk to school alone…
2065 : Parents are required by law to apply for a child-rearing license before getting pregnant. Kids under 18 are not allowed out of the house without a GPS locator chip implanted under their skin.
:: cough ::
I prefer non-asshole super-heroes. That said, I expect all comic-book heroes – EVEN WONDER WOMAN --will be passé in 50 years.
Yes, they do!
Confused by how we consider virtual reality and electronics to be a bad thing (there is a meme that playing outside or reading a book is superior). They will probably look at it the way we look at people who complained about invention of the radio being crass and lazy.