Algae oil? It has two advantages. 1) It hasn’t been tried yet so nobody knows what is wrong with it yet. 2) Combustion fuel without the carbon footprint. Sure, maybe you emit some carbon when you burn the algae oil, but you suck it up as you grow the next batch.
I would argue that the prosaic old Internet is creating a global culture that will change the way people think and work internationally. I spend many hours a day playing a text-based RPG that is also popular with Germans, Italians, Britons and well … lots of Europeans. I spent three hours yesterday playing with a person in Germany. I frequently will encounter posters whose texts are first written in their native language, then translated in to mine, and I will assume my posts are then translated to their native language, and we play … pretty darn well, for the most part, though you have to do a little interpolation to understand machine-language text sometimes.
In case you missed it … and I suspect most of you did because boards like the Straight Dope are, while still Cutting Edge in terms of traditional media, becoming a bit of backwater in terms of Net culture … everyone in the world soon will be able to “talk” to everyone else in the world, easily and freely. No language barrier. The game is being changed, and nobody knows it. And I for one are grateful that nobody knows it, because there are a lot of political types that would instinctively fight like hell to prevent it. Fortunately the political types are always the last to catch on to new media … a lot are still confused by the Intertubes!
Even boards like this have had some effect, as one’s words are increasingly judged on their own value instead of on the status of the person speaking. Doctor, lawyer, carpenter, unemployed … doesn’t matter, if your ideas are shoddy or shoddily presented, they get flamed down, and if they are sound, they are given serious consideration … sometimes eventually.
I don’t know what shape the worldwide Superculture will take or when it will happen, but it’s gotten a lot closer. I don’t know if the form of the government will matter that much if the revolution in values occurs.
In terms of tech, I have not given up on AI, just because it’s taking longer than we thought. Unlike fighting ignorance, once we have a sentient AI that can upgrade itself constantly, the route to godlike machine intelligences is pretty much the straight-up progression Vernor Vinge envisioned when he thought up the Singularity. It only has to happen once … kinda like DNA in that regard, eh?
I also think that nanotech still has huge potential and will be creating some exciting things in terms of clothing Real Soon Now, and could be making fundamental changes in medicine and materials production Any Time Now.
In the immediate term, the search is on, hot and heavy, for more efficient energy transmission and storage techniques. It may not be terrilby long before oil becomes … unnecessary, as a source of fuel.
Also WRT fresh water, I dont know the numbers, but hell, anyplace you have deserts you have HUGE solar power potential. Just build hundreds of square miles of solar collectors, use it to heat sea water into steam, condense the steam, blammo! Fresh water. Sure, it takes a lot of energy, but your HAVE lots of energy, for free, pretty much, once you set up the solar collectors. You pump solar energy and sea water in on one end, you get fresh water pouring out the other end. Why isn’t everyone doing that?
No, there is no Future.
So send me your good stuff when you renounce your materialist lifestyle and go off to become a traveling holy man a la Tolstoy*.
*he tried this when he was a doddering ancient but didn’t have the stamina. Ya gotta hit the road while you’re young and fit.
Energy from the sun and metal ore from the asteroid belt. Sooner or later, we’re going to run out of both energy and usable metal ore, and won’t be able to sustain a high tech civilization if we don’t find better sources.
Eventually, it’s likely that it’ll be more cost effective to exploit the purer metal ores of the asteroid belt than to keep using the ever poorer grades of ore you’ll be stuck as the better grades disappear. Eventually we may see space cowboys herdin’ them doggies to splash downs in the Atlantic or Pacific. You can set up huge Mylar reflecting mirrors in space which focus on generators that beam the energy back to the earth via microwaves. Shucks, it’s entirely possible that we’ll move heavy industry into space so it’ll be closer to the sources of energy and ore.
That probably sounds like I’ve been reading too much science fiction cough Heinlein and Niven cough but two hundred years ago who envisioned the high tech societies that we have today?
And I bet you never thought you’d see me not preaching doom and gloom, didn’t you? 
Screw that. I’m just gonna sit right here in my recliner with a jug of table wine watching TV. Saves wear and tear on the knees.
In my experience, nobody can predict the future with results any better than chance. The future will remain surprising, as always.
The best example from my own lifetime was the rapid collapse of Communism in the Eastern Bloc and the USSR in the late 80s and early 90s. As far as I am aware, not a single pundit predicted this even five years earlier.
Basically, AFAIK it is still expensive. I believe however that the missing piece was nanotechnology and MEMS manufacturing of the solar cells at a (paradoxically) large scale and we are just getting to that level now.
This Kunstler guy, the author of ‘The Long Emergency’ cited by the OP, predicted the collapse of the housing bubble. One of several of his phrasings:
This was written in 2005. He also predicted the mischief to be caused by derivatives. He predicts chaos ensuing from the immanent end of cheap oil. But there are at least some “if’s” in his theories.
If he continues to be particularly predictive, he’ll become more famous and have an impact on the future. Of course, once things start going along with his recommendations, he’ll become unable to predict upcoming issues. Whereas if he simply got lucky this once, then he’s just one in the milieu of doomsayers that have existed through the centuries and no one will remember his name.
I read his Clusterfuck Nation online column every week. I don’t always agree with what he says in all respects, but it is always depressing and amusing at the same time.
Neuroscience is a subset of biology, but I hope we see massive advances that can actually be used by the public at large (rather than just medical professionals) due to advances in brain science leading to an understand of what cognitive exercises, nutritional supplements or drugs affect what brain areas.
Advances in neuroscience could lead to better methods of coping with trauma, improving intelligence and creativity, improving quality of life, fighting disease, etc.
Not a severe improvement, but noticeable. The game dual-n-back is supposed to increase IQ by about 5 points in a month. Some neuroscientists are working on cognitive games to improve the brain areas that are damaged by schizophrenia or depression. EMDR is helpful for some people for treating PTSD. Balance exercises are helpful for dyslexia.
So I seriously hope we end up with more end user control over our brains soon (augmenting our moods and cognition) and our understanding of cognitive exercises to cope with trauma or build abilities is as advanced as our understanding of physical exercises to cope with trauma or build abilities. That could be somewhat revolutionary, right now our understanding of brain exercises seem far behind physical exercises.
I’m going to come at this from a different angle. The next revolution is already underway, and it’s tremendously exciting.
I’ll give it a name: The Age of Integration.
You could call it the information economy, I suppose, but it encompasses a lot more than that.
The 20th century began and ended with the same sort of basic infrastructure: Corporations of various sizes engaging in industrial activity, employing the population. We got really good at it, but until the very tail end of the 1900’s, our communications capability hid too much information, made it too hard for people to connect with each other unless they went through powerful intermediaries (publishers, radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, record companies), and forced people into various groups and associations if they wanted to stay in better communication. Much of what we produced in goods, services, and entertainment were approximations of individual needs and desires - they were targeted at the masses, or at least at demographic groups.
In the1900’s, if you were an inventor and needed to build a prototype, you had to find a powerful financier to pay for the machining. Knowledge was gained and lost constantly as people learned things and died before passing it on. Consumers had imperfect knowledge of products, and companies has imperfect knowledge of consumers.
In the 1900’s, the need for face-to-face communication meant that people were discriminated against based on race, sex, age, or looks.
The internet revolution is happening in phases. First we had the infrastructure build-out and the appearance of amateur web pages. Then the first Dot-Com boom gave us a flurry of experiments in business models and services. The strongest of them survived and formed the core of the next phase - the spidering out of the internet into our phones, our cars, tablets, home theaters, you name it. Having the internet available on your phone then opens the door for communicating real-time information like bar codes to a server that can process them and give you information that helps you make better buying decisions.
So where we’re at right now is the start of the integration of our lives through information technology. New technologies like 3D printers bring design and prototyping and machine building to the masses. “Virtual Corporations” allow people to create products and sell them by linking together sub-businesses that would otherwise have never found each other.
As our identities and social networks move online, and we spend more of our recreational time online, we enter a much more egalitarian world where old divisions of race, age, and sex no longer matter. The internet is just as entertaining and informative for a poor 14 year old as it is for a multimillionaire. The online ‘standard of living’ is pretty flat.
We’re starting to see the rise of very targeted specialized businesses connecting in much more intelligent ways with clientele. Micro manufacturers and virtual corporations making very specific products for the needs of small groups of people or even one-off manufacturing for individuals. Research findings find wider audiences. Artists can connect directly with their audiences without a middleman. Small, self-contained markets can be created by online communities trading directly with each other.
We’re about to become much smarter, and much, much more connected to each other. Services like Google Maps will become much more sophisticated, linking us geographically in ways we haven’t thought of doing before. We can transmit location data which can be used in creative new ways to make the economy more efficient and our lives better.
As an example, I think it’s Blackberry that collects GPS data from phones out in the field, and calculates the speed of all the cars. From that, it can calculate congestion and send that information back out to the owners of the phones, who can then avoid the congested areas. This makes our entire road network more efficient and saves us all time every day - even if you don’t own a blackberry, if the blackberry people avoid the jam you’re in, they won’t make it worse.
In the 2000’s, the internet got plugged in. Now, we’re all getting plugged into the internet. But that’s just the hardware and the backbone. The real value being developed now consists of data and relationships - the information we’re pumping onto the net, and the incredibly complex information network being built ad-hoc by the interactions of billions of people.
As another example, eBay connects buyers and sellers that could not otherwise find each other. The result has been a societal increase in value, because by selling our used good online we move them from lower-valued uses to higher-valued uses.
Because the internet spans the world, people in other countries are talking to each other in ways they never have before. Small manufacturers across the world can connect with individual consumers. I buy electronics from a tiny Hong Kong wholesaler who I would never have found without the internet. This is especially good for the 3rd world, and it’s undoubtedly good for the cause of world peace.
So the internet is connecting everything together, allowing us to create relationships that will change the way we interact with each other. We have no idea where it’s going to take us, but I’ll bet it’ll be pretty cool. We’re just getting started. I doubt if we would recognize the world of 50 years from now.
I suppose you’re right. One nitpick: if he’s right about this ‘Long Emergency’ business it won’t really matter if he becomes ‘unable to predict upcoming issues’, as that is potentially a centuries-long event.
I hope this is true and if we look back just to 1960 I think we could say the same thing. What would today look like compared to then if you did not live through the years or were born later. 1910 to 1960 is pretty similar. Even 1860 to 1910 was enough different though not 1810 to 1860.