You forgot to add 
Prices for just about everything will no longer be nearly as “standard” as they are now. Prices for virtually everything will be highly negotiable using internet/computer power.
Stuff like run of the mill grocery shopping will be overwhelmed with all kinds of fancy internet/computer/membership/conditional purchasing factors.
In theory, it might be good because “you” can be smart and get great deals. In practice, it will take advantage of those unwilling or unable to play within the system. People without bargaining power or alternatives or intelligence up to the task will royally screwed over.
A few decades after that, there will be a legal backlash against such a system, and standardized prices will generally be a legal requirement for common business transactions.
I’ll finally be paying off my charge card.
I’ll go a step farther and predict that anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of states will have legalized same-sex marriage, which the federal government will recognize*. In most states same-sex couples will have access to either marriage or marriage-in-all-but-name. There will still be states (mostly in the South) that deny gays as many rights as SCOTUS let’s them get away with.
*The recognition might be limited to couples living in states that recognize them (ie the feds recognize a married gay couple living in Iowa, but if they move to Kansas the feds don’t). Naturally this confusing patchwork of laws will lead to all kinds of lawsuits.
I don’t think porn will be all CGI even if it’s become the norm in “legitmate” films (porno lower always had lower production values), nor will we have fully interactive VR (as in Caprica). Porno will probally have higher production values than now, but still not as high as other films of 2020. Cheap & easy CGI would enable producers to produce material which is currently illegal (child porn, bestialty, necrophilia, etc) without involving any real children, animals, or dead bodies. This is going to lead to some interesting court cases.
Everything will be on-demand and almost everything will be pay-per-view. The free stuff will involve having to view unskippable ads or release demograhic info. Series will also regularly release free episodes as a promotions.
We might have incubators that can replicate the conditions of the womb well enough to enable 2nd (or even 1st) trimester fetuses to be transfered. They will be very, very expensive and in will be used as a last resort when keeping the fetus in the mother isn’t an option. Pro-life forces will use this as an excuse to get further restrictions on abortion despite elective fetus transfers being unavailable to most women.
NASA will still be in the planning stages for a return to the Moon or Mars mission. China will surprise the world with a moon landing. Possibly a joint mission with Russia. India will have people in space. The superwealthy will be able to take short “vacations” consisting of a few hours in LEO. Queen Elizabeth II (now widowed) will still be on the throne, but most of her duties and appearences will be delgated to Charle and William. Charles will gradually take over more and more duties until Parliament makes him Prince-Regent and Her Majesty “retires” from public life. She still remains queen until the day she dies (at 100+).
With regard to preventing transmission - we’re there, basically. Modern drugs can keep the viral load at undetectable levels, or nearly so, indefinitely. You’ll still get sick if you go off the drugs, and it’d be damned irresponsible and dangerous to have unprotected sex with someone even if you were on them - but the current regimen is good enough that there were proposals floating around six months or so ago that universal HIV treatment, provided free of charge, could eradicate the disease by making it very hard for infected persons to spread it.
One part of the scientific community seems to agree with you. As far as I’m aware even if (through non-adherence) the drug you were on were to become ineffective you can move over to another family of drugs, and as time moves on we’re likely to have more families of drugs with even less side effects, but right now we’re in a pretty good position.
Newspapers and magazines will no longer be available in print versions. They will have migrated entirely to the web.
Books will largely have done the same except for high-end coffee-table books that are sold as art objects. Most works will be digitally distributed.
Broadcast and cable television will consist entirely of reruns of web shows, or reruns of old classics.
I would guess that it goes back to being like it was around 1996. Different cars that use the templates of the actual street car. The Mustang, Challenger, and Camaro will move from Nationwide-only to the Cup series. Since fuel injection will probably be in place in 2 years, hopefully in 10 years we can have engines similar to production engines. DOHC engines for Ford and pushrods for Chevy and Dodge. If Dodge is still around at the point. Toyota will keep using carbs, since they still won’t have their computer problems sorted out.
Palestine will be a recognized state, but will still be in a state of simmering war with Israel.
The US Dollar will be worth about 50-70% of what it is today.
A second revolution will have taken place in Iran.
Ten years is not a long time; things don’t undergo a complete revolution in ten short years. About the only thing I’d expect to be significantly different in ten years would be computers and computer-related things. Society and sociological things would be barely changed. For the record, I did look at how things are today and endeavour to extrapolate ten years into the future. If you think my answers are too similar to today’s conditions, maybe the fault lies in the question asked.
Hear, hear.
Folks will still be having these prediction threads, and many such predictions will still be thinly veiled attempts to trash The Other Side.
- more things will be available online, and faster.
- textbooks in computer-based format will be standard. Textbook publishers will be able to charge less and get richer at the same time. They’ll still be available in text form for people who prefer it that way or who want to own the book, but most students will choose the cheaper and easier-for-most online option.
- handheld devices will get awesomer. They’ll be able to do about as much as a middle-of-the-road laptop can now, plus of course phone/camera/etc. They will also be made easier to use- fewer tiny tiny buttons and things like that.
- things will still be soft and cushy, possibly even more so. Stuff like memory foam couches or something. Futuristic stuff always seems to be full of hard, sterile-looking furniture and surfaces but I’ve always thought people would continue to like soft beds and couches way into the future.
- there will be another big fad diet. People will lose a lot of weight on it but a lot will gain it back and more. People will say it’s unhealthy, there will be less-extreme versions of it floating around, and there will be some people who swear it changed their lives.
- gay marriage (or at least civil unions) will be legal in many, if not most states. Probably not in the reddest of the red states, but at least one fairly red state will surprise everyone and legalize it.
- psych meds will be improved
- the “designer baby” debate will be raging.
Entertainment like literature, movies, and music will be sold as content rather than physical objects. You’ll purchase the information and then store it on whatever device you wish.
CGI will advance to the point where it will be interchangeable with “live-action”. Its breakthrough point will be the ability to use deceased icons like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, or James Dean in new movies.
The rate of meat consumption in the western world will peak and begin to decline.
If my earlier predictions do not happen, we will have sexbots, absolutely life like human robots that can be purchased outright or rented for sex.
Even third world countries will have them so that they are not the only humans reproducing.
You will be able to program the bot to do ANYTHING you want sexually and they will be so attractive and without any bullshit whatsoever, no human will have sex with another human.
To do so would be like having sex with an animal.
And the things that are changing ten years from now all exist now as seeds.
My predictions.
Oil has risen in price, making trnsport more expensive. This affects everything.
Various cities are trying to electrify their diesel rail systems, but aside from ones that had at least started to study the process in 2010, there have been no results yet. On the other hand, electrification of private transport is happening slowly.
One other adaptation to high oil prices is, of course, travelling less. Social media and non-motorized transport are more popular. You see many more bicycles, including large cargo models, and more and more localities are allowing horses back into the urban area.
The rise of transport costs also means that urban farming is more popular, and hang the impurities in the soil. Health authorities are watching for an expected rise in dsisease and birth abnormalities due to this… but it’s better than starving.
The process of making buildings more energy-efficient goes on. Passive-solar techniques and insulation are getting more bang for the buck than active techniques like PV panels or solar concentrators, if only because their prices haven’t risen as fas as the active techniques’ prices.
Local manufacture and commerce is starting to take off, but it’s taking time to get set up. People are on average materially poorer than ten years earlier, simply because they have on average less energy per person to use. This has started some on a political drift to the traditional left, as it did a hundred years earlier.
So…
Horses in subirbia, more leftists, and lots of insulation.
I’ll go even farther than this. The notion of having to “store” the content you “own” on one of your personal devices will be increasing seen as “quaint”. Instead you won’t care much where the content is stored, and you’ll just stream anything you want to any device you want.
And while there will be premium content that people pay for the right to access, the vast majority of content will be available for no extra charge to the end user. People might pay a certain amount for their internet access that will go into a fund to compensate content creators, but for the most part, if you want to listen to the newest single by whoever, you just type it in and listen to a stream and don’t worry about how whoever is getting paid, as long as you aren’t charged anything extra. Maybe it’s public domain, maybe it’s pirated, maybe it’s available with a little advertisement attached, but controlling the copying and distribution of this sort of thing will be a losing battle. Maybe in 10 years it won’t have gone quite that far, but in 20 years definately.
How content providers make money could still be an unsolved problem, or maybe we’ll have worked something out. But unrestricted access to everything will be a reality, and attempts to stop it will be trying to plug the holes in a crumbling dike. It will either be de facto and cut out the providers, who will see revenues plummet and a dramatic decline in new for-profit content, or we’ll figure out some legal/technological means to make it happen while still compensating them. But it’ll happen. And the law won’t mean much when China and India and Russia have much bigger internet presences.
How much do you think it will cost to transport enough hay to the city to feed your urban/suburban horse? If gas prices are so high that transportation costs form a large part of a city dwellers food bill, then how can you afford to truck in tons of hay for the horses?
The economic crisis of 2020 will be the inadequacy of value in 401k type plans for baby-boomer retirees. There will be a government bailout by restructuring Social Security. In order to get the votes to pass the restructuring the bill will contain a provision to allow personal management of accounts (much like Bush attempted).
Much like the death of newspapers - popular entertainment (movies, TV) will continue to be less and less economically viable. There will be a continued growth of ‘user generated’ content becoming the model.
Medical services will become more democratized and cheaper (ala clinics in Wal-Mart).
No way, until someone invents an electronic reader which doesn’t have to be plugged in or use batteries, and can be used in any light from pitch darkness to an August afternoon in L.A. The production of traditional books will diminish only if the people who read them finally decide to be content to do so only in places where computers and similar technology can be used.
We will, of course, still have the dollar bill, and no dollar or higher coins circulating to any meaningful degree. We’ll still have pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters as they are today. Because of inflation and the greater volume of coins that will need to be transported from banks to merchants, Brinks and similar companies will have to use articulated big-rigs to make their deliveries, instead of the largish armored vans they use today.
Coinstar will be everywhere, and will have upped their percentage to fifteen cents per dollar, partly because of the higher demand, and partly because they will offer more free choices (e.g. Amazon credits, etc.).
I will still be the only person in the country who thinks it’s preposterous and outrageous that the highest coin in regular circulation is worth about one-fiftieth of a cheap haircut or about a fifth of a big city mass transit fare. Of course in ten years it will be a lot less; I’m using approximate values from today; Supercuts charges about $15, and a ride on the L.A. bus or metro is $1.25 as of 2010.