Time for Futurists, Predict away...

In My Humble Opinion
21

there will be articifical intelligence: a computer will write a play and it will be beautiful, comedic and tragic. it shall be taught in schools, and kids will hate it, saying ‘how does studying plays and all that shit help me get a job? fuck the system, man’

hip hop, electronica and some completely new musical genres will sound even harder and forceful than today.

‘impossible’, you say, ‘nothing hits harder than metallica.’
well y’know, they probably said that about black sabbath.

conservatives will accept gay rights etc as a given, and will pretend that they always have.

there will be a revolution against capitolism, and it shall happen in american. revolutions always happen where the extent of the oppresion by the political system in question is greatest. this won’ happen for a long time, however.

nothing will destroy the human spirit, nor the need for controversy.

22

Wow. I wasn’t going to post anything at all. Then I was. And it turned into a huge essay. But it’s late, and I’m going to bed. I think I’ll try to continue it tomorrow, and maybe post it here. Either way, thanks for the suggestion; I’ve suddenly got a nice mental project.

23

In 75 years all sorts of things are going to change and hopefully improve, however, some things will not.

*Kids still won’t know how to wash the dishes or clean their rooms.
*The dish will ALWAYS look better in the recipe book!
*The day after you buy your new computer/time-modifier/cyborg house-cleaner you will see it advertised at $500 less.

24

negative entropy until the system implodes upon itselt

25

I rememebr seeing glow in the dark mice that had spliced jellyfish genes a few years ago. It shouldn’t be very long now before someone comes up with brilliant but common sense idea to take an orchid seed, splice it with jellyfish or firefly genes, grow it, and sell it on QVC as the world’s first organic nightlight.

If genetiscists(sp?) get good enough, they may even come up with a plant that glows about as brightly as a lightbulb, thereby creating a whole new lighting scheme for homes and cities. It may also spark even further interest in what else we can do with genetics. Maybe we can create organic factories, living power plants (ie harnassing electric eel power on a gigantic scale), living computers (with neural tissue being used in a meaningful way by those wonderful nano-chips), self growing homes, and perhaps even reflexive engines (harnassing the power of muscle tissue towards a specific action inside an engine). All these items would have the advantage of being self repairing to a point, relatively cheap once it has been created in the lab, and hopefully all you would need to do is feed these creations with cheap fertilizer.

I can see all this as taking off by decades end, but research will of course be so delayed by ethical concerns that we won’t see any of these cool things coming to past for another 30-40 years.

26

That last post by Javamaven1 was mine.

27

I will be alive and well and I will STILL be the hardest
Star Control 2 player in the world! Unfortuantely no-one will care. I know this because no-one cares NOW! :-b…

Cybernetic enhancements will be freely available. This is a given because nerve to electronic linkage is already a reality now and is being used to allow people with severed nerves to walk again.

Complete hormonal replacement therapy will add 50 good years to the lives of everyone who can afford it. This too is obvious since the the first version of the therapy (that adds 20 good years to one’s life) is already under review by the FDA.

There will be conflict in the Middle East.

Population in the western world will be out of control while Africa and parts of Asia will be stable since the huge pharmaceutical companies will STILL be unwilling to sell cheap anti-retroviral drugs to them and AIDS will have continued to eat the 3rd world alive.

Kung-Fu will be recognised as the greatest martial art in the world because people will finally live long enough to learn how to effectively use the damn thing. (I study it and love it. I KNOW).

Similarly increased life span will finally allow people enough time to truly undertand the Tao. The enlightenment that they receive will allow them to perform mystical feats of levitation, teleportation, telepathy and faith healing. In spite of a wealth of evidence to support the reality of the mystics’ powers both mainstream science and Cecil Adams will deny their existence. :wink:

The art of psychology will have unravelled many of the mysteries of the human mind and thereby discovered verbal/chemical/social/cognitive/behavioural cures for most mental disorders. Naturally brand new ones will emerge to take up the slack.

‘The comprehensive theory of everything’ will be finished and published by a little-known Hells Angel from the US (featured two years ago in Time magazine as the guy with the highest recorded IQ EVER) and Science will suffer a paradigm shift again.

People in the first world will stop going outside because evrerything that they want can be found on a VR-Internet that encompasses stimlation for all five senses.

The fact that we are all old-timers will not matter because the next generation (who will be twice as smart as we) will be in touch with the fact that Ageism is just as bad an ‘ism’ as the other one’s were.

I will still be one of the coolest people I know. I will still be filled with the simple joy of being alive. I will still want to live forever but still not be afraid of death. Will you?

28

What’s this Hell’s Angels guy you’re talking about?

Anyway, in the future, in first world countries at least, I think corporations will virtually be a ruling party.

“Vote Corporate”

29

Humans will, with rare exception, live as long as they want. Immortality will have been a fact of life for several decades. How this came about is a bit harder to predict - I feel that either nanotechnology or genetic engineering will be responsible for huge medical advances, but I strongly suspect that one of the two will be rejected by society as something that shouldn’t be tampered with, I just can’t say which. People who think life is sacred and we shouldn’t tamper with it will be for using nanobots to maintain our bodies in perfect health, people who are against the idea of having microscopic robots throughout their body and/or fear the possible consequences of runaway nanobots will favor a more organic solution. Either way, we will tackle natural death sometime in the next few decades.

If we develop medical nanotechnology I predict there will be a pill you can take that will change your gender, or other aspects of your appearance. If we take the genetics path the same stuff will be possible, though it will be via surgery and cloned organs. I think a sizable percentage of the population will take advantage of technology to modify their body, while many people still think there is something wrong or even perverse in doing so.

The idea of having to work for a living will be considered ridiculously old-fashioned, increased automation will be able to provide a standard of living that is superior to that of today’s world’s richest in most ways (though there will be some who reject this new wealth for personal or cultural reasons). People will occupy themselves by trying to gain recognition and fame for their achievements, whether they are artistic, athletic, or whatever. The only resources not available to all will be space and followers, and the most influential people will compete among themselves to have the best of both.

There will be a rapidly growing number of people living in space. Though space travel will never be efficient or popular enough to put a dent in the Earth’s population it will be an option for those who do not want to live on Earth and those who relocate will breed faster. A vast majority will live in orbital habitats though some will live on or under the surface of most planetary bodies in our solar system. We will have some people who have modified their bodies to be able to live in hostile environments, while most will modify where they live to have near perfect living conditions.

Computers will be able to simulate sentience so well that they are indistinguishable from humans if they want to be. Brain-computer interfaces will be advanced, common, and nonintrusive. Computers will have been able to read our minds so long that we will have already worked out most of the ethical problems and reached a point where an acceptable degree of privacy is maintained. You will be able to connect your mind to simulated realities so vast and detailed they are nearly indistinguishable from reality. Many people will choose to live in such a state, and this will be encouraged to save living space.

If we continue to develop biotechnology then we will have resurrected hundreds of extinct species. Many off-planet colonies will have bizarre and complex ecosystems made up of life natural, extinct, and/or wholly man-made. An effort will be made to preserve something resembling a natural ecosystem on Earth, however, and those who want something more interesting will either go off-planet or into simulations.

We will have send unmanned probes to dozens of nearby stars and manned ones to a few. Constant boost spacecraft will be fairly common and you will be able to travel anywhere in the solar system in a few days if you are willing to sleep through a high-G trip while suspended in fluid. Most travellers will prefer more leisurely craft that make a trip to Mars take a few days and a trip to the Oort cloud a couple of weeks.

Well, that’s the way I see it, unless there is something totally unexpected that slows us down or shakes things up totally, like a major war or contact with aliens. In another hundred years things will be almost completely the same, except that the vast majority of the solar system’s population will be non-Terrestrial and there will be colonies in other solar systems.

30

50% of the population will be incarcerated. 50% of the population will be gay, though not all the same 50%. People will have replacement bio-mechanincal parts like hands, knees, hips and legs. There will be physical identification databases (implant/DNA mix) enforced like taxes are enforced. A new language will mutate based on English but influenced by many other major ones and it will be nearly universal. National borders will disintegrate into tribal/regionalism. Woman will replace dildos (and most men) with electronic/sonic orgasm inducers and only bear children a couple of months in the womb before having them extracted and brought to term in artificial wombs. Health-concious people will subsist on nutritious liquid diets and soft/no teeth will be a status symbol. The new abs six-pack will be the Popeye-style forearms. Major sports will not be played by wealthy atheletes rather prisoners earning tobacco flavored vapor sticks. Major religions will merge into basically “It created Us, Then. This Good. That Bad. Follow.”

31

Hew - we’re being futurists here, so I don’t need to provide any cites, nor will I debate this. This is IMO only, so don’t bust my chops over it. This was as a result of brainstorming with a couple of people at work a while ago.

In the US:

Due to judicial activism and a creative interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, combined with a changing of Society due largely to the influence of one certain political party being in control of the entertainment industry and media…

  • Within 30 years, most States will have bans or moritoriums on handgun ownership. Less than 20 States will allow hunting anymore. Many gun manufacturers will be driven out of business due to continued, non-stop nuisance lawsuits funded by “limousine liberals”.

  • Within 60 years - citing ‘environmental and liability concerns’, hunting, even of herds raised expressly for that purpose, will be illegal. The US will severely limit firearms sales to the extent of bolt-action rifles intended for target shooting only, or blackpowder weapons. An enormous black market in illegal firearms will flood across our completely open borders. Only 2 gun manufacturers still exist, due to continued nuisance lawsuits.

  • Within 90 years - after an 11-10 decision by the (expanded, obviously) Supreme Court, the 2nd Amendment is found to not refer to either an individual right, nor a collective right. This confusing decision is followed during the very next “People’s Party” Administration by house-to-house sweeps by armed troops to collect firearms and disarm the public. This has no effect on the industry, as the last gun manufacturers were driven out of business 10 years ago by a class-action lawsuit done pro bono by the American Bar Association. The black market flourishes, with most new weapons being proivided by corrupt police officials who are desperate to make money (a working handgun brings $30,000 on the market).

  • Within 120 years - all “right to self-defense” has been completely abolished by People’s Party-appointed Supreme Court judges. The populace is ready now, having been deluged by more than a Century of leftist propaganda. People laugh nervously and look around in embarassment at the absurd thought of self-defense, let alone owning a firearm. I mean, really! However - murders, rapes, and armed assaults are conducted by criminals at a rate similar to that of 1990. The accidental discovery of a firearm in an attic or buried in a yard prompts a tactical response involving Special Forces teams, helijets, and “neighborhood martial law.”

Well…that was a rabidly pro-gunner’s outlook on the grim future, huh? Let’s try for something a little less blatantly political:

  • Within 10 years, AIDS and numerous other diseases will be cured. “Quasi-AI” will be developed, that will not be truly self-aware, but good enough to fool 100% of the people.

  • At 20 years out, a massive depression due to no really well-understood cause strikes the US and the industrialized nations. This lasts for 8-10 years.

  • Within 30 years, a terrorist nuclear weapon will be detonated within a major US city. No one will claim credit, and although there will be strong evidence as to who did it, there will be controversy for decades over who was actually responsible.

  • Within 40 years, the EC now spreads from Quebec to Russia, from Finland to Egypt. Australia, South Africa, India, and Singapore are also Members. NATO is disbanded.

  • Within 50 years - nuclear fusion is finally able to work, but at an efficiency so poor that the World is in danger of running out of fusion energy within another 200 years. Attempts to make a “North/South American EC” finally fail completely, with Canada, Cuba, and Venezuela joining the EC. The US sees continued strife as several groups of States undergo “peaceful succession movements”.

  • Within 5 more years, the “peaceful sucession movements” end as the government places 20 States under Martial Law, and troops occupy the States. The populace, seriously neutered by this time, only makes minor resistance. The US enters a trade war with the EC, which they lose.

  • Within 70 years - humans land on Mars, to occupy settlements built remotely by robotic misions.

  • Within 75 years, the Mars scientific colony is shut down and abandoned due to lack of interest and funding.

  • A look at 100 years - the average American is still overweight, lazy, and surrounded by technology they have no hope of ever understanding in their lives. The country is in clear decline, but the transparency of borders around the World is making this somewhat irrelevant. The average lifespan has only increased to 85 years, although the quality of life at higher ages has improved dramatically. Less than 50% of Americans have a religion of any kind, which makes America by far the most religious country in the World. The average person works a 24-hour work week. Due to a Century of porous borders, the US is becoming very overpopulated, with severe taxes on “land hogs” forcing many people to sell their houses and move into government-built Soviet-style apartment housing. The combined Tax Rate for most persons is 75%. In general, the people are filled with a vague sense of discomfort and a feeling that somehow they lost their way, but are too fat, lazy, stupid, and drugged to do anything about it.

Cynical? Yup.

32

Anthracite don’t you mean EU as in European Union rather than EC as in European Commission which generates policy?

I know this is IMHO but I can’t allow you to use this in your future. This is because when I am President of Australia (Yes President for those observant enough to notice that Australia is not currently a republic) I will create a Pacific Union with members Australia, NZ, Singapore, PNG, parts of Indonesia (after a few provinces break away during the 2010’s) and maybe even Taiwan (If we can subsidise its defence as good as the US did in order to have a market front to China, better them with us then against us.)

I don’t mean to be intrusive on your imagination or your post, I just couldn’t help myself. :wink:

33

Has anyone seen the tv series Dark Angel?

What do you think about the possibility of terrorists detonating an EMP that wipes out all data in most of the worlds computers, which turns the USA into a third world nation?

34

I know I’m not a psychologist, but I’d bet 5 bucks that the way we see the future says something about who we are right now.

Not being a psychologist, though, I don’t know what it says exactly.

35

In contrast to the previous posts, I predict that:
-there will be reversion to0 the mores, styles, and lifestyles of the 1890’s!
-Victorian morality will re-emerge as sex is de-emphasized from reproduction
-Victorian clothing styles will be hot: smoking jackets and top hats will become popular
-all types of mental illness will be banned; but custom drugs will neable people to experience scizophrenia, insanity, etc., for short periods (as an amusement)
-people will re-establish class boundaries, and regression into lower class behaviour will become a popular form of entertainment
-servants (butlers, nannies, and maids) will become popular again (this more direct domination of the rich over the poor will be popular).
-immortality will be possible, but most people will opt against it

36

I agree we will go through a phase like this sometime soon. The service industry is going to have to find a way to expand drastically when automation starts taking away more and more jobs. People without a marketable skill might spent a few hours a week doing minor chores for people who can earn a better income, and frequently hire people themselves.

37

Eh…I meant “Economic Community”, meaning the EU. They changed names about 15 years from now. :slight_smile:

38

[sparks]You’re gonna eat a bowl of chow mein and be hungry real soon.

I predict.[/sparks]

39

Two words: Bachelor Chow.

Oh, and maybe ** Soylent Green **…

40

In 2042, Nickelodeon will open their time capsule that they buried in 1992.

I think that I am the only one in the entire world who remembers this.