What are your predictions for 2112?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Based on this parallel thread of mine on predictions from 1900 which came true.

What will life be like in 2112?

List at least 5 changes.

2

I’m not sure. Since 100 years from now is a long time, I don’t want to rush to any predictions.

3

Well, Rush did have something to say about it…

4

I thought about this too when I read the other thread. It makes me sort of sad to know that I won’t get to see if my predictions come true, but here goes.

  1. Flying cars.

  2. Health care will be vastly different. We may well be able to regrow limbs and organs.

  3. Recreational drugs will be legal in the US.

  4. Cloning will happen more than now. A lot more than now.

  5. Everyone alive will have a chip embedded at birth that allows for tracking. No more missing people. Crime is very low because getting caught is almost 100% guaranteed. So no more jails or prisons.

5

We will be scrambling to feed people. Land will be at a premium since so much formerly coastal area will be under water. The US will have degenerated to a dreary theocracy (sort of like certain Arab countries are currently) and the real action will have moved to Asia. Oil will be rare and expensive; the idea of private cars will seem like fantasy. Mandarin will be the lingua franca of the world.

This seems pretty dreary. In 1994 I was on a committee to award research grants and I predicted to another member of the committee that we would look back on the preceding 40 years as the golden age of research funding. He thought I was nuts. But research funding has gone steadily downhill in the last 18 years.

6

My predictions;

  1. Solar, wind, and geothermal power will be the backbone of the world’s energy infrastructure. Nuclear power will be in limited use, but not much more than it is now. Coal and oil will be obsolete due to their high prices. Cars or whatever form of personal transport replaces them will run on batteries, fuel cells, or biodiesel. Almost all homes and businesses will be equipped with solar panels.

  2. Cloning and cybernetics will extend the human lifespan. It will be possible to replace a damaged organ by growing one in the laboratory from the patient’s own cells, thus eliminating the need for organ donors. Artificial limbs will be indistinguishable from the real thing. Cybernetic implants in the brain will make it possible to directly access information from the internet and view it on an HUD projected into one’s field of vision. Laws will be passed regulating how far beyond “human normal” one may become with cybernetic enhancement, and persons with cybernetic limbs will be banned from professional sports.

  3. Checks and physical currency will be obsolete. All financial transactions will occur electronically through a swipe of a card or a chip embedded in one’s hand. Pickpockets will attempt to use sophisticated electronics to try to hack other people’s chips. A black market will evolve using some sort of barter system or scrip to trade in contraband.

  4. Most of the food we eat will be genetically modified or lab-grown. Most meat will be produced by cloning animal muscle tissue in a protein bath, producing a lump of living meat which can be harvested again and again. Corporate farms will engineer custom-made or specially flavored varieties of fruits and vegetables (can you say bacon-flavored mushrooms?) Organic and naturally-grown produce will still be available, but at a premium price. Globalization will introduce more foreign and exotic cuisines to the American palate.

  5. Same-sex marriage will be legal throughout the western world. The current social stigma/taboo against homosexuality will no longer exist. Most people will self-identify themselves as bisexual. The age of consent will be lowered to 16 or less, and relations between adults and teenagers will not be viewed as immoral. Contraception will be more readily available - “the pill” will be available as a subdermal implant which only needs to be replaced twice a year. The government will promote the use of contraception and encourage couples to have no more than two children.

7

Will we even make it to 2112? That’s the real question…

8

Several items already predicted are, in my opinion, only ten years out, and others are, in my opinion, five hundred years out. One hundred years is kind of a hard time span to predict for, but it’s always fun to try. Here’s my attempt.

By 2112…[ol]

[li]All of the world’s easy fresh water sources will be almost totally depleted. A majority of fresh water will be produced by desalination and will be incredibly expensive. People will look back with horror at our casual waste of water. Access to fresh water will be the number one cause of political tension in the world. [/li]~
[li]Petroleum will no longer be a major energy source, since it will have been depleted to the point where its cost is prohibitively high. The only machines using it for power will be a handful of military aircraft. Coal will still be a major energy source (by 2112, we will still have another hundred years worth of coal). Nuclear will have increased, but solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc. will not yet be significant contributors. We will not yet have had the technological breakthrough to make these truly green energy forms viable competitors to coal and nuclear, and there will be no serious incentive on the horizon to find such a breakthrough. [/li]~
[li]Climate change having long been rendered irreversible, the environmental movement will have shifted its focus to the aforementioned problem of fresh water.[/li]~
[li]Still no extraterrestrial habitations (i.e. nobody living on the moon or Mars, etc.). There will, at this point, be no real plans in the works of creating such. [/li]~
[li]World population growth will have nearly leveled off, as education levels in the third world increase. Total world population will be in the magnitude of 15 billion. Population growth will not actually hit 0 for another hundred years.[/li]~
[li](BONUS PREDICTION!) The U.S. will still exist as a political entity similar to what we see today, though the Constitution will have been amended several times. The U.S. will still be a major world power, though not the biggest one. India will be #1 with a significantly different form of government. China will be the second biggest world power, with a similar government as today.[/li]~
(SUPER BONUS PREDICTION) Japan will have had several decades of dominance in space, (thanks to its successful erection of a space elevator in the 2070s) making it the technological leader of the world.[/ol]