Two-way public cellphone conversations.
Beets.
In the future, people will look back in wonder that people had their education recited verbally to them, and that it was a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all curriculum delivered by a maybe-sorta qualified instructor. There will be some sort of personalized immersive multimedia experience best suited toward each individual.
Also they’ll shake their heads that people back in the dark ages were expected to stop learning and start working, rather than it being a lifetime experience.
They’ll probably find it barbaric that we allowed people to be born with serious mental disibilities. These things will be detectable so early that ending such a pregnancy will be seen as no more controversial than having a miscarriage. That’s a bit speculative though. I’m not sure eugenics will be as easy a pill to swallow as I think.
Ugliness. With genetic engineering and advancing cosmetic technology, I expect the people of the future will be uniformly physically near-perfect, especially to the eye. With that as the standard, they may well look at something like a receding hairline or moles as a hideous deformity.
There was a Twilight Zone episode based on that premise.
Economic opportunity disparity for items that have a positive societal benefit.
In other words, requiring payment or earning a profit from:
Education
Information
Health Care
Legal Services
Socialism and government intrusion into every aspect of our lives. In a society where individual freedom is sacrosanct and individual achievement is celebrated and aspired to, they’ll wonder how in the world western society could witness the monumental failure of those principles graphically demonstrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and then collectively shrug and work harder to put the same destructive principles in place in their own successful society and culture.
That’s what I was originally going to say as well, but then I was thinking…if our technology gets to the point where we have essentially unlimited resources, and if we also live a lot longer AND increase productivity exponentially (or if we figure out ways for nano-manufacturing) then a form of socialism may actually work…in fact, it may actually be a natural progression.
-XT
Democracy.
At least, the people in charge will think so.
Keeping pets.
Asimov has explored a society where interaction through virtual images was the norm and face to face contact abhored. Children were raised together, but they would grow out of direct contact. Non-robot direct contact, that is.
I’ve seen a few different novels were being seen eating was considered to be nasty.
I’m sure we already have groups in which not getting cosmetic surgery is considered to be letting yourself go.
Linking food, clothing and shelter with the holding of a job
Yes, it’s just terrible in hellholes like Europe. :rolleyes: It’s so much better in America where we treat people as exploitable cattle.
Considering prison rape as merely the just desserts of felons.
Someday, I would hope, being sentenced to years in prison for recreational use of drugs.
I second abortion.
Well perhaps in the future they’ll have 100% effective, unobtrusive, and non-side-effecty contraceptives. Nano-swarms that eat your jizz or something like that.
I expect our gen will be getting a hard time about how we didn’t give Chimps and Dolphins “rights”. 2-3 gens from now.
Smoking will be illegal= unless all drugs are legalized. It’s an interesting toss-up which will arrive 1st. 2-3 gens from now
Certainly smoking will very shortly become more and more unacceptable and proscribed. 10 years
Killing animals for food will be viewed as we view smoking or veal now. 2-3 gens.
Smoking will probably decrease, true, but doubtful that it will be seen as “barbaric” simply because it’s so common in classic movies and those movies are going to be watched for a pretty long time, and people aren’t going to be able to look at Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with cigarettes and think of them as barbarians. It’s more likely to be seen as something antiquated and odd. But there will still be hipsters who do it for the image.
Voting for elected officials based on race or gender, when it’s done by any group in support of any candidate.
I’m hoping.
Human beings, being the natural tribal thinkers we are, probably won’t change completely in that regard though.