None of the above. Most of these I would assign no more than 1% probability. One World Government, Bioengineered Pandemic and Space Colonization are the most likely, but I wouldn’t give any of them more than 50:50 probability by 2050 at best.
Where is the option for none of the above?
How 'bout a freaking Flying Car?
Is that so much to ask?
That option would be called “Not Voting.” In case the zombies didn’t make it clear, the poll wasn’t intended as a serious scientific instrument.
In the case of nuclear world war, it will, of course, be the *last *thing you live to see.
I chose “nanotech run amok” but I was thinking on a small scale. Like, a lab wiped out by severe allergic reactions when they accidentally inhale a bunch of nanobots that somebody spilled into the air conditioning system, or something.
Most of my other stuff was optimistic.
Or David Hoffman’s excellent The Dead Hand, which details (among other things) the Soviet Union’s Biopreparat program and the little that is known about its continued legacy under post-Soviet Russia.
Stranger
Bioengineerred pandemic.
Caused by stupidity, corporate recklessness & greed.
But not intentionally.
Idiocracy.
“Bioengineered pandemic” and “Nanotech run amok” are essentially the same thing. Do you think nanotech necessarily means gears and a silicon or iron substrate? No, the whole premise of nanotech is, essentially, building our own proteins de novo and constructing cells from them to do things we can’t coax natural cells into doing. Either you think ‘bioengineering’ is merely genetic engineering (reprogramming existing nanomachinery) or you have an odd view of how machinery works when shrunk to molecule scale.
Anyway, my prediction: The 20th Century was the century humanity learned to read. Prior to that, ‘book learning’ was really ‘book memorization’, due in part to the fact paper was still somewhat expensive (viz. hornbooks) and to the fact we had no real idea of how to teach people. In specific, we (apparently) didn’t understand the difference between memorization and comprehension, so we emphasized the former because it was easier to test for (and, likely, more influenced by beatings).
The 21st Century will be the century humanity learns how to do math. Computers are now getting closer to where paper and books were in the early 20th Century, but educational styles have not caught up to the fact memorizing times tables, for example, doesn’t teach you anything and certainly doesn’t make you better at math. Pervasive, essentially always-available computing will both make arithmetic pointless for most people to know, for the same reason it’s pointless to memorize the holy book of your choice, and it will make it essential for people to be able to deal with logical concepts.
Why will people have to be able to think more logically? Because, if computers are everywhere, being unable to program them is a cognitive deficit comparable to, but worse than, being unable to read in modern American society. In short, if you think ‘everything is done with computers’ now you ain’t seen nothing yet, and the already substantial gulf between programmers and non-programmers will already get wider. (If you don’t know about that gulf, you’re on the wrong side of it.)
I’m hoping to make it to midcentury, when I’d be 95. Put me down for ‘none of the above’.
I hope I live to see:
- elimination of oil-burning transportation
- elimination of human operation of cars/vehicles (except off-road recreational)
- significant amounts of human DNA engineering to eliminate disease and bad human traits
- elimination of overeating & obesity
- 100% planned pregnancy, subject to global procreation treaty
- universal health care
- major reduction in air pollution/emissions
- 50% renewable energy
- elimination of greed
not too much to ask for, is it? 
nothing on that list
Nah–my thinking behind “bioengineered pandemic” was that it was engineered to be a disease. “Nanotech run amok” is something that’s not intended to kill.
I’m pretty surprised this late-night-slightly-tipsy-thread is still going, but you raise an interesting point:
This gets to something that annoys me about people whining about the state of modern education, and how great schools used to be: I sometimes ask them, if schools used to be so great, why can’t old people program VCRs? (Sadly the question raises eyebrows among kids and eyerolls among my peers; I need to come up with a new question). Because you’re right: schools used to emphasize memorization much more than they do now, and now we emphasize figuring out how to solve a problem much more. Hopefully my current students will be a lot better at figuring out new technologies–and, of course, designing new technologies–than previous generations were, and hopefully my approach to teaching math will help them with that.