I’m going to go out on a limb and say “no”. I think the change in the 20th century was unique and will never be paralleled again.
In 1900 most of the world (outside of cities like Paris, San Francisco, and New York) was essentially ancient. People only lived an average of 35 years, virtually everyone was religious, and electronics were almost non-existent (again, outside of modern cities). Airplanes did not exist, cars barely did; people still traveled by ship and train. Most people were farmers by profession.
By 1999 people lived an average of 65 years, secularism was becoming the norm among younger generations, and TV and the Internet were around in just about every country. Outside of Africa and parts of South Asia most of the world was thoroughly modernized, and capitalism became the economic mode just about everywhere. Most people worked in factories, offices or stores.
I predict that by 2099 people will live about 85 years on average, religion will become fringe, capitalism will continue to be the global system (with perhaps a few socialist outliers), the Internet will remain largely the way it is now (still using HTML, etc) but having totally replaced TV and radio, the system of nation-states will remain intact (no one-world government), and we’ll still be planning the first mission to Mars. Most people will still be working in factories, stores and offices, but many people will be on the dole due to automation.
I don’t think 2099 will be hugely different from 1999 - at least no moreso than 1599 was different from 1699. Certainly not as different as 1899 was from 1999 by any stretch of the imagination.
Does anyone else agree or have another vision of 2099?
Disagree (ETA: with the OP). Heck, thanks to smartphones and related technology, the world of today is already significantly different from that of 1999.
No, the average lifespan didn’t rise just because of decreased infant mortality. Various medical advances increased the ability of people to survive various sorts of diseases and medical conditions at all ages. Decreased infant mortality was important, but it wasn’t remotely the only thing that happened to increase the lifespan.
Furthermore, the infant mortality rate has been going down recently in the U.S. Where do you possibly get the idea that it’s going up? That’s not true at all:
I think we’re probably on the cusp of a bunch of game changers. Giving myself 40 years, I may not live to see it all but the end of the century should be pretty different. You could almost say genetic research just started along with a bunch of other medical knowledge. Artificial intelligence is just getting out of infancy too. The 20th century was nuts but I see no reason to think the ride is over.
I think the OP is likely right, I’d guess the likelihood of there being bigger changes in the 21st than the 20th century at maybe 5%, with most of that 5% being in the negative direction. Here’s my list of things that I think have at least a 1/10,000 chance of happening by 2099 that would make a big enough difference.
The positive direction.
Development of true AI, meaning AI that would qualify as a person (sentient and sapient).
Development of a way to halt and reverse the aging process.
The negative.
Global nuclear war.
The melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice with the subsequent displacement of all the people living at or near (the current) sea level.
There’s other things that could potentially happen, but I think the likelihood of aliens visiting us or similar things that would be game changers are too small to consider. The assumption I’m making is that the advancements of the 20th century were a lot more game changing than anything we have had so far this century, which I think most people would agree is the case.
I agree that these are the two areas of potential improvement, but as I noted, it’s more likely we will have continued small advancements rather than having the major game changers that I listed. By the way I look at it, anything short of those are not anywhere close to make a big enough difference the way 20th century inventions did.
People keep saying that, but it’s not true. Even though infant mortality account for a significant part of the low life expectancy of past eras (the median age at death during the renaissance in France was 10, so half of people born died before this age), it wasn’t the only factor.
Life expectancy for people who made it to 20 only reached 40 years during the second part of the 19th century in France (in other words, people who reached adulthood typically died before 60 until then).
An example I regularly give is that between 1000 AD and 1500 AD, no king of France lived to be 60, and their average age of death (excluding the one who was crowned and died in infancy) was in the high 40. English kings during the same period did a bit better, with an average age of death in the early 50, and a couple of them reaching 60.
The false impression that people were living almost as long back then providing that they survived childhood is reinforced by the fact that a lot of famous people lived long. Essentially because if you died in your 30s or 40s, you didn’t have time to become a famous general, politician, philosopher… to begin with. Even for sovereigns, who don’t to have to work on becoming famous, you had to live long enough to inherit the crown, and if you did, you need to have a long enough reign to be well remembered (if you look up well known kings, you’ll notice that basically those who are considered great kings are those who reigned the longest, since they had time to achieve a lot of things). An example of this would be Louis XV of France. He lived long and had a long reign. But he inherited the throne from his great-grandfather. Both his father and grandfather died before they could reign. So, we remember the guy who lived long, but forget the two who didn’t.
How could you know that? Majors changes are typically rather unexpected. We tend to expect more progresses in domains we’re familiar with (communications, genetics, computers… in your case), but the real breakthroughs that will change society will come unannounced as they did during the 19th or 20th centuries.
We’re only in 2017. In 1817, there wasn’t much in the way of industrial revolution, and not many TV and computers in 1917, either.
Yeah, but AI is weird in a way that other stuff isn’t.
If we keep making continued small advancements in AI, the question isn’t “well, we now have Watson, which reliably kicks ass on JEOPARDY by fielding trivia questions even if they’re asked in a conversational and somewhat slangy tone; it’s getting as great at that as AIs are against chess grandmasters; what do we do next?”
The question instead becomes, "well, we’ve now developed an AI that’s better at developing AIs than any human is; what does it do next?
I think it very much depends on how you measure change, and what you value. Subjective, in other words.
In lots of ways, there’s been very little advancement since 1900. Sociologically, people haven’t changed much since they first started recording their histories.
It does SEEM as though advances in technology accelerated at various times, with a big surge just after each increase in ability of inventors to act on their inventions, and after each advance in communications of ideas.
We’ve already had a significant slow down in certain areas. Warfare, and the technology to kill each other had a long and steady progress from the end of the 19th century until the end of the Cold War, but not much has changed since. Yeah, bombs have been refined a bit, but they are still basically bombs. Drones are only sociologically different from kamikazes.
On the other hand, advances which are still going forward in truly understanding DNA, hold the potential for sea changes in society and government both.
People in 1899 asked the same question. Every century in history has, at that time, seen the greatest changes ever in history. In the next hundred years, we’ll go through “the Singularity” (misnamed; it’s actually a horizon) about three times, same as we have in every hundred-year span. When we all have grandkids, we’ll be just as mystified by whatever it is they’ll be doing as our grandparents were mystified by us.
This is where, I think, you will turn out to be wrong. Automation isn’t just going to take away more and more of the factory jobs, it’s going to take away the store (self service checkout) and office (expert systems) jobs too. And this is a current trend that’s only going to grow, worldwide.
I’m looking at the question from the viewpoint of the actual technology, whether it be our understanding of DNA, quantum physics, etc. I’m looking at it in terms of what needs do we have as a society that are currently going unmet or could be met in a better way. From that perspective I don’t see much more room for progress. Take production of food. The reason there are still people going hungry is not because we don’t produce enough food, but because of political problems in countries that have hungry people. The big advances such as pesticides and GMOs have already been made. Communication is another human need, and we have the internet, smartphones and fast computers to access it, and satellites and fiber optic cables as the infrastructure for basically instantaneous communication. No matter what we develop, it’s hard (impossible unless our understanding of physics is way off) to get faster than the speed of light. Even if we are wrong, the average person won’t notice that their phone conversation gets transmitted just a tiny bit faster. Transportation is another area of human need. We have advanced planes, trains, cars, etc to get us around. Unless someone invents the teleporter from Star Trek, we’re looking at incremental improvements in those existing technologies, not making the jump from horse and buggy and sailing ships to the Boeing 747. Weapons have already been mentioned, and unless we develop antimatter weapons, I don’t think we can beat the advancement from front loading muskets and horse cavalry to nuclear bombs, tanks, and supersonic fighter jets.
Maybe it’s my lack of imagination, but other than the things I mentioned, I find myself asking what can possibly be invented rather than how can we invent this thing that we don’t currently have.
On reflection, it occurs to me that I should add a cite. In 1896, a woman’s group in Cleveland, OH, as part of the city’s centennial celebration, sent a letter to their descendants in 1996. They note the unprecedented change that the previous century had brought to them, and asked what changes the 20th century had brought:
Of course, the flying machine was a mere seven years after that letter, and the first expedition to the Pole only 13. By the same token, there are likely to be technologies which we, today, wonder if the next century will bring, but which we will see in the next decade.
The things we can anticipate will be the least influential things of the 21st century. The things we don’t imagine yet (but our grandchildren with hindsight will see developing in our times) are going to be significant.
The creation of Go is lost in the mists of time but it’s certainly over 2000 years old and probably one of the most studied games ever. When AlphaGo beat one of the world’s best and he looked over the games, he said that the match had “opened his eyes” and changed the way he looked at the game he’d been studying his whole life. When the new AIs start getting let loose in other fields, we might not just be surprised at what solutions they find but also what problems they decide to solve. I don’t want to be too grandiose but I bet most of us don’t have the imagination to know where it’ll go.