What will the world be like in 10 years' time?

[Brainster]

A month or so ago, I found out that Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine is available on archive.org. I was browsing through the February 1952 issue and discovered that Robert Heinlein had written a piece on his predictions for the end of the 20th century. Some are startlingly good:

2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure.

11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag

15. We will not achieve a "world state" in the predictable future. Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet.

But some are wide misses:

5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a "breakthrough" into new technology that will make every house now standing as obsolete as outdoor privies.

6. Cancer, the common cold and tooth decay will all be conquered.

12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars.

18 Fish and yeast will become our principle (sic) sources of proteins. Beef will be a luxury; lamb and mutton will both disappear because sheep destroy grazing land.

And some of them you do have to wonder what he was getting at:

6. We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.

7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So called "modern art" will be discussed only by psychiatrists.

 

[Craig4]

I sincerely hope, coal power will die a death due to economic realities. Cars with something other than an internal combustion engine will be the rule rather than an oddity.
My family will have stopped pestering me about getting remarried.

 

[Pope130]

A month or so ago, I found out that Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine is available on archive.org. I was browsing through the February 1952 issue and discovered that Robert Heinlein had written a piece on his predictions for the end of the 20th century. Some are startlingly good:

This article was reprinted in the 1980 book "Expanded Universe". Heinlein provided updates and commentary on his own predictions. He identified and criticized his own mistakes.

The comment about "We'll all be getting a little hungry, by and by." was based on Malthus, and the observation that; while food production was being added, population was multiplying.

 

[arthwollipot]

Cloud storage I get, although I'm sticking to my local storage for now at least. What I don't get is the Apple storage that (according to my nephew, I don't do Apple) is local and the hardware purchased by the consumer but bounces all the data via Apple servers so it's useless if you lose internet access (plus security and privacy concerns, and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple charged for the 'service').

It's not useless without an internet connection. All cloud data is still always available on the local machine. Cloud storage allows it to be synchronised to any additional machine connected to that cloud account. Apple provides a certain amount of cloud storage for free, but you can pay for additional capacity.

Basically just lasted one, in fact.

Well... technically the forum has lasted, though its identity changed.

 

[PhantomWolf]

A lot will be the same as today, but...

So.. 5 years in...

1) Eco-friendly cars will be more common.

This one seems to be on the money.

2) More people will be using public transport as it is improved across the world.

Happening a little slower than antisipated, but I think it's going to be right

3) Near Earth Space flights will be common place for ordinary people as Space Tourism booms.

Okay so I'm out with this one, partially due to the accident that Virgin Space had with their craft just a year after my posting. I still expect it to happen, just a longer time period. I would note that new space companies, such as Rocket Lab, are making space accessible to people at a far cheaper cost than ever before and I expect manned flights to go the same way eventually.

4) China will have landed men on the moon (there will be claims they faked it).

Since the US pulled out of going back, China has slowed down their pace, they are now looking at a landing in 2036.

5) ESO will have taken over the mantle of the most popular MMO of all time.

Well hasn't happened yet. It was kind of a tongue in cheek remark, but I would note that ESO had now won Best MMO of the Year for the past 3 years running and has increased its subscribers to 11 million with about 2.5 million active players (about half what WoW has) placing it in a very comfortable Third place just 4 years after launch.

6) Mobile Phones, portable gaming consoles, and Tablets will merge with the likes of Google and Windows Glasses resulting in most people using some form of enhanced reality through out their day.

I still think we are likely to see something like this happening, though not in the next five years. 15 to 20 probably.

 

[Brainster]

This article was reprinted in the 1980 book "Expanded Universe". Heinlein provided updates and commentary on his own predictions. He identified and criticized his own mistakes.

The comment about "We'll all be getting a little hungry, by and by." was based on Malthus, and the observation that; while food production was being added, population was multiplying.

Kinda figured that was the point, but it is certainly phrased rather coyly; he didn't factor in his change in the relationships between the sexes owing to contraception in that one.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It's not useless without an internet connection. All cloud data is still always available on the local machine. Cloud storage allows it to be synchronised to any additional machine connected to that cloud account. Apple provides a certain amount of cloud storage for free, but you can pay for additional capacity.

Well... technically the forum has lasted, though its identity changed.

I think we're talking about different things, this wasn't cloud backup, it was a NAS box (by another iName), but from what my nephew told me it required connection to Apple's servers to access the data on it. He was quite adamant this was the case and I pressed him on the question, we both worked in IT at the time so I doubt it was miscommunication. He could have simply been wrong of course but I seem to recall him saying that he'd had a outage and been unable to access his own data despite it being physically present.

I was sceptical as it seemed such a stupid idea, but as I say I don't do Apple. Windows, Linux and Android but not Apple.

 

[Bluegill]

Edit:
Oh crap, I didn't see that this was a necro thread. Oh well. These predictions might work for five years from now, too.


There will be lots of articles/videos circulating that are 10-year retrospectives: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Trumpism. Kentucky's current governor, Matt Bevin, will be Kentucky's senator, or in the White House (not necessarily as President, but maybe VP or cabinet.)

Most things will be worse.

We still won't have discovered life on other worlds, but we will still be gathering more and more evidence that it really could be there on Europa, or Titan, or other moons, or could have existed on Mars, and we'll feel like we really are on the verge of finding it.

 

[Roboramma]

Having just read the book Superforcasters, may I suggest that most of the predictions being offered in this thread are too vague?

I think it would be valuable to try to really make sure that our predictions are specific enough that it's entirely clear whether they are true or not.

 

[arthwollipot]

Having just read the book Superforcasters, may I suggest that most of the predictions being offered in this thread are too vague?

I think it would be valuable to try to really make sure that our predictions are specific enough that it's entirely clear whether they are true or not.

What are we, psychics?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Terrifying how spot-on accurate my predictions were!

 

[arthwollipot]

I think we're talking about different things, this wasn't cloud backup, it was a NAS box (by another iName), but from what my nephew told me it required connection to Apple's servers to access the data on it. He was quite adamant this was the case and I pressed him on the question, we both worked in IT at the time so I doubt it was miscommunication. He could have simply been wrong of course but I seem to recall him saying that he'd had a outage and been unable to access his own data despite it being physically present.

Okay then. Well, I'm not familiar with that product, so I don't know anything about it.

 

[arthwollipot]

I've made a calendar entry for June 2023 to check on this thread again.

 

[rdaneel]

Terrifying how spot-on accurate my predictions were!

Not really, I only have Ten thousand corpulent geese and they can be killed.
They tend to explode if they get too close to my aunt when she farts.
The automated harpsichord is nice though and my ceilings have never been cleaner.

 

[arthwollipot]

Well, I missed my calendar entry, but here we are, a little more than 10 years from the OP. So how did I do?

I believe that the internet will be so pervasive and continuous that we won't even refer to it as an internet any more. It'll just be data - the way we get around and do things will be so dependent on it that we won't think about it any more than we do electricity. Storage costs will drop basically to zero, and most data will be stored in vast server farms and streamed wirelessly to devices.

This has pretty much come true, though we do still refer to the internet. We all have what amounts to the sum total of all human knowledge sitting in our pockets, and the "internet of things" has more or less exploded.

Speaking of electricity, we are undoubtedly coming up on an energy crisis. Sustainable energy sources will replace a proportion of current sources as countries adjust their energy infrastructure. There will be more smaller, local energy generation units - many buildings will have their own solar and wind generation plants, with the excess feeding into the grid. Such plants will be considerably more efficient than they are now.

This was a bit optimistic, though solar rooftop installations are more common than ever and only getting more so.

Hybrid and electric vehicles will be much more common than they are today, which will improve air and water quality in many urban areas. Most petrol (gas) stations will include battery swap/recharge stations as well as petrol/gas.

Pretty much true, though my own country has been lagging behind somewhat in the provision of electric charging stations.

There will still be conflict in the Middle East and in Africa. Technology uptake in these areas will still lag behind developed countries. However, the situation will improve somewhat as more and more people get reliable access to the global information network. However, there will still be millions of people living in poverty.

Of course there's still conflict in the Middle East and Africa. That's pretty much a no-brainer. I did not predict conflict in Ukraine.

Movies will be shorter, skirts will be longer.

Still no sign of this.

How did you do?

 

[PitPat]

Jet Packs.

Always within 10 years away before safety regulations are approved.

 

[rdaneel]

Self driving cars will be available to consumers, but they'll still be an expensive, high end feature and not common yet. All other new cars will come with GPS navigation as a standard feature and will communicate with each other giving the driver up to the second traffic information. Mid range cars will be semi-autonomous, the driver will still have the wheel, but features such as adaptive cruise control, 360 degree cameras, and communication with other vehicles means the car can react to things before the driver is even aware there is a problem.

Traffic jams due to accidents will be reduced, further reduction will be seen because cars will be able to detect when one route is starting to get congested and find an alternative. This will also effect nationwide fuel consumption since traffic jams waste fuel.

Well my first post here was certainly overly optimistic.

Not really, I only have Ten thousand corpulent geese and they can be killed.
They tend to explode if they get too close to my aunt when she farts.
The automated harpsichord is nice though and my ceilings have never been cleaner.

And I had no recollection of making my last post and my reaction was "What the Hell", then I saw who I was replying to and went "Oh".

 

[Mike!]

Some easy guesses:

1. The world will be in imminent danger from some religion gone amok.
2. Oh, and the world will be about to end from some environmental threat.

3. Something commonly consumed by people will turn out to cause cancer..

4. The word "ask" will finally be pronounced "axe". Oh, wait, that's 950+ years in the future!

5. There will be a heated debate as to whether Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame.

I think Trumpism has this one pretty well covered.

 

[jeremyp]

Oh dear. I started reading this thread not realising it was ten years old. For me, most of the predictions fall in to two categories

1. It's plausible that it will happen before 2033

2. (a much smaller category) that's already happened.

For example, with Delvo's post at the top of this page, I was going to point out that #1 is already true and #4 is on the way, although attempts to do it have shown it doesn't work too well. #2 and #3 are probably ten years away.

 

[3point14]

Environmentally screwed, crop failures, mass migration and the breakdown of current society.