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

[Pulvinar]

On another forum, there was a discussion about thread necromancy, and when it was appropriate. Someone mentioned a situation where there was a discussion about what the world would be like in 10 years, that was revived 10 years after it was originally posted...

Would you happen to have a link to the 10-year-old thread? Or the thread where it's mentioned?

 

[Cain]

Everybody who read this thread, but did not write down a specific prediction will say, "Yeah, I was pretty much correct."

 

[AlBell]

The US will have no middle class, just the veryvery wealthy and the rest on welfare.

Cost of living will be horrendous for electricity, food, and gasoline/heating oil.

 

[Sherman Bay]

I will not be here.

 

[Ladewig]

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.

I am willing to bet that the world of 2023 will have all the technology necessary to do everything in your post. I am not convinced that technophobic Americans will want all that. If one's car is broadcasting its location to other vehicles and to traffic systems, then the government could determine one's location in real time. The irrational fear of government monitoring one's location will hold back the implementation of this technology. Furthermore, such a system would allow law enforcement to know when and where one is speeding (or running red lights or committing all sorts of moving violations). Americans will not want their cars "snitching" on them.


ETA: I have no idea if this technology would be accepted outside the USA.

 

[rdaneel]

I am willing to bet that the world of 2023 will have all the technology necessary to do everything in your post. I am not convinced that technophobic Americans will want all that. If one's car is broadcasting its location to other vehicles and to traffic systems, then the government could determine one's location in real time. The irrational fear of government monitoring one's location will hold back the implementation of this technology. Furthermore, such a system would allow law enforcement to know when and where one is speeding (or running red lights or committing all sorts of moving violations). Americans will not want their cars "snitching" on them.


ETA: I have no idea if this technology would be accepted outside the USA.

Well the response from the people testing the system now seems to disagree.

Whatever the reaction to the Ann Arbor study in Washington, it seems likely that drivers will be interested in seeing the technology added to cars. Maddox says the response from participants has been overwhelming: “We haven’t done a final survey, but people are very positive on the technology. Some people don’t want us to take it off their vehicle ever.”

 

[TragicMonkey]

In the futuretime people will live in upside-down domes far above the ocean surface. They will wear a lot of seersucker and have colorful beads woven into their eyelashes. Every household will have an automated harpsichord, a hand-cranked device for washing ceilings, and a marvelous machine that stamps your initials onto coins using the power of nucleoatomic radiationary. The average family will have a mother, a father, two point five children, a dog, a cat, a leopard, a penguin, a skeleton penguin, a farting aunt, and twenty to fifty thousand corpulent geese that cannot be killed or injured by anything natural or manmade. Entertainments shall not exist, and the biggest religion will be the surprise comeback of the Egyptian god Ptah. Sex will be outmoded as people will reproduce via finding new babies as prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack. There will still be over nine thousand different versions of "Law and Order" airing in syndication, which will baffle the futuremen because there will be no television.

 

[OMGturt1es]

So. What will the world be like in ten years' time?

Warmer.

 

[NewtonTrino]

Hmmmm my crystal ball seems to be cracked. Ok, I'll try to be bold so I can look like a genius in 10 years.

- many people will wear augmented reality headsets which will have a catchy name by then
- facebook will be like myspace is now (dead)
- there will be an all electric sports car that I lust after
- spacex will have a fully re-usable 1st and 2nd stage to orbit rocket based on their current grasshopper work
- there will be private for profit enterprise operating on the moon in some capacity
- the role of sugar in obesity will be much better understood and people will avoid sugar like they do fat now
- people will still eat a lot of big macs

I'm bored now so I'll stop.

 

[Woolgatherer]

-None shall have to wait for a donor as every body part will be printable. Think 5th Element.
-Naked people in puplic will be electronicly censored.
-People will be so tired of their electronic storage it will lead to a crash of personal information.

But what do I know.

 

[NoahFence]

People will stop referring to "Africa" as if it is a monoculture when people stop referring to the "West" as if Europe, North America and whatever other group they don't currently like are one big monoculture.

Why is Africa, the oldest civilization, the "developing" world?

 

[DragonLady]

Warmer.

FSM help us all...it was 115F here today.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

What do you think?

More of the people opposed to gay marriage and pot legalization will have died off, with younger replacements moving up through the political food chain. This will not cause the end of the world as we know it. Most other nations will still ban both.

Hipsters will "rediscover" the .mp3 music distribution medium and will talk endlessly about how much more "crisp" they sound.

The Republican party will have, by ten years from now, finally allowed an electable politician to float to the top of the presidential punchbowl. That politician will be an Hispanic or black female, who will win two terms.

Congress will still be the opposite of Progress.

The US National Debt including interest on loans will exceed the total Gross product of the entire solar system. This will have zero effect on day-to-day life.

Teenage boys will decide to pull their pants up.

Ozzie Osborn will still be a touring musician, but he'll spend more time sitting down on stage than standing. His "thing" will be the Great American Songbook.

Justin Beiber will pull a "River Phoenix" outside a nightclub in LA, and by 10 years from now will be nearly totally forgotten. Females aged 12 to 16 at the time of his death will be the new wave of conspiracy theorists claiming that he really is still alive.

NASA will have landed probes on asteroids, but Congressional budget processes will still have prevented manned landing on Mars. The ISS will have been deorbited, with no replacement. The Chinese space station will be in progress; Russian, Indian and Canadian astronauts will get to visit, but no US astronauts.

 

[zeggman]

Two men will be alive who have walked on the surface of the moon. They will both be Americans.

Some young folks will still delude themselves that a manned mission to Mars in their lifetime is a goal worth pursuing, while pooh-poohing ideas like transforming the Sahara to make it habitable.

Self-driving cars will be "street legal", but they'll still be less common than Lamborghinis.

Blood-borne sensors will make diagnosis and monitoring more effective.

ebooks will be more popular than paper books, which will largely be "print on demand" only.

Skin will be cultured in the lab for transplant.

There will still be a high correlation between anti-vaxers and anti-GMOers.

Labor unions will be on the rise. Minimum wage in the U.S. will be $13/hr.

Terrorists will not have detonated a nuclear device, including a dirty bomb.

People will be embarrassed to admit they were once opposed to Obamacare.

Gun control legislation will be about the same as it is today, except that New York's will have become more permissive.

I will have better things to do than come back and gloat "I told you so."

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Still no flying cars, still no hoverboards.

Anything else is irrelevant.

Oh sure, let's take all the traffic accidents we have on flat roads and multiply that by altitude. It'll add a whole new dimension to the term "multi-vehicle pileup."

 

[Woolgatherer]

Oh sure, let's take all the traffic accidents we have on flat roads and multiply that by altitude. It'll add a whole new dimension to the term "multi-vehicle pileup."

Microsoft will develop a powerful program that will make air transit flawless.

 

[Morrigan]

Microsoft will develop a powerful program that will make air transit flawless.

Google, I can believe, but Microsoft? They'd be too busy making sure the car you bought isn't really yours and that you can't lend it to a friend and you're really just using their "license to use the car", and their air transit system will be so glitched that it will constantly overheat. You'll know this by the large red ring that will appear on the road at this time, and driving into that ring will cause... death.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Microsoft will develop a powerful program that will make air transit flawless.

Unfortunately, the hardware it will run on will be so craptacular that it will result in millions of fiery deaths.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Microsoft will develop a powerful program that will make air transit flawless.

Except, knowing Microsoft, they'll end up putting the "death" in BSOD.

 

[spin0]

Microsoft will develop a powerful program that will make air transit flawless.

It will use already developed free/open source software and protocols to achieve this, changes them slightly, patents them and then all air transit will be Microsoft only. Except for few 'rebel hackers' who's existence is used to justify the need of constant surveillance of everybody.