Will Life Be Much Different 30 Years From Now?

Windbit

Where's my flying car, dammit?! The people of the 50's and 60's thought we'd have flying cars, home robots (OK, there's Roomba, but I'm talking about ones more along the lines of Rosie), a lunar colony, and all kinds of awesome stuff by now!

One of my friends brought this up once: No one predicted the Internet. The fact that a revolutionary invention can come out of nowhere is one hope for the future. With all the research being put into genetics, maybe we'll soon have the ability to screen developing fetuses for harmful genetic anomalies and correct them. Maybe we'll find a cure for cancer, or diabetes, or AIDS? Maybe we'll even be able to genetically engineer more efficient bodies that don't age as quickly, that don't contain useless organs that could still kill us (I'm talking about you, appendix!), that aren't as vulnerable to heart disease?

However, there's also a lot of potential disasters that may come to pass soon: The super volcano under Yellow Stone could blow at any time, killing millions in the explosion, blotting out the sun's rays, and ruining the global economy. An island in the Atlantic could collapse into the ocean, causing a super tsunami that would ravage the east coast of America. Global warming could go out of control in as little as 10 years, rapidly heating up the Earth to a point where humans can't survive. There's always, of course, the specter of nuclear war lingering as well.

So, do you think the future is bright, or is it all doom and gloom?

Bitstream

There is only one rule I stand by when it comes to the future:

All predictions but this one will be wrong.

VBakes

With these greedy neo-con christians running things? Its a bleak future indeed. I dont ee much progress maybe a little in robotics, a little in medicine. No ones willing to fund anything worth while.

Unknown

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Cycophant

As you pointed out, it always seems like little jumps ahead are made on things we all want (flying cars, servant robots) or things that will obviously improve with time (medicine, manufacturing, etc.), but the biggest, most influential "changes" seem to occur almost spontaneously, and completely from left field.

The internet is a great example, and besides a few random people, isn't really something anyone had really thought about. Yet look how drastically it changed our modern lives.

I'm trying to think of some similar examples, but none are coming to mind unfortunately. But those kinds of "leaps" are the ones I'm looking forward to in the future. The ones that I can look back on when I'm an aging man and go "Well shit, I didn't see that one coming...

...now where the fuck is my flying car I was promised?"


Maybe it'll be something like a completely new source of power that we'd never considered, that will solve or at least alleviate a lot of the issues we have with oil, electricity and pollution. Or maybe it'll something else like the internet - a technology or phenomenon that finds a way of making our world seem even smaller. Fuck, maybe it'll be something frightening and catastrophic that redefines how we look at living our lives - who knows. But I'm looking forward to it, no matter what.

VoodooV

my prediction for the next "Big Thing" that changes things fundamentally will be auto-driving cars. Either that or due to rising frustration over gas prices, we'll finally see a real shift towards alternative fuels.

forbis316

Trying to make predictions about such things is a futile enterprise.

Except post hoc everyone will claim it was obvious it was going to happen and point to the "signposts" along the way.

Unknown

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stigweard

Things change overtime but life itself is still pretty much the same. I've watched the Fall of transistor am radios, 8-track, and record players. I watched the rise and fall of cassette stereos, personal cassette players, portable cd players, dats, arcades, and on an on. Technology advances, changes, but it all serves the same purpose. The same goes for just about every other advancement. In the end we still spend a good deal of our lives preparing ourselves so that we can be a productive member of society in order to provide for ourselves and our families until we retire and die.

musanman

did you know that in the year 2010 the information in the world will double every 72 hours

imbalanced

EVERYONE can have a Segway! Once I get mine, I'm immediately going to break 100MPH, just like I do with my cars. Oooooh yeeaaaah.

Æthelred

electricitylikesme wrote: »

I am an expert futurist and far more qualified then any of you to make predictions on the future...bwhahaahahahaha! Oh man, couldn't keep a straight face saying that.

It is pretty hilarious that people actually pay Futurologists anything.

redx

In 30 years life will be totally diffrent. New technologies. Newish values. New ideas. It will be wonderful and beautiful. Of course, people won't really change much in that time, so most everything will still be fucked up and shitty, and people will still have to go about their lives in much the same way they do now.


With a little luck, a fair number of the technologies I interested in will have matured. Nano-technology, personal transportation and computing, medical stuff. So, that will be neat. It won't be where I want it to be, cause that is an ever moving target, but it'll be enough to effect how people, in first world countries, live their lives.


Don't know... maybe shit like One Laptop Per Child will help to transition some of the shittier economies in the world directly from subsistence farming to information economies, but I doubt it. Rich white folk trying to improve their lives hasn't really worked out so well for them in the past.

Casket

People will probably be popping pills to get rid of bad memories and shit.

redx

it's over rated.

lunasea

Casket wrote: »

People will probably be popping pills to get rid of bad memories and shit.

I definitely think the variety of drugs will change in the future. We've seen the rise and fall of a multitude of different drugs in the past few decades, from marijuana, acid, coke, heroin, and now ecstasy. It'll be interesting to see what kind of new and exciting drugs await us in the future, and maybe soma will come to pass? Who knows, the future is wild and new.

Casual Eddy

Well what the people in the 50s weren't counting on was the feasibility of that sort of thing. I think we more or less have the technology to make a flying car (something related to a harrier jump jet) but it would be absurdly expensive and complicated. We could make a moonbase too, if we had billions of dollars of spare money to blast up materials, men, and supplies.

I forsee more 'internets' in the future. Subtler changes that no one expects that non the less revolutionize our way of life.

IShallRiseAgain

I think drugs could become a serious threat to mankind and cause major stagnation to our development in the future. I mean what if someone developed a cheap to produce, side effect free drug that caused absolute bliss? People could buy happiness directly, and there would be very little need for innovation or even ambition. That is why, even if such a drug was developed, I would never take it.

Incenjucar

Easy bliss isn't everyone's bag. Some people get off on hard work.

If it was going to do anything, it would get the world taken over by the people who were afraid of drug use.

--

I think the growth of robotics and AI is going to be a big deal, and interactive machines in general. Machines are becoming more and more part of our basic existence. I'm especially looking forward to more tactile machines. well-designed touch screens.

Sarcastro

I disappointed a first grade me recently by not owning the personal jetpack I so clearly outlined in my letter. I am now sending regards to my senior self, and by the time he opens it, he had damn well better have my Marilyn Monrobot.

redx

Drugs are not free. You'd still have to buy them, and they'd be illegal, probably.

and they are not for everyone, as fireguy said.


Maybe the wirehead/electric addict route. We have the technology, and it wouldn't cost much to keep yourself fucked up once you get it installed. It would be attractive to folks who thing they have a lot of will power, cause you could turn it off whenever you wanted. You'd just never want to.

I'd probably be up for it.



Keep you damn robot, I really just want augmented reality.

thundercake

Water will be strictly regulated by evil mega-corporations, and mutant kangaroo men will roam the land.

sanityislost

I look forward to the new types of cake out in 30 years
thats if the apes dont rise up against us

SiL ..:..

emnmnme

I'm going to say the American Empire will fall ... but not before we annex Canada. I figure we'll have a ground war with China over resources ... but not before China annexes Taiwan. While we're fighting, Russia will sneak in and annex the ISS, Alaska, and Japan ... but not before reforming the Soviet Union.

Variable

a true global unity through technology and thus, economy. I don't know whether to view this as good or bad, though.

world getting smaller. yes, I'd agree with that idea.

Corlis

I'm hoping that innovations in communication systems mean that many more jobs are done from home, using video-conferencing and good virtual whiteboards to talk with your co-workers instead of actually being there. This would really be more of a culture shift than a tech shift, but it would make the roads safer, save on gas, and use up less space for office buildings. People have worked in their homes way in the past, and I think that it would be nice if we could get that going again, for the environment.

Globally, I'd like to see Africa rev up a little so it could better resist abuse from foreign countries and companies.

Also, fusion.

Djinn

Whatever happens, we'll be in our fifties and WAY behind the curve.

Ketherial

digital paper is really cool and would pretty much revolutionize the way we interact with all traditionally paper based products (books, magazines, agreements, photographs, etc.). maybe i just have low standards, but that's enough of a cultural shift for me.

Fallingman

I'm still waiting for virtual reality headsets to take off. Seriously, 10 years ago those were almost guaranteed to be in our future... And here I am, still experiencing things manually - like a chump.

Janson

With things like flying cars, it's not that we don't have the technology, it's that they would be virtually impossible to regulate/control. Several people have now come up with working prototypes for individual flying vehicles, but can you imagine the chaos they would cause? People barely manage to use roads successfully as it is. We'd have to find a way to set up air lanes - commercial aeroplanes use them - but that everyone would obey, and even then you'd have people complaining about the view being spoilt, etc. No one looks at the countryside and really notices the odd winding lane, but you'd sure as hell notice a row of flying cars.

Digital paper is something that'd be both practicable and perfectly feasible to implement, so I agree with Ketherial there.

As for robots - unless we gain sudden new insight into the human brain, AI is never, ever, ever going to be good enough. However, prosthetics have come a long way and that's really cool.

Sami

Japan will be on the cutting edge of strange entertainment and stranger pornography.

still

Windbit

A bit off-topic, but has anyone read Brave New World? The author was all like "Our world will become like the one I'm writing about if we don't do something to stop it." Personally, I thought the world he wrote about seemed almost utopian. I personally couldn't understand what was so bad with the world of Brave New World.

Unknown

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Windbit

electricitylikesme wrote: »

It was Dystopian because it was ultimately counter-progressive. They never really suppressed anything, just ensured it never really got out either. Basically you lived your life and died, and it never meant anything.

Isn't that basically what happens already? Also, in the book you could choose to go live on an island with other people who wanted a different sort of life.

I'm also really interested in transhumanism and technogaianism:

Biorobotics
Transhuman
Technogaianism

There's also an interesting Scientific American article titled "If Humans Were Built to Last." I found a PDF of it once, but I couldn't find it just now.

I think that using technology to fix the faulty features of our bodies is one of the most exciting ideas imaginable. By using genetic engineering, we could design better humans that aren't as susceptible to AIDS, osteoporois, atherosclerosis, and many other common diseases that plague humans. Maybe we could even design them to be more intelligent, rational, and not as obsessed with sex as humans. We could slow their life spans so that they can complete their education before reaching sexual maturity, which could distract them from learning. We could make them less dependent on food, which would help solve world hunger. Basically, we could replace humans with something better.

Technogaianism is amazing, too: We damaged the environment, but we could also create technology that can restore it.

The Cat

Janson wrote: »

With things like flying cars, it's not that we don't have the technology, it's that they would be virtually impossible to regulate/control. Several people have now come up with working prototypes for individual flying vehicles, but can you imagine the chaos they would cause? People barely manage to use roads successfully as it is. We'd have to find a way to set up air lanes - commercial aeroplanes use them - but that everyone would obey, and even then you'd have people complaining about the view being spoilt, etc. No one looks at the countryside and really notices the odd winding lane, but you'd sure as hell notice a row of flying cars.

Digital paper is something that'd be both practicable and perfectly feasible to implement, so I agree with Ketherial there.

As for robots - unless we gain sudden new insight into the human brain, AI is never, ever, ever going to be good enough. However, prosthetics have come a long way and that's really cool.

:^:

I tend to think its going to be a lot more crowded, and a lot more tense as a result. I'd like to think we'll change this habit of shipping products vast distances and localise a bit better, but there'll probably just be resource wars instead...

Fallingman

The Cat wrote: »

Janson wrote: »

With things like flying cars, it's not that we don't have the technology, it's that they would be virtually impossible to regulate/control. Several people have now come up with working prototypes for individual flying vehicles, but can you imagine the chaos they would cause? People barely manage to use roads successfully as it is. We'd have to find a way to set up air lanes - commercial aeroplanes use them - but that everyone would obey, and even then you'd have people complaining about the view being spoilt, etc. No one looks at the countryside and really notices the odd winding lane, but you'd sure as hell notice a row of flying cars.

Digital paper is something that'd be both practicable and perfectly feasible to implement, so I agree with Ketherial there.

As for robots - unless we gain sudden new insight into the human brain, AI is never, ever, ever going to be good enough. However, prosthetics have come a long way and that's really cool.

:^:

I tend to think its going to be a lot more crowded, and a lot more tense as a result. I'd like to think we'll change this habit of shipping products vast distances and localise a bit better, but there'll probably just be resource wars instead...

Also, I think what we're seeing now is that increased communication has people in less well off countries wondering why they should put up with living there. Migration will continue to increase along with populations.

Octoparrot

I've seen the future, and it's a 47-year old virgin sitting around in his beige pijamas drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an oscar meyer wiener"

Agrehond

At a science fiction convention years ago, there was a programming track called "Boy Did We Get It Wrong!" where they discussed the speculative assumptions about our future that science fiction attempted to predict.

I only remember a couple of them, such as no one really foresaw governments putting a man on the moon. Most sf lit had either giant corporations or a lone but brilliant scientist achieving this.

The number one gaff? "Computers will make this a paperless society".

Basically, our speculation of the future is pretty well rooted in todays technology and mindset.

And as for flying cars, well hell, that would be a catastrophe. People can't drive well on a 2-dimensional plane as it is. Think of the repercussions of an accident with a flying car. Yeesh!

Tarantio

It was said that no one predicted the internet; Maybe not, but take a look at Snow Crash and Neuromancer for some of the early ideas about what it could become.

There's another author that I've read about who's known for making particularly accurate predictions, I'll try to find it again. I think it was linked to on boingboing or something.

As for particular technological breakthroughs, I think there's a great deal coming that will make use of carbon nanotubes, and that the interesting social things that have exploded in recent years on the internet will continue to expand for a while. There's bound to be a lot of research into energy technology- both energy sources and storage- but there's no guarantee we'll move forward much faster than the snail's pace we're at right now.

I also agree that we have quite a long way to go to getting real useful artificial intelligence for anything not in a strictly controlled environment. If anything, I think too much of the effort has been focused on trying to re-create human intelligence, when we should really be aiming for something closer to flatworm intelligence. I don't really know how accurately we understand how thinking works, or how memories are stored, and these are the things we'll need to know before we can duplicate it.

I'm also of the opinion that we're about at the stage in psychology equivalent to the stage of chemistry when people were trying to turn lead into gold. (I know, I know, I'm being glib)

forbis316

Windbit wrote: »

A bit off-topic, but has anyone read Brave New World? The author was all like "Our world will become like the one I'm writing about if we don't do something to stop it." Personally, I thought the world he wrote about seemed almost utopian. I personally couldn't understand what was so bad with the world of Brave New World.

Are you kidding? Large scale genetic determinism/engineering is a utopia? Near complete squelching of free will is a utopia? Just because the people don't notice they are being manipulated doesn't mean it isn't happening. Got a problem? Don't sit and think about it. Take some soma. Everything will be ok!

jothki

forbis316 wrote: »

Windbit wrote: »

A bit off-topic, but has anyone read Brave New World? The author was all like "Our world will become like the one I'm writing about if we don't do something to stop it." Personally, I thought the world he wrote about seemed almost utopian. I personally couldn't understand what was so bad with the world of Brave New World.

Are you kidding? Large scale genetic determinism/engineering is a utopia? Near complete squelching of free will is a utopia? Just because the people don't notice they are being manipulated doesn't mean it isn't happening. Got a problem? Don't sit and think about it. Take some soma. Everything will be ok!

But what's wrong? There isn't any kind of sinister plan. The people aren't being duped. The government is honestly interested in making sure that as many people are as happy as possible. Supression of information does occur, but that's because the happiness of the people is put above the advancement of science.