7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions About What The Next Decade Will Bring

[KamaAina]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/12/futurists-next-10-years_n_7241210.html

From smartphone apps that can do seemingly everything to driverless cars and eerily humanlike robots, the past decade has seen dramatic advances in science and technology. What amazing advances are we likely to see in the next 10 years?

To find out, HuffPost Science reached out to seven top futurists -- and they gave us some pretty surprising predictions. Keep reading to learn more....

"In the next 10 years, we will see the gradual transition from an Internet to a brain-net, in which thoughts, emotions, feelings, and memories might be transmitted instantly across the planet....

We will spend considerable time in virtual and augmented realities allowing us to visit with each other even if hundreds of miles apart. We'll even be able to touch each other. Some of the 'people' we visit with in these new realities will be avatars. They will be compelling but not quite human level by 2025 -- that will take to the 2030s. We will be able to reprogram human biology away from many diseases and aging processes, for example deactivating cancer stem cells that are the true source of cancer, or retard the progression of atherosclerosis, the cause of heart disease.

[daleanime]

1. We will struggle....

to feed people.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. Let them eat virtual victuals.

[yeoman6987]

3. At this point I love the advances mentioned

The food thing we will have to deal with and will.

[daleanime]

6. I hope so.....

but that's not something that can be done instantly and we haven't even began to address it.

[yeoman6987]

16. You are right

The government can be experts on being ostriches.

[Bosonic]

10. vertical farming, in vitro meat, aquaponics

All fruitful avenues which should be resource and land efficient.

[daleanime]

11. Everything will have to be on the table (no pun intended) including.....

eating less meat.

[tritsofme]

19. Paging Dr. Malthus, call on line one for Thomas Malthus.

[Backwoodsrider]

54. and will be hard to keep our population hydrated

I wonder, as many of us face an increasing struggle to survive will the small % that are financially successful be able to continue functioning at that level or will their lives be totally changed too?

[pscot]

4. Futurists in 1970 overlooked the possibility of oil shortages

and gas lines. Any 'augmented' version of reality that leaves out climate change is missing something, somewhere.

[daleanime]

7. +1

[Avalux]

5. In the meantime, our home is being poisoned and species are going extinct.

I watched an episode of Through the Wormhole last night. It presented a theory that people are nothing more than algorithms, and our purpose on earth is to collect information. It makes some sense, and it's not a surprise where we're headed. The problem is that as a species, the more advanced our information collecting capabilities become, the less we seem to care for and protect the living breathing world around us.

[Dont call me Shirley]

72. I sooo disagreed with that assessment of reality. At the end of the show Freeman said something

to the effect that "our purpose, who we are, is what we choose to be", which is probably way more accurate. To simplify our complex beings down to information collectors only, is missing a huge chunk of who we really are and what our purpose is.

[NuclearDem]

8. 3D printing and augmented reality are going to be quite amazing.

[hifiguy]

9. 3D printing is going to be a very big deal.

But as for the more fanciful predictions, it's better to read Michio Kaku's The Future Of the Mind and realize just how far away these things are.

And no one outside the 1% will ever see them before the revolution comes.

[jwirr]

46. That is what I was thinking - no one else will be able to afford them.

[-none]

12. Look at the predictions made in the '50s and '60s.

How many of those came to pass. Jules Vern did better.
Now where's my flying car that was suppose to be delivered in in the early 1960s?

[Chathamization]

18. Or even the stuff people were predicting in the late 90's - look at Ray Kurzweil for an example of

someone who go just about everything wrong (and now Google has him in a senior position...eh...).

It will be interesting to see what comes, but asking a futurist isn't any more reliable than asking a random person in the street (and maybe less so, since they tend to be hopelessly optimistic about these things).

[longship]

29. Kurzweil is an utter kook.

He is just afraid to die. But he is getting rich selling his futuristic woo-woo extrapolations to other people who are apparently also afraid to die.

Singularity? It's bollocks. Kurzweil? Kook!

I was born in the 1940's. I remember rubbish like Kurzweil in the 1950's.

I want my flying cars!
I want my domed cities!
I want my nuclear powered vacuum sweepers!
Where is my hovercraft? (Oopsie! There it is... now full of eels.)
And how about the Orgasmatron?

By the way, Kurzweil takes megadoses of vitamins and supplements, which are much more likely to kill him sooner than if he just ate a moderate varied diet, went for a brief walk every evening, and relaxed a little bit.

He is a loony.

[jwirr]

48. And don't forget living to be 150 years old.

[Art_from_Ark]

23. Here's what Walter Cronkite had to say in 1967 about the living room of 2001

[renate]

69. how fun! thanks! n/t

[olddots]

13. the most important thing we will learn in the future

is that we never learn the the past .
I think Shecky Sheckleman said that .

[Fumesucker]

14. I'm reminded of this cartoon...

[haele]

15. Problem with predictions is the assumption of status quo

All things being the same, "X" should happen. However, people as a group are foolishly unpredictable, and there are too many variables to run a proper predictive analysis.

Could we have predicted Bush v. Gore, which enabled the disruptive atmosphere that has created the general social and civil decline, global instability, and income inequality we are experiancing now?
Well in hindsight, the environment that got us the Contract on America, the replacement of journalism with infotainment in Media, and public fear of change mixed with greed in general should have been a big warning sign that the lurching towards a reasonably positive society that had been FDR's legacy was in danger and that we were in the process of turning the country around and heading back to the turn of the 19th centrury instead of forward to the end of the 20th.

Here's my prediction looking at the current status quo.
Within the next 5 to 10 years (no matter who becomes President), Free Marketeering will pretty much ensure that even though there are a few small independent businesses in niche markets, the majority of the market will consist of four or five global monopolies or corporate -states with subsidieries and "partnerships" that funnel the profits up to the boards and major shareholder investor groups. Competition is nearly non-existant, along with any nation state regulation of these corporate organizations. Privatization of common resources and services is pretty much complete, along with the monitization of society. Most people will go about believing the illusion that they can control how they live and what they chose, because they don't want to admit that between Citizen's United and the codification of "Corporations are People", and Reagan's liberatarian homelies about the evils of Government and the moral rightgeousnous of selfishness call itself "self-reliance". It will just come about quicker if a Republican becomes president, but the Free Marketeers have basically hijacked the world economies, and that ship has already sailed.

In 10 years (2025), global climate change will be serious enough that even the Kochs won't be able to have a leg to stand on without getting wet anywhere they go. International Big Bizznus and the Shareholders will have to finally decide to spend money on trying to protect exisiting infrastructure because the costs will be to high not to do so. Privilidged trust-fund babies still won't admit Mummy, Daddy, and the Grandparents were selfish greedy bastards who looked the other way while common resources were being raped away, but they'll agree to be part of the "repair" work so long as they can keep their priviledge and status.

Technology will be focused on surviving the environment, not sustaining the environment.
Income Inequality will not have abaited as jobs grow scarcer and most workers can't afford to follow what jobs are left. Working and unemployed people will bear the brunt of the environmental degredation. Unless they had the skills or looks to be "famous", most will live lives of (as the song says) "quiet desperation", hoping that some crumb of comfort beyond making due with having sex, getting stoned, or doing something stupidly unaffordable for entertainment can be found somewhere.
Poor people will still bear the burden of Calvinism - "it's their fault they're poor".

In 25 years (2040), Technology will have advanced enough that a good third of all skilled jobs currently in the US will be automated, to add to all the jobs from the 1970's that had been automated, leading to a large amount of people who are basically over-trained and unemployable because the "good jobs" for the average person isn't there.
It will be a good future for those increasingly few who can afford it.
However, there will be a major "dropping off the grid" or disenfranchisement of the increasing amount of people who can't.
Now - that's with Status Quo as it is now.
There could be something that can change it. Heck, Aliens can come down pretending to be Jesus and rapture away the Prosperity Xtians along with the other fanaticists and we can start working on something better.
We can have a global awakening. Corporations may discover what it means to be a person, and figure out they need to participate with the rest of us.
But until then, I'd be skeptical of most futurists predictions.

Haele

[SheilaT]

17. I like your predictions far better than those of the experts.

The ones in the article absolutely overlook the overpopulation problem we have, and completely ignore the fact that some huge percentage of people live in poverty. Those masses of desperately poor people are not going to benefit from self-driving cars or 3D printed replacement organs or robo surgeons or anything else they've predicted.

And no doubt climate change will be the thing that has the biggest impact on the planet.

[arcane1]

30. Not to mention the energy and resources (and money!) needed to fulfill these futurists' predictions.

It's funny how people like those quoted in the OP are regarded as being so knowledgeable about the world, whereas to me they seem completely disconnected from reality. As if they don't really know where our food, water, electricity, and gadgets come from.

[SheilaT]

50. Even more interesting.

I had not given any real thought to those. Thank you.

I do like to pride myself on noticing details that others overlook, and so I really appreciate someone else who picks up on the details.

[IDemo]

20. Pay no attention to those minor details

You know - like climate change; energy, water and topsoil depletion; dying oceans, and impoverishment of the non-One Percent. I find it incredible that supposedly informed "experts" can blithely dismiss all of these factors with a wave of the hand, claiming that Humanity's genius and determination will overcome them (hello, Michio). The Jetsons would serve as well for futurism.

[hunter]

21. I was a kid in the 'sixties and and a teen in the 'seventies.

The Good Technology:

Asthma meds. The meds I used to take were quite horrid and dangerous. What I call my "crazy" meds are also much improved.

Computers. Oh my, I'm writing this on a computer that would have been called a "super computer" in my youth. It's about the size of a credit card, and cost $35, with a 16 gigabyte SD card "hard drive" that cost even less. My first home-built computer in the 'seventies had 1024 bytes of memory and used a cassette recorder to store programs.

Television, flat screens and inexpensive video! My first two years in college, before I changed my major to biology, I wanted to be a television engineer. The hottest pieces of technology we got to play with as students was a full frame digital time base corrector and a digital control board that could do all sorts of fades and wipes and (will wonders never cease!) chroma key. It was all big expensive rack mounted hardware. Any halfway decent "studio" quality RGB color monitor cost a fortune then, weighed a hundred pounds or more, and sucked up half a kilowatt.

Tires. Car tires used to really suck. Anyone my age or older of the "car culture" has experienced many exciting tire failures. My grandma would talk about past times even worse, when there was no reasonable expectation of driving between San Diego, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, or San Francisco without a tire failing. My own kids are entirely clueless about tires. As children they saw me change only two tires on road trips. I thought the second time great fun, back when the border between Mexico and the U.S.A. was still somewhat permeable and I got a functional used and well worn replacement tire for $5, which was money we really didn't have at the time, but we survived. Years later, one of my kids got a flat tire away at college and called the Auto Club. Had no interest in learning how to use the spare. Some new cars don't even have spares.

Things that have devolved:

Airline travel. My first airline flight was on a 737. Spacious, comfortable, good food, friendly staff. My last airline flight was on a 737 crammed full of grumpy people, my knees crushed up against the seat in front of me, offered a free little plastic cup of soda, the air was stale, not to mention the TSA people who made me take off my shoes and belt and empty my pockets and suspected the beat up old laptop I was using at the time might be some sort of bomb.

Cars. We still have cars. Cars suck, everyone on the roads these days seems to be meaner, most especially the cops. I hate cars. I always have. I resent that I have to drive a car to be accepted as a somewhat functional human being in this world. So I drive I mid 'eighties piece of shit car with a salvage title that I never wash except for the windows as my way of saying "FUCK YOU!" to this modern world.

As computer and information technology literate as I am, I'm still some kind of Luddite. This world would be a much better place if everyone practiced lots of safe sex, used effective birth control, did lots of reading and writing, practiced arts scientific, medical, and every other kind, and experienced many fine days in the garden or walking about.

[KamaAina]

33. Things that have devolved: Airline travel.

Phil Collins performed at both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts by taking the Concorde. You can no longer do that, even if you are a one-percenter.

[SheilaT]

51. I'm curious. How old are you?

I'm 66. Never had asthma, so I can't begin to comment on those meds.

I was an airline employee for ten years, from January 1969 to August, 1979. I had the amazing good fortune to work during the best possible decade. I flew for free. Okay, so sometimes there was a service charge, but sometimes it was totally free, no service charge at all. And I almost always flew first class. I was even served alcohol by stewardesses who apparently thought I was maybe sixteen years old, even though I was all of twenty-one.

Computers. I started working on them in that same January of 1969, because my airline was the second one in this country to go to a computerized reservations system. Which means I've been working on computers since before most of you were born. But I do appreciate the younger generation. Earlier today my son helped me solve a problem with my Ipod, and an hour ago the nice people at the check-in desk at the Motel 6 I'm staying in solved the problem of getting on the internet. I will NEVER trash the younger generation. NEVER.

Tires. My mother was very good at changing tires. She needed to be. Twice and only twice did I have a tire blow out on me. The first time, in the late '70's, a stranger helped me out. The second time, some forty years later, I called AAA and they helped. I will admit I could not change a tire if my life depended on it.

Cars. As someone who has lived and driven in various parts of the country, I can say this: Much of the time people always think the local drivers are truly awful. It's my observation that drivers are equally bad around the country. With the possible exception of Oregon, where I'm currently visiting my younger son. Drivers here are amazingly considerate. They stop to let pedestrians cross. They don't run red lights. I might move to Oregon.

The point is, as we all know, things change. Often for the better, but not always.

[hunter]

65. I fled high school for college in the mid 'seventies.

Computers and telephones have been one of my obsessions since I was a little kid.

In college the engineering classes were full of men I didn't get along with, and maybe a couple of women. I changed my major to Biology.

I might have established a successful and lucrative career as an engineer, but I wouldn't have been happy.

[Logical]

22. I am ready for driverless cars! nt

[KamaAina]

34. As are many people with disabilities.

We're pressuring the California Public Utilities Commission to go ahead and issue regulations for them already!

[Logical]

35. +1000! Nt

[jwirr]

49. I'm elderly. I could actually get around on my own again.

[tblue37]

24. In the 1950s futurists imagined people would actually have computers in their homes in the 21st

century--Like this!



Of course, the experts said they'd be far too expensive for most people to afford.

[postatomic]

26. Yea, but his Suit is making a comeback

What the hell is that huge steering wheel thing? Is this powered by steam? I don't miss shoveling coal into my computers' power source.

[Warren DeMontague]

27. It's for the "Hard Drive"

....get it?

[tblue37]

28. What about that wall-mounted monitor up around the height of a basketball hoop! nt

[Orrex]

62. It's to distract from that huge steering wheel on the left.

[IDemo]

32. No

On that image, from Snopes:

Although the photograph displayed could represent what some people in the early 1950s contemplated a "home computer" might look like (based on the technology of the day), it isn't, as the accompanying text claims, a RAND Corporation illustration from 1954 of a prototype "home computer." The picture is actually an entry submitted to a Fark.com image modification competition, taken from an original photo of a submarine maneuvering room console found on the U.S. Navy web site, converted to grayscale, and modified to replace a modern display panel and TV screen with pictures of a decades-old teletype/printer and television (as well as to add the gray-suited man to the left-hand side of the photo):

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

[longship]

42. Still, I want one for my home.

The mouse wheel looks awesome! Fifteen turns lock to lock. No more mouse wrist for me.

Plus all the meters are ultra cool. "But Captain, you've got to shut down World of Warcraft servers. The dilithium chambers are about to melt!!"

Plenty of fun with that user interface.

[tblue37]

70. OK--but it's still fun, and there sure were plenty of equally absurd

predictions floating around among suppsoed "experts" last century.

[SheilaT]

68. When we first started getting home computers

the assumption was that everyone who had one would need to know how to program them, so as to do things like balance a checkbook. No one imagined that others would do that programming. Nor did they think about the computer games.

[appalachiablue]

25. And HuffPo's, TOP FUTURISTS PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE NEXT DECADE FOR THE 90%

is where ?

[Scootaloo]

31. Taking them in order...

Michio Kaku: Are you kidding? No, this will never happen. As a society we find google glass to be highly obnoxious, invasive, and disturbing, and you think we're going to send our feelings over the internet via neurotransmitters? Nope. He's mistaking "having the capability" with "actually using the capability."

Ray Kurzweil: Maybe stretch to 15 years, but 3-D printing becoming a household staple actually does seem pretty likely, as does the idea of designer 'print on demand" templates.

Anne Lise Kjaer: Hmmm, i dunno. This on strikes me as "according to current trends," which in the world of microbiology sometimes doesn't amount to much. With the changing climate, worsening living conditions, and the ever-ongoing arms race between microbes and immune systems, I think it's probably more likely that we're going to see a resurgence of infectious disease, including some thought extinct or negligible (Polio, for instance) within the next two decades.

James Canton: Same problem as Dr. Kaku - having the capability is not nearly the same as actually using it. a phone is plenty enough for most people, and i doubt they will be wiring their entire bodies in ten years (see Google Glass again.) Robo-surgeons? No, that's definitely more of a engineer going "wouldn't it be neat if..." instead of actual industry or patient desire. I guarantee people would rather have a fallible human's hands inside their body than a robot, even if the robot is more precise. Why? because we're humans and humans are weird that way.

Jason Silva: "we will move into a world where access trumps ownership," I was inclined to laugh at this one... then I remembered that Toyota voids your warranty if anyone but a Toyota mechanic works on your car, and wants to sue you if you mod it - you are in effect paying a licensing fee, according to the company, which sees your car as advertising space for itself rather than an object owned by you. I'm sure mr. Silva had a more utopian vision in mind. Sucks to be a futurist, 'cause no futurist ever predicts bad shit that nobody wants.

Amy Zalman: Basically she says, in the future we will accumulate more knowledge about stuff. No shit.

Mark Stevenson: With an answer like that, he could be a Clinton campaign manager (Sorry Clinton fans! Look into your heart; you know it to be true!)

[longship]

41. Google Glass users now known as Glassholes. nt

[tblue37]

36. Science fiction writers are way better at prediction the future--both the kinds f technology

that might be developed and the kind of dystopian hell the future will be for most people, and eventally for all people (all who manage to survive, that is).

[KamaAina]

37. Indeed.

Arthur C. Clarke first described the communications satellite, and Robert A. Heinlein the waterbed.

And Kurt Vonnegut (who hated to be called an SF writer ) described the dystopian hell in Player Piano.

[tblue37]

39. And they had tablet computers and clamshell cellphones ("communicators") on

the original Star Trek.

[KamaAina]

67. Hell, Dick Tracy had an Apple Watch!

And that wasn't even sci-fi!

[LeftyMom]

52. Ender's Game predicted the blogosphere and pseudonymous pundits way back in 1985

Which is a fairly impressive guess at the future considering that home computers weren't even the norm yet, let alone internet access.

Orson Scott Card is a dick, but he deserves some credit for that one.

[hunter]

64. He was a big time Atari 800 fan back then, maybe still is, like me.

He was active on some of the larger boards, GEnie, Delphi, I don't recall.

I first logged onto the internet in 1979 (long before the World Wide Web existed) and very soon after it became possible recreated myself as one of the earlier semi-pseudonymous assholes.

Card wasn't quite the libertarian dick he was then as he is now, or maybe he felt he had to be more discreet because he wasn't yet secure in his dickishness.

While he was writing Ender's Game he did have some experience with these early networks, and was not unaware of previous work.

Ted Nelson was talking about hypertext and hypermedia in the 'sixties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson

From my perspective commercial interests slugging it out with one another (and Nelson's overwhelming compulsion to control every aspect of his vision's development) delayed the emergence of anything like a World Wide Web.

The turning point in all of this, I think, was the development of BSD as an easily licensed alternative to AT&T's Unix. The "phone companies" very much wanted to fully control these new networks as a monopoly, just as they controlled voice communication.

[longship]

38. Ray Kurzweil himself is already in the midst of the uncanny valley. R&K nt

[longship]

40. Plus, I have absolutely no use for Michio Cuckoo.

And my BS is in physics.

He is yet another loony who always spews his qualifications in interviews. I am not impressed. He is a kook.

[Blue_In_AK]

43. I don't put much faith in futurists.

When I was young back in the '60s, whenever they talked about the future, it was all about transportation or robots to do your housework, whatever, but I don't remember anybody ever mentioning an Internet. That has changed everything.

[Throd]

45. I'd believe a futurist who said "99% of this shit ain't gonna happen"

And I got lucky on the other 1% I pulled from my ass.

[jwirr]

44. During my college years two of my professors were futurists. They always seemed too optimistic

in their predictions. The ones in this article are like that also. And they are ignoring droughts, climate change, over population and a whole bunch of other problems.

[closeupready]

47. "7 top futurists" lol - where do I get a futurism Ph.D.?

[Orrex]

61. That was my exact thought.

Broadly speaking, a "futurist" is either a published science fiction write or else a would-be science fiction writer.

Lots of them have scientific credentials, sure, but they're still just guessing.

[jmowreader]

53. As long as we're playing, let me...

1. The 3-d printer will be the exercise bike of the decade: everyone will have one, no one will use it.

2. Millennials' diet will change from traditional foods to wafers similar to Soylent Red, Yellow and Green - not because of any socioeconomic issues but simply because they're more convenient. A minor scandal will erupt when they learn the Soylent Green of the future isn't made out of people. Soylent Red will be fruit flavored, Yellow and Green will be vegetables, White will taste like bread and Soylent Tan will taste like meat. Because these wafers will be filling and nutritionally balanced, no one will be able to eat enough of them to get fat. Old-fashioned food will still be available to all, but the millennials won't want it.

3. Cash will die out when payment systems like Apple Pay reach critical mass, because robbing a cashless store will be pointless.

4. The "doctor's office" will succumb to high real estate values. Physicians will purchase large ambulances with four-person cabs and travel in teams of an MD, RN, either LPN or CNA, and a paramedic to drive the vehicle.

5. Plural marriage will become legal: the rich will use it as a way to skirt inheritance tax, and the banks will decide the only way a family can afford to buy a house larger than a shoebox is if they have eight full-time salaries coming in. The churches will accept it on the theory that if plural marriage was good enough for Solomon it is good enough for you, so long as couples remain monogamous within these "corporate" marriages.
5a. But the South will still be trying to ban same-sex marriage.

6. The Koch Brothers will figure out how to make more money on green technology than they do on polluting tech, and all of a sudden the GOP will get "climate change religion."

7. A $5000 kit to convert any car into an electric car with a 100-mile range will become popular immediately upon its introduction.

8. The "trusts" will return. Eventually there will be no more than two companies making any particular product line.

9. The Craft Beer industry will severely contract because there are currently more beers on the market than there are taps to pour them, and new breweries open every week. It will still exist, but it'll be less than half the size it is now.

10. Pay will not increase but employees' workloads will.

[Humanist_Activist]

55. Since people are jumping on the futurist bandwagon, here are my predictions, based on when

changes are wrought, and start to become not rare.

Technological:

Autonomous road vehicles:

I will predict that probably within the next 5 years or so, long haul trucking will no longer involve humans directly, the first autonomously designed big rigs(no steering wheels, nor human controls) will be built and, at the very least, tested for long distance cargo hauling.

In that same time period, urban areas will seeing more autonomous electric cars on the road, the first generation or two with backup manual controls, but soon enough, those will be done away with, and by generation 3 or so, no controls available for human driving. On top of this, by this time, or perhaps generation 4 or so, say within 10 years, these urban vehicles will NOT be available for purchase, but rather are run by large fleet companies/public sector, as auto-taxi services. Same transition may occur for public bus and light rail services.

What holds for road vehicles may also hold for aircraft, boats, and trains. Having autonomous systems will remove human fallibility from the equation. The speed of adoption of this technology will be greatly affected by the power play between various Unions, Insurance companies, Customer advocacy groups, and Public Transportation lobbyists. The upside of such technology is a radical reduction in the amount of injuries and deaths attributed to vehicle accidents, most of which are caused by human error. The downside is that displacement of workers will be rather extreme, from truckers to bus drivers, the domino effect may lead to unemployment for millions of workers. We will need to have systems in place to deal with this.

Other Autonomous systems:

Now this one is tricky, because its so diverse, but basically, within the next 5-10 years, you can kiss a lot of customer service jobs goodbye. We are already seeing this with self checkouts in our stores, but next the technology will move to coffee shops, fast food, restaurants, hotels etc. This isn't so much reliant on the adoption of any new technology, but rather the wider adoption of current technology. It will adapt to where you just need an app on your smartphone to pre-order food and make a reservation at your favorite restaurant, and have it hot, ready and waiting for you when you arrive.

At the same time, more factory and warehouse jobs will be displaced by more machines, in this case general purpose robots and autonomous vehicles. This is already happening in a lot of places, and its different from the last wave of automation that displaced workers, those machines were big, heavy, expensive, and good at one or two tasks. Today's machines can be tooled to be more general purpose, or be really good at doing 5 or more things, repeatedly, with less errors, than humans. This means more jobs displaced.

And don't think, if you have a cushy office job that it is safe too. If you collate reports, organize files, deal with spreadsheets, etc. Well, the sophistication of AI agents and bots is catching up to human ability to organize, and can do it much faster and cheaper than any human.

Even in the medical field, the first or second opinion for your diagnoses may be IBM's Watson, or another, similar computer, which is, right now, tooled and programmed to combine and organize all known medical knowledge to allow it to make more accurate diagnoses of disease than any doctor can do.

Upside of this implementation of technology, a more convenient world, cheaper access to goods and services, more flexibility for individual needs and schedules. Downsides are, up to perhaps half of currently employed people would be laid off. It would be gradual of course.

Distributed Manufacturing:

A lot of people call this 3-D printing, and I think far too many think this will be the next big thing, and it will be, for hobbyists and small/specialty manufacturers. Even if you get the printers down to 50 bucks and available at every Wal-Mart, a lot of people simply won't bother if they can buy the item they can build for 10 cents worth a plastic for a dollar at the dollar store.

Instead, what we will see is more personalized and specialized items will drop drastically in price, and you may be able to pick them up locally, at wholesale, more or less, from the manufacturer themselves. CAD and other design models will be commodities to be bought and sold online, they already are, actually. Prototyping with physical objects is much easier to do now, and will expand. This type of manufacturing will lead to interesting aesthetics, things that simply couldn't be built using traditional manufacturing methods.

Energy:

I think, combined with distributed manufacturing, the drastic reduction in the cost of goods and automation, we will see a huge reduction in the needs for fossil fuels in the future. Solar cells, wind power, wave power, etc. will increasingly displace traditional fossil fuel sources for electricity generation, while electric cars(soon driverless) will displace gasoline cars as well. Basically, current trends will continue, barring catastrophe or stupid policy decisions. Another point, combine this with increased urbanization, and the points I made above, and you should see a rather large decrease in overall pollution by people in general. Again, barring stupid public policy decisions.

Food:

I would say, further out, we will see, as current trends continue, more human migration from rural to urban environments, and also increasing crop yields. However, top soil depletion and population pressure will increase the necessity of trying for low impact agriculture. Including types of hydroponics and aeroponics. However, I'll be honest and say this is highly speculative, and if we first fine a way to preserve or restore topsoil, that should take priority. But I could see, in the next 10-20 years, vertical farms moving beyond the experimental stage they are in today, and becoming somewhat practical. In addition, biotech may help improve yields in lower quality soil, etc. Lab grown meat may end up being factory grown meat, without the need for raising animals in the first place. May lead to an initial mass slaughter of such animals, but allowing many to roam wild, similar to horses.

Environment:

Now, please bear in mind, on this one, I'm talking technology, not necessarily public policy. So here goes, the increased automation mentioned above, combined with food and energy technology should, hopefully, reverse the current Mass Extinction event we are going through. The reason is simple, much of the environmental damage we have wrought on this planet is related to two things, pollution and destroying habitats. The largest sources of pollution in both cases is agriculture and manufacturing. With automation, we will reduce waste, with increased urbanization, we may be able to allow some land to lay fallow, to grow wild again. If we can increase agricultural yields without using more of the surface of the Earth to do so, that's perfect. But the ultimate goal would be to reduce the amount of land we need. This could allow us to expand carbon sinks, forests, to mitigate the effects of global climate change.

Communications:

This one, I don't see current trends slowing down anytime soon, so more ubiquitous, wearable and portable internet ready devices, expansion of internet accessibility in the so called third world. Penetration within the next decade of probably an addition 30% or more. It may become universal as wireless technology expands, as close to 100% coverage as possible.

Space, the Final Frontier:

Timelines here, 20-50 years, on the optimistic side. Much of this is speculative, but most of the restrictions right now are in implementation and economics, not necessarily technological. Right now, we have a few private space companies that are contracted with NASA and others to provide some specific services, such as delivering cargo to the ISS. We should expect this to expand in the future. However, it will be expanded independents of much government spending. We will see, first, space tourism for the super rich, that will, in turn, help fund research and implementation of methods for acquiring resources that are not in Earth gravity well, mostly asteroids. This will lead to a huge crash in the metals and violates market on Earth. Nickle, Iron, Gold, Silver, rare Earth metals, etc. will drop radically in price, a single, moderately sized asteroid(up to 1km or so in size) may contain enough of these and other elements than humans have mined from the Earth in all of human history.

Political:

This one is really tricky, because the biggest issues facing us are global, yet our governments are so varied. You have countries like the U.S. and Australia burying their heads in the sand when it comes to Global Climate Change, and others, especially in Europe and developing economies, who are trying to avoid increasing their carbon footprint as much as possible.

Honestly, I think the technology will lead over policy, companies, and consumers, want lower carbon emissions, so despite many conservative government efforts, less carbon dependent advances will be developed and implemented, just slower with less government funding.

We will face a political crisis that will be global, huge labor surplus brought about by technology. Its really up in the air how we will handle that, personally I would advocate for type of universal basic income, otherwise we have huge segments of the population who are unemployable and starving, that's how revolutions start.

[lovemydog]

56. Here's some futurist predictions

off the top of my head.

Fashion analysts will proclaim something is 'the new black.' It won't be.
'Virtual reality' will continue to suck.
People will start communes.
Most communes will disband for the same reasons the old ones did - arguments over sex and power.
Someone will create an app-app-app, an app to keep track of all your apps that organize your apps.
Some morons will buy the app-app-app. But it won't catch on.
Simple flip phones will get somewhat popular.
Ant Man will be the first Marvel movie that isn't a box-office smash.
Fap music will replace trap music in popularity. For a short while.
The New England Patriots will never win another Super Bowl.
The world will be shocked when a bunch of celebrities get their phones hacked and there are no naked photos.
Police forces will actually get better as more of them are on camera.
Floyd Mayweather will fight a mirror on pay per view and knock himself out.
Barack Obama will transition smoothly from best President in U.S. history to best former President in U.S. history.
More democratic socialists will get elected to public office.
The economy will improve for the lower and middle classes.
Younger people will do some great things for everyone.

[Freelancer]

57. There's no digging our way out with a virtual shovel

We have 10 billion people coming to dinner in less than 20 years. It seems to me that Republicans think a lot about who should get a seat at a finite table and who should get the boot, while Democrats are for building an ever bigger table.

To that end, we don't need virtual reality suites, or 3d printed hats as much as we need massive, transportable floating desalinization and waste treatment plants. We need thorium power generators that can fit inside a semi trailer in order to bring decentralized power to remote locations. We need sustained aquaculture capable of releasing several fry into the sea for every fish taken for our plates -- preferably on floating island cities supporting millions of inhabitants. Lastly and mostly (and perhaps most controversially) we need weather modification. The idea that humanity should control so much of the Earth's surface in order to sustain itself, but simply accept being at the mercy of the weather systems moving above it is inconceivable. The development of weather control -- at the very least severe storm abatement technology -- has got to be more of a research priority.

Of course, a couple of hours in a holodeck would be nice too -- especially after a long day trying to save the world.

[lovemydog]

58. Sort of along those lines, I like what this guy

had to say:

Mark Stevenson, author of "An Optimist's Tour of the Future:"

"The technologies aren’t the most important bit -- although they are super cool. It’s what society does with them, and right now it’s institutional change that’s the sticking point…. What you really want to look at, in my opinion, is new ways of organizing ourselves. So, my next book covers, for instance, the renewables revolution in a small Austrian town, open source drug discovery in India, patient networks like PatientsLikeMe and schools that are throwing out the curriculum in order to get on with some actual learning."

I'd also add the recent news that Hawaii just voted to go 100% renewable on its electrical grid.

[Oneironaut]

59. Far fetched. I would say those predictions

are better for at a minimum 100 yrs from now. They are futurists, I guess, though.

[CentralMass]

60. Wealth disparity and the decline of society will continue. Despite more technological

advances the masses will be increasingly less able to afford them as the working class (there will be no middle class) reaches parity with the third world..

[treestar]

63. Cool

So typical so many of the responses are like panicked that something good might happen.

[sendero]

66. I predict ...

.... that a lot of these "futurists" will soon become politicians to provide a more suitable outlet for their surplus of HOT AIR.

[Arugula Latte]

71. I hope meat "cloning" takes over so we can stop brutally torturing cows, pigs, etc.

[KamaAina]

74. We could stop that right now if we so desired

we could go back to the way farms and ranches worked for centuries.

The problem, as always, is the almighty dollar.

[Dont call me Shirley]

73. If we don't fix this inequality thing we have going on, life is going to suck for many of us. It wil

be fantastic for the minority of "access rich".