The future according to you.

[D20ragon]

Just thought I'd ask: What do you think our future will be like, and why?
Assume 100-200 years from now. Or more, or less, if you'd like.

[Asta Kask]

Better. Less crime, less wars, more respect for minorities. It's the way we've had it thus far.

[banjo1985]

I'm not sure, but I hope it involves sandwiches.

[Mx.Silver]

More different than any of us would guess; more similar than any of us might suppose.

[Finlam]

100 - 200 years in the future is so much speculation that I almost feel this thread should consist entirely of of X, X Everywhere memes.

But what will it be like? Depends on who you talk to.

When I talk to Linux guys, it's this:

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When I talk to Bitcoin people it's this:

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Personally, I think it will look like this:

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[tensai_oni]

Better. Less crime, less wars, more respect for minorities. It's the way we've had it thus far.

This. Movies like Idiocracy like to show the future as full of idiots brainwashed by mass media, but there's a reason that movie was a comedy and not trying to replicate reality.

Humanity is steadily improving over the years. We become smarter, better educated, more tolerant of others and less violent on average. It's a slow process, but pretty much a certain one.

In terms of specifics, look at how the world was 100 years ago. The biggest change between then and now, if you ask me? Information. The spread and availability of information is incredible now compared to a century ago. This is the direction development will take, into making information even more spreadable and easily accessible.

[erikun]

Just thought I'd ask: What do you think our future will be like, and why?
Assume 100-200 years from now. Or more, or less, if you'd like.

About the only good prediction I can make is that 90% or more of the people reading this now will likely be dead in 200 years.

[Aedilred]

I have a pronounced Tory streak (in the historiographical, not the political, sense) when it comes to this sort of thing.

Assuming that climate change hasn't killed us all, living conditions will probably have improved measurably with huge strides made in healthcare and technology specifically.

Society as we know it will have collapsed, replaced with a global system of virtual "walled gardens" that cater to niche interest groups. The ability to exist entirely within these spheres will eradicate the ability of individuals to deal with dissenting opinions or criticism. Traditional crime will fall, due to the general apathy and indolence of the population. Newer crimes, based on psychological manipulation, verbal assault, fraud and intolerance will rise. Civil liberties will have disintegrated, thanks to the near-universal widespread adoption of live-streaming social media and incumbent expectations to engage with it leading to eradication of privacy. A few holdouts isolated from the rest of society may remain, considered dangerous and backwards lunatics by those people even aware of them.

Inequality will rise, both within individual states and internationally. Advances in technology will replace the human workforce faster than the human workforce can find new work, leading to extensive poverty. Food production will be unable to keep up with the rising population, leading to mass starvation.

<stuff about politics and/or religion>

Or, you know, revolution.

[shawnhcorey]

Just thought I'd ask: What do you think our future will be like, and why?
Assume 100-200 years from now. Or more, or less, if you'd like.

Did you know that at the end of the 19th century, it was predicted that the level of horse manure in our cities would be so high as to make the uninhabitable? Long term predictions generally don't pan out.

[Spiryt]

In terms of specifics, look at how the world was 100 years ago. The biggest change between then and now, if you ask me? Information. The spread and availability of information is incredible now compared to a century ago. This is the direction development will take, into making information even more spreadable and easily accessible.

Information available is actually already way too huge and complicated too process by any normal human being that doesn't know what to search for, exactly.

And it will only rise exponentially.

'Brainwashing' thus doesn't have too occur by primitive media propaganda, but by subtle manipulation of information 'sought'.

At least I definitely see people having more and more problems with catching anything worthwhile from this, and being dependent on information filters, especially as far as very advanced technology goes, which average, literate, yet rarely reading citizens won't be able to grasp, at all.

Anyway, people will love, hate, breed and kill as always I guess, only in entirely new ways, sometimes.

[Aotrs Commander]

With any degree of luck, in that time period, either Earth will be absolutely subjugated under my rule and humans will have been forced into accepting that they can no longer escape consequences of their actions and that incompetance, ignorance and bigotry lead to summary and inescapable death and possibly posthumus necromantic punishment or have been reduced to a blackened crisp and the populace put to the metaphorical - or actual - sword.

Depending on how bad it is when I finally snap, and whether or not I feel even a little merciful.

[D20ragon]

Did you know that at the end of the 19th century, it was predicted that the level of horse manure in our cities would be so high as to make the uninhabitable? Long term predictions generally don't pan out.

I know.

This is just for fun, and because I could use some ideas for a somewhat realistic future setting.

[shawnhcorey]

Did you know that at the end of the 19th century, it was predicted that the level of horse manure in our cities would be so high as to make the uninhabitable? Long term predictions generally don't pan out.

I know.

This is just for fun, and because I could use some ideas for a somewhat realistic future setting.

How about flying cars then? (I'm too old for a rocket belt )

[unbeliever536]

1) Science news will be reporting the imenent end of physics, day after day, while actual physicists work diligently at the nigh impossible task of actually understanding how the universe works.

2) On a dark night in Gotham, Bruce Wayne's parents will be killed in a petty robbery, leading him to become a masked vigilante, protecting the city from an increasingly unlikely series of threats.

3) Earth's climate will have changed drastically because of our actions, and we will have dealt with it, while still arguing about whose fault the whole thing was.

4) Quantum Computing will have been discarded as an actual method of computation, but spawn dozens of other useful technologies which still use that label. When people try to change the label, nobody will listen.

5) Tumblr will be mad about something, and nobody will care.

6) I will grumpily complain that Mars is a useless rock we don't need to go back to and we should get off our collective butts and colonize the asteroid belt.

7) Discrimination against a subgroup I can't think of will dominate civil rights discussions, despite the fact that we will still have systematic biases working against non-whites, women, immigrants, queer folk, ...

8) WAR WAS BEGINNING

[Hyena]

I have absolutely zero faith in humanity, especially after the latest events, which are better left undiscussed. In a hundred years, the world will be a wasteland - and not the fun kind like in Fallout, either.

[Grinner]

Lots of interesting points made.

I can't help but note the tendency of people to extrapolate what the future will be like from their current circumstances. I remember once seeing a painting made in either the late 19th century or early 20th century. The painting depicted a woman stepping from a flying carriage (rather than a flying car) for a night at the opera house.

Today, this notion seems absurd, but if you compare it to later media, a pattern begins to emerge.

Flying. In the future, there's always something flying. Carriages, cars, jetpacks. Our depictions of future are always close to our depictions of today, filtered through a lens of high technology, usually resulting in some kind flight.

What I liked about Aedilred's point is that he took into consideration how technology could change not only our living conditions, but our very way of life. It's ultimately science fiction, I believe, being an extension of the state of affairs today, but it focuses on more than just what new toys we'll have.

[TheThan]

The grid is going to go down permanently, society will crumble in turmoil. We will lose much of the technology we take for granted, electricity, the internet (and computers in general), oil and petroleum based products, supermarkets, banks the works will all be rendered useless and die out.

Instead we’ll revert to a subsistence living situation, communities will form but for mutual protection against roving gangs that can’t fend for themselves. People will use a simple barter system for trade. We’ll have most of the knowledge we’ve attained but without the advanced tools that we take for granted now.

[The Prince of Cats]

Right now, Venice is looking at independence from Italy, Scotland from the UK and I am not sure Texas has ever stopped thinking about acceding from the US...

I see the future as a collection of nation-states or even Snow Crash burbclaves, each trying their own brand of government with peace through mutual pacts of military support rather than huge nation-states and coalitions trying to survive.

[Aliquid]

I have absolutely zero faith in humanity, especially after the latest events, which are better left undiscussed. In a hundred years, the world will be a wasteland - and not the fun kind like in Fallout, either.

The world is currently safer, more peaceful and less violent than it ever has been in the history of mankind.

Horrible things still happen, but things are awesome now in comparison to the past.

[Lord Raziere]

The future will either be Eclipse Phase or Nova Praxis.

assuming we solve the water, fuel and environmental problems first.....

....if we don't, well the world will become more flooded, we'll run out of oil, the ecosystem will go haywire, drinkable water will become a much sought-after commodity amidst things like droughts and/or famine as the climate changes, and we will end up being ruled by overlords controlling our vital resources and doling them out to us in limited quantities so we will obey them, because if we don't, it means certain death. we will probably eventually overcome them anyways, but it will set us back

[noparlpf]

Forget a century from now, we already live in the future. I have a little box in my pocket that lets me talk to people thousands of miles away. And see them. And I can access any information in the collective knowledge of the species.
But I don't have a flying car. Mine has wheels and runs on internal combustion of gasoline.

[Hiro Protagonest]

A hundred years ago, WWI started.

The world is still around today, still functioning just fine, and we even developed a weapon of unimaginable power about seventy years ago. That weapon actually acted as the deterrent that Gatling and Nobel's creations had failed to be.

Before that, there was the Crusades, the Mongol empire, Alexander "The Great", etc. Humanity has faced global-scale warfare already, and survived intact. Even when the barbarians sacked Rome, it didn't revert us back to a world of hunter-gatherers. When the Black Plague struck Europe, steam power was brought in as a labor multiplier.

Anyway, Mass Effect is fairly good for human technology, plus it's possible that we'll somehow develop FTL travel.

If I were to talk about what I think the world would be like in a hundred years, it would have a lot to do with politics (I would also make about a hundred different theories because of the biggest variables), hell, it would probably be entirely about politics, theoretical or not, so I can't.

Also, I don't know enough about Earth's resources and such.

[Coidzor]

Humans will still be humans. Technology will have improved in some ways and not improved nearly as much as we'd have liked in others. We may or may not have managed to achieve a stable geopolitical structure with the addition of a few of human lifetimes.

Various groups that are gaining acceptance today will have become more mainstream if not actually mainstream.

I'll almost certainly be dead along with everyone on this website as well as their children and possibly children's children, though life expectancies should increase.

Presumably we'll have managed to figure out this whole obesity and agriculture thing, since we have a tendency to "muddle through," as, IIRC, the Brits would put it.

[erikun]

I know.

This is just for fun, and because I could use some ideas for a somewhat realistic future setting.

If you want a realistic prediction from me, I'd say the most likely development we will see soon is context-relevant information searching. Modern attempts at AI are unlikely to produce anything resembling AI, but there is a good chance that they will create computers that can do exceptionally well at identifying the context of a situation. What this means is that someone could search for "The thing from the thing last night" on their equivalent of a smartphone, and it would be able to identify what stood out from their TV watching/other activities the night previously and produce a response. Preferably without asking 20 questions to narrow it down each time.

This will probably change advertising as well. The good companies would make sure to give advertisements and discounts for stuff you like, stuff you've already tried, and stuff you're likely interested in but don't know about. Bad advertisements will just pop-up stuff you likely don't want anyways. Much like ads today.

Also, smart-talking and voice recognition. Someone is going to figure out how to parse speech into a computer, so that it can properly recognize voice commands (with accents) and read off a line of text sounding natural without relying on a pre-recorded human voice.

[Leliel]

There will be a massive die-back as the oil runs out. Humanity as a whole will grit its teeth and bare it, making sure the knowledge survives.

Technology will be put on hold while we figure out how this solar thing works, and once that happens claw its way back to high culture, having taken notes about what destroyed the previous one along the way.

From there, a great African country, having been hit the least hard by the eco crunch, will claw its way to the top and finally stop being the whipping boy of the universe. They deserve it.

[Grinner]

If you want a realistic prediction from me, I'd say the most likely development we will see soon is context-relevant information searching. Modern attempts at AI are unlikely to produce anything resembling AI, but there is a good chance that they will create computers that can do exceptionally well at identifying the context of a situation. What this means is that someone could search for "The thing from the thing last night" on their equivalent of a smartphone, and it would be able to identify what stood out from their TV watching/other activities the night previously and produce a response. Preferably without asking 20 questions to narrow it down each time.

We already have something along these lines. Google tracks any given user and builds a profile on him. From that, it sifts through the information and presents the links most relevant to him. I'm told this has an unfortunate side effect of creating a "bubble", where all of the information a user can view is filtered to match his profile; all of the information he is given is controlled by Google. Moreover, the user will have difficulty escaping this bubble, if he even realizes he's in one.

On the other hand, there's a reason why "google" has become a verb.

But like you've already said, anything beyond Google will require tracking and profiling of far more intimate detail. I imagine a certain United States government agency could be of some assistance here.

[Gnome Alone]

As I understand it, the future 200 years from now will largely consist of shooting mutated wildlife and heavily armed lunatics and getting greasy drifters to fix your vast collection of helmets & glocks while looking for your scientist dad.

[The Prince of Cats]

The world is currently safer, more peaceful and less violent than it ever has been in the history of mankind.

Horrible things still happen, but things are awesome now in comparison to the past.

Yup. The difference is that we can now learn about every awful thing that happens across the world and people actual care what happens on the opposite side of the world.

Also, the media worked out years ago that people buy more newspapers if the news is negative. If a 777 crashed, killing all on board, on the same day a scientist cured cancer, the 777 story would get the front page because we are a ghoulish species who prefer tales of death and pain to hope...

I'll almost certainly be dead along with everyone on this website as well as their children and possibly children's children, though life expectancies should increase.

Actually, I was reading some future predictions by 'specialists in their fields' that was written based on the current progress of science and sci-fi idea which look to become plausible soon. It was suggested that mechanics behind the ageing process should be worked out so that anyone alive in 2050 (+/- a few years) no longer needs to worry about old age. Reversal of age-related issues might take a few more years, but being alive in 2050 is the trick.

[Knaight]

I strongly suspect that the information era will come to a close, to be replaced by something else that basically nobody saw coming, with all sorts of completely unanticipated technologies, societal developments, etc.. Conversely plenty of really old technologies will stay in use, despite the constant predictions of them fading away (e.g. writing), there will be constant whining about whatever the younger generations are doing (much of which involves things that basically nobody is actually doing) just like there has been for the last few thousand years, and whatever groups are holding power will desperately cling to it as they always have.

[T-Mick]

Worse. More crime, more wars, less respect for minorities. It's the way we've had it thus far.