Predicting Life 100 Years From Now 552
New submitter Simon321 writes "BBC News has an interesting article about the top predictions for life 100 years from now. The highlights include extensive farming of the ocean, wiring all sorts of computers to our brains, space elevators, and the break-up of the United States. 'There are some indications already that California wants to split off and such pressures tend to build over time. It is hard to see this waiting until the end of the century. Maybe an East Coast cluster will want to break off too. Pressures come from the enormous differences in wealth generation capability, and people not wanting to fund others if they can avoid it.'"
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:5, Insightful)
Futurologists don't need a background in science, only an audience.
Re:California wants to split off (Score:4, Insightful)
From a canuck pov, California is a lot like Quebec. Both have large debts, highly self-inflated opinions of themselves, and have a highly convoluted parasitic nature with both the federal government and other states/provinces. If they went up and left, they'd be in a crash bankruptcy within 2 years, and be begging to come back, as their own entitlement programs would cause them to collapse from within. As it stands now, their own entitlement programs are causing them to collapse from within.
So come on /., put forth YOUR predictions! (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict there will be unrest in the middle east.
One currency? Bad idea even if possible. (Score:4, Insightful)
Research "Optimal Currency Area". Try to have a single currency across a heterogeneous region, and you get a train wreck like the Euro.
People aren't going to give up their native languages, either.
Re:California wants to split off (Score:2, Insightful)
( like the feds would ever let that happen anyway )
What if all the middle class moved out, leaving no one left in CA but the illegals and some very rich folks. Basically it would be much like Cancun, a Mexican village with a bunch of resorts on the coast and the vacation homes of a couple rich people. I could see it happening because its not far from it now.
Now we'd probably demand some "foreign" military bases... Also I don't think we'd give up seattle without a fight, need a pacific ocean seaport.
Wait until after the really big city leveling earthquake and we're given the choice of giving it back to .mx in exchange for a bunch of oil, or keeping a majority spanish speaking state out of rebellion with no oil and a trillion dollar price tag to rebuild after the earthquake.
Another possible crisis point would probably be when the aquifer empties in CA, that means no more agriculture.
What happens when Vegas runs out of water will be another interesting crisis point, a lot depends on refugees evacuating east or evacuating west.
Either that, or peak oil declines and narco-state politics finally completely collapse .mx, so we end up taking over .mx as a humanitarian gesture if nothing else, leading to new "US States". Basically a really large Puerto Rico.
One way or another CA and .mx are politically merging "relatively soon" like within my kids lifetime.
I know the answer to that (Score:3, Insightful)
Hundred years from know futurulogist will write books predicting the same things as those in the article are "just around the corner" and will be available in less than another 100 years.
+100 and the exponential bias (Score:5, Insightful)
- in the eighties AIDS was said to be cured by 2000
- in the seventies nuclear plants were created, expecting all the technical uncertainties to be solved by 2000
not mentioning studies, novels, sci-fi movies that made an unsuccessful attempt to describe a world in a 30~50 years future
And they want to predict the world in 100 years from now?
Re:We'll go nowhere at this rate. (Score:5, Insightful)
30 years ago all sorts of stuff was being predicted. space colonies this that. all we ended up has been a widening income/wealth inequality with those amassing wealth doing nothing with that wealth but letting it amass more wealth sitting in the banks. there is no way in hell we will have space elevators, this that, as long as the rich can make more money without making anything. why invest in a space elevator, why you can just let the money sit in hedge funds and let it become more money overnight, without considerable risk ... the only ones who will do these would be new internet-era entrepreneurs and rich boys like the ones who are investing in space x thingies etc now. and no way in hell their numbers and wealth can make these stuff come true in a way that would matter for the public.
You have such a deep misunderstanding of the real world, I'm surprised you can manage to get food into your mouth to survive. The article summary seems to have triggered your "I AM THE 99%" response. However you don't seem to understand the nature of wealth. People like you sit back and complain that the rich have all their money in the bank, so there isn't any left for you. The reality is that weathy people invest their money to remain wealthy. What the hell do you think a hedge fund is? Like most investments, it puts the money to work.
If a space elevator could ever be made profitably, those kinds of funds are the ones that would invest. Poor, aimless, unmotivated fools will never make it happen. No such venture was ever done for charity. Columbus was sponsored by the Portuguese crown in a search for wealth in trade routes. The Apollo program was sponsored by the USA so as to not fall behind in the USSR and risk the cold war. A space elevator represents a huge opportunity for wealth generation. You don't think greed would make it happen if it was possible? You're just plain wrong.
-d
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think certain states should form providences and have more control, but I have no clue how that would happen smoothly.
We had that before - before, as you say, "They tried that once." It's called State's Rights, and the loss of the war of northern aggression assured a strong federal government and the loss of state's individuality.
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:5, Insightful)
You spelled "War of Southern Treason" wrong.
The South started the war, so I fail to see how it could be Northern aggression.
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:5, Insightful)
low taxes, small government, etc - and other tea party type things
don't fool yourself, they also want to meddle.
...a more likely scenario (Score:4, Insightful)
- The divide between the wealthy and the poor continues to grow. Globally, the middle-class is virtually non-existent. Most of the world lives just above a subsistence level.
- Biodiversity reaches an unprecedented minimum. Between over harvesting and habitat destruction, whole ecosystems have disappeared from the earth. People debate whether many of the large land mammal species ever actually existed or if they were part of a mythology.
- Petroleum is unquestionably depleted and too expensive for use other than by the military and the extremely wealthy.
- War continues as we fight over the dwindling remains of our natural resources.
- Welcome to the surveillance state.
- World population continues to increase, although at slower rates due to famine, disease and widespread war.
- The US has virtually no national transportation infrastructure since the social and political will never appeared to move away from the automobile before before gasoline prices and the maintenance of our roads became financially untenable.
- global warming continues with unimaginable impacts on coastal regions.
- chaos is the only predictable quality of life.
- No Linux on the desktop and the desktop computer itself will be an antiquated notion.
I wish I could jump on board with the techo-fantasies but I don't think that's where we are going - at least not for the majority. Now I'm depressed...
Re:+100 and the exponential bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Retrospectively,
- in the eighties AIDS was said to be cured by 2000
Is that all so far from the truth? The outlook at that time was a global pandemic across all people, spread thru hospital blood transfusions, medical and dental treatments, maybe swimming pool water... Looking at the stats, now its sort of a chronic lifestyle disease of certain subcultures, like smoking, sorta.
From my personal perspective, in my social subculture, its basically cured by lack of transmission, and is not relevant for fearmongering or FUD.
Its probably going to end up "controlled" like malaria or TB rather than apparent utter eradication like smallpox, but for all practical purposes, its no longer a threat.
Sleepwalking to destruction. (Score:5, Insightful)
What would such a thing need us for?
What is even more disturbing is that the exponential trend identified by Moore can be found in completely unrelated economic figures, energy use figures, patent volume figures, and many more.
Humans seem destined to ride an exponential wave, and not to notice until it's too late.
And all the while, the Fermi paradox waits before us like a dark chasm.
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:4, Insightful)
but they're getting along just fine as is. Still, the idea of anyone breaking away right now is ludicrous.
They aren't suggesting right now. They're suggesting sometime in the next 100 years. That's a log time. The last US civil was only a bit more than a hundred years ago. The USSR only lasted 69 years.
The key is that "getting along just fine as is" bit. Those days are numbered. China is taking over as world superpower. That's going to have interesting effects on the USA.
Re:We know one thing for sure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Breakup of the US - HIGHLY Unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
This is all based on the assumption that what is today, will continue forever, which is wrong.
California, which is the economic engine of the USA
As the acceleration of jobs leaving for China and India increase.... What is CA once the last manufacturing job moves to China and the last info/tech job moves to India? Well, they have a lot of farms, and ...um...
I'd like to point out too that California basically feeds the USA as well. Their agricultural output is vast.
Hmm thats a slight exaggeration, probably because they produce a bit more than, say, Nevada, or New Mexico, but ...
Once the aquifer dries up, wait for the next big drought so the rivers run dry, and that's the end of that. Which is not so bad, because you can rely on the vibrant factories and office buildings full of programmers, err, wait see above.
Sure, some big cities full of people. What happens when the big earthquake hits? Hmm. Well when a big hurricane hit N.O., we abandoned them and its still in a tailspin at a fraction its current size. After the cities in CA are perma-depopulated, what next?
There's no reason to conclude that the US wouldn't just simply use military force to preserve the union
What if "we" wanted to get rid of CA? You're assuming only a healthy vibrant state can/could exist. Imagine straight line extrapolation of no more agriculture, no more industry, no more people in the cities after the earthquake, everyone who can move, has left ... We've bought land from other countries, who's to say we wouldn't sell CA to MX for barrels of oil? Or a 99 year lease agreement? Imagine a piece of land with no realistic future economic value mostly populated by citizens from a neighboring country, you need something from that neighboring country, they offer up a "lease" or "trade" or something like that, secession doesn't have to be violence from outside the power structure, it probably will be from within the power structure. Maybe we'll make a treaty that CA and the SW is "NAFTA-land" in general and a new province of .mx in practice, legally technically remains our land, outsource management of everything outside our .mil bases to .mx, in exchange we get first dibs on whatever oil they have left. I could see that happening. Not a shot would be fired, just a bunch of treaties and trade agreements...
100 years from now for all practical purposes we'll have just as many languages with over 100,000 speakers as we do today.
And COBOL programmers will still be in demand. No I'm not kidding.
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just the British Empire. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, The Russian Empire, The French Empire, The Spanish Empire, the USSR.
Empires rise, and then they fall again. The USA is on the same path as all the empire before it. Only the timing varies.
Re:California wants to split off (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the GP said nothing about the state budget.
Second, that's a perfect example of the broken window fallacy. The citizens pay the Federal Government, and in so doing, give it money that cannot be spent for other things. The correct question is how much the citizens of California as a whole send to the federal government versus the amount that the federal government sends back. The answer to that is "a lot more", with the sole exception of the last couple of years (in which California has gotten more than it sent in, but so has every other state). In most years, California gets back somewhere in the ballpark of eighty cents for every dollar it sends to the feds.
Again, the amount is immaterial. What's important is the cost-benefit ratio. The blue states, on the average, get far less benefit for their federal tax dollars than the red states. This is fairly well established and can be trivially proven by examining the numbers.
Unless, of course, you consider the security benefits. Consider how the wide difference in wealth between the U.S. and Mexico has caused serious safety problems near our Southern border. Now consider what would happen if the Southern U.S. were similarly poor because California stopped propping them up. And that is why the argument of California getting less out than it puts in falls flat—not because it isn't true from a purely numbers point of view, but rather because there are unquantifiable externalities that the argument fails to take into account.
That's grossly incorrect [taxfoundation.org].
Re:Oh, the Horseshit You Will Print! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points. I lived in the south and was saddened by what I was seeing:
Many of the smart and ambitious leave. The culture, though, remains in place: an ever more pointless divide between the rich and poor (or lucky and unlucky.) Low taxes mean low social services for the poor and insular privately provided schools and social services for the rich, and pretty soon you have an out-of-touch and uneducated rich class and an out-of-touch and uneducated poor class.
If you don't get out of the south at age 21, you are screwed.
Re:+100 and the exponential bias (Score:4, Insightful)
Even there, among certain subcultures (cough, Catholics) the transmission rate is at or near zero. Eventually, the other subcultures, haven proven themselves unable to survive, won't.
Its interesting how on an individual basis we've tried to halt evolution and don't allow individual euthanasia. But on a cultural / subcultural level, if they as a group wanna fail, or self destruct themselves, we pretty much sit back and let them.