2100 (war, colonies, European, economic)

[User1771]

I'm unsure if posting about future history is allowed in this section but I would like to know: Where would we be in the year 2100?

If you look back at the 20th century we have come a long way in just 100 years. From Horses and Carriages to the moon, Heck that wasn't even 100 years that was really quick. So where do you think we will be in the next century? What could we achive in the following feilds of:
Science and Technology:
Politics and Entertainment:


And if you say: "We cannot predict the future or that there is now way",
just look at Jules Venre's book: Paris in the twentieth Century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century
also no apocalyptic responces since I am trying to be serious here.


Where do you think we will be by the year 2100?

[Chango]

I tried to do this once... it is pretty much impossible to predict but usually too fun to resist.

Here's what I think will happen:

On the surface things will look fairly similar. Density will be higher but most Americans (keeping this in the USA BTW...) will live in single family houses, drive cars (on the ground, still no flying around), get their stuff from stores and work 9-5 jobs to pay for it all. On the whole people will be poorer than today but crime, pollution and illness will be SUBSTANTIALLY lower.

Cars will be electric. Batteries will last 3-400 miles and be capable of instant recharge faster than we can fill up a gas tank. They will use "self-healing" panels and finishes, be able to change color at the push of a button and all be self-drive capable.

Most cars will be rented on a per-use basis, not personally owned. When you want to go somewhere you will order one, it will drive to your doorstep and return to the rental garage by itself when you are done with it.

Work and Entertainment through direct brain interface will be very popular; you will be able to "live" in and experience virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from reality. Large numbers of people will retreat from the real world into the virtual, some on a full time basis while their bodies waste away in special care centers for years at a time. "The Matrix" movies will seem strangely prophetic in 2100.

There will be no wires or plugs; electricty will be sent though the air to appliances like a phone signal. Most power will come from large orbital solar power stations which catch solar energy without interruption and beam it back to earth.

There will be a technology backlash of sorts... many people will crave "real things", "real experiences" invisible tech and/or anachronistic things. Artistry and craftsman ship will make a strong reappearance... for those who can afford it.

Space travel will continue to lag; man will have made it to Mars and even the moons of Jupiter but manned space travel is still uncommon and not available for the masses. Unmanned probes will have been sent to the nearest star systems but will not be anywhere close to their destinations by 2100. There will be small scale lunar and Martian bases for scientific research but they are not self-sufficent.

Medical care will be amazing. It will be entirely possible... even easy to cure any disease we know of today. Pharmacutical drugs will not be used; they will be entirely replaced with nanotec cures which actually go after the problem directly on a cellular level.

But new (mostly psychological) ailments casued by virtual reality and direct brain interface will plague the people of 2100 no less than heart disease and cancer plague us.

Lifespans can be extended past 150 years... and any part of a body can be replaced with a grown part, including the entire body through a brain transplant. Genetic manipulation/replacement parts and cyborg implants will have effectively lead to several new transhuman species, though nobody will be willing to admit it yet.

Real A.I. will exist but will be on par in abilities to transhumans. The line between one or the other will blur; it will be hard to to tell and even irrelevant if a sentient being was born in a womb or on a quantum computer. Most A.I.s inhabit and feel comfortable in the ever expanding series of virtual worlds called the "net"; the evolved version of the internet but some will seek external experiences through cyborg bodies. To them, the "net" is the real world and the "real world" is the strange "other place" they go to for fun.

The net will be the reason crime is so low and people tolerate otherwise spartan lives; it will provide the ulitmate escape. Even the poorest person can connect to the net and set up a virtual space where they are near-gods. Governments will find it especially easy to keep the populace under their control and real-life warfare will be a rare event. But strife and worry between transhumans and homo-sapiens is increasing; purely biological Homo sapiens are doomed to complete extinction by 2200-2300.

[cpg35223]

All countries will have considerably older populations.

There will be colonies on Mars and the Moon, both organized by private enterprise, not government. Space travel while still expensive, will be far more attainable.

The United States will remain the world's most dominant nation. China, after reaching the peak of its economic power in the late teens, begins to wane due to the inexorable force of demographics, itself a consequence of Mao's One Couple One Child Policy. By the time the 21st Century hits, the United States has only 50 million fewer people of working age than China.

Europe will come to be dominated by German and the eastern European countries such as Poland. Russia will fracture further.

Latin America will separate into the Haves and Have Nots. Chile, Colombia, and Brazil will become the continent's pre-eminent economic powers. In Africa, South Africa and Botswana.

Meanwhile, new energy discoveries send the Middle East back to irrelevance, but not before huge revolutions. The populations of Arab states realize that the corrupt oligarchies spent trillions of petrodollars in malinvestment. Ongoing upheaval characterize the region.

India becomes the United States main economic rival. However, the relationship is a relatively benign one.

Computers will not fulfill the prediction of dystopians, but rather make life better.

The average lifespan in advanced economies reaches 120 years. Lifespans of 160 are not unheard of.

[Josseppie]

By 2045 we will have reached the technological singularity so it is impossible to know what life will be like at 2050 let alone 2100.

For more on this topic I will post a link to the page in the science and technology forum.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/scien...tream-yet.html

[User1771]

One thing that worries me a bit is that technology is going to increase for a bit like it did in the 20th century and all of a sudden it is going to level out for a bit and then technology will re-increase like it did before.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by STB93

One thing that worries me a bit is that technology is going to increase for a bit like it did in the 20th century and all of a sudden it is going to level out for a bit and then technology will re-increase like it did before.

Information technology advances at a exponential rate doubling every 11 months. That rate will only increase as well so there will be no leveling off.

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

The average lifespan in advanced economies reaches 120 years. Lifespans of 160 are not unheard of.

Any person who is 160 in 2100 will have been born in 1940, and is already 72, so that particular advance will have to take place pretty soon. For the average person to be 120, about half of all the people will have been born before 1980. There are only about 2-billion people in the world now who were born before 1980, so that is a mathematical impossibility unless the world's population is reduced to 4-billion and nobody dies from now on, and from 2012 onward, the birth rate would be near zero and there would be almost no people under about 100, and most of us who are alive today will live to see 2100.

Do not assume that the forces of good will stay ahead of the forces of evil throughout the 21st century. In the 20th century, at least a hundred million people were killed by wars and despots. Wars and despots of the future will also be able to reap the benefits of technological advances for their own purposes. In addition to being technically capable of setting in motion processes that might not be so easily switched off again.

[Chango]

Here's another likely future:

After barely scraping by through the twenty-teens the United States is on the verge of default and financial collapse. Seeking to head it off, the US government triggers a war with China by attempting to place a nuclear weapons installation in Taiwan. Russia Allies with China and Western Europe with the USA; WW3 begins. Liberal use of nuclear/chemical and biological weapons devastates the planet in a war that results in the complete destruction of nearly every population center in the northern hemisphere and makes vast tracks of land completely uninhabitable. Billions die. The fallout descends upon the South as well; eventually all the countries of the world collapse; cities are torn to rubble by civil unrest, plague and local wars.

By 2100 Nuclear winter has created vast radioactive glacial regions and dropped the sea levels by 300 feet. The largest human population is on the Falkland islands and they have just figured out how to smelt copper into small knives and axes using a specific species of seaweed drenched with whale oil as fuel for their forge... the first technological advance in nearly a century. People there dream of building a ship capable of traveling to the now mythical lands of the North, though there is no wood available to build one. Nobody remembers that humans once walked on the moon, made powerful computers capable of amazing feats and criss-crossed the world both in person and virtually at the touch of a button.

There is no law of nature that says we will move forward. We are insanely lucky the world didn't end in October of 1962; the next couple of decades will be even more dangerous for humankind.

[User1771]

So, on a alternate history site that I go to a lot I have found this future timeline that to me sounds pretty realistic. I would like to know what you guys think of it.
timelines:future:a_revised_history_of_the_future [Alternate History Wiki]

[cubssoxfan]

Originally Posted by Chango

Here's another likely future:

After barely scraping by through the twenty-teens the United States is on the verge of default and financial collapse. Seeking to head it off, the US government triggers a war with China by attempting to place a nuclear weapons installation in Taiwan. Russia Allies with China and Western Europe with the USA; WW3 begins. Liberal use of nuclear/chemical and biological weapons devastates the planet in a war that results in the complete destruction of nearly every population center in the northern hemisphere and makes vast tracks of land completely uninhabitable. Billions die. The fallout descends upon the South as well; eventually all the countries of the world collapse; cities are torn to rubble by civil unrest, plague and local wars.

By 2100 Nuclear winter has created vast radioactive glacial regions and dropped the sea levels by 300 feet. The largest human population is on the Falkland islands and they have just figured out how to smelt copper into small knives and axes using a specific species of seaweed drenched with whale oil as fuel for their forge... the first technological advance in nearly a century. People there dream of building a ship capable of traveling to the now mythical lands of the North, though there is no wood available to build one. Nobody remembers that humans once walked on the moon, made powerful computers capable of amazing feats and criss-crossed the world both in person and virtually at the touch of a button.

There is no law of nature that says we will move forward. We are insanely lucky the world didn't end in October of 1962; the next couple of decades will be even more dangerous for humankind.

Maybe more likely is computer terrorism, where financial and Defense computers are hacked that bring on a Depression that makes the 30's look mild and then leads to unrest and war?