The future?

Obviously the future will involve robots, lasers and fog machines everywhere so that simply walking into a room is like the second coming of Jesus but better but what else do you expect?

Flying cars have been a dream for decades and they just never happen and I have a feeling they never will as the chances of catastrophic failure at any minute resulting in daily mini 9/11's just make a insurance strawberry floating nightmare so they're out.
I do however think car ownership will be pretty limited once we can just summon a car and pay just for the journeys we need with driverless cars.
I think meat will be grown in labs and mean the use of real animals will become obsolete freeing up vast areas of land that will become nature reserves with a small percentage used for housing.

So, what else?

Flying cars will only happen once they can be fully automated. The average member of the public is a hazard on foot, let alone in a flying machine.

Growing meat is a good shout, I think it will be a long time before it is affordable but it’ll happen one day.

Ok, 100 years from now

- One world government, Brexit and Trump are just minor inevitable backlashes against the sheer speed of globalisation, just as tribes banded to form city states and city states banded to form nations, the EU, NAFTA, African Union and USANASUR will merge. Increased power of global mega corporations like Google, Amazon and Facebook will break down national barriers


- Single culture, in order to achieve the above, cultural differences will have disipated, the influence of Hollywood, TV and the internet will result in the "Americanisation" of everywhere, the world will dress and act the same as youngsters in the first world today


- Urbanisation, the vast majority of humans will live in cities, rapid population growth and internal migration in India and China lead to many Asian cities resembling cyberpunk dystopias


- End of war, with the global government in place there will be no wars between states or civil wars, terrorism will still be a menace though as nationalists and religious extremists are increasingly marginalised

- Fall of religion, they'll still be around in 100 years, but seriously watered down and not take as seriously, churches, temples and mosques will become tourist attractions more than anything else, technological progress will render religion's "miracles" as trivial


- Economy, most nations have now stricken the right balance of capitalism and socialism and the universal basic income being implemented worldwide. Today's major corporations such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Toyota, Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Unilever have become global fixtures with huge political influence. Some have a seat in the UN/global government.


- Languages will still differ worldwide, but everyone will speak English either as a first or second language

- Space, slow progress made, Mars landing around 2060, small colony by 2100

Bottle caps as currency, Rat Au Van and other wonderful types of things.

Flying cars as an idea are always the epitome of DA FYOOCHAARRR, but I don't think anyone will actually bother unless there's a very good reason road, rail, or sea vehicles stop being a good idea. The energy required to keep a vehicle in the air is huge, what's the point if you're just flying up the M1?

Peter Crisp wrote:Obviously the future will involve robots, lasers and fog machines everywhere

"In The Future, There Will Be Robots" also had tight pants, and a manatee on stage*

*If you understood this reference, then you clearly spent way too much time listening to KChat like me

In the future white people and black people will live side by side in harmony, inside Chinese prison camps.

kerr9000 wrote:In the future white people and black people will live side by side in harmony, inside Chinese prison camps.

Apparently we'll all look similar to this in the future...

I don't think sport will change in the way that people 30 years ago thought it would with some odd futuresports as I feel the sports people like today will always remain the central focus rather than something like Speedball.
I think E-Sports will be a thing but will never have the global reach of Football or Basketball.

End of the human race can't come soon enough.

NickSCFC wrote:

kerr9000 wrote:In the future white people and black people will live side by side in harmony, inside Chinese prison camps.

Apparently we'll all look similar to this in the future...

We are all going to have myopia?

I think a serious financial crisis is on the cards at some point. Am I the only one worried about how there is increasingly very little paper trail to support our finances and how dependant we are on electronic records? It is becoming increasingly difficult to prove a mistake in the event one happens, particularly if deliberate as financial history can literally be rewritten.

Death's Head wrote:I think a serious financial crisis is on the cards at some point. Am I the only one worried about how there is increasingly very little paper trail to support our finances and how dependant we are on electronic records? It is becoming increasingly difficult to prove a mistake in the event one happens, particularly if deliberate as financial history can literally be rewritten.

I don't think it's beyond the realm of plausibility that we'll start seeing completely innocent people going to prison for crimes other people have committed using their digital identities.

"our records indicate you have previous convictions for indecent exposure and are a registered sex offender"

"but I'm innocent"

"The computer never lies son, you're nicked!"

• Japan will re-militarize, to counter the growing threat of China.
• The Russian threat will intensify, but will then recede as demographic trends beyond its ability to control force it to turn inward. It may even be at risk of breaking up.
• The west's own demographic issues will probably force a change of policy on immigration. Angry conservatives will look to automation, their current bane, as a means of averting the "immigrocalypse."
• Developed countries' militaries will transform as drones and semi-autonomous machines take on more prominent roles. Human combatants will not be eliminated, however.
• Exo-suited soldiers will become the new normal. They will be far fewer in number than today's squaddies, but they'll be able to bring to bear incredible force multipliers, utilizing advanced technologies to command drones, order precise missile strikes, and wield tank- or artillery-grade firearms. Their smaller numbers will make the developed world's armies of the future much more agile, and able to face down developing or third world armies many times their size.
• The development of hypersonic missile tech, and the proliferation of intelligent ordnance in general, will render the carrier battlegroup and tank a thing of the past, in developed nations' armies.
• Hypersonic missiles with global reach will render ICBMs obsolete.
• War in space will see the perfection of technologies currently in their infancy - wireless energy transfer, etc. An energy revolution for the next century, brought to you by war.
• Vertical farming will take off as cities become greener places to live. Their proliferation across the urban centers of the world will allow for the re-wilding of some agricultural lands, and permit more food aid to be sent to nations in crisis.
• Automation will take over all forms of transport, and as it grows more advanced and safer, most people will lose the skill to drive manually. Racing sports will still be manned, however, but the more dangerous ones will move into the VR sphere, becoming more like what you see in Ready Player One.
• Smartphones will give way to AR and VR devices not unlike the Focuses of Horizon: Zero Dawn, one day themselves giving way to much smaller devices, embedded in the body itself.
• A.I. developments will continue apace, in secretive military research facilities worldwide, as well as in public view. There will probably be incidents involving them which will lead to strict regulations in some countries.
• Hypersonic tech will filter into the commercial sphere and finally do away with long ass flights.
• Mankind will set foot on Mars, an asteroid and at least one Jovian moon by 2100-2150. A new space race will also see semi-intelligent machine explorers set foot on Mercury, fly through the Venusian atmosphere, and make landfall in the outer solar system. Conspiracy theorists will believe that China, India, the US etc are using them to set up secret military outposts and installations, away from prying eyes, where treaties can be routinely violated, claims staked, aliens contacted, etc.
• Colonies will be established at the Earth's Lagrange points, and wars of some sort will be fought for their control.
• Lunar colonies will be set up by several countries, as well as at least one temporarily inhabited Martian colony. Mankind's presence in space will remain mostly robotic, however, despite its slowly accelerating moves outward.
• Intensifying pressure on Earth for raw materials, rare Earth minerals etc, will kick start a resources race in space. The race may feel like the space race, and may involve a lot of Cold War-esque nuclear brinkmanship back home.

I think Japan re-militarising is pretty inevitable as I think every country should be allowed to defend themselves from obvious threats.
I don't think they will become an aggressor nation but will have a very capable military and take part in multi-national endeavours but only in a limited fashion and used mostly to give the troops some combat experience.
I think the more extravagant ideas in Manga about Japanese ultra high tech troops are a little far fetched but they will always be pretty high tech but as great as they are at tech they just don't have the population to fund cyborg super soldiers.

A new, ultra violent sport will be created to keep the masses happy and in line.

Gemini73 wrote:A new, ultra violent sport will be created to keep the masses happy and in line.

I preferred the remake with Chris Klein and LL Cool J. It should've been re-named to Nu-Metal: The Movie.

Corazon de Leon wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:A new, ultra violent sport will be created to keep the masses happy and in line.

I preferred the remake with Chris Klein and LL Cool J. It should've been re-named to Nu-Metal: The Movie.

Gemini73 wrote:A new, ultra violent sport will be created to keep the masses happy and in line.