What will life be like in 100 years time?

[surreptitious57]

Domestic Robots

Medical Nanotechnology

Regular Flights To The Moon

Whole Life Virtual Reality Simulators

Three D Holographic Televisions And Computers

Hand Implanted Microchips To Replace Mobile Phones

Animal D N A Implants For Ill Health And Sexual Performance

Compulsory Abortion And Euthanasia To Curb Global Overpopulation

[mistermack]

In the field of medicine, I would say that a biggie will be the development of the artificial womb, so that women won't need to get pregnant at all, to have a baby. They will fertilise the egg in-vitro, and then transfer it to the artificial womb, and take it all the way to birth in that.
They are already doing it, successfully, for a few days, but the law says that's the limit for humans.
But from what I read, they are surprised how well it went, and are going to start doing it with other mammals shortly. It could work out to be surprisingly easy.

Even if they drag their heels on doing it with humans, I can imagine the farming industry using it extensively. And the pet industry, and horse-breeding centres.

Why would you let a mare worth millions have just one foal per year, when you could get a dozen?

It might be good news for pandas and amur leopards too. Any rare species of mammal could benefit from it.

[laklak]

Not to mention all those delicious hybrids. Pork chickens, lamb escargot, beef oysters, endless possibilities.

[Blind groper]

Robots.
But not just robot maids. Most robots will be tiny, and will be tilling the soil, exploring for minerals, or just spying on the population. So many spies that no criminal will be able to get away with it. Instantaneous reporting to robocop that you are jaywalking!

Flying cars.
Yes, but not human controlled. All cars, on the ground or in the air will be controlled by computers, which will be part of a giant radio network giving those computers all the information they need to ensure that no-one ever has an accident. There will be special ground race tracks where people who insist on it will be permitted to drive old fashioned, non computer driven vehicles. There will be robodoc monitoring the race track.

Even war will not permit human participation. Robots fighting robots, with robocam recording it all for HD 3D TV broadcast. Place your bets now!

Space Elevator.
Finally built. People zip into space by the million, and stay in giant rotating space habitats. Some of those habitats will wander off to mine the asteroids. Robocap will be in control.

[Ian]

On this subject, I recommend reading the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Fo ... +100+years
http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Future-Sc ... the+future
http://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future- ... =abundance




(And right now I'm too lazy to type up a synopsis of these. That's just the way it is. )

[Jason]

Parody thread 0.5

[pErvinalia]

The one really stunning thing that could happen, and have gigantic consequences, is if someone finds a cure for aging. And it's starting to look like it's not impossible.

I can't imagine people taking that development smoothly. It would have to be rationed, and you would have the rich staying young, and living for ever, and the poor getting old and dying. I think that might cause a revolution. I'd be up for it.

I really think this is the key idea and the likely biggest nightmare scenario (combined with global warming and environmental destruction). It's going to get ugly when people can live healthy lives for 200 yrs or more. Unless we can colonise the moon/mars and start terraforming them, we are going to be fairly fucked by medical advances (as strange as that sounds).

[JimC]

The planet will be in mourning for the demise of its only hope, Saint Jim of Melbourne...

[mistermack]

The one really stunning thing that could happen, and have gigantic consequences, is if someone finds a cure for aging. And it's starting to look like it's not impossible.

I can't imagine people taking that development smoothly. It would have to be rationed, and you would have the rich staying young, and living for ever, and the poor getting old and dying. I think that might cause a revolution. I'd be up for it.

I really think this is the key idea and the likely biggest nightmare scenario (combined with global warming and environmental destruction). It's going to get ugly when people can live healthy lives for 200 yrs or more. Unless we can colonise the moon/mars and start terraforming them, we are going to be fairly fucked by medical advances (as strange as that sounds).

Maybe we underestimate our ability to cope though.
You could have a system where the only people who could have the anti-ageing, were people who never had any kids. But of course, the devil would be in the enforcement detail. People would find ways round it. If they had the money.

[cronus]

TSHTF with climate change, resource depletion and grey goo. Be glad it's a question you can't exactly answer, since realistic guesses leave few comforts. Won't be good.

[mistermack]

One big unknown is how science will progress, in the energy industries.

You've got a situation at the moment, where in some areas, solar energy is getting very close in cost to fossil fuels for generating electricity. 100 years is a long time. It will surely pass it, at some point, and actually cost less. Also, the technologies for storing energy will jump ahead in the next 100 years, so that the supply of wind and solar can be evened out to cover 24 hrs, 7 days a week periods.

Then you get the biggie, nuclear fusion. If that goes well, fossil fuel could end up a novelty, for historic vehicles, by 2114. The projected date for ITER to start producing fusion energy is about 2030.
It's purely for testing the technology, but they will have a good idea by then, as to whether it will be a viable industry. If it is, you could have a construction boom like the oil booms of the past going on around 2050, with huge plants giving us vast quantities of cheap electricity by 2070.
Carbon emissions would be pretty much history after that.

I would say that it's highly likely that energy will be cheap and clean and abundant, in 100 years time.

[rainbow]

Bacteria

[mistermack]

On the subject of fusion energy, if it does become viable, that will open up huge areas of the Earth as a pleasant place to live, and grow food.
As well as electricity, fusion produces a great deal of waste heat. If you put these plants in Northern Russia and Canada, you could have cities that were warm in winter, cool in summer, and with greenhouse food production located all around the plants.
If the cost of keeping warm in winter comes down, there are millions of square miles of empty land, that could easily come into use.

As well, if electricity becomes cheap, you can produce fresh water from sea water economically, and that brings millions more square miles into use, from deserts.

So very cheap energy would solve the overpopulation problems.

[cronus]

Social chaos is rising steeply even at the leading edge of climate change, and given a hundred years it is quite possible modern civilization will have perished and given way to regional very much simpler forms. Educational standards are dropping broadly across the developed world and are only semi-existent in the undeveloped. Given enough time this will bring a crisis in technological development and a reversal to a simpler form of industry and society....leading to further collapse because all the easy to retrieve carbons are gone for the most part. Hence I'd expect a two tier collapse, first to a 1900-1930s level of being, then followed rapidly (five or ten years later?) by full scale civilization collapse as the major cities empty or die out through food scarcity.

[mistermack]

Wishful thinking.