Make a prediction about the far future.

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Make a prediction about the far future.--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), November 13, 2000

Answers

By 2050, human population will have stabilized, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief: 10 billion people are quite enough, at least if they are to attain European standard of living. By 2100, there are still 10 billion people. Largely the same ones. This causes some worry. By 2150, the majority of people are old and largely helpless. The sects and outcasts that have continued to breed, on the fringes of civilization, have no interest in preserving the lives of the old vegetables. Or indeed much else of the old civilization. By 2200, horsebowmen ride cautiously around the ruined cities. There may still be metal warriors left there, and other creatures of legend...

-- Magnus Itland (itlandm@netcom.no), November 17, 2000.

We will elect a president.

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), November 19, 2000.

Fun one, Al! My predictions:

We will discover the limits of empirical science. In health sciense, life expectancy will plateau at 90; healthy life expectancy will plateau at 75. New antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases will force us to return to the hygienic norms of the early 20th century and a hospital stay will again be as risky as it was 80 years ago.

In microtechnology, great leaps forward in computer and communications technology will continue, but the same plateau effect as in the health care field will diminish the impact of those leaps on the culture. For example, you will be able to uplink to a satellite from a device the same size as your current cell phone, but you will find that you could reach most of the people that you want to talk to on your then-outdated cell phone. Your computer will be able to do a teraflop, but downloading Al's 23 kilobyte diary entry will still take five minutes because of traffic on the Web.

Same plateau in the field of new energy-efficient transportation. Your car that gets 120 miles to the gallon will still need constant adjusting to meet emissions standards when it is six years old. Breakthrough fuel cell technology will be found to pump pure CO2 into the atmosphere -- a pollutant by then considered as dangerous as volatile organic compounds are today.

There will be some steps backward. The growing population will make housing and food more and more expensive. Eventually, the Malthusian limit will be reached and even middle class people will be susceptible to famine or to homelessness.

The good things will be unchaged. Families will still take care of each other. Parents will take pride in their children. Occasionally, great acts of heroism by a few idealists will restore everybody's sense that there is hope for the future.

-- Tom Dean (tsd@ogk.com), November 20, 2000.


In the far future I forsee the situation that for the biggest majority man will continue to act as always, not having learned from history. Women will put up with men for some unknown reason.

-- Denver doug (ionoi@webtv.net), November 22, 2000.

School shootings will subside while building crashings via air will increase.

-- Adam Muller (nrhythm@hotmail.com), January 08, 2002.


I predict that at some point in the near future that there will be 100 or more suicide boomers will detanate all at once in different states at the same time. May 6,2002

-- Patricia Janice Horn (pathorn50@msn.com), May 06, 2002.

In about 50 years time the US will no longer be top dog. It would be a multipolar world of the EU, China and the US.

There will be more revolutions and revolts and the IMF WB and WTO will be nasty names in history.

In the mean time there will be more wars as the US kicks small countries around claiming it is doing it for humanity and democracy etc, despite a bomb not having any morality nor democratic understandings.

-- richard stephens (smurf1917@aol.com), December 30, 2002.


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