In twenty years (provided the planet is ok and we regained some of our financial bearings):
* Leslie Nielsen, Betty White, Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Stiller, Sidney Poitier, Tony Bennett, Roger Moore, Lauren Bacall, and Adam West will all be over 100 years old.
* Burt Reynolds, Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, Mary Tyler Moore, James Earl Jones, Clint Eastwood, will all be pushing 100 years old.
* Harrison Ford will be over 80 years old, as will George Lucas.
* Bruce Willis will be over 70 years old.
* The Brat Pack will all be in their 60s, including unofficial member Johnny Depp.
* Christian Bale will be in his 50s.
* Dakota Fanning will already be considered "too old."
* Superman will be pushing 90 -- and DC Comics may very well not own the copyright to him anymore.
* A digital "reader" will most likely be perfected in a number of styles to fit a number of needs, including book, comic book, and newspaper.
* Paper books and other reading materials will still be purchased -- by "paper aficionados" (similar to vinyl record collectors).
* All the DVDs you own right now will be obsolete, but if you're lucky you will still have a machine that can play them.
* It will be far more common for Americans to live in other countries; they will look at what country to emigrate to the way they look for what state to live in now. South America will probably be a big choice, especially since it will be likely it will have combined with North America at some point (at least in terms of trading and currency).
* The traditional 9-to-5 office environment will be the exception, not the rule. Company-provided health care will be the exception, not the rule. Independent contractors will be the norm.
* Scientists will have probably found a way to fuck with time-travel by that point. It may not be time-travel as we think of it from the movies we watch; but I have no doubt in my mind that this frontier will be breached.
* The most popular video games will be "virtual lives" where you can "experience" the life of a certain type of person. This will be a complete, 360-degree experience. Celebrities will also be able to license out their lives for others to play.
* Cures/solutions to the major causes of death -- Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, AIDS -- will be found. This will have a dramatic impact on life-expectancy, the ramifications of which won't be fully experienced for another twenty years.
* The wedge driven between the secular and religious sectors of the world will be extremely deep. Even deeper than now. In general, I think we will get increasingly secular, to the point where following traditional religions will be discouraged by the status quo as superstitious and potentially divisive. Paradoxically, this movement will make the religious hold on to their faiths even deeper, making them feel persecuted. I think it will be a situation where there will be a pronounced lack of sensitivity for the beliefs of others on one side, and an inflamed sense of paranoia and defensiveness on the other. Good times.
* Computer animation/imaging will be perfected to the point where for some high-budget blockbuster movies there is really no need to build sets, build props, or even have the actors move a whole lot. More likely, their images and unique movements will be meticulously scanned and inputted into the film. We have a little of this now -- but this will be the norm, and with far better imaging.
* "60" will be the new "30."
* Comic books will be mostly digital and have to incorporate some degree of both movement and sound. "Voice casting" for comic books will be a regular occurrence.
* In general, listening to books will be preferred to reading them by the mass market.
* Movie players/recorders, cable box, computer, video game system, music player, TV will all come in one unit -- the Entertainment Unit. It will be a thin plasma-type screen plus a modestly-sized hard drive/keyboard.
* By the same token, we will have a convenient all-in-one slim phone/music player/movie player/computer/camera/PDA. I realize we sort of have this with the new iPhone, but this will be the norm for everyone, and far more advanced. You could just own this device and not need a laptop.
Wow, I could go on like this all day. How did I get on this futurist kick? I need a separate blog for this.
And by "twenty years" -- with the exception of the celebrity ages -- I mean more like "10-12."
Eh, give me a cure for Alzheimer's and a collapsible video phone like in Earth : Final Conflict and I'll be good.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think a lot of these things will come to pass sooner than we might think.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, we never did get our flying cars.
All the DVDs you own right now will be obsolete, but if you're lucky you will still have a machine that can play them.
ReplyDeleteConsidering I still have my atari 2600 and plan on keeping my PS2 for just as long I'll probably still have something to play my DVDs.
I mean honestly, 20 years isn't THAT long of a time. I still have VHS tapes that are that old. for the longest time there was nothing better than popping in my copy of Star Trek II that I taped off tv. It had extra scenes that weren't in the theatrical release!
I'm just waiting for them to unfreeze a mammoth and clone it.
ReplyDelete, Paper books and other reading materials will still be purchased -- by "paper aficionados,
ReplyDeletenop only at USA, the rest of the world, not everyone can afford Those.
, The most popular video games will be "virtual lives" where you can "experience" the life of a certain type of person. This will be a complete, 360-degree experience. Celebrities will also be able to license out their lives for others to play,
No, we already have that game second life and a lot of games you can be whatever you want lawyers, doctors, gardeners even a cooking Mana, no the future of the games are more like the wii and online game but still the people play tetris and Pacman a lot and those games are already 20 years old.
and pokemon is 10 years old already.
, Comic books will be mostly digital and have to incorporate some degree of both movement and sound. "Voice casting" for comic books will be a regular occurrence, In the 90s a lot tried with webcomics that and failed,
or you remember those cds that came with marvel comic books in the mid-late 90´s with a cyber comics with sound and moving panels.
comics to comics and animation to animation.
, The wedge driven between the secular and religious sectors of the world will be extremely deep. Even deeper than now. In general, I think we will get increasingly secular, to the point where following traditional religions will be discouraged by the status quo as superstitious and potentially divisive. Paradoxically, this movement will make the religious hold on to their faiths even deeper, making them feel persecuted. I think it will be a situation where there will be a pronounced lack of sensitivity for the beliefs of others on one side, and an inflamed sense of paranoia and defensiveness on the other. Good times.,
Again only USA
Jmaes,
ReplyDeleteActually, They did invent a flying car over 20 years ago. A successor to Merlin, which was more of a two-man mini-saucer. They were both more novelty than practical I assume.
First, I am sure you are aware that South America is a continent and not a country.
ReplyDeleteSecond, i am not so sure I agree with your thesis here. Simply because there is a grwoing global economic middle class does not mean the old tribalism will fall by the wayside. It's too ingrained in our genes and institutionalized in our public dialog and institutions.
To the extent that corporate hegemony over our governments increases it may be possible that people will work wherever the jobs are, but if the jobs are in China or an unstable region, people will still likely be less inclined to move there.
Also, within 50 years we will have universal government health care. It's the only system that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteAssuming Bone marrow transplant guy is not a fluke we may have a way to cure AIDS now. Hopefully not through transplants only.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I believe Chris Rock was correct when he commented that the money is in the medicine and that modern medicine appears to be geared toward living with problems rather than curing them. Eventually people will be complaining saying "my AIDS be acting up."
No offense, but do you have any reasons to presume any of those things will come to pass, or are you just goofing around?
ReplyDeleteSome of them seem likely, others sound like one of those 1950's serials about how we'll all be living on the moon in 10 years.
That is an awesome. Some I don't fully agree with, but a whole lot I do. I wanna list SO much, but I'm afraid it'd be too cluttered with randomness. I just gotta breathe and let it go. Heh! It's fantastic to see I'm not the only dreamer that goes binge-thinking.
ReplyDeletei agree with many of your assessments, but feel like you are presenting things through rose colored glasses.
ReplyDeletein 20 years 95% of the population will live in highly urban environments and conflict over water rights will make oil wars seem like fighting wars with clubs and fists.
and frank miller's give me liberty will be read by so many trying to get rid of rabid localism.
Comics with movement and sound are a cartooooooon. Comics without movement or sound will do just fine in the digital era, just as television did not kill theatre - or books or even movies. Comics that try to just dabble with cartoon gimmicks will remain a fringe art form that never develops a significant fanbase.
ReplyDeleteThe social forces keeping North America and South America separate will continue for easily the next couple of decades. We’ll see a world government and world currency before a western hemisphere one.
America will remain religious happy and the parts that aren’t organized will continue its fascination with new age/wiccan/pagan stuff. Actually, in 20 years, we’ll be back in one of those Christian religious revival periods again, though you are correct that the percentage of the population it converts won’t be as high as last time, as it drops a bit every time. Atheism will remain unfashionable in the States.
“Be A Celebrity Virtual Lives” video games will be popular, but only one of the most popular. Think Sims versus Halo or WOW. Of course, since they’ll be video games using licenses, most of the Virtual Lives will be terrible.
Going back in time will remain impossible, although some FTL options will become practical as engineers figure out ways to industrial effects we already know. So, in twenty years, we’ll have gotten rid of cell lag on our phones.
Entertaining. Thanks, Val.
I've only presented the relatively positive stuff here; believe me, there would be a tremendous amount of negatives to trend out as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm not goofing around; I pretty much stand by every prediction. I base it on current events, reading various trending websites/futurist theories, and my own intuition.
The only question is whether twenty years is too long a time for some of this stuff.
I think the "entertainment unit" technology would be coming down the pike within five years, ditto for "all-in-one-phone-computer." The death of mainstream paper I see taking at least 20 years to fully happen, but I think newspapers will for the most part tank out within ten, if not sooner.
I love doing this trending/predicting stuff, but the more I get into it, I find the more people I make extremely angry. Not that people are getting angry here, but in the past I've gotten people really mad, especially if things actually turn out the way that I say. That's why I think I need a separate blog that I update every now and again to just dump this stuff in.
I'm not expecting any cures. There is no long term money in cures. The money is in treatments and preventive supplements that have to be taken every day for life. A long, long expensive life.
ReplyDeleteAND MAYBE, just MAYBE,
ReplyDeleteI will have the right to get married.
Val,
ReplyDeleteI've tried many times to explain to friends and family that Cable TV (not tv, but actually paying for cable) will be obsolete within 10 years as everyone will switch to internet enabled TV's (via Wi-fi) so the TV as center of the family room will exist, but you'll use the remote to log onto ABC.com and choose a specific show. Channel surfing will cease to exist, cable will be gone, tv shows will be choosen on demand, and only an internet connection will be needed in the home.
Anyway..........
Often when I explain this theory to people they get extremely upset and downright angry. I think their anger comes from suggesting they won't be able to watch Lost or something.
I think when you challenge a cherished assumption or habitual activity people just react really irrationally. We fear change after all.
http://tinyurl.com/6cw3hd
ReplyDeletebut mind you, this is going to be a bare-bones, stripped down blog with no schedule. I might post 20 items in one day, then not go back for two weeks. It's just to get this trendingness out of my system.
I think my favorite thing about futurists is how often they're wrong.
ReplyDeleteNobody living in the 1980s could have predicted what the society of today would be like, not even the relatively meaningless ephemera mentioned here (the core of the way the world is run has very little to do with what gadgets are currently popular). By the same token, the actuality of twenty years from now will likely include things we haven't yet even imagined.
To paraphrase Lennon, history is what happens while you're making other plans.
Movie players/recorders, cable box, computer, video game system, music player, TV will all come in one unit -- the Entertainment Unit. It will be a thin plasma-type screen plus a modestly-sized hard drive/keyboard.
ReplyDeleteI'm going with a yes and no here. Some video game makers in the 80s (like coleco and atari) predicted this trend of all in one computer/video game system 20 years ago. Really when you think about it the technology has always been there but consumers have never bought into it. The Sega dreamcast had a pretty good setup for web browsing, so did Microsoft's web-tv thingy they had going like 8 years ago. For some reason people just don't want to sit on their couch in the living room and surf the web. TV on the computer has been available for the last 8 or 9 years and over the last 5 years microsoft pushed it's media center pretty hard but it's still a fringe property in the home media market.
I don't think we'll see a true integration between the tv the computer and the video game console until we see a very big change in both internet and computer interface. Things like voice recognition (something that's also been available for about 10 years but never caught on) and vr/3d interface (like a wii-mote) need to become the norm first. Once those become your primary means of interfacing with the computer and the internet people will be able to do it comfortably from their couch. As long as we're using a keyboard and mouse I don't think any big leaps will happen. And when you think about the evolution of the internet and how much of it is based on the same protocols from 15 years ago I don't know how much change we can really expect in 20 years.
Also the idea that some all in one entertainment box will come bundled with a monitor seems like a sort of backwards logic. Lets say I'm rich I have a 80 inch matrix/plasma super 1,116,400 dpi hi def monitor why would I want the same 24 inch monitor some poor sap that eats government space cheese has?
The last problem with this set up is who makes it? am I going to buy an X-box tv that's completley incompatible with my buddy's sony tv? And does ABC or lets say espn.com start providing content that only works on the "disney home entertainment center"? I think 20 years into he future the lines between all the differnt forms of home entertainment will be blurred far more than they are now (we're already seeing that with things like x-box live, and the streaming netflix box), but stong corporate competition and Moore's law will almost assure us we might never see a single highly intergrated all in one home entertainment center that has the kind of market share something like windows or formats like "CD" or "vhs" have.
that was fun, I like this thread!
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you with respect to social trends, but predicting technological trends 20 years or less in the future can be fairly accurate. The timing may be off, but you can look at what technologies are progressing or are exiting research and going into development. It has to be based upon knowledge and the ability to ask the right questions.
Obviously there may be technological problems to overcome to enable usable versions of some technologies.
What do you think we have today that was not predicted 20 years ago?
you may find the 1999 AD videos from teh 1960's interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO58SGiYwwo
Some are pretty close in concept, if a little off in execution.
Oh, wow! Shannon Smith, right on the nose of what I was thinking. Pharmaceuticals will never come out with cures. When was the last time you saw a cure to anything. All we see at best is a vaccine. And, what's more profitable, scheduled doses of vaccine throughout someones life, or one shot. If you create a cure, people will never get a vaccine. They'll just get it if they become sick. Plus, if there is cures...then disease will be lowered, if not nigh diminished. No profit in that.
ReplyDeleteOh, wow! Shannon Smith, right on the nose of what I was thinking. Pharmaceuticals will never come out with cures. When was the last time you saw a cure to anything.
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong here, but in the history of mankind we've never actually cured a virus, any kind of virus, have we? That just might be one of those things that's not going to be possible. Vaccines galore could reduce these diseases until they're a think of the past, but some things just might not ever be "cureable"
predictions for 1999 from the 60s are predictions made between 29 and 40 years in the future. less than 20 years is not so great a leap.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with you about "audio books". Text oriented people will read things on Data Pads or god old paper; the type of people that would listen to a book will watch TV/movies instead.
ReplyDeleteYou should pick up "Paris in the 20th Century" by Jules Verne and "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurweil if you to see futurists past and present.
'Scientists will have probably found a way to fuck with time-travel by that point. It may not be time-travel as we think of it from the movies we watch; but I have no doubt in my mind that this frontier will be breached.'
ReplyDeleteIt's currently within our abilities to build a time machine. However, such a machine would prohibitively expensive in energy terms. Energy requirements - even with improvements in efficiency - have outpaced energy production improvements for at least the last hundred years, so we're not likely to see a breakthrough which changes this. Too, such a time machine would only allow travel from the future to a time or place after the machine was constructed (it would need to remain on at all times).
And, as was noted above, a moving comic is animation, which we already have (even the cheap kind). I expect that motionless cartoons have a long future yet ahead of them. Done well, they're too efficient to die.
I also agree that the United States will have public universal health care within half a century. In that time frame, we'll also certainly have permanent settlements on worlds other than Earth. (Little known fact: since the 1970s, we have possessed the technology necessary for interstellar flight within a single lifetime. Only a lack of will has held us back).
An addendum to my previous post: I'm amazed how scientifically illiterate are even persons with what's considered a solid scientific education.
ReplyDeleteI've asked around here at the university over the last week, and not one physics major in ten could tell me why the light of incandescent and fluorescent lamps look different. (Many of those who could say also commented that most of the common complaints about fluorescent bulbs are well-founded, but generally ignored.)
Not one in thirty could say which of the inner planets has the third-highest gravity (Mercury, which is smaller, but much denser, than Mars).
Not one who hadn't taken the astronomy elective knew that the universe has no center, and the Big Bang didn't involve expansion from a particular point.
And these were only the actual physics majors. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the biology majors dodn't know how an internal combustion engine works, that the idea of force has been abandoned by modern physics (actually, I should've asked the physics majors about that one), or that we have the ability to go to the stars (that one, too).
How much do you think an artist knows? An accountant? An ethnic studies major (they don't actually qualify as ethnologists, which suggests to me that the major is 'dippy,' as Richard Feynman would've put it)?
How much do you understand of the world around you? How much do you actually realize you don't understand? How much of what a biologist knows would utterly surprise you? A physicist? A cosmologist?
The average person knows, even in exceptionally general terms, very little of 20th Century science, let alone 21st. The average well-informed person knows very little of the vast amounts we've learned since landing on the moon.
Our understanding of physics, cosmology, and biology advances almost as quickly as do computers. Imagine that. As much as your computer has advanced in the last ten years, medical, physical, cosmological science has advanced that much, too.
And nobody knows. And almost nobody cares.
I saw an expensively-made show the other day, the writers of which didn't seem to understand even early 19th Century physics. 19th Century. They knew less than an educated person of the 1700s.
What a world.
And I'll be dead dead dead and burning in Hell! Woo hoo! I can't wait to feel that brimstone sting!
ReplyDelete"South America will probably be a big choice, especially since it will be likely it will have combined with North America at some point (at least in terms of trading and currency)."
ReplyDeleteOnly if the bad guys win!
South America is actually going more and more toward the left. People in those countries are rejecting the free trade/monetarist policies that the US has been trying to push on them (usually violently) during the past 50-60 years.
Just this year, the attempted US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia failed, and in January the Bolivians will be voting on a constitution that may outlaw the trading/currency changes you mentioned. Fernando Lugo was just elected in Paraguay on similar policies, and countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Chile have already started working on a South American union to resist US interference in their economies and politics.
- Dissembly