
I work at an accelerator. My boss asked me to predict the year 2043 - raywu
http://blog.raywu.co/2043
======
klodolph
Unfortunately, it seems like this was written by someone without a science or
engineering background.

Here are some errors in content or presentation:

1\. "Concrete jungle"... assuming gravity is supplied through rotation, the
structure would be under constant tension, which makes concrete a very bad
choice of material.

2\. "Synthesized photosynthesis"... "Photosynthesis" is a process,
"synthesize" is what you do to a substance. "Artificial photosynthesis" is the
correct term.

3\. "Renewable energy, however, will never live up to its promises. Hydrogen
will be abundant from synthesized photosynthesis"... Artificial photosynthesis
is a renewable energy source, so it is contradictory to say that renewable
energy will never live up to its promises.

Here are some criticisms:

1\. "AI" is a dream of the 1960s, we now understand that the problem with AI
is that we don't understand "intelligence" with sufficient depth to describe
what makes an AI different from an ordinary computer problem. I would say
"automated mission to Europa" instead of "AI mission to Europa".

2\. I don't think wired infrastructure will go a way. We are addicted to
bandwidth and fiber is the way to get it. We will only use wireless at the
bottom two levels or so.

3\. Protein will be significantly less difficult to supply than suggested.

When I read this, I feel like I'm reading predictions of a global network of
flying zeppelins from the early 1900s. That's not to say it's avoidable. It's
not avoidable. We can only really predict what will happen in the absence of
technological revolutions.

What's really _missing_ is a description of what humans will do for a living.
White collar jobs are getting automated, and everyone graduating collage is
competing with the people who used to do what the computers do, except for the
percentage of graduates in the non-automated fields (like software
development).

~~~
cpeterso
And Antarctica is unlikely to host many servers because it has long latency,
no power generation, and an unclear legal environment.

~~~
sp332
The legal environment could be cleared up, if nations had some motivation to
do the negotiating and paperwork. Latency would matter less if lots of servers
were all hosted there :) And as for power, there's no NIBMYs to complain about
nuclear power down there!

~~~
sfall
latency matters if your users are all spread over the country, at the speed of
light it takes at least 47.33 ms, I just went to speed test and my ping was 16
ms for a server 20-30 miles away. so you could use Antarctica for mass data
storage or processing. so it would work for archiving

~~~
matt_heimer
So you're saying Antarctica would be a good fit for Amazon Glacier
([https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/](https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/))?

------
fogleman
The problem with this article is that it was clearly written ~2013. It talks
about all the current buzz words. Elon Musk. Google. 3D Printing. Tesla.
Bitcoin. In 30 years these will be distant memories or absolutely commonplace
/ commodities hardly worth mentioning.

------
debt
Put your money where your mouth is:
[http://longbets.org/](http://longbets.org/)

~~~
raywu
This is cool, never saw this before. There're some titans betting against each
other. I'm not a betting man, but I see your point.

~~~
danielharan
How confident are you that these will come to pass?

How confident are you that half of your predictions come true?

~~~
raywu
I'd like to find a way to remind myself of this piece by 2040 and see how
far/close I am. It's incredible how some technology titans from the past were
spot on with their predictions (Asimov, Tesla), and some we yet to see
(Burke).

------
001sky
Ah, the poor people and their quest for affordable protein. Even in 2043, it
should now dawn on people that the witholding of basic building blocs of life
is the most efficient way to subjugate the lowered classes. In the meanwhile,
there is a colony on the moon. TLDR: not much will change.

~~~
calbear81
The one bet I'll make in the global protein race is that people will be
consuming a lot more insects given how easy they are to farm/grow. I know some
energy bars are already using cricket flour as a base and I recently had my
first taste of some delicious insects at a street food fair and they tasted
great.

------
lando2319
One thing I may add is the analytics of ones own health. Consider this...

2024: A person wakes up to a daily health report, an email with a daily
breakdown of their health. Through the use of their smartwatches and other
wearables, all kinds of analytic data gets streamed and analyzed
automatically, blood pressure, heart rate, even analyzing a person's blood,
all gets sent through algorithms looking for potential health issues. Those
who are more affluent elect to have their data analyzed by a real doctor.
Preventative medicine arrives.

~~~
sgift
2025: Thanks to intense lobbying all healthcare providers have now access to
that data, too. All companies state that they will only use this in your best
interest.

2026: In western countries the medical wearables are declared mandatory,
because of all the benefits they provide. This is another major lobbying
breakthrough for the healthcare industry, which stated that their data models
will work much better if everyone provides data to be analyzed as input.

2027-2032: Healthcare providers start to use the mandatory data to predict
your value for society. You didn't do enough sports last week? That's bad.
Thanks to the new unified healthcare data model (UHDM) you are now demoted
into category 2, which excludes you from almost any job, because you could be
a 'risk' for prospective employers.

2033: The world is parted into category 1 and category 2 people with no way to
go back up from 2 to 1. Even living a perfect healthy life (according to the
'guidelines' provided) doesn't help as the UHDM says that any category 2
person is damaged beyond repair. Category 1 people live in constant fear of
doing anything not according to the guidelines helpfully provided by those in
charge.

------
exratione
A blind eye turned to medicine there, the most important technology. Also one
of the most likely to produce disruptive, revolutionary advances in the next
couple of decades, given the relationship between computing power and the life
sciences.

~~~
raywu
Completely overlooked. Thanks for pointing this out :)

------
Thiz
Three machines. How could you overlook the three machines that will change our
future forever?

One to extract food from the soil. One to extract water from the air. One to
extract energy from the sun.

With these three machines we will free human beings from the scarcity problem
leaving plenty of time to pursue more gratifying endeavors like terraforming
the moon.

~~~
raywu
Are you referring to James Burke's post-scarcity economy?

------
YZF
Let's look back 30 years... 1984

Since then: Transportation, air ground and sea, virtually the same. Personal
computers were there. Cell phones were there (larger, more expensive). Space
program maybe in a better state. Space shuttle. Medicine hasn't fundamentally
changed our quality of life.

What has changed? Not that much. We have progresses but not much in the way of
revolutions.

The earth's population has grown, a lot. Computing devices are more ubiquitous
and the Internet. The world has become a smaller place and people are a little
less different. The Berlin wall has fallen. 9/11\. Those of us with jobs are
working harder. Gaps are growing between rich, middle class and poor.

2044

Climate? Population? Super bugs? We are likely to be closer to a "world state"
but there's always a chance of some major war. Nuclear weapons? Major
disasters?

Technology wise we will probably get self driving cars in this time frame.
Maybe space exploration will advance but I don't believe in any major way,
perhaps the ground work would be laid for some more major shift there. Life
expectancy will probably increase somewhat. In many areas we are hitting some
system complexity limits in being able to make major progress. This has been
happening already. We'll get more bandwidth to our homes, have somewhat faster
and smaller computers, and likely new display technologies (3d/VR ...) We will
have more robotic devices around performing various functions but nothing like
Asimov's world... I think client vs. server will shift back to more client
side similar to the mainframe->PC shift...

~~~
dsuth
> Medicine hasn't fundamentally changed our quality of life.

Maybe not for you, but I think many current and former developing countries
would strongly disagree. Take a look at this:
[http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=home](http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=home)

~~~
YZF
For sure there have been a lot of changes but my intuition says progress over
the last 30 years wasn't so great. I'm pretty sure the spread and severity of
Malaria has grown. HIV. Air pollution in China.

Let's look at the link:

\- It looks at 50 years, not 30 years.

\- Very anecdotal. With regard to Mexico I'm not sure if it's better off than
it was 30 years ago. What about the drug wars?

\- Seems to equate more money with better outcome. High-rises and modern
bridges = progress.

\- "more than one billion people in extreme poverty," \- today

\- "Income per person has in fact risen in sub-Saharan Africa over that time,
and quite a bit in a few countries", inflation adjusted? Doesn't look like it
is. I was just looking at Wikipedia's Health in Kenya article: "The 2010
maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Kenya is 530, yet has been
shown to be as high as 1000 in the North Eastern Province, for example.[5]This
is compared with 413.4 in 2008 and 452.3 in 1990"

All that said, the world is hopefully moving towards a more stable population
and a larger middle class (percentage wise) but I would need to see a lot more
data before being able to say a lot more for sure about changes over the last
30 years.

------
tmzt
This is the problem with futurism, it becomes a projection of the small unit
of time we currently reside in.

Reading Brave New World in an updated edition, the preface was about the
nuclear arms race and how Huxley wished he had focused more on that as threat.
Since I was reading that in 2002 or so it seemed that elements of the book
itself were more relevant.

To solve this we would have to figure out which technologies have a future
trajectory, try to ascertain what that is, and also predict unexpected events
that would change those trajectories.

Let's say that we think electric/autonomous cars will become a majority. We
first have to figure out the factors that will drive that, whether it is
ecological consciousness, the price of fuel, simple competition between
established car markers confronting upstarts, safety concerns, etc.

We also have to consider the darker sides of human nature, and the intervening
events that may shape the years between now and then.

------
chriskottom
Most long-term predictions tend to be made by people living in pockets where
the future has already arrived, but it seems appropriate to recall Gibson's
prediction about uneven future distribution. Trying to extrapolate based on
local maxima will always produce a trendline that outpaces reality. To his
credit, I don't see any flying cars here; the author bases many of his
predictions on innovations and trends that are already to some extent or other
in progress. But in order to bring a change from possible to widespread, it
has to be commercialized first, and I struggle to see a profit motive for some
of these things, even in the next 30 years - i.e. energy consumption
monitoring by Google when electricity is cheap thanks to nuclear fission, etc.

~~~
raywu
Very insightful! Thanks for mentioning: Gibson and local maxima. I completely
agree with your view on commercialization; in terms of monitoring consumption:
I think there will be money in analytics/data that help us push forward
ubiquitous computing (even if electricity is cheap)

------
matt_heimer
I'm not sure about Google getting specifically into power monitoring. After
all they already tried that with Google PowerMeter and stopped in 2011. I
think the Nest purchase was more about getting into the internet of
thing/connected devices market and _all_ the different types of data they can
capture.

~~~
raywu
Ubiquitous computing…but I'm guessing it's the data that's important?

------
ktd
The odds that anyone will think "The Third World" is a good name for their
virtual reality seem minimal at best.

~~~
raywu
What's your take?

------
AICalico
hey Ray - just came here to say it was a brave attempt at near-casting.

About your "Third World", have you read D Suarez's "Daemon"? He develops a
darknet which is FB on steroids (to put it mildly).

Also, you didn't manage to address the issue of climate change and global
warming. I'm rather pessimistic on those counts.

~~~
raywu
I haven't, thanks for the rec! That's really cool.

Yes, I overlooked that, too (along with personal health). We probably won't
move away from coal and crude oil economies soon enough (even as we adopt more
nuclear) for earth to avoid a climate disaster in the next 30 years.

------
Ryel
Great read!

With your article in mind, what would you guess are the best investments
following the same timeline?

~~~
higherpurpose
Even if you know the _industries_ that will grow exponentially, it doesn't
guarantee stock success. I've just recently seen an episode of Haven, where
one guy gets sent into the past and tells his grandpa to "invest in the
microprocessor". I immediately thought "what does _that_ mean?! Invest in
Intel...or VIA?". What he said would is no different than saying a few years
ago "invest in smartphones".

So if I tell you nanotechnology, biotechnology and 3d printing are "the
future", in which company do you invest now?

~~~
jonmrodriguez
I don't know if you're right about this. If you know which industries will
beat the market at large, then you could make money by getting a loan and
investing it in that industry, spread across all the companies, and weighted
by doing some due diligence on the companies (basic financials, how close they
are to mass market, team, product-market fit, etc)

~~~
fixedd
Industry specific index funds?

------
devanti
history tells me that big companies like Google and Toyota are unlikely to
still be around making a huge impact. A newer, younger company is more
reasonable

~~~
raywu
I hope so, too

------
BorisMelnik
fascinating. wish this were a movie! just one question: why exactly do you
believe intercontinental travel will become more expensive?

~~~
raywu
I was always afraid that we'd have to choose a place to settle down
permanently as a kid.

It's the oil price (current combustion systems) that I think will render
traveling economically infeasible—temporarily, until new energy source gets
implemented.

------
sscgod
Great vision! Like your vision on energy usage

~~~
higherpurpose
I actually thought his energy vision was pretty off the mark. Oil won't peak
when when we'll be able to extract less than before. It will peak when
electric cars will start becoming _mainstream_ , and I expect that to happen
at least a decade earlier, with most cars "in production" being electric cars
happening about 2 decades earlier (so about 10 years from now).

He completely dismisses solar power, even though it has seen accelerated
decrease in price/Watt already, in some countries/regions even surpassing
coal-based energy in price, and it's still very early days. I also have quite
opposite views about fission. If we figure out _fusion_ , we might use _that_
quite a lot, but I really doubt everyone will use an order of magnitude more
fission reactors than we do now to power the 3d-printing and space economy.

~~~
raywu
That's a good point: peak when electric vehicles become mainstream. Is
transportation the main driver for crude oil? How about plastic?

I'd love to see solar take a dominant role in energy—the question I have is
will PV technology and geographic climate constraints push solar forward fast
enough?

Writing a response to you also made me think about energy storage. I think
that'll play a much larger role and I didn't think of it earlier.

~~~
jndetlefsen
The energy storage issue for renewable energy can be solved with today's
technology just by making the grid bigger. Think of distribution networks
spanning multiple timezones and geographic region.

For plastic i believe the recycling rate is already very high.

~~~
raywu
That's interesting, I didn't know; what are some companies betting on energy
storage?

------
bloaf
My own assertions about 2043, for what they're worth.

Space is going to continue to be a novelty as far as Joe Public is concerned.
If space-hotels exist, they will only be available to the very rich. There
will be no "Elysium" space city or prototypes thereof. Mining of non-
terrestrial resources is a somewhat unlikely possibility; if it is done, it
will be done with robots.

People will not share driver-less cars, although driver-less taxi services
will be cheaper and more convenient than the current taxi system. Driver-less
cars will cause some big shifts in entertainment. Music consumption (esp. via
radio) will no longer be the only thing you can do while traveling in a car;
radio's listener-ship will decline.

VR telecommuting is farfetched, it would definitely be possible but no one
would use it outside of small tech companies. We will be making good progress
on direct brain<->computer interfaces but they will not be mainstream yet.
Using them will require training, and the limited functionality they provide
will make that training unattractive to anyone other than technophiles or
people with disabilities. There are some who are interested in testing them in
children, but this is... unpopular.

Sensory augmentation will be entering the public consciousness. Devices like
cochlear implants will have reached parity with our natural senses, some
people will be getting elective implants.

I shudder to think what would happen if an unregulated crypto-currency became
the de-facto currency of a country or several countries. The sci-fi fan in me
thinks it would be cool, the scientists in me wants to see what would happen,
but the realist in me thinks that the results would probably be really
unstable economies that would hurt the participants.

Countries that are traditionally thought of as "3rd world" will continue to
improve, and the world as a whole will continue to grow more peaceful. The US
will continue to lose its superpower status.

3D printers will exist and be adopted beyond makers and techies. Most people
will use them to make key fobs and whacky utensils for parties since they
don't know how to do their own 3D modeling. Some companies permit their
customers to print replacement components, others attempt to remove 3D models
of their parts from the internet. Food printers are a possibility, but there
will not be much use outside of confections. The medical and industrial use of
3D printers will be somewhat common, and increasing.

Artificial meat will receive serious consideration for use in the fast food
industry; whether it takes off or not is a matter of politics, not technology.

The US's energy infrastructure will limp along for the foreseeable future.
Coal power will slowly lose out to natural gas. Solar panels will continue to
become more economically attractive. Batteries become better as well, leading
to more and more houses to go completely "off the grid." (There may be some
interest in wiring such houses for DC power only.)

Global warming will not have been addressed in any meaningful manner. There
are some buds of interest in geo-engineering as way to avoid the consequences.

There will have been no "miracle cure" discoveries for diseases like cancer,
Alzheimer's, or diabetes. Significant progress will have been made on
prevention, but the treatment options will only be slightly better.

People will not be afraid of AI, they will like that they no longer have to
wait to speak to a support person. AI will not be delivered as such, it will
come in bits and pieces; by the time people realize we are leaving too many
tasks up to computers, they will be too comfortable to want to change back.
Some examples of the "bits and pieces" we are likely to get:

Medical judgments. Doctors and pharmacists will still be busy, but they
increasingly leave diagnosis and treatment decisions up to their computers.

Literature review. Researchers use computer analysis to identify gaps or
inconsistencies in the scientific literature without having to read or
understand the literature themselves. The computer can even suggest what
procedures and statistical analysis would be best to use. Lawyers can also
discuss their case with a computer and have the computer provide relevant laws
and precedents.

~~~
Houshalter
That seems extremely conservative. Many people are predicting the singularity
around the 2040's. Even current AI is starting to revolutionize the world and
allow for robotics and automation almost everywhere. Many of the technologies
you mention already exist, it's just a matter of how quickly they will be
adopted (which is happening faster than ever
[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/technol...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/technology%20adoption%20rate%20century.png))

~~~
danoprey
It's smart to be conservative, in my opinion. Although technology is
developing at an ever faster pace many people still overestimate what will be
done within decades. There are surprisingly few accurate predictions from 30
years ago and most of them then thought we'd be a lot further than we are.

