
Ask HN: What will the future look like? - ma2rten
I think the HN crowd is among the smartest on this planet. So, I am very interested 
how you see the future. Maybe collectively we can make fairly accurate predictions. At least it should be interesting.<p>I don&#x27;t really want to make this a &quot;What will the world be like in X years?&quot; type of question, because experience teaches those predictions are never really accurate. Instead I&#x27;d like to leave the time frame open ended and just ask you what developments you see now and how think they will impact our world in the future.<p>I will give one prediction as an example:<p>There will be a big breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Computers will be able to take over most jobs, starting with truck drivers and taxi driver (thanks to Google), then call center agents and finally everything. People will only work when they need to.
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IsaacL
I have a long blog post planned covering 5 future scenarios. This thread would
be a good place to test-drive an MVP...

Scenario 1 is exponential progress - the Singularity which Ray Kurzweil thinks
is inevitable and which Eliezer Yudkowsky is trying to bring about. Progress
feeds into progress until we enter technology heaven.

Scenario 2 is steady progress - the worldview of TED talks and most of Silicon
Valley. We gradually solve social and technological problems, and the future
is an improved version of the present.

Scenario 3 is stagnation. We reach a point where our ingenuity and resources
are only sufficient to maintain our current level of civilisation. Peter Thiel
might be a proponent of this worldview. If you think "business as usual" is
taking us nowhere fast, you're likely more interested in out there ideas such
as seasteading, charter cities and bitcoin which promise to open up new vistas
of innovation.

Scenario 4 is steady decline. Dwindling resources lead to fraying social
structures which lead to cascading problems - new problems arise faster than
we can deal with them. It's not a popular viewpoint, but it's happened to many
complex societies in history. Note that if scenario 2 tends to be a liberal
viewpoint, and scenario 3 tends to be a somewhat libertarian viewpoint, then
scenario 4 is probably a traditionalist conservative viewpoint (conservatism
as in Edmund Burke, not George Bush).

Scenario 5 is sudden collapse: everything appears to be going fine until
suddenly we're all killed by global warming/nuclear war/asteroids/etc.
Surprisingly, scenario 5 is more popular than scenario 4, usually because
certain groups believe they will live out the apocalypse and get to see the
rest of decadent society destroyed.

~~~
ma2rten
Seems like you enumerated the possibilities, but I guess you'd also have to
ask:

1\. For whom? Is the divide between poor and rich people getting smaller or
bigger? Is the divide between poor and rich countries getting bigger or
smaller? Will there be countries?

2\. What is getting better/worse? Will people be richer in the future? If they
are richer, will they be happier?

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arkokoley
There will be a breakthrough in education. MOOCs will replace physical text
books and a greater part of studying and learning will take place at home,
giving the teacher the oppertunity to discuss things in greater detail.
International level books and Lectures will be easily available to students
and teachers everywhere, especially in rural regions, bringing the students
from there at par with other students from cities.

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doubt_me
Hopefully a replacement for the united nations will come forth and abolish the
super powers control over everything.

Second prediction: Hacking will become such a huge problem that fighting it
will force everyone into a locked down internet with computers you can't fix
or open up without breaking and new standards will be written to replace
innovation with an illusion of innovation. Apple Mac Pros are just the start

Third prediction: New STDs?

~~~
thenomad
No need for new STDs, the patch releases for current STDs are scary enough.

For example, Gonorrhea isn't really a serious threat right now, but the steady
growth of antibiotic-resistant Gonorrhea is a different matter. Back to the
fun days of inadequately-protected sex giving you infertility, arthritis and
blindness...

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AnSyn
Optimistically, 5 years from now: the list of states to follow Nevada's lead
in allowing autonomous driving cars will grow to more than half. Additionally,
Europe and other parts of the world begin to allow such vehicles.

Newspapers like Financial Times, NYTimes, WSJ, begin to realize
paywalls/subscriptions are not necessarily the best business models. Beginning
the process of realizing the old pay model does not work. While at the same
time more musicians, small film projects, books get funded by sites like
Rockethub, Kickstarter, Indiegogo. Adding to further weight against the old
pay model of the entire content creation industry.

Part pessimistic, but will add this into optimistic as well. Already companies
like JCPenney's, Macy's etc are facing the competition of not just Walmarts,
Targets, but also Amazon and online stores. Optimistic being that stores
closings will lead to creative destruction and reinvention of malls across the
US. The reinvention wouldn't be for a bit longer however.

15 years: Malls facing near extinction will need to reinvent themselves. As
city greening like in the Bronx, Philly and other cities around the world are
currently in their infancy, - Malls are converted to have roof top gardens and
become indoor parks for people to be able to exercise with dogs etc, during
heat waves, strong winter snaps etc. The heat wave aspect will be especially
important as climate change becomes more and more problematic.

Autonomous buses replace older buses which require a driver. Cities like
Copenhagen, Portland, Philadelphia begin experimenting with "fast lanes" for
autonomous buses, which gives them the entirety of street use of selected
roadways. Autonomous cars have a quarter of the market and have over thrown
the taxi industry.

25 years: Autonomous hold 100% of the market. Robotics are heavily used
through the households. Households themselves evolve due to climate change,
fresh water issues, and stress on waste management/sewage systems. 100% water
recycling, reusing, etc per every household. Houses too will compost like how
we recycle. Indoor gardening and outdoor gardening will be used more widely
with robotics making gardening easier.

With the 3D printer revolution in full swing, and recycle/reuse everything
rule in practice, it'll become rare that anything ends up in the trash stream.
Material that will not be reused will be recycled and broken down into raw
material form for 3D printers etc. Reused products will make thrift stores
more in fashion, possibly taking over big box stores empty from places like
JCPenney's, Bestbuys, etc going under.

3D printing, will take this role. Both low-cost and luxury. Both in big
buildings and small. Skyfarms will be easy and cheap to build with such large
3D printers. Some skyfarms will take the role of organic/none-gmo, with
locality in focus. Other skyfarms will take the role of massively growing gmo
crops year round in a mass-controlled environment. Excess of the crops will be
stored for the future, as climate change proves more costly regarding
droughts...like the one the the US has been going through.

3D printers ability to build large infrastructure will show in bridges and
high speed railroads/maglev lines. Particularly in the US - the dream of
Boston to DC in an hour or less. Making the east cost a whole lot closer, with
Erie, PA, and Buffalo NY becoming suburbs of cities like Philly and NYC, which
practically become neighborhoods to one another. High speed rail emerges to
compete with autonomous vehicles by providing 300mph or more travel speeds.
Cars too will get faster with better technology and be able to go just as
fast. Airlines return to Concorde style flights in order to make flying
relevant.

50-70yrs: But eventually with high speed rails and cars that can go a whole
shit ton faster, airlines only advantage is the oceans. The new concord
flights are re-designed for international flights, but limited as underwater
high speed trains connect the North America to Europe, which re-occurs with
various spots throughout the world, some projects more challenging than
others, but still achievable. I like to think of this as limited to a few
instances, but I could see with 3D printing that later on these projects
emerge to connect heavy island areas like the Caribbean, Asian Pacific, etc. I
fear for what this might do to the marine life. None the less airlines are
forced to reinvent themselves with private spacecraft, space tourism really
enters into a new era as it becomes available to the masses and space hotels
emerge, with space study laboratories sponsored by partnerships of
Universities competing against other partnerships. The same thing emerges on
the Moon, with laboratories first obviously, but then the emergence of hotels,
and university partnerships laboratories. Towns emerge, mining already in
process by this time.

100 years from:

Laboratories, hotels, towns, mining etc on Mars and possibly there their
moons.

Mining occurring throughout the solar system.

All the while, with this 100 years of climate change, turning us more fully
aware of our planet Earth. By now we've already have acted within the first 20
or so years. Wind power, solar power, conservation, recycling, reusing and
composting, growing locally while also growing on mass in skyfarms, and
possibly beginning to mine landfills for things that can be recycling. Science
ideally comes up with ways to help the oceans, capture carbon, and slow down
the extinction rate. The understanding of fixing the problems will help us
better understand terraforming planets like Mars down in the next 100 years
after.

Pessimistically: In short, mass job losses around the world due to these
emerging technologies will cause upheaval and lead to radicalism, possibly
war. I don't think we'll wipe ourselves out, but we can very well put
ourselves back by a few centuries. Though..optimistically...I feel some
knowledge will exist past such a war that will allow us to speedily catch back
up to where we should be. Still, such a global conflict is unnecessary, as
there are ways to help those displaced by technologies - without sending them
to the battlefields. Also relating to this..such a war could put us behind in
trying to fix key parts of the climate problem, and extinction problem -
possibly missing an important prevention of an extinction that may end up
proving to be a keystone species that sparks off a domino effect killing the
rest of us in the process. I suspect bees as the keystone species. But then
again..maybe such a war would cause a population drop off in humanity that
would help radically cut carbons from the environment. While we try to regain
our balance, we find it harder to deal with climate change and to get to where
we were - thus taking longer and thus offsetting the carbon amounts in the
atmosphere for longer helping soften the effects for the next century. But
yea..such a war would still suck and be unnecessary.

~~~
ma2rten
I am hoping that war will become a thing of the past. Hopefully in the future
we will have a better understanding of and when conflicts develop - and how to
resolve them. Also communication between cultures will improve (more people
speak English, machine translation, more direct communication though the
internet) and cultures will become more similar.

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rooshdi
Planets will be the new nations, teleportation will be the new transportation,
and engineers will still be in demand.

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kabisote
Religion will be banned.

