FourCast Podcast

I predict that within a hundred years we will begin successful time traveling experiments. I don't mean that we'll all be owning a TARDIS or a Delorean, but I believe that scientists will be beginning simple experiments with non-living object or maybe simple lifeforms (like plants or mice).

I predict that, a thousand years from now, religious lunatics will be killing people who disagree with them throughout the Solar system. Pretty much the same as now, really, only with spaceships. I guess there's your "terrorforming Mars" discussion.

We actually have the technology NOW to terraform Mars, if you're patient enough. The rings of Saturn contain way more than enough water ice and other frozen gases to give Mars a useful atmosphere, and ion thrusters can move them from Saturn to Mars fairly quickly and cheaply. Getting people to Mars is still the hard part, but a constant thrust of only 1/10 gee will let you get to Mars. Georgia Tech (the US State, not the former Russian client nation) has published a paper on such ballistics: http://www.ssdl.gatech.edu/Papers/Technical%20Papers/AAS03-667_paper.pdf

My prediction is for an extremely advanced personal computer. Two devices that can be worn on the user's forearms, sensors connected from the devices to the user's fingers. Special glasses worn by the user with connecting ear buds and a microphone. The "computer" projects a hologram in front of the user, visible only with the special glasses. The "computer" responds to the user's fingers' movements and voice commands. And, it is powered by wireless electricity (Witricity).

100 years :
- Medicine is socialized
- Networks are socialized
- No more fuel, commute is reserved to actual physical workers, everyone else works in the cloud from their three by five feet cell, and virtually travel through 3D screen walls
- Reffined sugar is banned for making people fat, as well as fried food and hot pockets
- Fusion nuclear reactors start working, but too late to solve the energy crisis : Sweden freezes to death and all cute blond dudes are history.
- 600 millions people are killed in the bangladesh-india war due to the rise of the ocean and the dissapearance of a part of Asia under sea.
- Each piece of numerical art forme is tagged by a virtual code bar that enables a true count of consuption by the public, enabeling the paiement of a salary by the Worldwide Tax Fund (the famous WTF). The media industry is now paid by the artyist, not the other way around.
- The last artificial sattelite finally goes out of order. They are just not needed anymore. People can't afford to launch them anyway.
- The cumsumption of meat is banned after the age of 18, since you are not in your growth period anymore. It is eventually replaced by soja based protein shakes, if you actually have a physical job to do. At the age of 112, Lady Paris Jackson is sentenced to 20 years in jail for breeding chicken in the backyard of Neverland and selling them to the Hollywood Jet-Set

OK, i'm gonna stop there, i'm just being silly...
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I predict in then next 20 years that plastics will be replaced by glass and as a result all our sodas will taste better.

All I'm going to say is: Evil. Penguin. Robot. Overlords.

First of all, I'm now afraid of evil penguin robot overlords. So thanks!

My prediction is thus;

by the time 2100 rolls around, the global environmental crisis will have moved past its tipping point, and we'll be seeing the erosion of South Pacific islands and various parts of Africa and Australia's coasts to rising water levels. The North Pole will be gone, as will the Antarctic Peninsula. The Amazon will have been cut in half, and western-Europe will be experiencing on and off seasons of drought similar to what Australia is dealing with now.

That being said? We will have the technology advances needed to reverse the tipping point, something that is not available to us now. Governments will subsequently be more favourable to "going green" and by 2150, the North Pole and Antarctic will find themselves BEGINNING to revive themselves.

Not very pretty, huh?

My prediction is that in the future planes will be flown by a computer, a pilot and a dog and it will be the dogs job to bite the pilot if he touches the controls.

My next prediction is that in the future, podcasts will be hosted by artificial intelligence bots waxing lyrical about what's happening in your chosen subject. You'll be able to apply themes and styles to your bot to change its look and character. You'll be able to create popular personalities with the A.I scouring the web for all information on a particular person and then attempting to re-create that personality and look for you.

Want Ashton Kutcher delivering the daily stories that matter to you? no problem.

Eventually companies will move in creating more lifelike A.I's and a website will be setup called the A.I bay dot com where people can share different versions of Ashton Kutcher.

In 50 years technology will allow for MATRIX like environments giving people the ability to literally have heaven on earth. This new technology will have infinite possibilities but 99% of the time it will be used for porn.

In another 50 to 100 years medical advances will also allow humans to not only achieve immortality but also live in perpetual youth. An interesting debate will spark regarding the morality of immortality. With the earths population going out of hand, laws will be passed to govern the usage of this new medicine. Procreation will be dictated by laws, where one has to agree to give up their life if they want to create another.

In another 500 years the man machine will become one. The human mind , consciousness will transcend the body allowing for human consciousness to be transferred between machines via the electromagnetic spectrum.. Human will finally achieve the ability to travel beyond the stars but will have to leave their physical bodies behind. People will pay big bucks to have their consciousness broadcasted into the stars hoping that some alien civilization picks them up on their interstellar radios..

in 40 years, water will be replaced with an electrolyte infused sports drink by the name of "Brawndo", resulting in the mass destruction of crops worldwide.

points awarded if you can name the movie.

but really though... in 25 years, we will prove Einstein's theory of relativity to be false and also discover "quantum processing" to not be physically possible. but not all is lost as we will have harnessed to the power of bionic computing: using organic matter as central processing units for general computing, only *just* replacing the current SOI process and carrying on moore's law just in the nick of time.

SanDisk will also release a 1 petabyte nanoSDXC memory hair for use in cybernetic memory enhancement; a solution based on bionic implants of flash memory chips in the form of hair strands to augment human memory.

(this technology would be developed 5 years prior beginning with the 50 terabyte nanoSD memory hair; a person's pre-dementia memories are extracted and loaded into a single strand of memory hair, wired into the brain via Firewire derived "plug and play" follicles. this is able to completely counteract the effect of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia by completely bypassing the wasted, organic brain and feeding directly into the brain stem to provide autonomous control over the body with the preprogrammed memory hair.)

SanDisk's new 1 petabyte unit would allow for older individuals with more vivid memories prior to the onset of dementia to have more of their lives stored for recollection in their post-dementia state of living.

The fun part is guessing what won't change.

Here is a link to predictions that were made in 1900.

HREF didn't take? (previous post)

Here's the URL:
http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm

@ Dr. Emmett Brown: _Idiocracy_

We just had 8 years of live demonstration of what it's like to have the idiots in charge, thanks.

Digital wallpaper.

Imagine every wall in your house covered with a material that feels and looks like regular wall paper, only it can display high resolution color digital images / patterns. I'm not envisioning an active (LCD, OLED) type display, but something similar to an e-book reader screen that doesn't consume power unless it is changing the display. There would be no glass or plastic "screen" like an e-book reader though - it would feel like wall paper and wouldn't be back-lit in any way.

People will be able to change the color or texture of their walls as easily as they change backgrounds on their computer monitors now.

You wouldn't ever have to paint or hang pictures on the wall anymore. Kids wouldn't have to buy posters for their rooms either. The possibilities are endless.

-MC Fisticuffs

Projectors

Soon:
2- 5 years: in smartphones, Low Res/Light 2-4 foot screen, 2-6 foot throw
5-10 years: in mobile phone/pad/tablet, High Res 6-8 foot screen 12 foot throw
10+ years: vertically projected size adjustable 3d screen

I predict that in the very near future we will get another episode of fourcastpodcast.

Then, later, we will get more episodes.

I see most people focus on technological changes, I find speculating about social and political changes more interesting.

Social:
I expect global trend from last 20 to 30 years of falling living stand and increasing wealth inequality to continue in the future, i.e. real purchasing power of 90% of global population will be going down in absolute terms while wealth of top 0.1 % will be going up. I expect gradual contraction of average life expectancy, increase of child mortality. Global demographic transition will result in increasing average age of population, which, in combination with wars and massive famines caused not buy lack of food but by income inequality, will result in global population drop.

Economic:
I expect diminishing volume of global per capita industrial output, diminishing influence of industrial capitalists and increasing influence of financial capitalists. We will see more intensive boom and bust circles driven by financial speculation. Global unemployment will continue to grow, and even in developed N. American and W. European countries will continuously be in double digits.

Political:
I expect soon China will allow majority foreign ownership in its national banks witch will be then purchased by Wall Street investment banks. That will in combination with parallel deregulation of capital flow controls result in end of Chinese industrial development and rapid fall of living standard in that country. Majority of its productive industrial assets will be sized by US and EU corporations. Russia will be dismembered into number of smaller quasi independent statelets, what still remains of its technological and industrial base will be completely destroyed. Governments of states like Venezuela, Syria, Iran, N. Korea will be ousted in coup d'etats, followed by massive economic dislocations and fall of living standards. If some of those governments actually manage to maintain hold on power then those countries will suffer attack by weapons of mass destruction killing majority of population a completely destroying those countries as unified political entity.

And finally technology:
Increasing strength on intellectual property rights will result in diminishing proliferation of new technologies. Most new technologies will be tightly controlled proprietary IP monopolies sold at enormous markups to wealthiest 10% of global population. Degrading standards of public education and income will result in generally diminishing technical knowledge even in developed nations; we will see reduction of per capita college graduates and most of those will in non technical fields. Generally governments will invest less in science, of investments that remain most will be only is specific fields that offer good possibility of commercialization after they are handed over to private corporations. Of course those corporations will patent such publicly developed technologies as private IP. Free computer programs such as Linux will be made illegal in the name of maintaining free market as it clearly represents unfair competition to proprietary software. Corporations will be granted legal rights to install backdoors and spy software in programs they sell so they can check if users are using only legal proprietary software. These programs will automatically report content of your hard disk and your activities to proprietary corporations, if they detect any illegal software or activity they will report you and your location to police and you will be arrested within a few hours. Actual trade or sharing of illegal software or media will be treated as a crime equivalent to terrorism. Method of allocating available Internet bandwidth will be adjusted to additionally favor of corporations using Internet in its business and at expense of common users.

My prediction is that withing ten years terrorists will begin to use custom crafted plagues to attack their enemies. One of these will mutate with devastating consequences and society will be changed a radically as it was during the Black Plague.

I predict that people will stop commenting on this website when they realize there won't be anymore podcasts and SJ has totally forgotten the URL to this blog.