How do you see the world in 100 years?

[davidn3600]

How do you see the world in the year 2113?

Is civilization advancing or heading towards collapse? Will we have put a man on Mars? Cured cancer? Has World War III been fought? Have we moved to alternative energy sources? Will the USA still be standing? Will we have had a female president?

Some have suggested that the next 100 years may be the toughest in human history. The next century we will be battling issues involving climate change, overpopulation, increasing energy consumption with depleting resources, destruction of the ecosystem, increasing wealth disparity, etc.. Even threats by mother nature herself with the arising problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and deadly viral outbreaks.

How do you see our politics in 100 years? Would we still have 2 political parties? Will religion become less or more important in our lives? Will we have more states in the union? Will China be a superpower? Will we have moved forward on gender and racial equality?

Interesting to think about...
The United Nations estimates that we will have a population of around $10 billion by the year 2050. What makes matters worse is much of this population growth is occurring in the 3rd world where birthrates are still high. Poverty and hunger will become even bigger problems in the future. Economically the first world seems hellbent on destruction of the middle class. Not just in America, but everywhere. Wealth has become way too concentrated at the top. The top 1% own 40% of our world's total wealth! And that percentage is increasing. And if that stat isn't enough to make you sick...here's another. 50% of the world population owns how much of the world's wealth? 1%.

I am quite confident humans will still be roaming this planet in 2113. However unless we change the way we do things and the way treat each other and the planet....it may not be an advanced civilization. We may be taking a step backwards.

Just my thoughts...

[Chipper Chat]

1. American teenagers will have lost the power of speech.

All communication will be in the form of texting (even if sitting next to the person). To actually talk to another person will be considered unsocial behavior.

[davidn3600]

7. Reminds of the short story "The Pedestrian" by Ray Bradbury

[MrSlayer]

2. From the inside of a pine box most likely.

I think the best days of this country are long past. In 100 years I see the world decimated by water wars and other resource based conflict. I see the majority of the populace as slaves to the ultra rich elite that rule by fiat from their private compounds and enforce that rule with their private armies. I see the environment damaged to the point where humanity itself is threatened with extinction. Humans are too venal, greedy and selfish to be anything other than a blight to the planet. Mother Earth will get back to normal after we're gone.

[Chipper Chat]

3. Some southern states will breakaway from the US and form their own country.

It will be a theocracy - and will include the following states: Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. The ruling religion will be Baptist.

[truebluegreen]

4. Hot and barren. Oceans too acidic to support life.

[hunter]

5. Four billion surviving humans will be hating us...

... while we roast in hell and they roast every day.

wikipedia

[reformist2]

6. Everyone looking at computer screens 24/7.

[rrneck]

8. I expect another Axial Age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age

Jaspers described the Axial Age as "an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness".[11] To the extent that the Axial Age represents an in-between period, a period where old certainties had lost their validity and where new ones were still not ready, it has also been suggested that the Axial Age can be considered a historically liminal period.[12]Jaspers was particularly interested in the similarities in circumstance and thought of the Age's figures. These similarities included an engagement in the quest for human meaning[13] and the rise of a new elite class of religious leaders and thinkers in China, India and the Occident.[14] The three regions all gave birth to, and then institutionalised, a tradition of travelling scholars, who roamed from city to city to exchange ideas. These scholars were largely from extant religious traditions; in China, Confucianism and Taoism; in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism; in Persia, the religion of Zoroaster; in Canaan, Judaism; and in Greece, sophism and other classical philosophy.

In addition to Jaspers, the philosopher Eric Voegelin referred to this age as The Great Leap of Being, constituting a new spiritual awakening and a shift of perception from societal to individual values.[10] Thinkers and teachers like the Buddha, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras contributed to such awakenings which Plato would later call anamnesis, or a remembering of things forgotten.

I think it will get exceptionally ugly, and we will have to rethink the fundamental concepts of humanity and human relationships.

[defacto7]

9. I join your semi-cynicism.

As for not being an advanced civilization, we are already taking those backward steps. "We change" ... that's an understatement.

[jberryhill]

10. By living an extraordinarily long time

But I don't plan on seeing the world 100 years from now.

[Prophet 451]

11. I've been doing an RPG on this

I've actually been running a homebrew RPG set in this timeframe. Since it's a homebrew, I haven't fully fleshed out the background as yet but here's the Cliff Notes version of what I've got so far (minus the psychic powers and alien incursion).

Since there seems to be a determination among both politicians and a section of the public to not do anything about global warming, the oceans will rise and become too acidic to support life (at least, not anything we could eat). Homes will become much smaller and several cities will be completely lost as coasts creep inland. Much of teh public will chalk this up to the wrath of god. With the rising temprature, more revealing fashions will become teh norm. Due to increasing pressure on grazing land, most people eat a mostly vegetarian diet with only the rich being able to afford meat more than once a week or so. For a more complete overview of this kind of society, see the first half of Ben Elton's Blind Faith.

The US will split into two distinct nations. The South will be a theocracy ruled by the dictates of fundementalist (Southern Baptist) Christianity, combined with a view that capitalism is sacred. Contrary to expectations, they won't reinstate slavery but only because wage slavery is cheaper. No social support or unemployment insurance of any kind. If you lose your job or get sick and are poor, you die. Labour unions will be outlawed; wages will be low, capitalising on a population too desperate to turn down work even if it's for pennies. Most of the population lives in company-owned shacks. Public education is limited to basic literacy and numeracy. The North bans handguns and smoking outright, has a form of universal (albeit basic) health insurance and maintains friendly trading ties with Canada. Economy is based around service industries and IT. Public education, now federally controlled, is comparable to other first-world nations. Public housing is expanding but not fast enough to keep up with a rising population. Porn is banned in both North and South but for different reasons. The North experiments with building artificial islands to contain the growing prison population.

The Commonwealth becomes a formidable trading empire but the UK becomes very much the junior partner in that empire. The UK's health system has now become a combination of tax monies being paid to private healthcare providers. Welfare benefits continue to be cut, eventually leading a situation where only three months of benefits are provided. The Church of England is disestablished when King Charles chooses to take the title "Defender Of The FaithS" i.e. of religion and spirituality generally, rather than any specific denomination. With the loss of land due to global warming, most of the population are herded into high-population blocks akin to those from Judge Dredd, purpose-built to combine housing, work and recreational areas with as little wasted space as possible. Life expectancy is now around 88 and retirement age is 75. Retirement income is savings and work pension, state pension having been abolished (leading to a rising incidence of poverty in the elderly). Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have almost fully devolved powers with Whitehall only setting a UK-wide agenda on the broadest matters.

[canoeist52]

12. Without global cooperation, the human race is toast.

But the Earth will go on without us.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. Like any other honest person, I don't have the ability to foresee the future

not for a year, much less a century. If we look at the predictions made in the past about our own present you find great variety and almost no accuracy. They say the world would be burned out or they say it would be a golden age, but none describe the reality in which we live with anything close to accuracy.

[Cleita]

14. I see us going the way of the dinosaur.

I'm feeling very pessimistic right now. With us reaching critical population mass and not making any attempts to fix this and to take care of the damage we are doing to our planet, I believe the planet will scratch us off of her like so many fleas. Earth will go on without us.

[MineralMan]

15. I won't see it at all. My ashes will have reached

the Gulf of Mexico by then.

[Hatchling]

16. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

The federal government of the United States has ceded most of its power to private organizations and entrepreneurs.[3] Franchising, individual sovereignty, and private vehicles reign (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). Mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts while private security guards preserve the peace in sovereign, gated housing developments. Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads and all mail delivery is by hired courier. The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds where they transact tedious make-work that is, by and large, irrelevant to the dynamic society around them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

[Joseph Ledger]

17. The year 1900 predicts the year 2000:

http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/postcards-showing-year-2000-circa-1900.html

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the Moving Pavement