What will the 22nd Century bring?

Adam917 · Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2012 1:47 am Post subject:

:-P

Just keeping the trend going. My predictions:

Population will drop to 1 billion (10^9) or less & those people will still be cleaning up the mess their ancestors (us and our ancestors) brought about by wreaking the planet out of pure greed & selfishness.

A resource-based economy will be the norm, with every single object used going back into the system to be used for another purpose. Money will not exist & people will not have jobs as we currently see it, but they will have duties that involve taking care of the environment (be it Earth or whatever planets we discover & visit).

Spirituality will most certainly still exist but it's unlikely to look like organised monotheistic western religions.

People will have nanomachines or even tinier things inside them to take care of whatever ailments may happen to them.

AIDS, cancer, & other present-day chronic diseases/conditions will be eliminated but that won't mean the end of epidemics & pandemics, for newer, more powerful diseases will exist.

Another plague will break out well before 2199 (possibly before the end of this Century), causing war over who gets treated & who doesn't.

People will live to well past 100 years old normally, & may never die except in extreme accidents.

Brain downloading/uploading will be done at regular intervals automatically & a human being will be able to be restored with ease should they die or have brain damage.

By the end of the 22nd Century, the entire world's population will be 'grey' demographically (in that the number of people entering retirement will far exceed the number of children being born - happening now in several countries - entire western world by 2050, all industrialised countries by 2100, world after that).

Genetic alteration of human beings is done regularly, however some people are against it (I personally am in the against camp for now, due to human selfishness) & people will be judged ever more harshly because attractiveness & desirability will be chosen, not occur by chance. I really fear this happening in my own lifetime (born 1985).

Vactrains (Discovery Channel - Extreme Engineering, 2003) & space planes will replace airlines & rail trains, allowing anyone to get from anywhere to anywhere on Earth in under 4 hours' time.

Fabbing (downloading/making physical objects with computers) will be how most non-food objects will be acquired.

Have any more?

PS: I count the centuries & millennia a bit differently, preferring this century/millennium starting at 2000 rather than 2001, & using a 0 & negative numbers for years before 1 CE. I also prefer saying 'the eighteen hundreds' for the time period 1800--1899 as opposed to 'the eighteenth Century or 1801--1900. I capitalised 'century' in the thread title because I believe use of the word in this sense is referring to a particular century in a particular calender system (proleptic Gregorian in this case) as opposed to any century or 'a period of time lasting 100 years'...