writercises | FILL: What's coming? (Reply)

Original posting 5 February 2011

Kind of fun. Over here http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/30/making-predictions-for-the-year-2030/
there's a list of predictions for the Year 2030, including:

1. automatic translators
2. life expectancy of 150 years
3. only 2% of the world's population will live in extreme poverty
4. greenhouse skyscrapers in cities will produce food
5. driverless cars commonplace
6. 18 cities over 20 million, New York the 16th largest city.
7. Automated flying drones common transport
8. Space tourism common, 40,000 people working in orbit
9. Computer animated actors replace most live actors
10. China will have 250 cities with over 1 million inhabitants
11. Large number of people with robot lovers

The discussion over there includes commentary on these. But what do you think? Are these realistic? That's ... 19 years from now. And, of course, what did they forget?

Hum, 20 years? What happened in the last 20 years? What's the big swingers -- money, population, resources, technology... I'm almost willing to bet that we'll have at least one world-wide epidemic in that time span. We haven't really had one, but we've certainly got the capability to have one (sure, sure, we had a little influenza, this and that, but let's have a real killer, one that wipes out big chunks). Something to think about...

What's your prediction? Something good, something bad, something borrowed, something blue?