You never really know what could potentially happen that will turn the universe on its head in an instant: think about things like 9/11 and the Covid-19 pandemic…
Let’s hear from AskReddit users about the radical societal changes that will happen in their lifetimes.
1. Scary stuff.
“The inability to tell real videos and pictures from Deep Fakes.
It’s going to be fun when CCTV footage can’t be verified as real because a video of anyone doing anything can be generated.”
2. Good news.
“Here’s some good ones: a vaccine against cancers, Mars colonization, environmentally friendly and safe ways to produce electricity that will bring energy security to all, electromagnetically pro-pulsed trains for faster travel!
The world is what you make it, see the good in everything, everyday.”
3. In big trouble.
“Abandonment or moving of major cities away from the coast line.
New Orleans is not in a good place if the mean sea level goes up a few feet.
Venice may disappear.”
4. Alternatives.
“A shift away from traditional meat for protein needs and a move towards alternatives that aren’t as environmentally detrimental, specifically focused on insects.”
5. Desperate times.
“Climate change will create huge unstoppable waves of desperate immigrants … some from nations we now think of as “first world.” For example, if the gulf stream shifts or fails, Northern Europe is totally screwed, will have the climate of Iceland.
All these refugees will cause a backlash in the remaining stable nations, which will turn to dictators and military rule in an effort to control the chaos.
Check out the book “Reverse Lightning” sometime.”
6. Trippy.
“The comprehensive family tree of humanity.
Genealogists have been working on this for a while, at least individually, but AI and genetics should be work it out much more accurately and push the boundaries to the realm of archeology, and going forward its a byproduct of digital history.
We are in an era of information and there exists a huge amount of information about everybody, but there also is currently a gaping hole in the storing and cataloging of information that will be filled in time as we learn how to manage digital history.
When my generation was young, we learned about historical figures and immediate relatives within a few generations, analog history, because its all there is, there aren’t a lot of records of what happened that tell us much.
Going forward there will be a ton of information about everyone that lived and there will be absolutely no ambiguity, all links known, everything remembered, digital history. 1000 years from now there will be 30 generations of information about everybody, everyone will know what all of there ancestors were like, waaaay into the past.
There will be a comprehensive digital family tree of humanity; everybody alive and everybody ever known to have lived. It is a real thing. It is a difficult, but solvable problem.
History will have such different meaning in the future.”
7. Can’t avoid it.
“Climate change.
Just so you know, one of the three biggest rivers in the world is gone due to heat waves in China.”
8. Virtual world.
“A mass exodus from the physical workplace to the virtual. There are so few things we can’t do online already, why continue burning mass amounts of fossil fuels for unnecessary things?
Movement toward nuclear and solar energies for all. Densely populated urban areas will continue to grow as outliers move inward toward reliable resource availability. Nature will fill in our gaps. If done right, some of us stand a chance.”
9. Wild stuff.
“Have you seen the stuff that Boston Dynamics robots can do now? Mobility is no longer a problem. Artificial intelligence that doesn’t take over the world is the next hurdle.
I wonder if people in the advanced robotics community actually have conversations about the number of laws that cannot be broken by robots. Ever seen the movie “I, Robot”?”
10. The great decrease.
“Massive population decrease.
Ecosystems work when the different animal and plant populations are relatively steady and constant (birth rate = d**th rate, more or less).
Occasionally, there is evidence of a certain population finding an ecological niche, allowing the population to skyrocket due to abundance of resources and/or lack of predators. This causes the population to increase parabolically (birth rate>death rate).
It’s happening with the anacondas in Florida; a new population was introduced and dominated the food chain there. Now it’s been years and there’s a ton of them, but they are actively destroying the ecosystem of the Everglades and it’s causing a lot of problems with the other species.
Every time in history when this happens, nature balances it out at some point. Either there will be a lack of food due to a larger population, or there will be an illness, or natural disaster etc. it wipes out 70-80% of the population, which then will either go extinct, or equilibrium will be reached again.
With the overpopulation of the earth, it’s not hard to see the pattern repeating itself. Famine, illness, v**lence etc. we are heading towards a future in which I don’t think the majority of us will survive.”
11. All about community.
“Western society’s shift to a more community-based level of thinking. (Healthcare, food, housing, etc).
Eastern society’s shift to a more individualistic society (personal freedom from governments, freedom of speech, personal financial gain, etc).”
12. The future.
“Robots taking care of old people.
Soon there will be more old people that caretakers, robots will become cheaper that available labor.”
13. Drought.
“I can see a mass exodus out of the non coastal western United states due to extended drought and long term lack of water.
Just millions of people moving back to the Great Lakes region or to either coasts.
Mass migration and 1000s of miles of unlivable land would have pretty significant impact on the economy and society itself.”
