Talk Elections

Will we have the same party names in 2050? Will there be issues traded around? Will new issues arise or be recycled? What do you see?

Well, there will be two parties: the Democrats and the Robots. Humans will belong to the Democratic Party, self-replicating robot hordes will belong to the Robot Party.

The Robots will win every election.

Thats funny. But anyways to answer the question at hand. Yes we will.

Can someone actually discuss this thread...and Stark definately needs to stop being a dick. :P

Democrats and Republicans are still the two main parties. Religious Social issues are no longer a major factor in campaigns, instead economic and foreign relation topics dominate political dialog. One of the parties is isolationist/protectionist (I'm guessing the Republicans) and the other supports free trade and greater involvement in world politics.

With the ways trends are going I'd say it would be the other way around. I'll say it again the Republicans will be a much more liberterian although socially conversative party and the Democrats will be a much more Social Democratic then liberal party overall.

Could be. I personally think most of the important social issues of today are not going to play much of a role 40 years from now.

I mean, there has to be new social and economic issues that emerge. Perhaps old ones will be recycled if our nation moves to the right.

Yes, I agree.

I think that USA will evoluate to the left after Obama's presidency. Obama is a great politician, as great as Reagan. Reagan managed to destroy New Deal's Social-Democrat/Liberal coalition and build an ideological system based on the hate of federal government and a return to traditional values. Today, these ideology is strongly discredited by Irak war and economic crisis. Obama's words and acts are particularly audacious, and they could deeply change Americans mentalities.
In 2050, social issues will be totally inexistent, because they are old-fashionned. Abortion, homosexual civil unions... are necessary progresses. Economic issues will probably be preminent in the political debate. I think that Democrats are going to seem more to european social-democrat parties, promoting welfare state and reduction of inequalities, whereas Republicans will continue to advocate economical conservativism.

As much as I would love to imagine social issues not playing a significant role in 40 years, I'm far less optimistic. I think every generation likes to think we can move beyond backwards thought, but we never seem to.

Today, I can't be pessimistic : Nothing is impossible. Great progresses have been made between 1945 and 1980 : USA legalized abortion, death penality has even been briefly abolished... today civil unions are likely to be legalized in several states.
Reagan managed to stop the movement for 30 years, but this time is finished. I don't want to be arrogant, but I think that in this case USA should took European coutries as an example. Ultraconservatives have less influence here, and more social progresses have been made. Europe have for example abolished death penality ( France has not to be proud about that, we have been the last to do so ).
To conclude, I want to say : "Yes, we can !"

Well, I am sure that there will be other, more assinine issues that the reactionaries will bring up after civil rights and biological rights become assured. Perhaps they will bring up letting free markets, rather than civil rights law, deal with those that have the mutation for genetic diseases. Perhaps Gattica will become the model of social conservatism by 2050.

Iḿ going to have to say that the debt and the defecit will be fairly massive issues.

Those are ALWAYS issues...and they will continue to be....people will say that they will work on them, but something comes along and makes working on the deficit quite impossible.

If the Republican Party goes into a death spiral by betting on an Obama failure and Obama succeeds spectacularly, then Obama might have built the ultimate Big Tent coalition that includes everyone for lack of alternatives. Such has happened twice in American history with the demise of the Federalists and the demise of the Whigs. In both cases the older Democratic Party became the only game in town, and because the political victories were won in primaries and state conventions, the Democratic Party became unwieldy. In both cases the Democratic Party split.

Regional differences in America remain strong -- about as clear as they are in, for example, Italy... or Britain (American political culture is very much a British import, and regional differences in America themselves reflect the cultural divides in Great Britain before 1776. Even where the population is very different from the original British (or in the case of greater New York, Dutch) settlers, later immigrants adapted early-American institutions to their own ends. Irish political machines operate much like the Puritan machines of New England; New York City has been a multi-ethnic community since it was the hick town of New Amsterdam.

The Republican Party has a non-negligible chance of dying. Its regional appeal seems to be shrinking. http://i.usatoday.net/news/TheOval/National-Journal-1-16-2009.pdf (http://i.usatoday.net/news/TheOval/National-Journal-1-16-2009.pdf) Not only must it live down culpability in the worst economic hardships since the Great Depression, but it also is associated with the corruption of the last GOP President.  Herbert Hoover had a moral compass and ran a squeaky-clean administration, which one cannot say of Dubya.

I predict that the Democratic Party will have split long before 2050 (perhaps around 2020), most likely along a line that exists in much of western Europe: a conservative party and a social-democratic party.

Human Cloning may be an issue.... Completely unethical today, but who knows in the future.

I don't know how much of The Boys From Brazil (a brilliant but evil mad scientist modeled after Joseph Mengele clones duplicates of Adolf Hitler, arranges to have them be adopted by politically-conservative and authoritarian 53-year-old men who have 'accidents' at age 66 that leave their adopted sons without a father -- as was the case for Hitler) can ring true... but that's not how it would work. I think that the system would clone obedient, undemanding workhorses of people who would be perfect slaves at work and pliable supporters of a dictatorial order.

Human individuality is a virtue, and if there is to be any genetic engineering, then at least let it be to reduce the occurrence of such genetically-connected horrors as Tay-Sachs disease, MS, congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes mellitus, and certain forms of inheritable feeble-mindedness. If there is any connection of genetics to the sociopathic personality, then let genetic engineering work to eliminate that built-in moral hazard of tigers in human bodies.   

Yes. That's basically what should happen. There needs to be good regulation...really good regulation, where Human Rights are perserved and are not arbitrarily set to benefit a private and partial interest like what has happened with Human Rights in the past (i.e. the Anti-Abortion movement, the Pro-Abortion Rights movement...both sides of the slavery and labor rights movement). See the thread where Don trolled me and you will see that I have some idea of what could work and what wouldn't. The entire idea of "designer babies" isn't inherently a bad idea, so long as it is not made to discriminate against certain discrete and insular minorities and is not used to cause intentional disabilities in children and is publically funded, so as to perserve and develop more social mobility.

Genetic engineering is an inevitability. Ideally it protects human individuality, and that is hardly inconsistent with the elimination of genetically-linked diseases. Such a disease as Tay-Sachs, Huntington's chorea, or cystic fibrosis erodes one's potential for self-expression. But if it is intended to offer a white child to black parents so that the child will never face the burdens of discrimination, then such reflects a fault in society best dealt with as such (discriminatory tendencies) instead of through genetic denial.


One danger is the potential for exploitation for either social engineering (the moral hazard of engineering people to fit into the ideals that some hierarchy sets, as in Huxley's Brave New World) or for commercial exploitation, as with some family trying to have a clone of Peyton Manning or Alex Rodriguez to ensure itself of a stream of fortune. That might be trickier if one wants a clone of Jimmy Stewart or Audrey Hepburn, as acting is a culturally-loaded activity. 

That's a good start, but I do not want to preclude the abilities for parents to make sure that children get the optimal genes that their parents can naturally offer....this is the true way for individualism and social mobility. Allow children to carry all their family's best traits into the future...and be a good representative of that family- but it will be entirely from that family.

On cloning for economic advantages:

What's wrong in allowing us to have people whose only chance at a living is to do menial work? We will still need people to do the store-clerking, the janitorial work, and the busing of tables.  We would do far better to improve the rewards for doing low-skilled but still-necessary work. We don't need to create a surfeit of surgeons, attorneys, software engineers, or particle physicists -- people who might be pushed into jobs at which they chafe because they have the "wrong" family connections.  Anyone who wants to avoid violent revolution needs remember what happens when talented people meet a political order such as Imperial Russia that has little use for them.

We don't need to breed the likes of Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds. One of either is enough... and I don't think either one of them particularly desirable people except for their talents at throwing or hitting baseballs.  To recreate either is to cheapen the original or make a mockery of an entertainment. (Tellingly, horse racing prohibits cloned horses, so there won't be an exact clone of Barbaro competing at a track near you).

Individuality is precious, and it allows expressions that might offer innovations. If I were to clone anyone for personal gain it would be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But that would cheapen Mozart, wouldn't it? (The costly music lessons would pay for themselves very well, thank you!)

Then again, this would only seem to be a problem now....but by 2050, many lower skill jobs will probably be automated. We already have supercomputers that already operate at the calculating power of 10 human brains. By 2050, we will have long since automated customer service, maintainece and already...the check out line at the Safeway is now run by computers.. :P

This is an interesting discussion.  To look at where we will be, let's look at where we were.  After all, history repeats itself over and over again.

Let's see, 2050 is 41 years away.  41 years ago, the year was tumultuous 1968.  The issues in 1968 were the war (Vietnam), the draft, law and order, and civil rights/busing.  None of those issues are really issues today.

In 2050, yes, the two parties will still be around, they are an entrenched part of our establishment.  I think that what will change is the diversity of our electorate.  I believe that health care will continue to always be an issue, as will taxes, the national debt, and trade.  If I had to guess, the issues of 2050 would be a lot more like the issues of 2009 than we'd all imagine them to be.

...and yet probably unimaginably different. Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I will probably be wrong, but here we go-

Social Issues-
I think we will slowly find a common ground on abortion and gays that about 60% of Americans can agree on. We will probably privatize "marriage" by 2025ish and would have found some sort of administrative mechanism to deal with abortion at the same time. It will probably be pretty similiar to what happens in Israel and the UK today. I think the stem cell thing will continue to peter down and eventually evolve into what treatments should be allowed or funded by Medicaid.

1Designer Babies/ some form of Gattica or Gattica-lite
2Genetic Discrimination Protection
3Artificial Intelligence (Already there are social conservatives getting ready for this fight to ban it on the grounds that it either debases the traditional community or that it is sort of tantamount to an abortion in the same way that cloning is)
4Life Extension- views will range from adding any form of this to "forbidden knowledge" to wanting to fund technology that will allow any one person to live as long as they would like. Most Americans will probably take something in between- probably only allowing insurance companies to fund a procedure so many times and not allowing government funding of such research after a certain point)
5 Immigration- surprise?
6 Gun Control

Very unlikely-
Bioethics for ETs (out of the 20 scenarios for the future I run in my head, maybe 1 or 2 involve us being contact with aliens, though another "half dozen" (a conservative estimate), has us knowing whether or not there is some form of Life on Mars or Life on a thousand other planets.

Foreign Policy-
We may or may not be going through a cold war with either China, Brazil, some form of European Federal Government or perhaps even Russia, Iran or India. In fact...this "Cold War" could simply be in a multi-polar war between several continent-states by mid-century. Some differences between the 20th and 21st century could simply be that proxy-wars will happen a lot closer to home and that the threat of a global nuclear war will be placed with continental nuclear wars. Basically, 21st Century American Foreign policy could be a mix of 19th century and 20th century foreign policy.




Economic Issues-
1The Deficit- more likely than not
2Taxes
3Minimal Equity Laws (as the majority of jobs become automated, there will be fewer and fewer people "working" for a living and relying on the equity in their investments instead)- the debate will be whether or not all citizens should have...perhaps $150,000 ($18,000 in 2000 dolars) in equity at all times that they are entitled to and cannot be taken away unless they incurred heinous debt.
4 Industrial Subsidies to "Green" Industries
5 Industrial Subsidies to space colonization and exploration
6 Land Use/Global Warming (see above, actually)
7 Issues arising out of the selling of the Social Security System, such as regulation and mandatory account liability.
8 Issues arising out of the publicizing of the Health Care System.

Cloning could be a big issue. I believe this will be one of the few issues where the conservatives will win in the long term (full human cloning is totally illegal).

Major issues include:
- The deficit and national debt.

- Funding for the now established Mars and Moon bases (though they're very small, five or six astronauts at a time).

- Renewable energy as oil is starting to become less common.

- National parks will be a big deal as the left advocates for the protection of natural areas while the right says it hinders development.

- Overpopulation is an issue, though not too urgent in the US. People are encouraged to have no more than two children, though there are no laws specifically dealing with it.

- Debate occurs over whether the house should be larger due to the higher population.

- China the equivalent of Japan nowadays, perhaps a bit more powerful economically, high tech and modern, though pollution is still an issue.

- Outsourcing of grunt IT jobs to Africa is a big issue. Africa is equivalent to India today.

- Should college be nearly free for all citizens who want a bachelors degree? This is a big question as a college education is all but required for one to get most decent middle-class jobs.

- The globe does warm somewhat, but not enough to have any major environmental effects. Both sides claim they are right.

- Privacy is a big issue as newer technology gives government and businesses the ability to know much about your life. Both parties favor strict privacy regulations, and most businesses respect it as does the government.

- Healthcare has advanced so much that many deadly diseases nowadays are now curable. Cancer is rarely lethal, with only the rarest forms such as pancreatic cancer being threatening.



Issues that will have disappeared or already been dealt with:
- The middle-east is now fairly stable, radical Islamic extremists are basically non-existent. Iraq is a stable nation, and very economically successful, and not just because of oil. Saudi Arabia is experiencing a deep recession as oil is used less and less around the world. Iran is a full fledged democracy, but growth is slow, as is Afghanistan.

- Israel has become a state where both the Israelis and the Palestinians have political power.

- Social security is non-existent at this point save a small department that provides help to the poorest of seniors.

- Al Queda slowly fades as the less extreme generation comes of age. It eventually disappears.

- Racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination are all but non-existent. However, we have yet to have a female President despite a few candidates coming close.

- Newspapers are long gone. Issues from city hall to the capitol are now on the internet.

- Manufacturing jobs no longer exist due to advances in robotics.


Few other predictions:

- Computers have advanced significantly, though they still cannot compete with humans in a number of areas including inductive reasoning, creativity, and self communication. A computer simply cannot emulate anything close to human intelligence due to their inherent design.

- Space tourism is growing, though still mostly a rich persons industry. Space craft remain in space for a few hours then fly back to the ground.

- Economic powers include: USA, China, Japan, EU (though not as much as the others), and the urban parts of India.

- Potential rising economic powers are: Iraq, the Philippines, and a handful of African countries.

- Russia is in bad shape economically.

Yeah. The science fiction author Arthur C. Clark predicted that by 2001 we would have sentient computers, be able to have a manned mission to Jupiter, have a large orbiting public space station and a relatively large functioning moon base.

At the same time, he didn't foresee cell phones (2001 clearly has one of the characters using a phone booth because there was no other way), the fact computers would be far smaller than they were in the 60s, WiFi-esque technology, and he way underestimated how advanced our GUIs and computer graphics would be.

Eh...I'm pretty sure that computers will have gotten to functional AI by 2025 and full AI by 2050. It takes about 100000GFlops to get a functioning adroid (basically a Fembot) and about 10000000GLOPs to get a fully functioning human mind (think the little artificial boy on AI)...though you would need like 1000000000GLOPs (or more) to emulate every single microscopic function of the human brain. Right now, my laptop (which I got from the wages of my clerk job last summer) runs at about 25GFLOPs (enough to emulate an aligator or chicken).....and the best PC probably runs around 200GFLOPs (enough to emulate a rodent) and is about $3500. You could probably get a super computer for your labortory or business for $25000 that runs about 1000GFLOPs (about as good as a cat emulator).

I want you to take these things away-
1- You just really need one or two generations of computer development to get a surface-deep mammilian emulation
2- We probably will never be able to totally emulate the human mind
3- Its not going to be epic FAIL or epic WIN with "Strong AI". Screw what Searle has to say. He mostly approaches the issue from a non-practical method, anyways.

Map of America in 2050:
()
In 2046 an invasion of gay cyborg aliens invaded Earth. Everything was destroyed in explosions of nuclear fire except for the colored areas. The ocean had food coloring dumped in it and is now a lovely shade of rainbow. The gay cyborg aliens roam the ocean in their gigantic brown ocean liners crushing dissent from the mutated beings of the world. The eastern Green mass is Socialist Republic of Coal. The nation powers its industries based off of the resource in its title. The SEOC is building a secretive army to get back against the Cyborgs. The yellow mass is the Heartland. The Heartland is a nation based off of love of baseball, corn, wheat and God. Nothing special ever happens there. The pink blob is the Zombie Free City of St. Louis. The red blob is the Syndicated Mormon Conglomerate of Desret ruled by the resurrected body of Mitt Romney. The western green blob is Starbucks & Microsoft Inc., no one in the nation does anything productive and just plays virtual games all day. The light blue mass is Norht Cali. The teal mass is the Las Vegas Prostitution Zone where all of the Mormons go for their needs. The pink zone is The Flaming Homo Republic. San Fransisco was stated for an atomic attack by the aliens but decided not to after realizing the men there were much more attractive than their own. The FHR must now supply them with a shipment of sex slaves every year.

Would China have become a parliamentary democracy (albeit one dominated by the equivalent of the LDP) by this point, or would it still be a Communist dictatorship? 

Just remember, a computer is, at it's core, and adding machine. A human cell is far different and far more complex than a gate, not to mention that the human brain is unimaginably complex. AI will improve, yes, but how well it simulates human or mammalian intelligence is another question. I doubt you could accurately simulate a single brain cell. Then you have to multiply that by at least 50 billion. Many cells are very different and such. I just don't think computers have the memory or speed to deal with that, even if tremendous advances are made.

You also have to take into account that a program that "learns" in an efficient way has yet to be invented. I've heard some funny stories about tests with these "learning" programs. Additionally, we don't understand the human brain fully, and to simulate it you have to understand the brain.

I'm not saying this because I am afraid of sentient computers or anything, it's just the design of a computer is fundamentally different than that of the brain.



I personally think they'll be somewhere in between. They'll have a parliament, but the oligarchy will still have some influence.

...and I agree with that. We may NEVER or at least not this century have a machine (at least a manufacturing machine) that is able to totally able to mimic an animal, or even a person. What we can do is have a machine pretty soon that can emulate the behaviors and functions of a person or animal. A good example of this was in AI. All but one machine emulated the person, but do not come even close to completely mimicking one. I bet in the AI timeframe your probably had your weird prototype robots by 2020ish and your first man and woman emulators by 2030 or 2040. The movie probably took place in the year 2100 or 2150, when computers were given enough time to do full functioning humanity...and the little Pinocchio boy was probably the first one like it though androids have been used for a century beforehand. I base this logic on a pretty simple thing- its much easier to have a program emulator than the console or home computer that you need to run the program. I am guessing it is anywhere between 1000 time and 1 billion times easier emulate something than to totally recreate it.

Oh yeah, that's fine. In certain ways I agree they can emulate humans. In others, I have my doubts.

I didn't see that movie unfortunately, but I understand what you mean.

Few problems that have to be solved, which I'm sure they can unless the basic design of hardware is altered. Here's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#Problems_of_AI) a huge list of complex problems. This is why I highly doubt a computer could mimic human intelligence in the next few centuries, if ever. I used to think we would have sentient computers by the turn of the 22nd century, but after doing some research I realize that there are far too many complex problems to solve. It is possible, but I believe very unlikely to occur within the next few centuries.

I agree somewhat with that as well. Some of these things are being done better and better by the day by even an average business or labortory mainframe, some of these issues will probably take another 200 years. Like I said, the AI timeline is probably the most accurate timeline to date. The most primitive androids claimed to be about 100 years old. It was about the year 2125, so that means the first "mechas" were around since like 2025....and the first full simulation in a machine happened that year.


What about health-care and the life extension issue? (I think as preventable death falls to its near zero, the LE would be around 85) At this point, I think that it is possible and beneficial to have a way to slow down the aging process by about 25 years, so as to allow people to have most of the hard work in forming a career behind them when they have children. This wouldn't mean they could retire to have kids, but it could mean that they could have children when their workhours are the lowest and their incomes are the highest....and that they could work another 20 years beyond what they do now...

So, you would still start your career around the same time, but be able to wait to marry and have kids until you are 40. By then, you could afford to put your kids into better schools and provide better programs and nutrition for them as well as affording to spend more time with them. After that, they could work another 40 years and build up a much larger pension and retire at 80 and live to be 100. (maybe by 2050 or 2070 the average LE would be in the mid-90s- which would actually be a pretty conservative jump).

This seems to be the most optimal way of extended life with our current cultural norms. This will probably double population growth, but I am hopeful that this will encourage more economic incentives for the government and entrapanuers to work harder until we achieve a breakthrough on environmental sustainability and space colonization...just as we have with atom bombs, robotics and the promise of extended life.

There also seems to be a problem of health-rationing that could come of this, but I don't think it would be an issue unless we can alter the fundamentals of cell death. At this time, it would appear reasonable that stem cell research can make sure the body still produces enough to tissue to be reproductive and able-bodied for about half-again as much time as it otherwise would (30 years of good health vs. 50 or 60 years of good health...with about the same amount of fair health to follow  (25 years now and 25 years then).

40 years from now?

If you follow the theories of Howe and Strauss, times roughly 80 years apart (maybe 70 at times, maybe 90), have similar tempers. 2050 will probably be more like 1970 than like 2009. Expect young adults to challenge the political consensus, the religious norms, and the culture of people born from about 1980 to 2000. Today's clean-cut, conformist, pleasant kids will have become clean-cut, conformist adults with a largely-insipid culture with the equivalents of aging crooners like Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. The 2050-era equivalent of "Easy Listening" Music will be everywhere, and kids will hate it. Expect such musical performances as revivals of Hair, Tommy, and Jesus Christ Superstar to do astonishingly well.

Even if there is no equivalent of the Vietnam War, there will be cultural ferment. Expect to see young adults mock the corporate style of their fathers who got America through the dangerous era of 2005-2020 with long hair, worn jeans, tie-dyed linens, and the like. Beatniks will have given way to hippies.

To take a stab at what the major issues will be at this time, in no particular order...

1) Human Cloning

2) The rights of people in an ever more technological society

3) Moral issues about how much science should do

4) What is a person (meaning that I think abortion will actually still be an issue, but also in terms of cloned humans, and perhaps even robots and animals by this point)

5) Fear over an emerging Japan and Turkey

6) Anti-immigration laws... after we have spent 2020-2040 in a rush to import labor, like the rest of the current first world

7) America's aging infrastructure (this is an issue about every 40 years)

8 ) Potential admittance of at least some of Canada into the Union (this will likely take the shape of eastern Canada wanting to join the (now far weaker than today) European Union, while sections of Western Canada wish to go with the United States, Ontario and British Columbia will be the two provinces most happy with the status quo; assuming the idea of a Canadian Nation has any validity, the early 21st century will take it to the breaking point

9) Globally, the continued carnage of the Russian War of Dissolution will be on everyone's tv's, but while people in the West will pretend to care, they really won't; the West won't take the side of any of the some 10 states formed by the total break up of Russia in the 2030's, preferring to be a spectator and denounce the violence from afar, happy that its old nemesis has finally been done in.

10) The Weaponization of Space... more of a "should we have" by this point.

11) Still coping with some of the effects of climate change, though the total disaster that was predicted never took place.

12) International aid... the planet has the capacity to feed a population that is now 10 billion, but we can't get the food there... still.

Wildcards:

Africa - Will it finally find its footing in the modern world?

Atlantic Europe - Will it finally come to terms with its true irrelevance in the modern era, or will it still arrogantly try to act as the world's guiding light?

China - Is the Chinese government going weaken its grasp on the coastal provinces in order to keep the economy humming, or will it attempt a crackdown and go into isolation as it has in the past?  Eitherway, the pressures created by the burgeoning wealth on the coasts and the continued lack of development in the interior, plus growing ethnic concerns, which by this point will be shrouded in economics, will cause the government to weaken.  This will likely take place by 2030, but will still be an issue in 2050.

India - Has it continued its benevolent growth as a friend of the United States?  There are three "what ifs" there.

 So, how will the teenagers 40 years from now rebel against the salad-eating, electric car driving, ice skating left-wing democrat homosexual corprate masters of today? :P

Off topic: Has anyone ever played the game Mass Effect, it's great and the backstory is intresting.


Anyway,  I'd like to make some predictions as well on the issues and the future.

The Issues- 2050.

Artifical Intelligence: I think that there will be an outright ban on this, not VI or Virtual Intelligence but AI. Think if robots could think for themselves. Scary.

Immigration: Once again, the United States will implement a system that will halt the great waves of immigration that are occuring today. I think this will happen sometime in the late 2010s,

Morality: The Science vs. God arguement, should life extension be allowed? Or is that messing with Mother Nature?  Is human cloning a good idea? Personally if you could call me a socially moderate republican today, I'll be more socially conservative then Rush Limbaugh in the future if these are the issues.

National Parks: As mentioned before, in an ever-advancing knowledge society, people will want to protect our heritage.

Civil Liberties: Self-explanatory

Space Warfare: Self-explanatory

My Predictions

I think that the republican party will still be the party of conservatism, just in different way. More in the mold of Tom Dewey, Nixon, and Rockefeller.

China will turn into what Japan is today, after chatastrophic failures in the 2020s and 2030s.

Japan will join the UN Security Council.

The Chinese will be the first to return to the moon, in 2018. The US will be back there in 2019. The Japanese and Europeans will arrive soon on there also. Due to economic problems, China will pull the plug on most of there operations. The US will be the first to land on Mars in 2034. Colonies will be set up on both, though Mars rather later.

Rising India will be talked about like China and Japan are today. Except unlike China, It will be a strategic ally of the US

The USA will still be top dog, although in a more multipolar world.

Hey Soulty, have you read The Next 100 Years[/i because some of your predictions are familiar to the ideas in that book.

I still think that strong AI is nearly impossible, at least with the current design of computers.

As for your points about androids, I don't see those coming to pass to be honest. They're not that practical, especially when you can by many very cheap specialized robots. A good example is Roomba, you'd have one that mows the lawn, perhaps some automatic kitchen appliances, etc.



The life expectancy will be high eighties, maybe low nineties in places like Japan.

All forms of cancer will probably have high surviveblility rates. All demographic groups will have low birthrates, but that's ok because people live much longer. The slowing of aging to advance a career is an interesting idea. Though the cultural may make the opposite occur.


I doubt that would be an issue. Life will probably be extendable for the durations you noted.

See, I'm not sure population will be a problem. The trend in every country is to have fewer children. I wouldn't be surprised if the birthrate in the US was 1.3 or something.

I wonder if colonization of Antarctica will occur around that time. That could help slow the effects of overpopulation and such.

Overpopulation may not be an issue. After all, they were predicting in the 20s that we'd starve to death in the 80s due to overpopulation, it didn't happen.

I personally think the world won't change as much as some think. We'll live longer, family sizes may be a bit smaller, and while there will be some cool advances in technology, I doubt many will be practical.

There are far too many technological issues for this to become reality. Another thing to consider is the shrinking of the size of hardware has practically stopped. You get any smaller and quantum mechanics start to interfere.

We may get a HAL 9000, but nothing like in AI or i Robot.


Perhaps. I think there will be large waves of Chinese and Indians to the US at some point as well.


I think liberals will win long term on life extension while conservatives will win long term on full human cloning (though not cloning specific tissues).


Yep.


I don't see this as an issue personally. The first obvious signs this will become a problem will result in the complete outing of the political establishment. Look what happened to Republicans and Bush after the shock of 9/11 wore off.


Eh, it will remain neutral territory. Only the US, China, and Russia will have advanced space operations.


I agree. Again, they'll win cloning, and abortion will have ended in a stalemate in the 2020s-2030s. Late term abortions are banned, but women still have a choice.


I agree completely.


Yep.


Not sure about the dates nor as to whether China will beat us to the Moon, but yeah. Russia will remain a space power despite domestic issues.


Yeah.


Agreed. There will be far more Japan/Germany-esque countries, but none will come very close to us.

I borrowed some of his ideas, yes. ;)  Really good book.  He makes alot of sense.

Yes, I liked it as well. The only thing I found strange was the world war between Turkey, Japan, Poland and the US. Othereise I found it really intresting.

I think that part was a tiny bit of a stretch as well.  Seemed a little contrived, but his reasoning behind his assertions seemed pretty sound.  I think Poland is the future of Europe, Turkey the future of the Eastern Med and Middle East, and Japan will prophet from China's internal weakness.  All those ideas were thought I had going into the book, but never really put together until I read it.  Really, history does repeat itself, and old trends reassert themselves in new ways.

I have been saying for a long time that I still believed Russia was the real threat for the immediate future, not China, and he lays down a very good argument for that point.

2) Something like that.  Also to what extent your information should be stored and made available to others.

3) Odds are, opponents of new directions in science will meet with only limited success, as has always been the historical pattern.  But the faster science advances, the more persistent an issue this will become.

5) The Japanese will have one of the best sources of labor imaginable right in their backyard... China.  The Chinese and Japanese hate each other, but likely Japan will offer Chinese business protection from the Central government, in exchange for their continued production for Japanese capital.  Economics turns enemies into friends pretty quickly. 

The Turks are advancing, and also have a ready supply of labor in their backyard, along with several even more backwards countries over which they will be able to exert considerable influence.  They are also the only county in that part of the world with any considerable access to trade, and a population to take advantage of that access.  If Iraq doesn't split (big "if") then its access to the world is limited by geography (mostly landlocked) and all other states in the region are limited by similar factors, while the Persian Gulf makes for a less than ideal trade route (Strait of Hormuz)... not to mention that control over oil will be less a concern by this time.  Turkey has alot of potential as a reemerging power and faces few serious challengers.

6) Most likely, though I'd say India will also be a major contributor, as they will be one of the few countries actually eager to shed some of their population, and will most likely still be allies of the United States.

8 ) Depends on quite a few things with Mexico.  Will we exert more authority over their northern states, or they over our southern?  This will likely be a battle of economics over culture.

9) Most likely.  Central Asia has no promise in terms of the future.  There is just too much working against it.  Russia is challenging the West, yet again, and will likely continue to assert itself at a great and greater level over the next decade.  It will lose this challenge, to a strong alliance of the United States, Poland, and their immediate allies in the region (the U.S.-Poland relationship will be the new US-UK... not that the Anglo-American Alliance will weaken).

The irony of the modern age is that, as the world become more integrated, people are reaching more and more for their own national identity.  There is no "Russia" as such.  The vastness of the Russian state hides the fact that there are many regions in that expanse (even after the Cold War break up) that have their own identities and interests.  The first time the central authority in Moscow was thoroughly discredited, Russia broke apart at its edges.  This will happen again, but the edges are now not just the periphery, but what remains of the historical Russia itself.  The last of what can really be called "Russia" will splinter.

The very notion of a Russian nation has always been hard to maintain.  Battles over what "Russia" is, how it is to be identified and with whom, have raged on throughout its history.

Russian culture is fundamentally paranoid, and now they truly are the at the lowest level of security, as a state, that they have been in 400 years.  They know that what I just said is true, which is why they are acting now, in the hopes of preventing internal destruction.

11) There will likely be some rise in global sea levels.  There will be some shift into the northern climes of warmer weather... which will mean better growing seasons there.  But by about 2030, CO2 emissions will be headed in the other direction, and the melt water from the glaciers will cause a minor trend back in the other direction.  I'm not that worried, just so long as we don't go nuts, and I think the general trend is away from that.

12) The real problem is, and always has been, access to food supplies.  The United States wastes enough food each day to feed double its population for that day... that waste is either direct, i.e. because the food sits on a dock somewhere waiting to be exported, or indirect, such as in the case of people who receive generous subsidies deciding not to farm.

Problem is, the domestic situation of many starving countries is such that the people there either lack the means to purchase the food, or we lack the ability to get it to them, even for free.  There would not be so many starving countries if their governments weren't keeping us out in one way or another.

We have also gobbled up tons of farm land via the expansion of suburbia, which is on the way out.

China - The most likely thing is that the coastal areas flee into the arms of the West/Japan, and are either successful, or not.  Eitherway, China's problem are going to keep it from developing into a major threat.  China needs rapid economic growth not only to thrive, but to keep from collapse; which is why they are so anxious to buy up our debt.  They need us to keep buying their products no matter what the cost to them.  But this rapid growth is coming with more challenges.  The internal situation in China is a mess.

BTW... the ethnic problems in China are not just in the extreme interior.  They are all over the place.

LOL

Guys, look at the issues from 40 years ago. They really aren't all that different from the ones we're discussing today. The basic things remain the same no matter how much technology evolves.

The top issues will be: national defense, taxes, education, environmental protection, various social issues, and probably still healthcare

Hmmm...so I am guessing the "Han" thing is only for the parts of China that are on the Yellow River? Eitherway, if the Chinese Coast did become its own country, it would have about 1m sq mi and about 400 000 000. So yeah, I can see China as the new Japan. And Japan as the new America and China as the new Mexico. :P


In terms of the way you see science in all of this. By the beginning of mid-century (2025-2045)I think we can come to a common ground. We will probably have or be well on our way to doubling our time in "good health" (today it starts when you are 16 or 17 and goes until you are between 35 and 55), while only slightly increase our time of "fair health" (today its about 50 to 70). We will either have a HAL system or be close to that by then. We will probably have started to build space stations throughout the inner solar system and have regular scheduled flights into LEO...but "space towns" or "star ships".

Where do you think we will be in term of finding aliens, or at least an alien planet...not just some ice rock or giant ball of flaming gas.

Not "its own country," but rather that the central government will be forced to relinquish alot of its control over that area, or face total destruction, thus making it a good place to do business, but the Chinese state will be a weak one. 

Really, China is not entirely unique in this regard.  While it is not perfectly analogous, look at the political confrontation between the the coastal US and the interior US during the 1820's and you see a very similar situation... a well developed and wealthy coast at war (figuratively) with a less developed interior that feels as though it is being hosed by the rich folks in the big port cities.  And this pattern is repeated in a number of "one coast" countries.

The difference is that a huge percentage of the Chinese population lives in the interior... whereas this is not the case in many countries that are similar geographic problems.

Perhaps the social fracture would lead to a physical fracture, but that need not be the case.  Eitherway, China's own capital is still limited, but they have a labor supply.  Japan has massive capital, but a limited labor supply.  You do the math.

And the fact is that there is great historical precedent for this problem in China.  It has happened many times, in cycles.  China's coast opens to trade.  That trade creates a massive influx of wealth on the coast, and the interior gets left behind.  The fast social change leads to unrest.  Those who seek to exploit this unrest work the interior against the coast.  The interior prevails (usually through the strangest of circumstances) and China falls back into isolation. 

The Chinese Civil War the 30's and 40's is a prime example.  The Chinese communist movement started on the coasts, but they could not gain enough support there, and so they enacted The Long March into the interior where they knew they could kick up more support.  Through bizarre circumstances, Mao prevailed and China fell back into isolation.  And the opening up of China in the 19th century was following a period where China had gone into isolation for the exact same reasons... and this has happened again, and again, with exactly the same causes and outcomes each time.

What makes now a bit different though is that the world is so integrated today, that total isolation will be hard to achieve, and multinational corporations make it so there are extra-national entities that can keep the coastal economy active.

I suspect the issues of 2050 will be much the same as the issues of today, but with an awesome FUTURISTIC twists, like the following:

Whether or not to allow ROBOsexual marriages, adoption, etc.

Should SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE abortions be legal or illegal?

What do with all those illegal (SPAAAAAAAACE) aliens

Should the government subsidize PhDs and other advanced doctoral degrees, which future children will need to get any jobs that pay more than minimum wage?

How should we best pursue the War on (ROBOT) Terror?

Things like that.

Sounds like Futurama to me. I bet the world would probably be like Futurama by like 2250, if we discover how to travel in relativistic dimensons and speeds. Then again, if we ever did get FTL, would it change the world that much?

1. Someone would assassinate Hitler.

2. Someone would assassinate Stalin.

3. Someone would assassinate Miguel de Torquemada. (Spanish Inquisition)

4. Someone would betray John Gacy and Ted Bundy to the relevant police forces.

5. Someone might bring a bicycle to the Roman Empire (I can't imagine a technology that would have done more good for more people at the right time) and show how to use it.

6. Someone might lock the door to the President's box at Ford's Theater during a performance of Our American Cousin in April 1865.

Yeah, you're right. :D

Yes....but how would all of this make it easier for me to get laid?

Then again, back to something for all of us-

Maybe we could force Barbara Bush to have an abortion. :P

...or perhaps we would able to protect the Crazys from being sodomized by aliens. Then again, is that neccesarily a bad thing?

Helping out the Roman Empire would come dead last on my agenda.  I would be more eager to help the people who fought against them... for the most part.

And, of course, we all know what would be #1 on States' agenda

()

LOL

Ironically he would still end up under a strong federal government. I could so picture him being one of the villains though.

Where's the suicide booths? We were supposed to have those last year!

Well, already a few states are not arresting their doctors for it.

Hmmm...this is who I think will be the strongest countries in the world (in no particular order) in 2075-

Total Population 13 000 000 000  (growth of 110% of today) (G)GDP: 350 000 000 000 000  (growth of 700% of today)
United States of America- 700 000 000  Capital: Washington, D.C.
Federation of Mexico-   400 000 000   Capital: Mexico City, D.F.
European Union- 800 000 000         Capital: Brussels
Commonwealth of Turkey- 850 000 000  Capital: Moved to Istanbul
South African Confederation- 1 000 000 000  Capital: Johannasburg or Nairobi
The Federation of Japan- 1 000 000 000  Captial: Tokyo
Christian Republic of Poland- 600 000 000  Captial: Warsaw
Republic of India-  2 500 000 00  Capital: New Delhi
Empire of Persia- 500 000 000  Capital: Tehran
Brazil: 500 000 000 Captial: Brasilia

Second Rate Powers:
State of Israel (only surviving sovreign nation on the Eastern Mediterrian)- 10 000 000 Capital: Tel Aviv
Buddhist Republic of Tibet Capital: Lahsa- 400 000 000
Austrailia Capital: Sydney- 40 000 000
New Zeland: Wellington 7 000 000
Confederacy of the Tartars Capital: Tashkent 300 000 000

Disputed Territories: Siberia- U.S.A., Japan, Tartary
                                 Western Africa- African Confederacy, Commonwealth of Turkey
                                 Indonesia: India, Japan
                                 Sonoma/Ariza- U.S.A., Mexico
                                 Tunisa, Morocco- European Union, Commonwealth of Turkey
                                 Sarmatia- Poland, Turkey
                                 Croatia, Transylvania- Europe, Turkey and Poland

Any other takers?

Roman Empire? Who cares. The people of the Roman Empire? Much different.

The bicycle would have been the simplest modern technology to imitate in antiquity, and it alone would have made life safer and more efficient. It would have also made slavery harder to enforce. It's just surprising that nobody invented it until modern times.

 

Zombie times, or at least generalized cannibalism due to collapse of environment, agriculture and energy supply.

I think the US will look more like Yugoslavia than former USSR. Can't let all these guns go to waste.

They have cannibalism in the former Yugoslavia?

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

Yeah I know all about Balkanization, seatown.  But I was talking about cannibalism.

Well the US owners are already cannibalizing the country... and that will stop once there is not sufficient energy(fossil fuels) to do so, and we will see some pretty spectacular fighting. As for literal cannibalism I don't see it happening, most people will die before they get hungry.

Though I am optimistic that there are progressively more fossil fuels as they find better ways to get to it. Though I think when capitalism finally separates itself from those who are not capitalists, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

I don't know about 2050, but in the coming decades, I think there are some issues that are destined to develop.

Many major economic issues in the future will be those related to our aging populace.  

I expect Social Security to be a big flash point in the future.  Even now, you see the Millennial generation opposes Social Security because they think that they may never see the benefit from it.  As long as each generation is larger than the one that comes before it people can expect to get more out of the system than they put in, but once that reverses the system is hard to sustain.  The US will become much more friendly to immigrants, seeing them as a way to reduce the age ratio.  Immigration is an advantage that the US will have over any other western nation, and I expect the US to be very prosperous compared to the rest of today's first world nations.

My guess is that artificial intelligence and genetic engineering/human cloning will be major social issues in the future.

I think its almost given that in the future a computer will gain true sentience.  I can imagine that there will be mass paranoia about sentient computers and fear that they might become malicious.  Meanwhile, 'designer babies' will become a reality in the future, especially for the very rich, which will only increase the gap between classes as the children of rich people accrue more advantages.  

Other issues in the future will be space exploration and colonization and foreign policy as always (though I don't feel comfortable speculating on the particulars of it).  

The bicycle is deceptively simple.  First off a Roman bicycle is going to be heavier, simply because it'll end up being made mainly of wood with expensive metal used only where absolutely necessary.  Imagine something like an early velocipede only with pedals and a chain drive.  The wheels in particular will be heavier for there will be no wire-spoked wheels. Also because of lack of materials, it'll have to have solid tires rather than pneumatic ones, so it'll be far less comfortable and the lack of rubber means they won't grip as well making them less safe.  Last but not least, you can forget about there being ball bearings for the wheels.  Maybe roller bearings or a plain bearing.

Given the expense involved in making even the inferior Roman version outlined above, dropping a bicycle off in the Roman Empire is not going to set off transportation revolution.

There has already been born children that have been born from prescreen embryos and now they are trying to get approval for IVF with mitochondrial DNA donors.

That's not optimistic... it'll be a different type of catastrophe, environmental degradation.

That's true but at least there might be a future that could come of it. Perhaps there will just be the collapse of our civilization, but it could be the start of a new one.

Technically, if time travel has changed our past, it has already happened.

In other words, if someone in 2500 decided to go to the roman empire and change something, those changes would have already been manifested in the history of the roman empire we know today. It's not like someone changes something, then the entire world history is changed, those changes have already happened in the past


Think about it.

I'd imagine that if someone did travel in time and change the past, we would never know it would happen. This is the second most plausible thing (something like Crono Trigger). The first most plausible thing is that time travel is impossible or that civilization goes extinct before it figures it out (sort of like a book called Evolution where within the lifetimes of most posters here, civilization gets destroyed by a mix of Global Warming, Terrorism and Genetic Engineering and in a thousand years civilization's survivors start to evolve back into animals). The distant third being that time travel just creates alternative realities (something like Stargate) and a forth being that Doctor Who is real.

Though, I think I made this thread wondering what people really believed would happen with current and possible issues in 40 years and 4 have already come to pass.

My main things I was trying to poke out and get a natural, candid response about whether one of the two parties would "just give up" on abortion or gay rights just like conservatives had to do with overt racism in the 1960s or what liberals had to do with what is now known as Obamacare and its potential future expansions in the 80s and 90s. Of course, there will be new issues, too.

Oh yes, this thread.

I admit this was much fun, though you shouldn't be so shocked by some of the oddball responses.  After all, people are thinking of 2050 like Robert Zemekis thought of 2015 in Back to the Future Part II: REALLY REALLY SUPER DUPER FUTURISTIC LIKE INSANELY HYPERBOLICALLY PASTEL COLOURS FUTURISTIC MAN!!!!
Meanwhile, it is 2013 and we don't seem to be anywhere close to commercially available flying car suspensions or $50 Pepsi bottle.  A lot can change in two years though, let me tell you.

Rarely though is attention actually brought to political issues.  I mean, "silver or gold" is so 1896 mannnnnnnn.  By 2050 we'll probably be talking about something much more relevant, like whether or not to eliminate paper and coin currency entirely and replace it with entirely electronic payment.  This could result in an "Odd Man's" alliance of staunch civil libertarian left wingers and "Get Off Gold!" conservatives.  Electronic Paycard advocates would obviously be dominated by the business classes for ease of transactions as well as having your name in a database.  Eventually, as technology increases the debate further to whether Americans should stick to their government issued purchase cards or move onto implementing scanners into people's hands to facilitate transactions.  Civil liberty concerns run amok, giving rise to a third party movement called something like "the Free People's Party" that is opposed to the elimination of currency in favor of all transactions being electronic.  Corporatocracy runs amok as Democrats and Republicans battle over which banks should reign supreme.  Those against the forced electronic movement are divided further between those who want a return to paper backed currency (a far cry from their Gold Standard ancestors) and those who want a total eradication of the monetary system (basically, Star Trek).

Another possibility.

Bumping.

This was an interesting conversation to read (it was created 12 years ago just after Obama's inauguration).

How well do you all think these predictions are aging?

Also, any posters who are still active who commented on this thread (Daily_Beagle, Antonio V, pbrower2a) what do you think about your older predictions?