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