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Predict What 2110 Will Be Like

MICHAELSD

MICHAELSD

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
5,522
3,535
NJ
1910 was an amazingly dramatically different time to live than today. Extremely basic electronics and little manufacturing precision. Now, in 2010 we have great televisions, very polished and stunning computers, a very advanced internet, very nice, fast cars, manufacturing precision, and so on. What will 2110 be like? My predictions:

Cars with an interior vaguely similar to a limousine that drives itself based on a highly-refined network are becoming mainstream, and the government is trying to get older cars off the roads.

Wireless energy everywhere so your devices are practically always charged.

Extremely fast Internet anywhere.

Beginning of robot age.

Four or five major software/hardware manufacturers fight for the top rather than just Microsoft and Apple.

Computers will be a combination of iOS and Mac OS, and all Apple devices will run the same OS, though each will have different apps. Isn't that what iOS updates are getting closer and closer to? Being a highly-optimized Mac OS with multi-touch?

The average person's house and things owned will be much nicer due to much better manufacturing and cloning of materials. When we can clone materials, anybody could have an incredible house. This holds true to buildings looking much nicer as well.

Everything will be very oil-resistant and essentially scratch-proof. That would be very nice.

Even highways and roads will be stunning due to new methods of building.


I'm sure I could think of a lot more and post it after a few more people post what they think the future will be like. 1910 was drastically different from today, 2110 should follow the pattern for sure.
 
in 100 years? I don't think we can realistically predict it. People in 1910 would explode if they saw an iPhone.

If anything, it will be like the Matrix.
 
With any luck, some of us on the forum right now might live until 2110, so we'll let you know. At least we'll have a general, vague idea of what 2110 will be like. For sure, devices will always have more than enough power. How we get there is another question. Wireless charging everywhere? Batteries able to keep regenerating electricity? Batteries with insanely high capacities? Devices with very, very low power draw?

I wonder what an iPhone will look like in 2110, if they're still being made :eek:. Four generations in, I can't imagine going back to the first.

Imagine time travel. If we can go into the future, the future changes. Apple can get the iPhone they make a hundred years later then optimize it for the time period then a hundred years later the new iPhone will be 10,000 times better than what would have been released. Time travel is endgame, since we can pull technology as far into the future as we want then change the future so it's more impressive in the future then change it again and so on.
 
Oil can be replaced and will be replaced in a hundred years. We're going to need to be able to clone other resources or we're screwed.
 
Hopes:

That we will have figured out a more productive way than waging wars over finite resources for energy.

Stem Cell development will mean (among many other things) that people can regrow their own organs and tissues.

Nanobots will make a surgeon's scalpel much less necessary.

That people will better understand and deal responsibly with the consequences of overpopulation.

Realize the incredible importance of our ecosystem and place more value on our rainforests and sustainability.


There are a lot of negatives I can foresee as well but I don't want to depress myself or go too political.
 
MICHAELSD said:
Oil can be replaced and will be replaced in a hundred years. We're going to need to be able to clone other resources or we're screwed.
Click to expand...

Replaced with what exactly? Put a gallon of gas in your car, drive until it runs out and then attempt to push it back home.

That's how rich in energy this stuff is. And we'll eventually run out.

Not to mention it's thanks to petroleum based fertilizers that have been feeding our overpopulated earth (not to mention the fuel to run our tractors, to plow the earth, and the fuel to put in our trucks to bring all of that to the supermarket).

Sure you can talk about Solar, Wind, Turbine, and other renewables, but you need vasts amount of energy (and petroleum based products) to create these infrastructures. Even then, this is just electricity we're generating. Not oil.
 
iBlue said:
That people will better understand and deal responsibly with the consequences of overpopulation.
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This. We can't support the population we have now, yet the population is growing and the ratio of more people in poverty is growing because of it. There aren't enough jobs for 300 million people. There will be less in the future when machines replace labor. We might as well have factories operated by only machines and a few people to watch over them and make sure the machines are running okay. People don't like the job, and it really isn't what we're designed to do. Besides, quality control will be better with just machines.

Mavimao said:
Replaced with what exactly?
Click to expand...

I'm confident by 2110 either oil can be cloned so we can make as much as we want or we'll be able to optimize anything that normally runs on oil for a different energy source.
 
MICHAELSD said:
This. We can't support the population we have now, yet the population is growing and the ratio of more people in poverty is growing because of it. There aren't enough jobs for 300 million people. There will be less in the future when machines replace labor. We might as well have factories operated by only machines and a few people to watch over them and make sure the machines are running okay. People don't like the job, and it really isn't what we're designed to do. Besides, quality control will be better with just machines.
Click to expand...

7 billion is more accurate. I meant what I said much more globally than "the world" of America. ;) I also meant a lot more than employment. In the words of Bill Hicks "Lets work out this food/air deal!"
 
I'll bring up a new point that I feel is significant and overlooked: We won't need people doing most labor when machines will be able to do it better and cheaper without assistance. There will mostly be jobs available that will require people to think, design, develop, etc. Maybe it will be for the better for products. No human error. Then companies will have more money to hire people in better, more important jobs so even more people will work on products than now.

Most of the population has a job in labor now, and it was the same way in the past. When we don't need people to do those kind of jobs anymore, we'll need a much more intelligent population. A lot of jobs available will have people feel significant in the future, but unemployment will be at its highest until the population gets smaller until we're down to the amount of people that we need. We don't need to have 7 billion people in the next generation. Please, don't let the population grow. We're bringing on overpopulation, a higher ratio of people in poverty in the future, laws against childbirth, and unemployment.
 
By then, we will all be drving electric cars with very powerful battery tech. you can go 1000x around the earth on one charge. and energy becomes dirt cheap. well either that or we have a nuclear apocalypse. We find out the cure to cancer and AIDS among other diseases. We will also figure out genetics to a very high level. We can the "perfect" person. the fittest to survive if you will. as far the over population goes, i think we'll figure out something. go underground, go to the moon. mars etc. I also think that hereditary diseases( risks for diseases as well) will become a thing of the past. also,we will have nanobots in our bodies so we will be virtually disease free. Our computers will be quantum computers. also, due to the advances in medical field, we are able to live for 100s of years without dying. Our brain will simply be transplanted to new bodies as needed, unless we figure out how to stop the aging process. our bones will also be infused w/ synthetic diamond. making it much stronger. and we will also have machine augmentations for better eyesight, strength etc. And other inventions that we can't even fathom right now. 100 years ago, if you told someone you could get message to a person 30,00 miles way in 30 seconds he would call you mad. likewise, i think we are going to either head to one extreme or the other. at this rate tho, i think we aren't going to a good place.

MICHAELSD said:
I'm confident by 2110 either oil can be cloned so we can make as much as we want or we'll be able to optimize anything that normally runs on oil for a different energy source.
Click to expand...

come 2110, we won't be using oil anymore. we'll be using something entirely different. its, yield to energy ration will be massive. maybe a nuclear reactor of sorts. of course, it would be extremely safe. impossible to break. maybe some sort of nitrogen car? using nitrogen from the air is a fantastic idea. it makes up like 3/4 of our atmosphere.
 
Oil isn't a sheep! It isn't organic! Just as you can't clone gold or silver. Oil, natural gas and coal are created from dead organic material that's been layered with sedimentary rock and through time, pressure, heat and bacteria have been transformed into fossil fuels.

Look, I'm not calling for a Mad Max apocalyptic hell-hole, but the truth of the matter is, oil fields across the world are going into decline (notably Cantarell in Mexico), and we need fossil fuels to produce the fertilizers and pesticides to grow the food to at least feed our population.

You talked about over-population and that I can agree with you on. But when we can no longer grow food in the quantities we've been able to...what then?
 
I read awhile ago about a company that sells nuclear receipts that power whole neigborhoods. It's buried deep below the ground, under cement, and is extremely safe. I don't know if it has actually been approved for use though. But it needs to be.
 
I fear that at one point (maybe already?) the Earth's population will become too large. Escaping to space will not be a viable alternative for large parts of the population anytime soon. Either there will be a pandemic or there will be wars. Either way, we'll see very ugly scenes of people dying / getting killed.
 
ranguvar said:
I fear that at one point (maybe already?) the Earth's population will become too large. Escaping to space will not be a viable alternative for large parts of the population anytime soon. Either there will be a pandemic or there will be wars. Either way, we'll see very ugly scenes of people dying / getting killed.
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secret government movements just to reduce population. sort of like a futuristic gestapo sort of. just more secret. they will show up at your house and murder you if you show up on the computer screen as the person randomly chosen to die.

EDIT: a blakc plague type thing maybe? when population becomes too big, it just becomes easier for the disease to spread thru contact. also, maybe WWIII? all out nuclear warfare. sends the world to hell. people have to wear special suits and respirators just go outside. Due to the massive amounts of dust kicked up by the nukes, the world goes into a colder climate. Everybody has a "cleaning" machine to remove any radioactive substances before entering buildings/homes. a buffer zone if u will say.
 
1. Most of the population will not have to work because everything will be so automated or done by robot drones.

2. We'll either be moving people to another planet, or we will have just started the infrastructure for it.

3. Most of you losers will still be virgins.
 
MICHAELSD said:
Cars with an interior vaguely similar to a limousine that drives itself based on a highly-refined network are becoming mainstream, and the government is trying to get older cars off the roads.

Wireless energy everywhere so your devices are practically always charged.

Computers will be a combination of iOS and Mac OS, and all Apple devices will run the same OS, though each will have different apps. Isn't that what iOS updates are getting closer and closer to? Being a highly-optimized Mac OS with multi-touch?

I'm sure I could think of a lot more and post it after a few more people post what they think the future will be like. 1910 was drastically different from today, 2110 should follow the pattern for sure.
Click to expand...

I think that you're not looking ahead far enough, simply because it's not something the human mind can comprehend - something of which it doesn't know anything about, or can't even imagine. I think there's a chance that we won't even use cars, we'll be onto the next big invention that makes cars obsolete. Also I doubt Mac OS or iOS will have anything to do with the computers we're using then, if we're using computers at all. Again, they'll become obsolete with the invention of whatever it is that replaces it. I can see computers being more of a combination of iOS and Mac OS during the next 5-10 years maybe, but 100 years is far too long for an operating system to live for. Plus, it's just bad marketing to try and make it last longer than it needs to.

However the wireless energy everywhere is very interesting. I can see that being true in 100 or so years. And we'll pay an 'Energy license' similar to a Tv license, or maybe just energy tax or something. Never having to worry about batteries running out would be amazing.
 
As fusion power will still be "40 years away" we'll all have Mr. Geothermal units in our houses for leccy, small 30cm x 30 cm units that drill all the way to the Earth's core.

Amanda Holden will be entirely made of plastic, rather than her current 75%.

Due to inflation money will be abolished and we'll have to buy stuff with cabbages.

All cabbages will be grown under armed guard in outer space.

Teenagers will bitch on MR that Macs have crap video cards and they can't play StarCraft 2 at maximum settings.
 
Some hopes:
  • A relatively common, cheaply producible compound or alloy that greatly increases the efficiency of solar absorption panels. Hopefully sooner rather than later, to ease the pain of the situation Mavimao describes.
  • iPhone 427. :p
  • Cloud computing will be old-hat, allowing most data to be retrieved from anywhere, and as free and ubiquitous as GPS is now. We're pretty close to this already.
  • Jetson-style flying cars, dammit! No, seriously, I'd really like it if scientists figured out the exact what, why & how of gravity, and was able to alter the force on a small scale.
  • The ability to transfer someone's memories directly into external storage. I think it would be cool to allow my preserved knowledge to become an interactive time capsule, with future generations able to gain information and insight from my "digital shadow". (I think I'll trademark that phrase...)

And some fears:
  • The energy situation Mavimao describes, as mentioned above. Unfortunately, Mav's logic is sound; the amount of available fossil fuels may be unknown, but we know one thing for sure-- it's finite. We have to invest in other energy sources as a species, and must get over our "Not In My Back Yard" histrionics.
  • Overpopulation. As much as we may not want it to happen, we'll probably still face it. Like the early 90's alt-dance hit says: People are still having sex, and nothing seems to stop them.
  • The overpopulation may indeed make a disease outbreak even easier. We got relatively lucky with swine flu; it sneaked past the defenses we had, but turned out to be a relatively pedestrian flu. It's only a matter of time before we have another pandemic-- and we may face an Ebola-like superbug. (I'm moving to Madagascar-- and shutting down everything!)
 
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