My prediction:
1. Fall of capitalism. Prices of manufacturing individual goods is dropping to nothing. Especially with things like software. Capitalism isn't working very well here.
Probably wont happen. Capitalism is working fairly well. Capitalism is doing what Us and Europe said it would do. Its help in crease standing living the world over, its helped increase literacy rates, it help increase life-spans so on. Cheaper goods means easier goods to gain, means goods are more common. Capitalism is diminishing roles of sovereign borders. Capitalism is bring the world closer together. What we're seeing really is shift economic center. The tallest this, richest that, longest this ect, are no longer in the US, or Europe or other well known first world country. They're in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and South East Asia.
Capitalism isn't perfect. Capitalism can't provide constant highs. Capitalism does provide small increases over time.
As crappy as it sounds, Sweat house labor are some best jobs to get in countries which have them. They have the best pay, least danger.
2. Change in religious sentiment. I think there's been a massive shift in religious beliefs throughout the last 50 years. Some big religions get smaller, at least four small ones getting more popular. Middle eastern religion is becoming significantly more organized, western religion fighting to be more secular.
I would like to see, but I'm biased. Secularism is growing, though the last time I checked, Islamic beliefs were still having better overall growth. Spain is a has state religion. You used to be able to pay your taxes at churches. This has declined, as is overall church attendence, and its decrease. England its almost consider goshe to be religious. Its catching, defiantly. And eventually it'll get there. I bet africa, Middle east and south and central america will probably holds out for ever.
3. Fall of Israel. Israel's a horse that a lot of nations are betting on or against, but they're losing out. That flotilla raid was Turkey's Pearl Harbour - they've been very ambivalent on Israel, and that's just shoved them and much of the EU towards the hostile side of the fence.
I dont see this happening either. the UK and the US are sorta forced in forever need to keep Israel going since its their baby after world war 2. Its not impossible, but as long as they dont piss the UK and US off at the same, they'll have some sorta of support.
4. Nuclear weapons. As people begin to accept terrorism as a valid war strategy, it'd be more morally acceptable to kill civilians. WW2 Japan will be used as propaganda of nukes = peace. Guns were once immoral. Planes were immoral. Cruise missiles were immoral. There's going to be a time when some country owns nukes and nukes no longer become immoral.
I can see the line of reasoning here. Though unlike conventional ordance, nukes will fuck everyone and thats an undeniable fact. (Though some powers on the world want to really really badly.) Even small tactical nukes will affect more then its intended targets.
5. Electric car. One of the founders of Better Place gave a talk about how they planned to give everyone electric cars, make a pile of profits, and help the average person save money. This includes revolutionizing the energy grid. It also means that petrol prices will drop massively.. all those nations reliant on oil exports.. well...
This would be awesome, however it faces the exact same issue as green power generations. We lack the ability to store industrial amounts of electricity. We can totally make electrical cars now, however no one wants to give up on amenities they have grown used to when the cars that have are still on the market. Not impossible, just impossible for the near future.
It would need a few things to happen that are independent of each other. There been talk about using nano tech to restructure silicon based batteries which have been known for years to be a better reservoir for electricity then lithium, and the other main stream materiel, it however had no longevity. By restructuring the interlay of the silicon, this issue can be circumvented quite handily. We already have a large silicon industry that could handle this production. I dont know whats going on here. I havent read up on it in the last year or so.
The other thing, is room temperature super conductors. This would let up use our crappy batteries/capacitors and still have electrical cars, among ushering a new industrial revolution.
6. Quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, and signal processing. There growing fast like the electrical companies were boosting up in the 80s. I've seen some amazing things done with them and studied under one of the pioneers. Huge bonuses to almost every field in every day life, it'll change life just the way the computer did. And at least introduce more privacy concerns.
What this means is pretty unpredictable, but I bet they'll be significant.
I got nothing really. We dont have to many applications for nanotech right now, other then its really cool and it could do a lot. Its just to much in its infancy to counted on. Kinda of like carbon nanotubes. For my QM anything always raises red flags. I dont know to much on signal processing.
1. Fall of capitalism. Prices of manufacturing individual goods is dropping to nothing. Especially with things like software. Capitalism isn't working very well here.
I hope so, but I also hope that communism does not take over, communism is the better idea but it never works, we need a combination between communism and capitalism.
Anarchism is supposedly another dream that wont come reality, but who knows.
What we really need is a dictator of the world who actually cares for its people, and who isn't greedy, very very very very rare...
Communism does fail when its applied. Though I dont believe you mean communism here at all but socialism. And Anarchism in all its various all fail. Human beings have been governing themselves for about four thousand years+, and not once anywhere did it work. And we've done a lot of weird form of governments. Hell, there suppose to a town in the netherlands that anarchy, but it functions closer to a socialist democracy.
2. Change in religious sentiment. I think there's been a massive shift in religious beliefs throughout the last 50 years. Some big religions get smaller, at least four small ones getting more popular. Middle eastern religion is becoming significantly more organised, western religion fighting to be more secular.
Personally, i think religion should be kept to oneself and not shared or organised, each to their own, but i doubt thats going to happen.
Obviously theirs the dark horse of middle eastern religion taking over, and you know how some of them have the thoughts that religion should be connected with the government.
(Speaking of religion connecting with the government, this is pretty much happened/happening but on a weirder scale in the U.S, if you look at it, only Christian presidents have been presidents, and therefore the ideas of said presidents...)
Sigh. I suggest doing something called reading and research. Only for the last 40 years has religion been a concern for presidency. Thanks to the cold fucking war hold overs. /sigh.
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abe Lincoln werent christians or very Christians. Jefferson made the least magical religion to date. There so none magical, they get confused and hang out merrily with secularist. There are others I could list with effort, but these were on the top of my head.
4. Nuclear weapons. As people begin to accept terrorism as a valid war strategy, it'd be more morally acceptable to kill civilians. WW2 Japan will be used as propaganda of nukes = peace. Guns were once immoral. Planes were immoral. Cruise missiles were immoral. There's going to be a time when some country owns nukes and nukes no longer become immoral.
Japan was used as a test for their nukes, poor Japan, might reflect the crazy shit going on their, but hey, might be right, after all Japan has pretty much declared that they wont participate in wars any more.
Poor planes, what did they ever do to people 
.
And as for the civilian thing, this probably will happen as well, naturally much latter down the track.
I dont know whats going on here.
5. Electric car. One of the founders of Better Place gave a talk about how they planned to give everyone electric cars, make a pile of profits, and help the average person save money. This includes revolutionizing the energy grid. It also means that petrol prices will drop massively.. all those nations reliant on oil exports.. well...
YEA! Damn countries reliant on oil, leave the oil alone.
But electricity will soon dominate almost every aspect of society as it is getting more and more advanced.
Sooner or later electric cars will take over the oil dependant cars, in all aspects, speed, cost, efficiency, Etc...
But perhaps the oil industries will attempt to hold back the revolution of electric cars by assassinating people, hell, its happened before...
I dont know if you are being real here, so I have a tin foil hat for you on hold. Oil companies, all of them know they are in a loosing industry. The big mean evil oil companies are some of the largest investors in green technology. Their getting ready to jump ships because of capitalist pressure for profit.
---
- Mechanical upgrades to the human body, this would be accepted for the people who were in accidents or had birth deformations, to have their body parts replaced with better mechanical ones.
Further on in, perhaps only by a year or so, people will start demanding them and getting their body parts replaced just for the upgrades, as a mechanical body part would be better than an organic one.
Their will be some people who resent the mechanical upgrades and prefer to stay natural, sooner or later another war will occur, and depending on the technology...
The six million dollar man will stay a dream for a very long time. There no real method as of yet to let the human body use anything bionics. There large persisting issue between infections, dying tissue, numb nerve endings. Even something as simple as the heart has proven to be a great challenge. These are just technologies in making the body accept it has none organic things in it.
There have been some small successes. There are artificial ears, and eyes that have shown moderate success, though they require cranial implants.
This doesnt include the issues with legality, and getting any of these bionic parts approved, and even if super bionic parts would ever be approved or made. Let alone the probable expense. As even a manual claw are quite expensive.
-Control of the population.
I mean numbers.
Sooner or later people will start culling the populations of the world, as we are getting ever so close to the carrying capacity of the earth.
It will happen naturally, whether by leaving it alone till we topple over the carrying capacity and millions die of starvation, or if it happens before we go past the carrying capacity.
...
Anyway, a lower amount of population = better, but not too low otherwise we will have less difference in the human race, which equals bad for evolution.
This doesn't need to happen. Reading and some research. If you take a gander at the UN world population study, you'll see that moderate predictions has the world population capping at 10 billion by um. Fuck. 2030? Or was it 2050? I cant remember which decade right now. Third world nations will continue to have high birth rates, while industrialized countries will have none sustaining birth rates. We may see stabilization or decline after this. In which case, its well under humanity ability to take care of itself.
And even if it did need to happen, there no legal or moral way to do so except through means which are happening now. Education and provision for birth control, which will help consolidate the 10 billion popcap.
-The second dark age.
Self explanatory
-The second golden age.
Self explanatory
I guess they are, but their so nebulous they dont say anything. There been many golden ages and a few dark ages. These terms are ill define to be productive.
-Lack of resources causing people to go to drastic measures, nuclear power plants becoming the norm.
Third/second world countries, sometimes even first world countries, building the plants shoddily, causing many disasters (fun times...).
The only real resource war will probably be over water rights and management. It probably wont come to arm conflict, just pissy politicians.
Considering the US is the strictest in terms of Nuclear power plants, no probably not. Our only nuclear fuck went exactly how it was suppose to, and sits on three mile island with near home and schools and not even a worry. Modern nuclear power plants dont really have this worry. Melt down is a thing of the past with third generation plants, and you have to almost do it on purpose for second generation plants.
Third world countries lack many things in order produce nuclear power plants. Money, and the technology. No one is sharing nuke tech with countries that dont have them. The most that third world countries will get will be self contained power plants, that act functionally similar to huge batteries that can power a small town for ten years. There a few firms in the US with them on the drawing board, but they are having a hard time getting permission to build them.
-The evolution of cold fusion.
Allowing us to easily use cold fusion, finally an end to the energy/resource draught.
Reading and research. Cold fusion wasn't given up on because it was hard, but because its impossible. Its consider much in the same like as perpetual motion machines.
Fusion however, is doable and it will be here eventually.
Well it is a theory, and the speed of light CAN be changed....
This right here, is my biggest pet peeve. For science, theory is as good as it gets. A model of how the universe works with predictions and practical applications. In this context, theory doesn't mean guess.
An excellent video explains this in less then 10 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/u/27/zcavPAFiG14And there are some out there fringe science with models showing fluxing c, but its not the accept due to its poor evidence. With what we know now, it holds best that c was and is always constant.
If anyone is interested in learning about Relativity, these video series are high quality, very accurate very digestible explanations.
http://www.cassiopeiaproject.com/vid_courses3.php?Tape_Name=Relativity
Author
Topic: Painting a Black Swan (Read 6217 times)