My Predictions for the Next 100 Years as of July 2005
Please, before reading these, keep in mind that I realize not all of my predictions are going to come true. I still think at least some of them will.
1. Global Warming is going to get considerably worse before it gets better, and people are going to start to get really scared, and will be shocked out of their denial about the fact that it is happening. The number of Hurricanes and other storms will increase, as the sea level rises, within the next 20 years.
2. All cancers will be cured by a combination of viruses that are engineered to attack only cancer cells, and viral vectors which genetically re-engineer the cells of the patient, within the next 15 years.
3. Laissez-Faire capitalism and absolute "Free Market" economy ideals will be thoroughly discredited. The USA and both major political parties will go back to more Roosevelt-era or Keynsian economic plans. The Libertarian Party will become an even smaller and more comical minority than it already is.
4. Quantum Teleportation will create faster, more powerful computers. So fast and powerful that right now, we can't even imagine. This will happen within the next 10 years.
5. Quantum Teleportation will make it possible for humans to travel from point A to point B without having to traverse the space in between, although, not necessarily by directly teleporting individuals directly. Perhaps what will occur is a quantum teleportation stream of Gravitons (once they are discovered) resulting in a portal or door through which one can simply walk to arrive at their destination. This will gradually reduce the number of cars used on the planet, and hence the need for fossil fuels. Faster-than-light space travel may also begin to take place. This will happen within 10 to 50 years.
6. Quantum Teleportation or entanglement technology will also, perhaps, result in some form of replication, making food, clothes, technology and other material goods so inexpensive as to be practically free, and making land and services the only commodoties left which aren't totally free.
7. Various forms of Holistic Medicine will continue to gain wider acceptance, and as a result, more resources will be devoted to using the scientific method to determine the efficacy of individual methods of various alternative medicine allowing the individual to make informed decisions and to separate the wheat from the chaff. This will happen within the next 20 years or so.
8. EVP and other electronic technology will improve, becoming more sensitive so that ghost hunters and researchers of the paranormal will be able to establish even better contact with the dead, eventually leading to real-time conversations. This is happening now, and will culminate within the next 10 years.
9. Life After Death and even the existence of God will come to be known as a scientific fact.
10. More people will become consciously aware of the corrupt nature of the money-lending industry and a worldwide movement against creditors may start, resulting in the end of debt as a way of life in America and other nations and possibly result in federally mandated debt relief for all or a great portion of Americans, eventually putting most creditors or at the very least, credit card companies out of business for good. This will happen within the next 10 years.
11. People will re-learn the value of community, and consciously desire more time with their families and more time to make new friends and spend time with them, and along with the return of Keynsian economics may come a movement towards a federally mandated reduction in the number of hours in the average work week.
12. The idea of Intentional Communities becomes more popular, and more and more people start, and join them til the movement eventually hits critical mass and becomes a major lifestyle in America and abroad. Intentional Communities become mainstream, and all major religious denominations and social organizations begin forming their own communities for their members to live and possibly work in. This, combined with above mentioned forms of transportation, eventually leads to the end of urban sprawl and even the urban lifestyle starts to take a backseat to rural living, but without giving up most of the amenities of the cities.
13. New communications technologies based on above-mentioned Quantum Teleportation will render tasteless cellphones obsolete.
14. Smoking will further continue to go out of style, and in a few decades, young people will think the very idea of it is crazy nonsense.
15. Marijuana, and industrial hemp will both become legalized.
16. The last stronghold of philosophic-scientific materialists who cannot accept the possibilities of God, spirits, the afterlife, or holistic methods of healing will hold out as long as they can. CSICOP and James Randi will continue to believe in the non-existence of all of these items until the day they die, but no young people will join their movement and take up their cause, whose continued existence is limited to the day they leave this Earth and find out for themselves.
17. Christianity will start to shrink again in the next 10 years, and will certainly become a minority within the USA within the next 100, or it may re-invent itself and begin to grow again, but it will never be as large as before. As second and third world countries' standards of living increase (if they ever do) Christianity's growth in these nations will begin to slow, and then reverse. Islam's numbers will follow a similar pattern.
18. Large numbers of people, particularly from Asia, but also from the Americas and Europe begin to emigrate to Africa in order to avail themselves of it's land and vast natural resources, which will begin to reverse the trend of depopulation that has taken place since the slave trade. New technologies allow people to make even the Sahara Desert into a fertile oasis. This will happen within 70 to 100 years.
19. Genetic Engineering results in the human race curing most diseases, and learning to artificially increase the human natural maximum lifespan. Human beings also gradually take greater control of their reproductivity, through new birth control technologies that improve the ability to enjoy sex, while more reliably controlling reproduction, and with less side-effects.
20. Advertisement and Marketing-Driven culture gives way once again to a simpler lifestyle, resulting in people lowering the expectations they have in a potential mate, thereby once again making marriage the stable institution that it once was.
21. A New Paganism (as James Joyce suggested) takes hold of America and the world, bringing about new forms of spirituality, and the revival of old forms based more on creativity and artistic expression and love of beauty than on scriptural literalism. Paganism becomes more mainstream in America so that it is no longer primarily a refuge for people rejected by Christianity, such as gays and lesbians. Americans start to let go of their sexual hangups, and gay marriages are accepted throughout the world once again. Scientific Evolution begins to be taught in schools once again, rather than biblical creationism. Education improves and people start reading classical philosophy and taking it seriously once more. A new Renaissance ensues, but without the Christic veneer of the last one. This one will be blatantly and unapologetically pagan. This will happen in the next 50 years.
1. Global Warming is going to get considerably worse before it gets better, and people are going to start to get really scared, and will be shocked out of their denial about the fact that it is happening. The number of Hurricanes and other storms will increase, as the sea level rises, within the next 20 years.
2. All cancers will be cured by a combination of viruses that are engineered to attack only cancer cells, and viral vectors which genetically re-engineer the cells of the patient, within the next 15 years.
3. Laissez-Faire capitalism and absolute "Free Market" economy ideals will be thoroughly discredited. The USA and both major political parties will go back to more Roosevelt-era or Keynsian economic plans. The Libertarian Party will become an even smaller and more comical minority than it already is.
4. Quantum Teleportation will create faster, more powerful computers. So fast and powerful that right now, we can't even imagine. This will happen within the next 10 years.
5. Quantum Teleportation will make it possible for humans to travel from point A to point B without having to traverse the space in between, although, not necessarily by directly teleporting individuals directly. Perhaps what will occur is a quantum teleportation stream of Gravitons (once they are discovered) resulting in a portal or door through which one can simply walk to arrive at their destination. This will gradually reduce the number of cars used on the planet, and hence the need for fossil fuels. Faster-than-light space travel may also begin to take place. This will happen within 10 to 50 years.
6. Quantum Teleportation or entanglement technology will also, perhaps, result in some form of replication, making food, clothes, technology and other material goods so inexpensive as to be practically free, and making land and services the only commodoties left which aren't totally free.
7. Various forms of Holistic Medicine will continue to gain wider acceptance, and as a result, more resources will be devoted to using the scientific method to determine the efficacy of individual methods of various alternative medicine allowing the individual to make informed decisions and to separate the wheat from the chaff. This will happen within the next 20 years or so.
8. EVP and other electronic technology will improve, becoming more sensitive so that ghost hunters and researchers of the paranormal will be able to establish even better contact with the dead, eventually leading to real-time conversations. This is happening now, and will culminate within the next 10 years.
9. Life After Death and even the existence of God will come to be known as a scientific fact.
10. More people will become consciously aware of the corrupt nature of the money-lending industry and a worldwide movement against creditors may start, resulting in the end of debt as a way of life in America and other nations and possibly result in federally mandated debt relief for all or a great portion of Americans, eventually putting most creditors or at the very least, credit card companies out of business for good. This will happen within the next 10 years.
11. People will re-learn the value of community, and consciously desire more time with their families and more time to make new friends and spend time with them, and along with the return of Keynsian economics may come a movement towards a federally mandated reduction in the number of hours in the average work week.
12. The idea of Intentional Communities becomes more popular, and more and more people start, and join them til the movement eventually hits critical mass and becomes a major lifestyle in America and abroad. Intentional Communities become mainstream, and all major religious denominations and social organizations begin forming their own communities for their members to live and possibly work in. This, combined with above mentioned forms of transportation, eventually leads to the end of urban sprawl and even the urban lifestyle starts to take a backseat to rural living, but without giving up most of the amenities of the cities.
13. New communications technologies based on above-mentioned Quantum Teleportation will render tasteless cellphones obsolete.
14. Smoking will further continue to go out of style, and in a few decades, young people will think the very idea of it is crazy nonsense.
15. Marijuana, and industrial hemp will both become legalized.
16. The last stronghold of philosophic-scientific materialists who cannot accept the possibilities of God, spirits, the afterlife, or holistic methods of healing will hold out as long as they can. CSICOP and James Randi will continue to believe in the non-existence of all of these items until the day they die, but no young people will join their movement and take up their cause, whose continued existence is limited to the day they leave this Earth and find out for themselves.
17. Christianity will start to shrink again in the next 10 years, and will certainly become a minority within the USA within the next 100, or it may re-invent itself and begin to grow again, but it will never be as large as before. As second and third world countries' standards of living increase (if they ever do) Christianity's growth in these nations will begin to slow, and then reverse. Islam's numbers will follow a similar pattern.
18. Large numbers of people, particularly from Asia, but also from the Americas and Europe begin to emigrate to Africa in order to avail themselves of it's land and vast natural resources, which will begin to reverse the trend of depopulation that has taken place since the slave trade. New technologies allow people to make even the Sahara Desert into a fertile oasis. This will happen within 70 to 100 years.
19. Genetic Engineering results in the human race curing most diseases, and learning to artificially increase the human natural maximum lifespan. Human beings also gradually take greater control of their reproductivity, through new birth control technologies that improve the ability to enjoy sex, while more reliably controlling reproduction, and with less side-effects.
20. Advertisement and Marketing-Driven culture gives way once again to a simpler lifestyle, resulting in people lowering the expectations they have in a potential mate, thereby once again making marriage the stable institution that it once was.
21. A New Paganism (as James Joyce suggested) takes hold of America and the world, bringing about new forms of spirituality, and the revival of old forms based more on creativity and artistic expression and love of beauty than on scriptural literalism. Paganism becomes more mainstream in America so that it is no longer primarily a refuge for people rejected by Christianity, such as gays and lesbians. Americans start to let go of their sexual hangups, and gay marriages are accepted throughout the world once again. Scientific Evolution begins to be taught in schools once again, rather than biblical creationism. Education improves and people start reading classical philosophy and taking it seriously once more. A new Renaissance ensues, but without the Christic veneer of the last one. This one will be blatantly and unapologetically pagan. This will happen in the next 50 years.