Predict changes you expect to see before the end of your lifetime

People stop leaving their houses

Minimal levels of car ownership.

Disapperance of fast food restaurants. But not fast food. Fast food will be prepared in huge centralized kitchens and delivered directly to customers' homes.

At the rate we are going, more than a two-party system in the US. Possibly four.

The death of radio.

A cure for HIV and cancer -- we need something optimistic.

Massive global migration related to climate change.

Swelling populations that further deplete and damage the environment, leading to famine and political instability all over the world.

Continuing with the optimism, a Clint Walker sexbot.

CZJ turning 50

I probably only have another 20 or 25 years left, but I expect major changes. Maybe even medical advancements that would give me even more years!

I can see a cure for HIV R3, but not cancer.

I'd be curious to see stats over time about car ownership R2. Probably not like a rock, but I bet it is dropping. If a person is the type to always have a car payment (buys a new car every 5-6 years) then Lyft or Uber could be competitive even if you drive to work every day, and that isn't even considering public transportation options.

Cashless will become the norm rather than the exception in a lot of places.

Unemployment will rise. Companies just can automate fast enough (in their eyes).

Marijuana will become legal nationwide.

Probably negative population growth in the US.

Since I'm very old, I expect to see the 4th of july 2019 before I die. Also, satellite internet from that Tesla guy who just put the needed satellites in orbit last week.

Massive hordes of homeless bums being shoveled off the street a la 'Soylent Green.'

R3: I disagree on the parties. Primaries are for parties that have automatic ballot access to determine which candidate goes on the automatic ballot line. To get said ballot line and be able to use a primary to nominate a candidate, you have to get so much support at the previous election (it varies from state to state). Since people don't want to spoil an election they vote for one of the 2 big parties that already has automatic ballot access, insuring they continue to have it for the next 4 years and all other parties don't. The system is literally rigged to keep third and fourth and so on parties out.

Not to mention, everyone and their mother predicted a 4-party system after the disaster of 1968, but that didn't happen then and I don't believe it will happen now.

I expect legal weed as well as decriminalized (but not legal) harder drugs nationwide. I also expect the prison industrial complex to collapse on itself. And local TV news will be dead by the end of the coming roaring 20s...

R4, kinda takes care of itself then, doesn’t it.

Silly young fools thinking Communism is, like, such a cool new idea, continuing to vote Marxists into office in The USA until it collapses as a Republic and they're left huddled in confused bewilderment, as their future "Free Speech!" protests are literally steamrolled by authoritarians.

R13: That was a good Buckley, Blanche. Now do Brier Rabbit.

R13, nobody is advocating "Communism."

Democratic Socialism is nothing like it.

That John Bircher shit is just a bit old, don't you think?

Oh, geez. Other developed countries have multiple, viable parties and it's just fine, and I'm not a communist, lol. That said, R11's post is enlightening.

Robot prostitutes.

R15 Why can't we have Blue Collar Labor Democrats anymore? WHY does it have to be Marxism or nothing? Why not just "defend the interests of those with low access to power and also, defend Constitutional rights and the principles of Western enlightenment"?

Now it's about idolizing Conservative Islam and the same, old Marxist ideas of the early 20th Century. Why?!

Truthfully, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet R17.

No need to file tax returns. The IRS will already know how much money you made and how much money you owe in taxes.

More cross-pollinated and hybridized fruits and vegetables.

China taking us out.

Robot sex partners already exist in Japan, R17.

World War 3

More violence and rage. More mental illness, due to more isolation, among other things. More homeless people.

Microchipping and tracking humans like we do pets

Cloning organs for transplant and body parts for fun and decoration, for the wealthy

More heavy drug use and overdoses

The full recovery of the Bald Eagle from near-extinction.

A gay POTUS.

Elimination of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gyre.

LInk R23 and are they "hot"? I have frequent flyer miles to burn. :)

Contact with aliens

R29 why the fuck would any advanced species want to talk to us?

[quote] the rate we are going, more than a two-party system in the US. Possibly four.

No, the way it's set up, you cannot have more than two viable parties at once. If you had even a 3rd grade level of education and mentality you'd know this.

Nice try but come back and post when you can actually contribute the conversation intelligently or at least at a junior high level.

r22

Nope, once again another moron posting. China is locked. It cannot be a viable power because it is exposed to the sea only on one side. This makes it to difficult to expand and too easily exposed to attack

I asked a 5th grade child this and he laughed that someone grown up wouldn't know. Nice try but please only post if you can actually contribute, otherwise you look foolish, but that is probably what you are going for.

R31, we'll see about that.

R4, the pentagon and global scientists have been warning us for years that global warming engenders political upheaval. As resources such as water and arable land dry up, fascism emerges. People think they can hoard resources (nope). But scientists are working on heat resistant soil. So I hope to see heat resistant soil. Electric planes for regional travel would be great.

The gene for homosexuality will be modified and only heterosexual babies will be born.

R30 Because they need our essence. They crave our sexy life essence.

R35...and they will be ruled by immortal cyborg-gays, who never age past 30 but can pass for 21.

The toppling and downfall of Amazon and Twitter, I hope.

There's already a web series about the robot prostitutes

You wish, Troll R35.

Unemployment, climate change migration, wars and Genocide. Our democracy will end with a whimper and be replaced by a plutocracy.

Serfdom (return to). With a plutocracy that finds this pretty normal.

Complete disappearance of the middle class, soviet style.

How can the American people allow billionaires, when they claim they cannot afford universal health care for you all (which is of course Bullshit)? Obviously, you are not a Democracy. Bill Gates paying so little for some aspects of the polio elimination program and you made this guy some sort of hero that doesn't get taxed. Get your Democracy together, America.

Shit is going down.

Anyone typing on a home computer or iPhone bitching about inequity or returning to serfdom needs to GTFO. You are ridiculous. You are deluded. I hope you get magically transported into Aleppo over night.

That permanent record adults used to warn kids about? It really will be permanent. Facial recognition, housing and employment records, political affiliations, and most purchases will be brokered by big data and used for profit in a way that today’s credit report and criminal history can only envy.

China’s social credit system is the future, but in America it will be implemented via capitalism rather with legislative support, rather than directly by the government for the most part.

I am told that one of the AMC movie theaters near me (in Manhattan) has completely eliminated human being as ticket sellers and now only has kiosks, which of course means you can't pay cash.

R46 A theatre near me has kiosks, but you can also buy tickets at concession.

Cher will finally have her last gig on her "Farewell" tour.

R47, movie theaters have had ticket selling kiosks (or whatever the correct name for them is) in addition to live ticket sellers for years, but my point is that I'm told one of the AMC theaters near me in Manhattan now has ONLY kiosks and NO live ticket sellers. Which I guess is just as well, because the last time I went, the two ticket sellers on duty were incompetent.

R49 Okay, but if people want to pay cash for a ticket can't they just go to the concession to buy one? Are they serving popcorn from computer kiosks too?

Trump will die of a stroke will in office.

while*

A Pandemic. Climate change will become undeniable.

Hardcover and softcover books will become obsolete in favor of Kindle or other digital readers.

No asians in the usa they will all become white in future generations.

Maybe the theater has those cash machines that parking garages have.

We will travel by drone

The end of US Postal Service mail

Most malls and retail stores will disappear. So will movie theaters. Cars will be self-driving which will drastically cut down on accidents. There will be a cure for baldness. Phones will be holograms and embedded in people's thumbs and index fingers. There will be very little need for unskilled labor and unemployment among uneducated people will skyrocket, leading to world chaos.

Agree with R54 that hardcover and softcover books will become worthless. People will throw them away, then the few remaining old books will suddenly become valued collector's items like vinyl records. However, with all books becoming digital, a massive computer virus or grid failure will wipe out much of our history, novels, poetry, and other types of books. Suddenly, people will see the value in hardcopies again, and public libraries will come back in some form but only the rich will buy books and have their own home libraries.

Gender will disappear, along with the notion of sexual identity. Both will become meaningless. This will happen due to the trans movement and the political and social chaos created by transgender as well as the rising international crimes against females, such as the killing of female infants in certain countries. There will no longer be "women" as we currently understand that term. Women's sports will disappear. Women will disappear along with the idea of women's issues, since all the outspoken "women" will eventually be MTF trans and they will be the voice of women until there is no such thing as women. All society will then collapse.

Continued climate changes will result in rising levels of the oceans, more violent weather every year. Forest fires will be the norm. More specifically, Glacier National Park will no longer have any glaciers - that will happen in my lifetime. I recently recommended to a friend who lives in Sweden to invest early in companies offering to install a/c in homes and businesses. I also recommend that people invest in tattoo removal because we know many people will use this service as they get older.

Technology will continue to advance. I like the idea of not having to file personal income tax returns and can see this happening in my lifetime. I'd imagine that you would be given a tax bill or a refund with the option to dispute if necessary. Internet trolls will be quickly identified and denied access, like when credit card companies now notice suspicious transactions and block your card until you can prove otherwise.

Facial recognition will be everywhere. For instance, when you walk into a hotel to register for a room you have booked, you will be greeted by name as you approach the front desk. Or you can ride public transportation without showing your ticket because you were recognized as having a valid pass. Many people won't like having their face recognized, but I can see within my lifetime that this will become more common.

Robots will eventually replace all jobs so capitalism will be a thing of the past. We'll probably all get a monthly allowance from the government and people will live for pleasure.

I can't wait to go to a robot doctor.

Male beauty will be exalted more than female beauty, as in the era of Greeks and Romans.😂 I think we're already headed there.

Self-flying planes.

I would love never to have to deal with another shitty human cashier.

[quote]A cure for HIV and cancer -- we need something optimistic.

With how people are turning out, I think it's better if disease just ends humanity.

R54: No. The only people who like digital are boomers and Jones-ers, aka old farts. GenX-ers and Millennials actually prefer hard copy print for books. Traditional books aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Mass starvation, migration, resource wars and death on a scale that is incomprehensible to the baby boomers that caused it all.

No seats on airplanes. We just get loaded in like a UPS truck.

[quote]I would love never to have to deal with another shitty human cashier.

Will robots be trained to put the coins in our hands before the bills?

self-driving cars

Trump gives imperial order for the dissolution and illegalization of datalounge and other free speech advocacy websites and entities.

[quote] Traditional books aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I'm not so sure about that. A grand-uncle of mine passed away last year and he had a den full of massive hardcovers of those James Michener novel-sized proportions. I kept a few and tried to donate the rest to libraries and used book stores, but nobody wanted them because they say they take up space and people don't buy them as much. They ended up in a Goodwill.

[quote]The only people who like digital are boomers and Jones-ers, aka old farts. GenX-ers and Millennials actually prefer hard copy print for books. Traditional books aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Do you honestly think you won't want the embiggener someday, dumbass? I "preferred hard copy print for books" when I got my Kindle as a gift in 2011. I can't live without it now.

Don't you love how some DLers think no one ages?

Whole Foods will cease to exist. Costco and Trader Joes will still be around.

Amazon will eventually own Wal-Mart.

Amazon will grow bigger and bigger until Jeff Bezos dies. Whoever takes over for him won't be as business savvy as he is and only then will Amazon collapse and other corporations will have a chance.

R76: Put your bifocals on, grandma. That's how people did it before getting a tablet to "embiggen" things.

I think most developments will be driven by climate change. More severe weather, environmental changes will cause organism and animals populations to change. Some will become more prolific leading to diseases returning and new ones arriving. This will change medicine, culture, socio-economic and religious facets of society.

Trump will suffer a major brain aneurysm on camera while he's saying something stupid. Dead by the time he hits the ground.

R77 I can see that happening. I think Amazon will eventually sell it because it's a poor fit. Amazon is more into selling cheap stuff to the mainstream market, not expensive food to the high end market.

Coastlines will wipe out super-rich beachfront homes, and they will connive to take away inland homeowners' property by Force Majeur/Forced seizure.

Global warming gets way way worse but it might be about the time I would kick the bucket anyway so I might be one of the lucky ones/

r80 Nope. Not going back, bitch. Not that how I read is any of your fucking business, you waste of sperm and egg.

[quote]Obviously, you are not a Democracy. Get your Democracy together, America.

You’re right, we’re not a democracy. We’re a Republic.

[quote]No seats on airplanes. We just get loaded in like a UPS truck.

Thank you. This made me burst out laughing.

Stronger storms.

Increased cancer.

Writing skills will become sought after.

Madonns will have a final tour. In a coffin.

^^^Madonna

Reform in certain occupation fields. I think negligent or corrupt nurses and doctors won't have the protections they have now.

Self-driving mancaves, in response to commutes exceeding 2-3 hours each way. You'll crawl out of bed, stagger to your self-driving mini-camper, drive to the freeway, and go back to bed. An hour or so later, you'll shower, get dressed, and cook breakfast. You'll eat breakfast & babysit the camper as it exits the freeway & merges into gridlock, then continue to babysit it while playing with your compute, watching TV, catching up on work, etc. as it inches along to your office.

After work, you'll babysit the vehicle (while working, watching TV, etc) as it inches toward the freeway, then make dinner, take a hearty dump, and entertain yourself for another hour or two on the way home.

Oh... with your vehicle's entry & exit from the city timed & a huge fine if it's within the city for more than 18 out of 24 hours... just to make sure nobody tries living in their vehicle "for real" & to force you to go *somewhere* every night.

R84, that's pure bullshit. Yes, sea levels are rising, but propaganda like you've cited assumes BOTH that worst-case episodic flooding (like storm surge during a hurricane) will be the universal daily norm AND that nothing whatsoever will be done to engineer around it.

Fact: Florida hasn't had a "natural" coastline in DECADES. Every single sandy beach in Florida is manmade, as are the concrete control structures and geotechnical infrastructure that make it possible. As future hurricanes destroy older, lower-lying structures, they'll be replaced by newer, bigger structures with taller foundations, and Florida's coastline will become increasingly concrete.

Reality check: take the algorithms used to generate those sensationalist maps that show Florida underwater & run them using TODAY's elevation data... surprise, surprise, they'll show HUGE areas as 'already underwater' that are, in fact, quite dry.

Hi tech jobs explode for humans to apply. Robots will takeover menial public service emplotment. No more customer service postions. Unless you are bilingual. Undereducated class will be on streets. The have and have nots divide will be startling. Humans dead on streets.

*employment

I know this is cheating because it has already begun: the sixth extinction.

An Oscar for G -- I'm an optimist!

people having less children us losing its position as superpower clean energy hiv vaccine better manmade meat more natural disasters

Very few local newspapers, and the ones that do continue to exist will only publish Monday, Wednesday, Friday and weekends.

a pandemic that wipes out so much of the population that land and resources will be redistributed to survivors

A universal basic income being accepted in many countries as the reality of automation disrupts the number of jobs available. Now it is semi taboo and laughed at but I predict eventually necessity will mean that changes.

r67 Why?? 😲 What bad experiences have you had with cashiers?

We will completely deplete our reserves of fossil fuels-OIL, NATURAL GAS, COAL. Then of course we're FUCKED.

3D hologram movies, and by extension, 3D hologram porn, you'll be able to be in the middle of a virtual orgy in your living room.

A return to government fascism bolstered by the police and military.

Body scanners that output your measurements which you can then use to order clothes that are cut and sewn by robots. A crude form of this exists today but it's still inconvenient and expensive.

As water becomes scarcer, cleaning clothes using sound (?) waves to get dirt and stains etc out of fabric.

Oh, yes, R96, concrete will save Florida coastlines.

You must live in Florida to be such a brain-dead snotty idiot.

R110, you're forgetting that Florida has the most urbanized coastline in America. If push comes to shove, Florida will build a huge offshore dam, complete with pumps to synthesize wave action on the beaches, LONG before anyone seriously considers abandoning an inch of urban coastline.

South Florida might be (naturally) low-lying, but it's also 100% non-seismic, and the continental shelf is both wide and shallow. And unlike places like New Orleans, it has NEVER (in modern history, at least) been legal to build structures here whose first floor isn't at least a few feet above sea level. So... Florida doesn't have to hold back the sea forever, it just needs to mitigate high tides and storm surge.

It sounds like nit-picking, but it makes a HUGE engineering difference compared to having to hold back water 24/7. It's the difference between barrier failure flooding yards & parking lots, vs drowning people trapped in their homes.

The main casualties of sea-level rise in Florida will be agriculture (due to saltwater intrusion making water too expensive for profitable farming) & affordable housing. Florida's future is Coruscant-like urbanity, not some dystopian ecotopia abandoned to the sea.

Two men having a surrogate baby that has both their genes.

People who can afford it will be able to design an embryo down to hair color, sex, aptitude for athletics, health issues, potential IQ, etc. Only the poor will procreate the old fashioned way, everyone else in vitro.

Very “Gattaca” r113

[quote]Two men having a surrogate baby that has both their genes.

Ok, stupid question time: Can’t they do that today? I’m thinking sperm of Father A and sperm of Father B, mix em up, turkey baste, and voila?

A sitting US president will suddenly expire while in office. The redacted autopsy report will first be released on twitter. Death will say, "natural causes."

This odd idea popped in my head today - crazy women getting implants to appear pregnant all the time. Well go from the lips to tits to ass to stomach.

Instagram will be banned.

R104 I wish you were right, but I suspect that in the US, anyway, we'll let them starve.

cure for spinal cord injuries

R115, to the junior high, post haste! Your biology class awaits.

I predict the collapse of human society when Climate Change causes widespread crop failures. Which would lead to industrialization shutting down, which will eliminate factories emitting pollution. That actually isn't a good thing in our situation, pollutants have been acting like an umbrella shielding us from an even greater temperature spike caused by Global Warming. The pollutants will fall out of the atmosphere within a few weeks and temperatures will skyrocket. Google Guy McPherson for more info. Bye bye humanity and a populated earth.

Aliens unlocked by a NASA-exploring probe from the depths of the Jovian satellite Europa's ice-locked subterranean ocean will invade Earth and enslave all gay men as their personal extraterrestrial poolboys. --And it'll be none too soon, let me frankly tell you!

R121 I haven’t been in a junior high class in over 35 years, and even then I wasn’t good at science.

What did I miss?

Zombie Apocolypse!

In contrast to R122's pessimism, I predict that agriculture will simply drift northward. We'll grow lettuce and tomatoes in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio, while crops like corn & wheat will displace dairy farms in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and southern Canada (while dairy will push further north into places like northern Ontario and Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, hotter climates in places like Florida and California won't matter much to agriculture... long before summer temperatures start to matter, California's urban majority will put their collective feet down and take the state's fresh water for themselves, while saltwater intrusion in Florida will cause an even BIGGER explosion in urbanization across the state into areas that are presently dominated by agriculture.

It doesn't even MATTER whether or not the soil in Canada north of the US border zone is particularly fertile. Modern fertilizer is cheap and abundant. What REALLY matters is cheap land and cheap fresh water, both of which Canada has in mind-blowing abundance.

Ditto, on the other side of the Atlantic. Central Europe's loss will be Siberia, Scandinavia, and Scotland's gain (I don't want to say 'Britain', because by that point the Home Counties will be looking pretty Coruscant-like as well).

At the end of the day, a skyscraper doesn't CARE whether or not the natural terrain's ground level is dry or underwater, because EVERY skyscraper -- even in Dubai -- spends its lifetime standing with its metaphorical feet in water.

Today: buildings in Florida sit on foundations of crushed limestone mined from the edge of the Everglades, piled on top of limestone bedrock above vast underground caves filled with water.

Future: buildings in Florida sit on reinforced concrete pilings, manufactured from limestone mined from what used to BE the Everglades, rammed down until it's resting on the original limestone bedrock, and the hole left after pouring the building's foundation filled in with... crushed limestone. Some existing low-density structures will be destroyed by hurricanes and flooding, but most will be demolished long before that point and replaced by skyscrapers simply because the land they're sitting on will become too valuable & some developer will show up offering to pay ghetto families more money than they've ever seen in their lives to sell and move (so he can demolish the block and build yet another skyscraper). Or families with early 21st-century McMansions will sell them for millions of dollars to developers, who'll tear them down and replace them with even BIGGER homes.

Millions more of Chinese will be imprisoned in internment camps. And the US will reach 1 million imprisoned immigrants before 2020. And trump will imprison millions more before 2024. And Julian Assange will never be heard from again

A fascist US government. Repeal of gay rights. The Democratic Party reduced to irrelevance.

r124,

the transuranic elements we knew as "Unq", "Unp", "Unh", "Uns", "Uno", and "Unn" have real names now... Rutherfordium, Dubnium, Seaborgium, Bohrium, Hassium, and Meitnerium.

We've also synthesized elements 110-118, and completed another whole row in the periodic table (including the newest believed-to-be-sort-of-noble(-ish) gas, Oganssson).

We've confirmed the existence of 'top' quarks (previously theorized based upon the existence of 'bottom' quarks, but never observed until the late 1990s). No giggles from the peanut gallery, please.

We've achieved superconductivity at temperatures warmer than liquid nitrogen.

We've discovered a few new forms of matter & elementary particles.

Schroedinger's cat is still simultaneously alive and dead. ;-)

Oh... almost forgot... we're ALSO breaking new theoretical ground with the next row of the periodic table, since we have to add a whole new as-yet-unknown orbital (the "g-block") whose potential existence isn't even confidently known to be possible, and whose physical properties are still unknown.

Crucifixions of SJWs.

Madonna as President.

More resource and water wars. I say more, because these factors have spurred the wars that occurred now. I expect China to make a push into increasingly depopulated Russia.

A massive plague that will knock off 25% of the worlds population. We're due for something like that to reset things.

Dylan Geick and Chandler Massey will not complete their undergraduate studies. Maybe Dylan could play someone with whom Will cheats on Tubitha.

The return of Jim Crow laws and some type of poll tax for voting.

four and five

Chace Crawford coming out as gay.

The return of Christ, our saviour.

A civil war in Russia when Putin dies and oligarchs vie for control.

A return of supersonic air travel, but using new more efficient aircraft seating around 50 passengers in a business class configuration.

Space tourism, including "around the Moon" tours.

Solid state batteries for electric vehicles, putting the final nail in the coffin for the internal combustion engine.

Basically, all this:

We will all live in a hellish dystopia of super storms and no resources or food if we live at all.

R129 = Sheldon Cooper

Anyone think they’ll ever be faster planes

No r115 but some scientists predict in the future stem cell techniques could be used to create eggs from male cells in future and sperm from female cells thus allowing for same sex couples to truly have genetic children fr both of them, it's not certain though and it's a long way off.