My two basic paradigms when considering the world fifty years from now are:
First, any technology that produces wealth, wins wars, or confers social status will be adopted almost immediately by government and business elites regardless of current ethics, social norms, or societal disruption.
Second, any process or situation that is unsustainable will stop.
An old friend and distinguished futurist told me many years ago that gypsy fortune tellers make predictions using a crystal ball and serious scholars make forecasts using statistics. Both have roughly the same rate of success... i.e. not much.
So I am simply going to make musings about the future.
Here goes:
The most pleasant and viable places to live will be Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and the Scandinavian countries. They will also have their share of social and environmental problems but a lot less than anywhere else.
AI and robotics will have changed the world in ways that are not really fathomable at this time.
The United States will become a very loose confederation of states with conservatives residing in the Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest. Liberals will flock to New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Pacific rim of California, Oregon, and Washington. This semi-succession from the federal government will be lead by Texas, Massachusetts, California, and Florida. The driving force is to be able to walk away from the national debt and incompatible views on civic culture.
Canada will break up, lead by the provinces of Alberta, Quebec, and British Columbia. Each autonomous province will have an embassy in Washington, D.C. and trade consulates around the world.
The U.S. will annex part of northern Mexico and turn it into a security buffer zone to stop the flow of both illegal immigrants and drugs. It will also function as a safe haven for American industry and middle and lower middle class Americans.
China will break up into various ethnic provinces with the relatively prosperous coastal populations separating themselves with the more undeveloped and backward interior.
India will be ascendant but chaotic. It is unlikely to remain democratic but could still be a hub for high tech industry.
Russia will have essentially collapsed.
The European Union will revert back to the historical norm of bickering nation states. They will be largely populated by bi-racial Muslims.
The population of coastal Florida will drop by half but the interior of the state will continue to grow and reach a population of 45 million people.
Much of American higher education will be transformed or disappear. The top 50 colleges and universities will continue to attract top students from around the world and have massive endowments to subsidize the status quo. But most small private liberal arts colleges will vanish from the scene by 2045.
The fate of our massive state college and university systems will be a mixed bag.
Most young people will opt for inexpensive certification programs offered at community colleges and online. An Ivy League degree will still confer elite social status, but not necessarily be a one-way ticket to the upper middle class. Business will become increasingly skeptical and disillusioned with the so-called best and brightest and impressive-sounding credentials.
America will be a cashless surveillance society like most parts of the advanced world.
Bitcoin and crypto currencies could be the biggest scam in human history, or the greatest investment in human history, or just another innovation that changes the financial system somewhat.
The future of space exploration will be entirely robotic; as well as the mining of asteroids.
SETI (Active Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is an attempt to send messages to intelligent extraterrestrial life. Active SETI messages are predominantly sent in the form of radio signals and may have unfortunate outcomes for mankind.
UFOs that are now officially called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena will be identified. It is likely that they are radically new aerospace technologies from China, Russia, or USA; or government-sponsored experiments in social psychology and mass mind control. It is unlikely that we are being “futzed” around by superior alien beings...but who can say for sure?
Small tactical nuclear weapons will be detonated by small terrorist groups to destabilize nation states. Some groups will be clandestinely sponsored by national governments and others will just be an aggregation of aggrieved individuals.
Global climate change will be more or less be successfully managed by technically advanced and affluent countries. A large part of the third world will succumb to drought, famine, plague, and mass migrations.
Virtually all types of cancers, including pancreatic, will be curable or at least very well managed.
Designer babies will be the norm. Parents will choose the height, skin color, athletic ability, and intelligence of their offspring.
Governments will breed an indispensable but disposable warrior class…. like the myth of Cadmus and the dragon’s teeth.
Designer epidemics and plagues will be made possible by the application of AI to bio engineering.
The elites and upper classes will practice monogamy during the first 18 years of their children’s lives to provide an optimal environment for their intellectual and emotional development. It will create a new type of hereditary royalty. The bulk of society, especially the lower and working classes, will resemble the Maury Povich and Jerry Springer reality tv shows with wide spread familial dysfunction fueled by alcoholism, drug abuse, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness.
Islam will be the dominant world religion, followed by Christianity, Agnosticism/ Atheism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
Religion will likely become increasingly fundamentalist and doctrinaire. It will be the primary psychological coping mechanism for most people in an age of disorienting civilizational transformation.
Because America is a deeply entrepreneurial and commercial culture, expect numerous cults lead by charismatic and telegenic leaders to spring up like day lilies.
Turkey will dominate the Middle East and create a new Ottoman Empire of sorts. They simply have the water, young people, a semblance of functioning civil society, and professional military.
Iran will reemerge as primarily Persian Shiite Muslim country with its minorities either being forcibly suppressed or allowed to form their own semi-autonomous regions. Tehran will resemble a quasi cosmopolitan metropolis similar in many ways to the time under the Shah in the 1970s. It will still be antagonistic towards Sunni Muslim states but not actively anti-American or anti-Israel.
If Israel can integrate its state-subsidized, rapidly growing, unproductive, and disruptive ultra-orthodox population, its future looks good. If not, expect much of its very talented tech elite to emigrate to America and Asia. That said, the Jewish state will retain a significant nuclear deterrence and be able to deploy advanced drones and robots to defend itself from external enemies.
Although medical science will extend a viable health span to well over 100 years, most people will voluntarily choose to end their lives at around 85, or society will do it for them. Old people simply take up too much in the way of societal resources and contribute little of real economic value or social utility.
Expect wars over water resources, especially for agriculture.
Wars will increasingly be fought from both cyber space and outer space. AI will be integrated into almost all combat scenarios. Traditional military virtues and values of honor, duty, and courage will be transformed.