2057, or what will life be fifty years from now?

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

The recent thread about stoplight cameras, here
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=6086.0

...got me thinking, and reminded me of an issue I wanted to discuss with all who are willing.

The Discovery Science Channel recently ran a series of shows surrounding what life would be like fifty years from now, entitled "2057".

Too large in scope to be encompassed in one show, it began with "the Body", progressed to "the City", and went on to "the World".

Much of this I found to be really cool stuff, since it was probably (by my estimate) 80% logical extension of current tech, 20% sheer speculation.

However, there was some extremely disturbing, 1984 -ish madness as well.
EMT's could basically put you on ice, not healing you, but placing you in stasis, effectively preventing further damage/death until you could be transported to specialized ER/urgent care facilities.

Once there, you could have organs replaced within 24 hours, after having printed them out using current printer technology gone gonzo.
...that is, IF you had the proper health plan.

If you were caught drinking alcohol to excess by a mandatory p!ss test which your own toilet automatically does, (the example used in the show), your primo health plan was cancelled.

No health coverage?
You're sent to some bone warehouse, to sit in a dark corner in an antiquated wheelchair, waiting to die.
What does this bode for freedom-loving peoples?

In another episode, "the City", a grandfather had an old laptop, and his grandson used it to hack the city's infrastructural operating system, shutting everything down, and releasing a holographic shark/cartoon character that displayed himself mischievously on all of the building-sized electronic billboards scattered ubiquitously across the city.
Their solution?
The police in 2057 had greatly expanded their scope and responsibilities.
They could monitor the activities and movements of every citizen, and it wasn't long before they had narrowed down the source of the hack.
The police chief's reformed-hacker father and her own son.

Lots more to observe and discuss, but this seemed to embrace a very Eurocentric vision of society, a very "Canadian/Hillaric" health care model, and so on.

For those who would desire to use cash, stay off 'the grid', come and go as you please, and so forth, it seemed to marginalize and push these folks to the edges of society, denying them access to the vast majority of 'miraculous advancements' coming forth in the next fifty years.

Anyone else see this series?
Anyone else see Big Brother standing in the wings?

Fig

[wingnutx]

EMT's could basically put you on ice, not healing you, but placing you in stasis, effectively preventing further damage/death until you could be transported to specialized ER/urgent care facilities.

That's all we do now, try to keep you alive until we get you to an ER.

My prediction: In 50 years Europe will be part of the Caliphate.

[MechAg94]

From what I have heard, the sea level will be much higher and we will all be living on boats killing people with webbed feet and defending ourselves from pirates running around on old oil tankers.   

[BakerMikeRomeo]

In 2057, the Discovery Channel will air a special re-run of 2057, and we viewers will chuckle at what we thought the world would be like in 2057.

Also, stuff will suck.

~GnSx

[crt360]

If you were caught drinking alcohol to excess by a mandatory p!ss test which your own toilet automatically does, (the example used in the show), your primo health plan was cancelled.

Will the law require us to p!ss only in our own personal toilet?  Will it be a talking toilet that recognizes you, greets you by name and comments on your bathroom activity?

I'll probably be in a rest home or sleeping with the worms by then.  Either way I'll be too old to care.

[glockfan.45]

Well thank God I will likely be dead by then. Thoughts about that sort of future make me happy to think about my own mortality. I dont give much credit to their attempt to predict the future however. If you want a good laugh pick up an issue of Popular Science ,or Popular Mechanics from the 1950's to see what they said was comming. I still want my nuclear powered flying car, and my self-cleaning house.

[El Tejon]

crt, talking toilets already in use in Japan.  Toilets analyze your waste for diet, blood and disease.

Big Brother waiting in the wings???  He's already here!

[Lonestar49]

...

Hmmm, I may or may not be around by then but..

First, humanity must get past April 13 2028 first.  Some meteor is gonna come very very close, as in, it has a real good chance of hitting the target, has be reported by those that study the heavens..

And, it may happen sooner, if they don't see one coming in.. not really a remote thought.


LS

[Manedwolf]

Space stations and a moonbase, either ours or China. If we don't, they will, period. They want the helium-3 mining stakes.

UK...half-flooded London after Islamic extremists bomb the Thames flood barrier, and the call to prayer from loudspeakers on a likely nonfunctional Big Ben.

Dubai will either become a New Rome, or collapse into post-glory ruin and burnt-out skyscrapers after the slavelike workers there rebel.

And I've been considering learning Mandarin Chinese.

[mustanger98]

EMT's could basically put you on ice, not healing you, but placing you in stasis, effectively preventing further damage/death until you could be transported to specialized ER/urgent care facilities.

That's all we do now, try to keep you alive until we get you to an ER.

My prediction: In 50 years Europe will be part of the Caliphate.

That was my understanding on EMT's also. I'm not one, but we're talking about a guy with a rolling aid station, not a MASH unit.

The part about Europe... it's rapidly heading that way. It'll happen to any country or region where the people don't exercise their national sovereignty. To have a country, you have to have borders and you have to decide who is or ain't welcome.

[mustanger98]

From what I have heard, the sea level will be much higher and we will all be living on boats killing people with webbed feet and defending ourselves from pirates running around on old oil tankers.   

Yeah, I heard about that two. The last horses will be where I'll be... up there on the top of Mt. Everest.

[Lee]

I will be 101 years old and will start smoking again...life is grand in 2057.

[crt360]

crt, talking toilets already in use in Japan.  Toilets analyze your waste for diet, blood and disease.

Great.  All I need is toilet hollering, "hey, jackass, ease up on the enchiladas or I'll report you!"

[Sindawe]

And I've been considering learning Mandarin Chinese.

Wise choice.

[Bigjake]

Quote from: El Tejon on Today at 05:48:11 PM
crt, talking toilets already in use in Japan.  Toilets analyze your waste for diet, blood and disease.

IF the democrats don't suceed in getting myself and my brethren killed in some foreign shithole,  who knows.

sometimes it seems like if the bastards don't get me killed there, they'll figure out a way that involves separating me from my guns here.

[charby]

I'll be 83 years old in 2057

I'll probably be on my front porch yelling at all the Spanish speaking kids who keep running through my yard. I just hope that they aren't Arabic speaking kids.

-C

[280plus]

Ooo, I'll be 'zactly 100 yo in 2057. Ya'lls invited to the party!  I imagine prune juice and vodka will be high on the list of beverages consumed.

[lee n. field]

2057, or what will life be fifty years from now?

Different.

In 2057, barring unlikely medical advances, I will likely be dead, or at the far, far end of the survivorship curve (102).

The United State is now run by a managerial and ruling class with a boundless capacity for self deception.  "We're a free country, the free-est around."  Yeah, right.  "Our economy is healthy."  Yeah, right.  "We can afford to fight multiple interminable foreign wars with no end in sight".  Sure we can. 

No moon bases, no jet packs, no flying cars. 

In the 1960s the USoA put people on the moon in 8 years from a standing start with 1960s Dodge Rambler technology.  Now they're talking a bullshit 15 years to do it with 45 years newer tech.  You gotta wonder what's happened.

In 50 years this country will have lost it's status as hegemon, and likely much else.

[Manedwolf]

2057, or what will life be fifty years from now?

Different.

In 2057, barring unlikely medical advances, I will likely be dead, or at the far, far end of the survivorship curve (102).

The United State is now run by a managerial and ruling class with a boundless capacity for self deception.  "We're a free country, the free-est around."  Yeah, right.  "Our economy is healthy."  Yeah, right.  "We can afford to fight multiple interminable foreign wars with no end in sight".  Sure we can. 

No moon bases, no jet packs, no flying cars.  In the 1960s the USoA put people on the moon in 8 years from a standing start with 1960s Dodge Rambler technology.  Now they're talking a bullshit 15 years to do it with 45 years newer tech.  You gotta wonder what's happened.

In 50 years this country will have lost it's status as hegemon, and likely much else.

What happened was office politics within NASA. The Russians kept the Soyuz hardware and kept upgrading it.
NASA literally trashed the Apollo designs, plans, specs and all, because that OLD hardware might keep the rising stars with the shuttle program from getting their new corner office. Thus, we've LOST an entire generation of technology that worked. The engineers are dead or retired...they've been bringing back some as consultants, now. They've even been reverse-engineering Apollo hardware in museums to see how things were done, since all the notes were long since trashed.

We literally could not build a Saturn V as it was for about 15 years or so...if that. It's all been lost.

I find it disgusting.

[gunsmith]

I'll only be 117 years old,  so I'm sure I'll be harassing liberals on the internet.

[CAnnoneer]

2057: with a lot of luck - societe a la "Demolition Man"; otherwise - the "Fallout" computer game series.

[RevDisk]

I'd be 76.  Which isn't that old, comparatively speaking.  If I'm unlucky enough to still be alive, things will be different but the same.

I have serious doubts our current economy will be the same in fifty years.  Technology will change, as it always does.  My guess is that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford the latest technology, especially medical technology. 

The next couple of decades will be interesting times.  A lot of changes will be made.  But I suspect day to day life will remain the same as it has for thousands of years.  Get up too early, go to work, work some job you can stand for 8 to 10 hours, go home and get something to eat.  Repeat.  The cosmetics will change, but the essense will not.

Politicians will continue looting as much money as they can.  They'll probably wreck the economy a couple times.  Politicians know as much about intelligently managing money as babies know about quantum mechanics.  They'll continue stripping civil liberties as quickly as they can.  Eventually, folks will get a lump of their freedom back.  Then politicians will start chipping them away.  Repeat.  The cosmetics will change, but the essense will not.

Either the oligarchy will be dead, or very firmly entrenched.  Combined with decades of advancement in intrusive population monitoring technology, ugh.  I will make this prediction.  Either survailance technology will be severely restricted, or it will be everywhere and used against the citizens at every chance. 

Long before then, I hope to semi-retire to some place reasonably far from major population and start a small business of some sort.  Hopefully with a healthy number of acres under my feet, fully owned.

[mustanger98]

I'll be 83 years old in 2057

I'll probably be on my front porch yelling at all the Spanish speaking kids who keep running through my yard. I just hope that they aren't Arabic speaking kids.

-C

I'll be 83 too... if I manage to live that long.

I've heard stuff to the effect that, America as we know it, we're outta here by 2020... taken over by everybody else. Given what they're saying about that coming about by illegal immigration, I wonder what the odds are that all these SHTF/TEOTWAWKI threads won't have been purely vain idle chatter.

[Cosmoline]

From what I have heard, the sea level will be much higher and we will all be living on boats killing people with webbed feet and defending ourselves from pirates running around on old oil tankers.   

No dude, WE will be on the oil tanker    Those guys from DU will be the helpless villagers. 

[mfree]

Hrmm. 2057, I'd be 79 years old. Well, that is, if I make it that far.

Honestly, I don't see it much different. Analog communications will be a thing of the past. Phone lines will be severely antiquated and replaced by a single high-speed data link to the home. I think by then we'll have about 25% of vehicles still running directly on fossil fuels and the rest either plug-in hybrids or direct electric. Houses carrying solar panels, I bet that'll be up to 1/3, as well as most major businesses, once the production curve ramps up and prices fall.

Fashion wise, I don't foresee much real change except another trip through the pastel/neon/earth tone revolutions.

India will be a major world power. China wil probably see a "soft revolution" by then. Russia will descend into the depths of statism along Stalinist lines but without the level of regional power they had before... but will more than likely suffer a "hard revolution". Europe will have bankrupted itself and *attempted* to drag Ireland with it; but Ireland has already seen the light re: taxes and social programs and will emerge as a nation-power along the lines of 70's France, rivalling England.

There will still be fighting in the middle east, probably centered in Iran/Pakistan and internal fighting in Saudi Arabia as the kingdom falls and the people revolt.

I'm losing interest in this thoughtline though... I could make up more but why?