I’ll go by (very broad) regions:
The United States experiences a brain drain and Trump’s death (all but inevitable in 10 years, whether by natural causes or other means), will cause a major rift in the Republican Party. Democrats will somehow fail to capitalize on it and then blame online leftists, famously the kingmakers of American politics.
Canada will become a de facto part of Europe. Bike lanes will be added.
Europe will experience an economic boom as it’s basically forced to develop new industries, becomes the default destination for scientific research, and the Euro begins to replace the dollar as the currency of choice for international trade contracts. France, especially, will benefit as it isn’t reliant on the U.S. for military support, space launch capabilities, etc. and will become the default NATO weapons supplier.
Russia will have a deep post-war depression even if it takes Kyiv due to brain drain and sending so many young men into a meat grinder.
China will have a medium-sized economic crisis but ultimately (after Xi) enact long needed reforms (kind of like when Mao died and Deng Xiaoping enacted reforms).
India will have a major crisis as Hindu Nationalism goes too far and people begin to revolt.
Central Asia will keep on keeping on. (I don’t know a lot about Central Asia.)
Latin America will increase trade with China and Europe at the expense of the United States. Bolsonaro will go to the hospital 50 more times and be bit by an even more exotic bird. Argentina will benefit most from the decline of the U.S. as a reliable trading partner.
Israel will annex the West Bank and Arab countries will isolate it. Saudi Arabia’s line city will still be in the planning stages. Iran will develop a nuclear deterrent but the power of the Supreme Leader will be weakened and shift to the elected officials because of economic problems.
The Maghreb will benefit from Europe’s rise and increased trade. West Africa will experience an economic and population boom and become an inexpensive manufacturing hub. The Horn of Africa will probably remain a shitshow (but hopefully I’m wrong about that). Central and Southern Africa will also experience significant growth but at a slower pace than West Africa.
Australia will lose another war with emus as New Zealand wisely allies with the Emus. They will force Australia into a humiliating peace deal that ultimately leads to a third Emu War, much like WWI’s onerous peace terms led to WWII.
Ocean acidification and rising sea levels will begin to fuck everyone and scientists will scream about it but it’ll be the following decades when that sort of thing really wrecks the world economy.
Nintendo will somehow sell me the same games for the 5th time.
Famine will enter the American lexicon again.
Major roadblocks to piracy and porn in the US. Piracy will never be eliminated, but the barrier to entry will become too difficult for most folks. I've subsequently been hoarding all of the media I can get my hands on in case this happens - I refuse to pay for 20 streaming services just to watch movies and TV.
A war will happen.
It will either be a civil war within the US but involving all of North America.
Or the literal 3rd world war. With usa and Russia fighting against Europe, where Canada is one of the main battleground.
I really wish I'm wrong, but I predicted drump's colonialist ambition over Canada years ago. I also remember being laugh at by everyone around the table at a diner for saying conservatives were making nazism acceptable again. Well guess what...
Peak human population will occur within the next ten years. Previously this was driven by falling birth rates. Now it will be driven by rapidly rising death rates. Within the next ten years, I think 300 million - 1 billion dead from starvation due to bread basket collapse is a conservative estimate.
Traumatized Ukrainian "terrorists".
You've fought s brutal war only to be sold out by your allies. Do you really just go home?
Most will. But a few will take the fight into Russian territory and use insurgent tactics.
The media will call them terrorists.
More floods, storms, droughts, extreme heats, fewer animal/plant species, more garbage everywhere
Trump tries to sell a state to Russia.
Following the path of other regimes around the world, the USA builds their own "great firewall", segmenting most people here away from the global internet. At around the same time, personal VPNs become explicitly illegal. We might also see the government seize control of at least one certificate registrar, if they don't fire up their own, thereby "owning" TLS online.
On the upside, there's a chance we will see more grass-roots efforts to reboot a lot of institutions that were co-opted by the rich. You're just never going to hear about that through conventional channels. For instance: local newspapers with real journalism behind them. Or more small businesses with the intent to last, rather than sell. It's possible that more of those things will be co-ops, union shops, or even Mondragon inspired. Either way, there's a path forward for more community, real communication, and eventual prosperity, provided folks keep their heads and take things offline where necessary.
The surveillance of chats and the prohibition of encryption in many Western countries must have a purpose. It mostly makes sense if democracy is dismantled.
Since the West doesn't show signs of sharing resources voluntarily, my prediction is that the West is willing to fight a nuclear war to preserve its lead which cannot happen in a democracy.
Without that war, Asia will take over as the center of commerce and innovation. The brightest will move there, which means that the remaining people in the West have to be innovative without the main ingredience for innovation.
- dollar devalues by 90% compared to present value
- wages so low / cost of living so high that people can't pay for bread with their wages, making subsidies / universal basic income a necessity.
- US goes on the brink of a civil war before the rich agree to pay for said subsidies, probably some people die because of it.
- US slides into a mixture of tech-authoritarianism/fascism
- martian settlement/research makes surprisingly fast progress, with wide bi-partisan support because people realize it's actually a good idea for everyone, creating demand for human labor and driving up the wages.
A Tsunami of unprecedented size will completely destroy a coastal metropolis.
A heat wave in the middle east will leave hundreds dead in the first recorded wet bulb event.
In September 2035, the Arctic will be completely ice-free for the very first time, 15 years ahead of predictions.
Around that time, the first commercial shipping route along the north-western passage will open.
One of the first container ships will run onto a naval mine and sink, killing all hands. Russia will deny any involvement.This year will be declared the year of the linux desktop.
And so will the year after, and the one after…
-The internet will become something only old people use and will fill up with old people like radio and TV before it. Something new will be the hip new thing that kids use/consume, though it technically could be considered the internet
-Coal power plants will be phased out entirely in U.S.A. with some taking credit and others morning the loss of a purely economic conversion over to natural gas power. It will look like it is solar's time to shine, but a "new" way of generating power which is cheaper and slightly cleaner will take over and slowly convert natural gas plants to whatever it is.
-There will be a detracted argument over whether or not what comes after current gen-AI is considered sapient and worthy of rights. While the debate will be straightforward in a vacuum, other semi-related topics will mix in including: the rich wanting their AI doppelgangers to keep control of the money/power they earned during life; something to do with sex and/or relationships because of course there will be; religious opposition until the poll numbers swap, then there will be some regions that view AI rights a helping the disadvantaged
-A young politician from the democrats will get elected on the back of anti-Trump hate. They will have in their first two years theoretically enough support to pass substantial legislation, but will be stopped by a small number of conservative democrats from doing anything substantial save for maybe one big accomplishment. They will loose the 2030 midterms to a bunch of republicans and a "grass-roots" organization that is paid for by rich business owners, but will come back to win the 2032 election against a rich republican from New England. However, they won't have control over the congress and by 2035 will be a lame duck.
-Someone will scrap NASA's current human space flight plans to promote their own plan, which in itself will be scrapped when a new administration comes in. By 2035, articles will be printing "it is a shame that no real current alive human has stepped foot on the moon", taking a subtle dig at China's AI-human that is currently building structures on the moon.
Economical collapse in multiple countries, including the US. Like Great Depression II.
Since I'm not feeling very optimistic, and given that everything I predicted today was the exact opposite, I'll say this.
- Campi Flegrei explodes, creating a noise louder than Krakatoa.
- Santorini sinks into the ocean.
- Nuclear war.
- Groundwater runs out all over the world.
- A massive solar emission hits earth, throwing us back into the Stone Age.
Doing my duty, to protect the world by predicting things, so the exact opposite happens 🍺.
Just to cover all the bases, some extra points.
- AI superintelligence is evil.
- A gamma-ray burst hits earth.
- Aliens are evil.
- Vacuum decay is possible and something accidentally triggers it.
- Nobody likes me romantically.
Wars over water in North America
World War 3.
But it won't be a nuclear war that ends the world. (un?)fortunately. -- Nuclear war doesn't benefit the elites -- Instead it will be a jillion proxy skirmishes all over the developing world, as countries get puppeteered by Russia/China/USA into fighting their battles, and said countries get 'support' in the form of weapons and training that will breed a whole new generation of extremist regimes and terrorists.
In the end, we'll be back to the same ol' same ol' -- Life gets shittier for everyone in a gradual, painful, tedious way.
1984 with just a hint of Wall-E.
We'll have reduced the human body to basically just another machine and will be in the process of reverse-engineering it. So many new techniques and sources of data have come online all at the same time in biology.
This is in contrast to the current situation where we know a few things about select parts of the body in isolation.
Radio music will be almost entirely AI generated by 2035.
I am faithful that humans will continue to be the primary composers, performers, and tastemakers of music even when AI tools are involved, because music is simply fun to do for people who do it. I know I'm simply not interested in giving up my passion even though an AI could do it, and I think most musicians are with me on that. We do it because it is worth doing.
But as far as radio pop music is concerned, I think that listeners will eventually be conditioned to prefer "better than real" (but really more polished than real life) music, just like we have with modern record production, particularly auto-tune, drum sample replacement/augmentation, vocaloids, virtual analog plugin software, compression and saturation, and sample-based electronic music. And once that happens, it'll be cheaper and more predictable to ask an AI to spit out a song than to pay human producers to do it.
"Saltwater Intrusion" is going to become a fairly common story in coastal areas in a few years, to the point it becomes normal. The way everyone has just accepted fire season in the western US.
Which, in turn, will bring more and more shady water-rights selloffs and thefts, main affecting marginalized communities.
I understand it is normal human behavior to focus on negative things and an evolved survival trait. But it is kind of sad that no answers have any positive thoughts about the future. So I will try one:
Computer and robotic technology will improve and get cheaper. It will become feasible for home bound people to be able to have some sort of participation in society through telepresence.
The United States of America will become Ununited. A group of states will break away and wall themselves off from the rest of the country, creating their own Trump worshipping society. They will create their own version of utopia and tell stories about how the rest of the world is going to die off because they will make everyone transgender and have no more children. The rest of the world will rejoice and join together in actually fixing climate change, eradicate poverty and spread the Eurovision worldwide.
In 100 more years the walled off states will emerge to repopulate what they expect to be an empty planet with their own eugenically created race of clones and finally realise that they were completely and utterly wrong.
✨ Enshitification ✨
In order of hopeful least hopeful:
- I finally create my first ever original song using something like Vocaloid or UTAU. Would absolutely prefer Vocaloid because I tried v6 once and it was so much nicer than UTAU/OpenUTAU and so much easier.
- I actually finish a Wattpad series I started instead of letting it rot after I lose interest.
- Pokémon Empire (my absolute favorite fan game, just below Uranium) doesn't get nuked by Sintendo.
- The devs still working on Uranium finish the post game and let you capture the legendaries mentioned in the Tsukiyomi village museum(?).
- I finally get the remaining books in the Bakuman manga series and actually read the whole series. I've got the first 9 volumes, so I should hopefully be done at some point before the end of the decade, assuming my favorite place to go for used manga has the other 11 volumes at some point or doesn't close down.
@remindme@mstdn.social 10 years
AI is going to replace a lot of peoples jobs and no real government is prepared for the aftermath.
Something like Detroit beyond human where AI is causing massive unemployment and real humans are really suffering. While the super rich are in lofts doing their own thing.
Its not all bad, Ive heard some short stories on the importance of open source and manufacturing your own thing. Theres stories on communities banding together in such times and rejecting that which makes the rich richer. But I personally think it will be far and in between. People have to want to change, and I just dont see it happening.
Another economic depression in the US, on a similar scale to the 1930s, maybe a lot worse. Probably a lot sooner than 10 years.
For a run-down of some of the key reasons, this video is long (40m), but worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM
World War 3: Return of the Civil War
Pandemic 2: Bird Measles
Depression 2
All at the same time
Communicating with AI becomes indistinguishable from human contact, unless it's face-to-face. While promising to solve the loneliness epidemic and provide safe and effective therapy for anyone who wants it, it also unleashes a torrent of convincing AI propaganda. Technocrats using AI and charismatic humans as useful idiots and a front, effectively rule the world. Most people are poor and go hungry, but resistance is futile. There is no safe way to communicate except meeting in person, and there are few safe spaces to even meet that aren't under constant surveillance. Organizing any resistance is incredibly difficult, if not hopeless. Truth is no more.
At least five new countries acquire nuclear weapons.
The United States will no longer be a member of NATO or the United Nations or both. The US is being labeled as an adversary by Germany, so in 10 years, the United States may very well lose half of it's allies because of these 4 years we're enduring.
Russia could still lose it's war with Ukraine and may have lost because of the combined efforts of the EU since the US 10 years ago (accounting the time scale) has abandoned Ukraine. Russia and the United States could very well be allies by this point which would make the world arm themselves since we're seeing countries retaliate in trade wars.
Inflation in 10 years will be the new norm because no politician, Democrat or Republican, can't ever get their marbles of a grasp on holding corporations accountable.
Speaking of Corporations, in 10 years, they would've sucked dry and owned well over every important asset, service and many acquisitions along the way. We would have to make the term 'Megacorp' to identify these corporations by.
US car company collapse. A major armed conflict between two large economies
China will overtake US as the dominant economic power, exert their influence on neighbouring regions and get more push back than it thought (similar to Russia).
The world will fracture into different regions with different day to day life (even more so).
US will become the wild Wild West where everything goes in the right state.
Canada and Europe (western not Eastern) will stay put in terms of peace, but they will no longer have “the best standard of living”.
Africa will get abused by China and become the next China.
Australia will be like, wtf mate, but they’ll be dead soon… stupid kangaroos.
" Dinosauria We" by Charles Bukowski
He nailed it.
Humans are quite bad at predicting the future, so I'm going with an easy one.
China will do nothing and somehow win.
