2084 — The Best & Worst Predictions
Responding to James Altucher’s predictions of the future
This was a great read! I love thinking about the future, so I had to jump on this thought experiment. :D
The future is a mix of the best and the worst outcomes. Reality is oftentimes far worse and far better than we ever imagined.
But the best way to predict the future is to create it.
So I’d like to share some of my own predictions for the future from now until the 22nd century. Of course, this is all assuming that something extreme doesn’t happen such as the apocalypse or aliens.
The Best things I want to build toward:
A) Augmented (and Virtual) Reality will realign human behavior
Augmented reality will be the next big thing. Virtual reality will be a slow burn over the next few decades until it gets to ‘full dive’ technology.
AR will change how we interact with the world on a fundamental level. With spatial computing, we will be able to contextualize our experiences.
That means:
1) Using the environment to change how we use the internet. Instead of looking at the little pocket screen or desktop screen or living room screen every day all day for content, the content will be projected into our world. We could play games using the landscapes we’re traveling through during our (automated) transit. We could walk into a store and automatically apply our tickets/coupons/membership cards. We could decide where, when, and how we see our news by anchoring it to a specific time and location in our homes or lives.
Couple this with IoT devices and we can indeed automatically refill our fridge, toiletries, etc when it is needed. This would enable and be enabled by just-in-time manufacturing rather than mass production, leading to less physical consumption.
2) Seeing the environment more clearly than ever before. Now that the virtual world is interwoven into the real world, there will be more incentives to build experiences that draw attention to the environment. We can have experiences that actually show photosynthesis, the water cycle, the greenhouse effect, etc in action. What people see and measure is what we pay attention to. So actually being able to see how insects impact your life, or how bacteria propagate (and the difference between good and bad germs) or even how a diverse social circle increases your thought patterns and empathy… all of this makes it easy to appreciate nature.
Now that we see the impact of our actions, we can better focus on how to improve our impact. This will reinforce the use of local resources, renewable energy, and recycling.
Most of the things we buy will be virtual. Virtual clothes, pets, nick-knacks, and so on will bring physical minimalism to a new level. With less demand for material things, there will be less of a ‘need’ for huge manufacturing plants or operations, and thus less waste and pollution. Decade by decade, our carbon footprint will go way down.
Virtual realities will pop up allowing people to be completely immersed in new ways of living. This will increase empathy, test out new ideas with little to no risk, and provide a safe space for everyone on every side of every spectrum to live out their wildest dreams.
In all, AR/VR will unlock a revolution in education, anthropology, evidence-based policies, gaming, and empathy.
B) Climate Change will be reversed and/or managed
With people paying more attention to the environment, humanity will turn more if its attention to solving these problems. People will be inspired by their AR lenses showing them the magic of nature and seek to copy/amplify those effects. There will be a resurgence in biotechnology investments. People will use genetic modification and bioengineering to create trees that can grow to full size in a matter of months or even weeks. In addition to soaking up carbon, we will likely invest in technologies that can neutralize particularly dangerous weather such as shooting giant lasers into the sky.
We will create cities that float in the sea, underground, or even in the air. These cities will help all those people on rising coastlines or in areas that will be impacted by climate change-related disasters (such as forest fires, flash floods, and tornadoes).
C) Society and Politics will find a healthy balance
America — America will use this time to finally become great for all people. The hard lessons we are learning now about police brutality, radicalized biparty politics, systemic oppression, and so on will lead the way for a better country. Evidence-based politics will come to the fore as people grow tired of empty platitudes. Ranked-choice voting will become the new default as people yearn for their votes to count. Our government will experiment with randomly-selected constituents and find it far more efficient. The remaining policy-makers will be pooled from politicians with actual experience in the fields they are making policies for.
Most importantly, America will realize the need for reviewing our laws every decade rather than every century. There will be inalienable rights, and everything else will be simple regulations that set basic standards without trying to dictate how to meet those standards.
Lobbies will be banned and all political campaigns will be free, ie no money in politics (besides getting paid well to actually do the job right).
Police will be restricted to non-lethal methods, the justice system will be completely revised to no longer reinforce oppression, there will be no court of public opinion, and the government will only be in charge of ensuring there is always competition and that all citizens have their basic needs met.
The World — Thanks to these more ethical political systems, along with people learning more empathy for other cultures, countries throughout South America, Africa, and Asia will finally be able to make their own come up. No longer will there be foreign interests who meddle in their economies, resources, or governments, allowing them to figure out their own standards of stability. Africa will likely find the greatness from its ancient civilizations such as Mali, Zimbabwe, Madinke, Kush, Xhosa, Edo, etc… They will gain ownership of their own raw materials and even leap frog above ‘Developed nations’ with their infrastructure like Korea did coming into the 21st century.
D) Space Age Industry will reinforce the green revolution
As space becomes cheap, or at least more affordable than ever before, businesses will move off-world. Manufacturing, mining, chemical plants, and other industries that are often sources of pollution will find that it is far more profitable to produce their products in space. They will be able to use much more advanced robotics with less energy thanks to zero gravity. They will also be able to utilize advanced 3D printing and a number of other manufacturing techniques more easily in space. Most importantly, they will be able to find far more raw materials in space than can be found on Earth with far less negative byproducts.
We will likely not have large space colonies even within our lifetime, but everyone will know someone who knows someone who works in space.
By the beginning of the 22nd century, we will finally have the perfect ingredients to start building space habitats that can fit hundreds of people at a time in nigh luxurious comfort. This will superpower the existence of safe spaces. Meaning all those virtual environments where people were exploring radical or custom lifestyles will now be able to craft bespoke physical environments around their virtual ones as well.
The Worst things I want to avoid
A) Augmented (and Virtual) Reality will become an addiction
Corporations already obese on ad revenue will find a gold mine of data when 40–60% of the world wears cameras on their head. Unlike smartphones, these cameras will be able to show them every single thing you look at for just a few milliseconds longer than normal. Buying isn’t even necessary for the ads to be successful, because they get money just from selling the data on what people look at, under what conditions, for how often, etc… they can then charge a premium to place those ads exactly when/where people will incidentally look. People will be sick of ads, but many ads will become so well placed, they’ll seem natural.
People already glutted on social media and content mills will find a gold mine in content. Every waking moment, and perhaps even their dreams, will be filled to the brim with engaging content made by billions of other people and AI alike. Some people will become millionaires or even billionaires just from sponsoring products in unique ways and making viral content, only a small minority of which will actually be meaningful or add value to their viewer’s lives.
Most of it will be insane drama:
Pranking people with projections of a new car in front of their house, only for them to go outside and walk right into a pile of 💩, reaction channels where you watch poor people through live streams as they go through their miserable lives, fighting ‘dragons and mythical creatures’ that are superimposed over innocent animals, etc.
Content creators will work with businesses to create epic quests where people can go find product placements for a chance to win a face-to-face AR-hologram appearance with their favorite content creator,… and 10% off their next purchase of that product.
Virtual shopping will also become the new fad. Where people will pay tons of money to virtually wear what the Kardashians wore last night at the virtual KardashianCon…
With this new form of materialism, are carbon footprint will balloon to include physical manufacturing on top of digital mass production in the way of server farms bigger than cities.
Rich off of AR, companies will not find a reason to invest in solving difficult problems such as full-dive technology. Instead, they will fake mind-reading through AR devices that can guess what you will do and want based on intimate data. VR will be like the dark web in that it is only a tool for hackers, which will also scare consumers away from it.
Eventually though, the real world will be so terrifying, that most people will completely augment their reality, or flee to virtual ones as a means of escape.
B) Climate Change will destroy half the world
Coastlines will erode, major cities will adapt or drown, minor cities will disappear without many people even knowing they existed, weather will find a new normal in much more extreme temperatures…
The world will feel like a dangerous place again: unpredictable and capricious, like how our ancestors thought there were massive beasts at the ends of the Earth, or a pantheon of angry gods ready to strike them down… but many today will think this is the divine wrath of their god bringing forth the end times.
Those places that adapt will use increasingly more short-sighted solutions to try and stave off (or hide) the results of climate change.
Instead of figuring out how to lower global temperature, nations will erect big levees and try to build bubbles around the cities who can afford it, leaving the rest to fend for themselves.
Instead of reversing carbon footprints, governments will just tax carbon emissions and subsidize electricity. This will discourage the government from actually investing in radically different technologies such as nuclear or geothermal, since those won’t net revenue like getting taxes from the byproducts of fracking or natural gas or building solar panels.
Instead of solving climate change, humanity will go into survival mode. Our collective culture will be in perpetual fear of scarce resources, freak storms, and war for what is left.
C) Society and Politics will fracture civilization
Those places that adapt will use their safety as an incentive to attract businesses and taxpayers. This will create even more reasons to raise taxes and pass short-sighted regulations that only cement monopolistic incumbents and block truly innovative solutions that are ‘too risky’ to allow a chance to compete.
Thus, radicalization and systemic oppression will become even more of an issue as societies become more polarized and survivalist.
Deep fakes will make people believe anything as politics become the new Reality TV. This combined with climate change and polarization will pave the way for the disintegration of democracy.
The US will become the Nu Union and the Grand Ol Confederacy, split mostly along urban and rural areas. The NU will depend on the GoC for food and resources until they can figure out vertical farming and space imports. The GoC will depend on the NU for medical and technology advances until they can reassemble their own grids running on oil mined from their backyards.
Once they do, the NU will become self-sufficient, walled super cities with transport systems that only go directly to other major cities; life is fast, chaotic, and ever-changing rife with government intervention.
The GoC will become bible thumping farmers who shoot NU-looking people on sight and/or just live a quiet life that never has to change with the times even while freak storms and weather lay waste to the countryside.
Australia, or whats left after intense forest fires, floods, and drought, will become the new America. China will become the new superpower until it crumbles under the weight of its own male-dominated population, leaving the way for Russia, Japan, and Korea to take the reigns. Africa and South America will crumble under the weight of China and the Fractured States fighting over their resources. The EU will regulate itself back into the middle ages.
War will break out the likes of which has never been seen before.
D) Space Age Industry will stall into Nu Feudalism
With all this happening on Earth, space will be a dream only the uber-rich will be able to invest in. They will build new monopolies spanning across space travel, tourism, mining, and communication.
The One Percent will be able to flee to super small but comparatively luxurious space habitats. As war breaks out across the world, people in power will continue playing their games from on high.
From there, they can reign down weapons, control the means of production, and even have a stranglehold on the communication lines from space that will no doubt be more reliable than those on land.
They can use space to carve the world in their image, using war and resources as their tools. They can reward their followers with a place in space, while everyone else lives in peril of nuclear bombardment.
Reality
It’s very likely that none of this will happen. There’s a chance that some of this will happen in an unpredictable way.
But in talking about this, I hope to make it more likely for the best stuff to happen, and less likely for the worst stuff to happen.
The best way to create a better future, is to think about what you want (or don’t want) to happen, and work towards it, day by day.
I did a hour and half, impromptu podcast about this topic as well (Warning! There is some bad audio feedback for the first 3 minutes :/ so please skip past the beginning).
Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think. I still have some thoughts on Jame’s actual article though, haha. Should I do a point-by-point ‘debate’ or leave it as is?
