How do you envision technology 50 years from now?

[Stuart]

What is "properly"? If you are destroying their military assets, that would take more warheads than just a few nukes. If you are planning a fully coordinated strike against their strategic assets, of course it makes sense to make the job properly. However, what are the strategic assets of, say, Brazil? They don't even have much in the way of either WMDs or their delivery vehicles.

Again, we run into the concentration factor here. Brazil, for example, is concentrated into a few small areas that can be efficiently targeted, so is Argentina and Chile. They're typical third-line countries in that they have their economic, military and political assets concentrated into a few small areas while the rest of the country is spread very thin. Of all the third-line countries, India is probably the hardest one to take out and that would require a significant investment. For the rest, a nuclear depth charge fuzed for a surface burst and delivered by rocket (SBROC or SSN-16) would be perfectly suitable.

Some SIOPs are available, as well as some wargaming reports from the WARPAC. Which sources indicate that this doctrine is factual, and which of them are credible? I'd just like to see the sources, because for all that talk about it, I haven't seen people referencing anything solid, or anyone for that matter.

The SIOPs won't contain it because the U.S. never adopted that particualr strategy; for us it was politically impossible so nobody ever bothered to address it seriously. The meeting information where such issues were discussed are not part of the puiblic record (one of the advantages of having think tanks do things). The Russian side of it came through in the 1990s with a number of different people talking about the concept. You'd have to search through the Russian documentation yourself to see if it's in print anywhere; it isn't available in the U.S. but there's a hell of a lot published in Russia that isn;t available here.

Yeah, but do you think that such ideas really bit the dust because the original approach (satellites) wasn't working?

We know the satellite launch system didn't work because it was marketed commercially in the 1990s (the marketing effort failed of course). We also know that the back four tubes on the 941 are quite different from the forward nest of 16 (we have photographic evidence of that). So everything fits together. Having said that, there was a mass of bullshit that came out in the 1990s purporting to be from Russian sources and virtually everything that came out in that era is suspect.

What, you're not even warning people? You mean there's no dude in every single quartal of the city equipped with megaphones and a red signal rocket which starts emitting the "SIGNAL ATOM" sound as soon as an atomic attack has been detected? You got to be kidding. We have 15 minutes slated for the cover procedure, but the shelters are generally located in the basements of most concrete structures, and most basements of schools, as well as some houses have stocks of NBC gear which is necessary to obtain. Duh... I didn't know it's that bad, but then, I believe your housing system would not allow people to be saved en masse - it's not like these carboard boxes would offer much protection

The exact policy on whether to warn people hasn't been decided last time I looked, as I said, its debateable whether a warning would do any good. Few people have any nuclear shelters, few maintain serious stocks of emergency supplies, even fewer no what to do. As you say, U.S. frame houses essentially offer zero protection. We've done studies that show that if we did give a warning, more people would have been in protected locations before the warning than would be when the laydowns happened. We had the grounds of a good civil defense system in the 1950s but it was destroyed by deliberate funding starvation in the 1960s and has never been rebuilt.

Oh, that is true that many nations are concentrated, but there are some Third World nations which aren't even industrialized enough to care. I do understand a strategic necessity to hit someone with a WMD arsenal or something (I don't know really how viable taking out Australia is - what would Australia be able to offer if it wasn't nuked would be rather beneficial for restoration, and it's quite unlikely taht Australia's population reserves woudl allow it to occupy large areas of the world like US or Russia ). The point is that if they are already alert and the world is in general heading to war, wouldn't they though disperse their military assets as to avoid being hit? Like, scramble the Navy, put their planes on reserve ("Spreadout") airfields? I know Russia has such procedures, but I thought they are fairly universal, and the more concentrated your C&C and population are, the more sense such a strategy has.

We have spread out (strategic dispersal to give it the proper name) as well, the municipal airport where I live has runways wide enough to take a B-52 (although getting it off is hairy if Flight Simulator X is to be believed). Most countries don't have that option though, they're infrastructure is as concentrated as anything else and attempting to disperse it would simply cause an even bigger catastrophe. Australia is a good example of a place where the strategic bases are such that taking them out (a necessity since they are key elements in supporting U.S. Navy forward operations not to mention Australian operations) would also take the country out. Myanmar on the other hand probably wouldn't be targeted at all, primarily because its own government is as destructive as any nuclear attack is likely to be. Strategic dispersal is a very viable tactic, the best way to survive a nuclear initiation is not to be where and when it goess off, but it does require a lot of preparation. Most countries don't have it. Look on it from a logical point of view, there is a limited amount of resources for infrastructure development. One can either spend it on dispersing existing infrastructure or developing the existing infrastructure further. The former offers some benefits in the event of a very unlikely event, the latter offers immediate and significant benefits that are tangible witin a short period. So the money goes to the latter. Across the world, concentration is actually increasing, not diminishing. It's easy to check that; when a new factory in such places is announced, mark its position on a map. After a while, its apparent they're all being built in more or less the same place.

Quite surely. Iran, unlike other Third World nations, does pose a strategic danger and it has a viable WMD arsenal and means of delivery, for all the laughs about it's photoshopped rockets.

There were a lot of other reasons as well but basically, yes.

[K. A. Pital]

Of all the third-line countries, India is probably the hardest one to take out and that would require a significant investment.

Yes, I'd believe that to be so. But even if all other nations have their industrial assets concentrated, they would be quite eager for a vengeance in the future, once you expended your nuclear arsenal. Even very poor nations can afford to build nuclear weapons within reasonable timeframes, so by kicking them in the guts at Hour Zero you might be risking them scrambling stuff to hit you back, vindictively and in pursuit of greater power, 20-30 years after Hour Zero.

The SIOPs won't contain it because the U.S. never adopted that particualr strategy; for us it was politically impossible so nobody ever bothered to address it seriously. The meeting information where such issues were discussed are not part of the puiblic record (one of the advantages of having think tanks do things). The Russian side of it came through in the 1990s with a number of different people talking about the concept. You'd have to search through the Russian documentation yourself to see if it's in print anywhere; it isn't available in the U.S. but there's a hell of a lot published in Russia that isn;t available here.

Sure, I'll give it a go. It's not like we have much on our hands, but some documents do contain valuable information on targets.

We know the satellite launch system didn't work because it was marketed commercially in the 1990s (the marketing effort failed of course). We also know that the back four tubes on the 941 are quite different from the forward nest of 16 (we have photographic evidence of that). So everything fits together. Having said that, there was a mass of bullshit that came out in the 1990s purporting to be from Russian sources and virtually everything that came out in that era is suspect.

What about conserving several mobile land-based ICBMs in some dusty-rusty storage in the middle of nowhere to remind people several years onward that you can still ruin their shit if they continue provoking you or trying to conquer you? The SLBM sat idea failed and that's true, but I meant other delayed retaliation ideas which are also easier to pull off.

We had the grounds of a good civil defense system in the 1950s but it was destroyed by deliberate funding starvation in the 1960s and has never been rebuilt.

I don't really understand, why such neglect? Did your government just consider the chance of reliable retaliation in the future neglible, or is it the "economically, it's unreasonable to try and save people in a very low-probability event", and you laughed while we spent money on shelters and civil defense?

Across the world, concentration is actually increasing, not diminishing. It's easy to check that; when a new factory in such places is announced, mark its position on a map. After a while, its apparent they're all being built in more or less the same place.

Yeah, I look at the satellite light maps quite often, and at their progress as well. To be fair though, in the First World a process of sprawling lights in the rural areas is seen; that might not mean industrial infrastructure is moving there, but it certainly means something. Also, the more every city glows, the more self-sufficient it is; at least that's true for here, if the city glows heavily that's probably because it has X factories among them cloth and food factories, as well as railway stations and airstrips... if however, only one city glows while the others don't, that means centralization is rising and only one true infrastructural center exists.

My favourite place on the map is Egypt. So concentrated. You could take that out with a few hits, maybe in one hit... and that's all. Israel's targeteers must love that nation - they know Egypt won't ever risk Israel going ballistic on it's ass

[Samuel]

I don't really understand, why such neglect? Did your government just consider the chance of reliable retaliation in the future neglible, or is it the "economically, it's unreasonable to try and save people in a very low-probability event", and you laughed while we spent money on shelters and civil defense?

Because the money in civil defense doesn't produce any immediate benefits and is first on the chopping block. Remember global warming denial? "It won't help anyways". That and it might have been the target of ridicule and politically easy to take out with the whole duck and cover.

[Stuart]

Yes, I'd believe that to be so. But even if all other nations have their industrial assets concentrated, they would be quite eager for a vengeance in the future, once you expended your nuclear arsenal. Even very poor nations can afford to build nuclear weapons within reasonable timeframes, so by kicking them in the guts at Hour Zero you might be risking them scrambling stuff to hit you back, vindictively and in pursuit of greater power, 20-30 years after Hour Zero.

But the logic is that by the time they've recovered to that point, so have we and we're in position to give them another dose of instant sunrise should the occasion arise.

What about conserving several mobile land-based ICBMs in some dusty-rusty storage in the middle of nowhere to remind people several years onward that you can still ruin their shit if they continue provoking you or trying to conquer you? The SLBM sat idea failed and that's true, but I meant other delayed retaliation ideas which are also easier to pull off.

The presumption is that the storage sites would be known and targeted. That's the deadly thing about a nuclear war, what one doesn't use one loses. So, firing the things off now to do some useful but non-essential task is better than losing them on the ground. That's why "limited exchanges" don't work. Everybody knows its "use it or lose it" everybody knows everybody knows, so get the lot off before it gets destroyed.

I don't really understand, why such neglect? Did your government just consider the chance of reliable retaliation in the future neglible, or is it the "economically, it's unreasonable to try and save people in a very low-probability event", and you laughed while we spent money on shelters and civil defense?

The reason at our end was the administration that arrived in 1960 was full of ideas about "stability" rather than winning wars. They (or rather Robert Strange McNamara) believed that the best way of defending against a nuclear war was to ensure that the consequences were so frightful that nobody would start one. Due to that point of view, it was deduced that any attempt to build defenses (civil or ABM) would reduce the devastation and thus reduce the frightfulness and thus make nuclear war more likely. And old friend of mine, Don Brennan, spent 20 years of his life arguing against that and coined the term MAD to describe it. Add in the anti-nuclear campaigners who were opposed to anything associated with nukes on basic principle and we have the end of civil defense. Nobody in The Business laughed at Russian civil defense, we were seriously envious of it. But, there was no talking sense to people.

Yeah, I look at the satellite light maps quite often, and at their progress as well. To be fair though, in the First World a process of sprawling lights in the rural areas is seen; that might not mean industrial infrastructure is moving there, but it certainly means something. Also, the more every city glows, the more self-sufficient it is; at least that's true for here, if the city glows heavily that's probably because it has X factories among them cloth and food factories, as well as railway stations and airstrips... if however, only one city glows while the others don't, that means centralization is rising and only one true infrastructural center exists.

The light mass is a pretty good way of judging things although one has to be careful. Las Vegas burns more electricity than most countries and doesn't produce anything useful.

My favourite place on the map is Egypt. So concentrated. You could take that out with a few hits, maybe in one hit... and that's all. Israel's targeteers must love that nation - they know Egypt won't ever risk Israel going ballistic on it's ass

Been there, done that. One missile, three warheads. One in the river to contaminate the Nile and the whole country is gone.

[Sky Captain]

My favourite place on the map is Egypt. So concentrated. You could take that out with a few hits, maybe in one hit... and that's all. Israel's targeteers must love that nation - they know Egypt won't ever risk Israel going ballistic on it's ass

Been there, done that. One missile, three warheads. One in the river to contaminate the Nile and the whole country is gone.

Or one could possibly just bust the Aswan dam and flush large part of Egypt out into Mediterranean sea.

[Lonestar]

Or one could possibly just bust the Aswan dam and flush large part of Egypt out into Mediterranean sea.

I'm pretty sure that was what he meant.

[Broomstick]

So, um, does anyone have any interest in discussing a technology OTHER than one concerned with warfare....?

[Surlethe]

So, um, does anyone have any interest in discussing a technology OTHER than one concerned with warfare....?

On a forum full of 18-25 males? Are you kidding?

On another note, split a one-liner to Testing.

[Broomstick]

Well, I would have thought, given the high numbers of geeks around here, that games, personal electronics, and the like be of interest, but alas....

[Forum Troll]

Gone.

In the unlikely event of humanity surviving fifty or more years, the survivors will be scavenging for what they can find. When that runs out, we're talking a 17th century level of existance if that

While bioterror is deserving of more attention since such could kill far more than even terrorists with a nuke, you're being pretty optimistic or shall we say pessimistic about the terrorists getting everything right on their first try.

If they mess up on the first attempt and only wipe out millions of people and not 7 billion, that warning would spur more measures against bioterror. Sarin gas is theoretically easy to make, but they screwed it up in the Matsumoto incident.

Cold viruses have had eons of evolution to be fairly optimized in how well they spread, but we see a lot of variance there even among non-lethal sicknesses. One person will be in a classroom with other people who sneeze all over their hands, get traces of mucus, not wash his hands before eating and get the disease. Somebody else may avoid getting sick at any time during the winter flu season. If he just walks by 50 yards away, he doesn't get as much of a viral load, maybe a few tiny droplets suspended in the air if that (if the viruses onboard weren't killed by the UV of sunlight). Restaurants are hotbeds of disease transmission but avoidable ones.

Even the 1918 worldwide influenza pandemic only infected 20% and killed under 5% of the world population. People wore masks when using public transport, practiced varying degrees of sanitation, and many survived.

Imagine, for example, a disease that is a construct of haemorraghic smallpox (97 percent mortality) and influenza so that it has the infectiousness of the latter. Breed in resistance to all known vaccines and a four-week incubation period during which the carrier is contagious but symptom-free.

Isn't haemorraghic smallpox a reference to symptoms developing in a certain minority of cases after exposure to smallpox, with not all individuals suffering from any particular smallpox virus strain developing that bleeding, due to variation in how much of the virus different individuals get, the strength of their immune systems, etc?

If you could give an example of a smallpox epidemic in history where a figure like 97% of the total population died, I would be curious. Generally the figure is a minority of the total. While a very high percentage died after the Spanish conquered Mexico, there were multiple combined mortality factors there.

Also, even if the virus was designed for a 4 week incubation period of being symptom free, wouldn't random mutations and individual variance mean a certain percentage of individuals would develop symptoms and reveal the existence of the pathogen days if not weeks early, giving it away?

The symptoms of the most infectious viruses known like all the sneezing, coughing, and mucus help them get dispersed through the surroundings and spread to other people. Without causing those symptoms, they would spread less, so it seems reasonable to expect that was an important evolutionary adaptation. Even limited mortality helps spreading by not killing off hosts too fast.

The IJA in WWII had a whole biological weapons unit but only killed a fraction of a million Chinese with the diseases they spread.

The Soviets had thousands of people working on a biological weapons project in the 1970s and 1980s, yet at least all publicly known information suggests they didn't manage to develop much of an unique supervirus so much as work on weaponizing existing diseases and methods of dispersion. They reportedly had an accidental release of weaponized smallpox at one time and a separate accidental release of anthrax in another incident, infecting some people each time but fortunately contained afterward.

Even when there was concerns about Iraq's biological weapons program (though the effectiveness of Iraqi WMDs turned out to be exaggerated and unable to stop the invasion), even Saddam Hussein didn't create entirely new pathogens but just worked with existing diseases like anthrax. He had a multi-billion-dollar economy and far more resources than a terrorist group.

I don't doubt that bioterror is an underrated threat. (So much as just duplicating the Influenza of 1918 could be worse than a hundred September 11th attacks). But is it actually probable for a mere terrorist group to make a doomsday super-virus better than any nation-state biological warfare R&D programs seem to have managed so far?

[Forum Troll]

This has been on my mind a lot, recently. If so many things that would have been deemed technologically impossible or just weren't imagined just 50 years ago exist today, such as mobile phones, very powerful computers in the household, CAT scans, etc... what can we expect to have in 50 years

The rise of the telepathic Borg...

Telepathy is common. You don't have to believe in pseudoscience. Just radio. And miniaturized computer implants, not a scary surgical procedure with big knives and large incisions but under medical science revolutionized by microrobots.

Millions of books and media get merged into a standard petabyte database of all human knowledge, accessible through the implants as well as conventional means. Google evolves into a set of AI helpers. Anybody can have the power of a supercomputer to assist them at any time, though as many people remain morons as ever.

Internet access everywhere. Tune out your immediate surroundings with a thought at any time. Displays projected onto compact sunglasses or onto your eyes directly. Blockers are installed in classrooms during tests so all the kids don't just look up the answers on wikipedia.

TVs access all shows ever aired at any time, no longer held to the original broadcast time, and the distinction blurs between a TV and just another computer monitor. Dumbed-down operating system interfaces are made for idiots who still hadn't learned how to use a computer.

The end of batteries...

City surroundings are energized with giant inductive power supplies so all portable electronics run forever off the wireless power without needing batteries.

A worldwide superconducting power grid makes money off how electricity is twice as cheap in some regions as others, buying and reselling.

Renewable power is an insignificant fraction of energy generation as long as it costs the slightest bit more than coal, but someday somebody develops solar power that doesn't cost a thousand bucks per square meter, causing it to get installed everywhere not to save the environment but to do what more people really care about, saving money.

Flying cars? Sort of...

Somebody mass-produces affordable personal blimps for recreation, like having a picnic at a few thousand feet up. High-speed accidents are impossible as they maneuver like a beached whale, gently bump into things, and don't go anywhere fast. The little blimps came sometime after giant blimps become common for transporting equipment too bulky for helos or aircraft and premanufactured buildings. Beams from microwave cannons on the ground or in space power them, so fuel costs are nil.

Fast and reliable travel remains ground-based, especially during days of bad weather when it is too windy for small aircraft and blimps.

The new food additives...

Simple sugars are manufactured artificially, and corporations put them everywhere to save money, like high fructose corn syrup today. Vat-grown meat is made to always have the texture of the best steaks.

Cyborgizing the elderly...

Induced human hibernation is developed. Countries put many of their elderly into hibernation by a strong incentive program. The justification is to help them by transporting them to a time of improved future medical technology, but the real reason is to reduce social security and health care budget deficits in the short-term by hosing their descendents instead.

Rich elderly people cope with the decline of their body by becoming cyborgs.

And the new arms race is on...

Some nation develops human genetic engineering. That's not for cannon fodder, as muscle strength isn't that important in modern combat and not worth the cost. No, it's for top scientists and researchers to be made with larger brains, to a human what a human is to a chimpanzee. The race is on for which will successfully develop AGI and start the Singularity first, so them or their creations conquer the world before somebody else does.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

So, um, does anyone have any interest in discussing a technology OTHER than one concerned with warfare....?

Well, it's a very relevant point of discussion, as we're advancing to a level of technology where it is very, very possible that we'll inadvertently render the species entirely extinct, or sending it back to the Stone Age with no hope of recovery.

On the other hand, technological progress over the next fifty years will likely take a significant hit as we become increasingly resource-starved, and our energies become forcibly devoted to sustainability. Presently we're well beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, running all-out on dinosaur-juice meth. Shortly, we're not going to have quite enough of it to sustain our addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms are going to hit like the proverbial ton of bricks.

To make it into the next century, the entire population of the planet must get by on 80% less energy than it does presently. Imagine taking the median income of $35,000 and slashing it to $7,000. Or about $580 a month. One can live off less than a sixth of that, but by then, you're living in a straw hut with no running water, no electricity, and the only reason you'd not be actively starving to death is because you're shooting chimpanzees at the local wildlife refuge.

So, with that mental image firmly affixed, let's examine the implications. For a family of four living in a 3 bd/2 ba house, living the typical American lifestyle, electricity costs are at least $200 a month. This is discounting winter months, where this figure may double. And while I couldn't pin down a specific average monthly grocery budget, but it looks like the typical American spends between $5 to $10/day for food. We can assume $300 per month for communication and entertainment (internet, cable, telephone, and cellphones.) And, finally, if our putative family drives 33 miles/day, they spend at least $125/month on gas and routine vehicle maintenance. Add a $1000 mortgage and a $300 car payment, and our typical American family of four has a budget of $2355 per month.

But, to shed 80% of their wealth, this family only pulls in $580 per month. What goes? Pretty much everything but food. Rather drastic, one might say. And I promised we wouldn't have to go out to the local wildlife park and shoot the chimpanzees for supplemental protein, so obviously, the present lifestyle is going to need a drastic reworking.

If we cut down food expenditure to $3/day per person (easily doable,) this reduces their grocery bill to a mere $365/month. So now they can eat, and they'll have electricity. Obviously, this means they can't afford a car. Even a $9000 clown car made from Tupperware and powered by a lawnmower engine will now be nearly 130% of their annual salary, as opposed to the less than a third it was before. From this, we have our first prediction:

1) The concept of a personal automobile will go away in the next fifty years. People will need to use mass-transit, or non-motorized methods of transportation.

They obviously can't afford the nine room McMansion either. However, if you cram them into an apartment with a minimum of 'bling', and centralize climate control for the building, you can cut their electricity usage to about $80/month. This leads to our second prediction:

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

This ties back into the first prediction, since one has to have everything conveniently located, so they won't need that car they can't possibly hope to afford. Fortunately, they won't suffer for lack of entertainment, as we've proven that we can manufacture electronics cheaply enough to give to that family shooting the chimpanzees. However, because most of what civilization produces will have to be plowed back into getting us over our collective dino juice-meth withdrawal, we're not going to have as many expensive electronic toys for the children to smash on the holidays. This leads to our third prediction:

3) Electronics will become very green-friendly. They'll either have to be inexpensive, easily recyclable, and biodegradable . . . or else, they'll be tough enough to pass down to one's great-grandchildren. Lightweight, ultraflexible circuitry will allow us to embed electronics into just about anything, or encase it in enough resin to outlast the Pyramids.

[Samuel]

Well, I would have thought, given the high numbers of geeks around here, that games, personal electronics, and the like be of interest, but alas....

Games? Once we have holodecks, no one will leave them. Ever.

[Guardsman Bass]

So, um, does anyone have any interest in discussing a technology OTHER than one concerned with warfare....?

Well, it's a very relevant point of discussion, as we're advancing to a level of technology where it is very, very possible that we'll inadvertently render the species entirely extinct, or sending it back to the Stone Age with no hope of recovery.

It's possible, but not everyone agrees on its likeliness.

On the other hand, technological progress over the next fifty years will likely take a significant hit as we become increasingly resource-starved, and our energies become forcibly devoted to sustainability. Presently we're well beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, running all-out on dinosaur-juice meth. Shortly, we're not going to have quite enough of it to sustain our addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms are going to hit like the proverbial ton of bricks.

Why's that? If anything, slamming up against the resource constraints, particularly in the First World, should generate a massive amount of attempts to compensate by technological means (whether or not they are successful is another story), at least in the First World. Not so much in the Third World, of course.

To make it into the next century, the entire population of the planet must get by on 80% less energy than it does presently. Imagine taking the median income of $35,000 and slashing it to $7,000. Or about $580 a month. One can live off less than a sixth of that, but by then, you're living in a straw hut with no running water, no electricity, and the only reason you'd not be actively starving to death is because you're shooting chimpanzees at the local wildlife refuge.

I'm assuming that you're taking away all possibilities of usage of either petroleum and/or coal for power generation. This seems rather pessimistic, though; there are a number of alternative power generation means that could be built over the next 50 years (including widespread nuclear power), and there is always the possibility of the use of electrically-powered substitutes for a lot of the machinery we have at present. There are, after all, electrically powered furnaces, trains, and electric tractors.

So, with that mental image firmly affixed, let's examine the implications. For a family of four living in a 3 bd/2 ba house, living the typical American lifestyle, electricity costs are at least $200 a month. This is discounting winter months, where this figure may double. And while I couldn't pin down a specific average monthly grocery budget, but it looks like the typical American spends between $5 to $10/day for food. We can assume $300 per month for communication and entertainment (internet, cable, telephone, and cellphones.) And, finally, if our putative family drives 33 miles/day, they spend at least $125/month on gas and routine vehicle maintenance. Add a $1000 mortgage and a $300 car payment, and our typical American family of four has a budget of $2355 per month.

Why are you equating energy consumption with income growth (which is more a function of productivity)?

But, to shed 80% of their wealth, this family only pulls in $580 per month. What goes? Pretty much everything but food. Rather drastic, one might say. And I promised we wouldn't have to go out to the local wildlife park and shoot the chimpanzees for supplemental protein, so obviously, the present lifestyle is going to need a drastic reworking.

This is only if you don't come up with at least partial substitution for the loss of fossil fuels. It would be difficult and somewhat costly, but a lot of electrical substitutes exist today, if not widespread.

If we cut down food expenditure to $3/day per person (easily doable,) this reduces their grocery bill to a mere $365/month. So now they can eat, and they'll have electricity. Obviously, this means they can't afford a car. Even a $9000 clown car made from Tupperware and powered by a lawnmower engine will now be nearly 130% of their annual salary, as opposed to the less than a third it was before. From this, we have our first prediction:

1) The concept of a personal automobile will go away in the next fifty years. People will need to use mass-transit, or non-motorized methods of transportation.

That's only if you don't get electrically powered cars in the next 50 years that are reasonably priced - enough that any middle class family could afford one.

They obviously can't afford the nine room McMansion either. However, if you cram them into an apartment with a minimum of 'bling', and centralize climate control for the building, you can cut their electricity usage to about $80/month. This leads to our second prediction:

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

I'm skeptical of this. Even before the age of cars, not everyone was living in tenements and high-rises; most neighborhoods were more like the traditional neighborhoods you get in New Urbanism planning, with a mix of stand-alone houses, row houses, small apartment buildings, and the like. They managed to get along quite nicely in an era of electric rail and the like.

This ties back into the first prediction, since one has to have everything conveniently located, so they won't need that car they can't possibly hope to afford. Fortunately, they won't suffer for lack of entertainment, as we've proven that we can manufacture electronics cheaply enough to give to that family shooting the chimpanzees. However, because most of what civilization produces will have to be plowed back into getting us over our collective dino juice-meth withdrawal, we're not going to have as many expensive electronic toys for the children to smash on the holidays. This leads to our third prediction:

This is where we disagree. I think over the next 50 years, it's not going to be that difficult to replace a very large, if not majority, of all that lost coal/oil power (oil is generally only used in transportation, anyways) with alternatives like nuke power and possibily solar power if it gets cheap enough (no guarantee, considering the absolute assload of subsidies it takes right now just to keep going compared to nukes and coal).

3) Electronics will become very green-friendly. They'll either have to be inexpensive, easily recyclable, and biodegradable . . . or else, they'll be tough enough to pass down to one's great-grandchildren. Lightweight, ultraflexible circuitry will allow us to embed electronics into just about anything, or encase it in enough resin to outlast the Pyramids.

My money's on the former.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

This has been on my mind a lot, recently. If so many things that would have been deemed technologically impossible or just weren't imagined just 50 years ago exist today, such as mobile phones, very powerful computers in the household, CAT scans, etc... what can we expect to have in 50 years

The rise of the telepathic Borg...

Telepathy is common. You don't have to believe in pseudoscience. Just radio. And miniaturized computer implants, not a scary surgical procedure with big knives and large incisions but under medical science revolutionized by microrobots.

First you must overcome the problem of developing a reliable high-bandwidth mind-machine interface. And, it's going to require many hooks into the brain. Depending on just how immersive you want it to be, this is going to be a very invasive sort of brain surgery, magical nanotech or no. There is also the question of whether or not you can build (or genetically engineer) microscopic robots that you'd trust to crawl around inside someone's brain. Also, you must solve the problem of where you are going to put the circuitry that sits between the brain and the outside world, and how you will power it without accidentally rendering the user a drooling imbecile in the process.

Millions of books and media get merged into a standard petabyte database of all human knowledge, accessible through the implants as well as conventional means. Google evolves into a set of AI helpers. Anybody can have the power of a supercomputer to assist them at any time, though as many people remain morons as ever.

This prediction, I suspect, has a significant chance of coming to pass. I'll defer to AGI folks who know what they're talking about, but I imagine one of the first uses for advanced AI will be in search engines.

Internet access everywhere. Tune out your immediate surroundings with a thought at any time. Displays projected onto compact sunglasses or onto your eyes directly. Blockers are installed in classrooms during tests so all the kids don't just look up the answers on wikipedia.

Internet access probably will be everywhere. It will be absolutely essential for the tightly integrated city of the future. Assuming that we develop datajacks we'd be willing to implant in children (which has issues all on it's own . . . namely a child's brain is undergoing significant wiring-up, while her head is growing. You may not want something as tightly-integrated into her brain as a high-bandwidth MMI,) we'd not use blockers so much as the school intranet will filter their access to the outside world, and command them to autistic mode.

TVs access all shows ever aired at any time, no longer held to the original broadcast time, and the distinction blurs between a TV and just another computer monitor. Dumbed-down operating system interfaces are made for idiots who still hadn't learned how to use a computer.

When you can put electronics onto anything, you might catch clips of your favorite form of entertainment in the daily newspaper. A family will still probably have a discrete television, only it will be a powerful computer in its own right.

The end of batteries...

City surroundings are energized with giant inductive power supplies so all portable electronics run forever off the wireless power without needing batteries.

No. This sort of extravagant use of broadcast power requires that you A) Are not energy-limited, B) Rigorously require all electronics to adhere to the exact same voltage and power requirements, C) Absolutely spam the city with electromagnets, and then bake the occupants with all the waste heat, while running the risk of slowly cooking them through constant exposure to the power field. More likely, you will see batteries with 10x to 20x the capacity of ones you see today. You may use inductive chargers to minimize wires and connectors, but battery chemistry will give you a battery with about as much lifetime as the typical user would care to use.

A worldwide superconducting power grid makes money off how electricity is twice as cheap in some regions as others, buying and reselling.

No. This requires the development of extremely high-temperature (room temperature) superconductors, and that these superconductors be cheap enough to manufacture that you can lay the millions of miles of cable needed to completely revamp the world's electrical grid. The former has yet to be discovered, and we can only guess at the latter.

Renewable power is an insignificant fraction of energy generation as long as it costs the slightest bit more than coal, but someday somebody develops solar power that doesn't cost a thousand bucks per square meter, causing it to get installed everywhere not to save the environment but to do what more people really care about, saving money.

Dinosaur-juice meth. Fossil fuels must be abandoned as soon as possible. Yesterday would've been nice, but since we were all partying it up like there's no tomorrow, the transition isn't going to be at all pleasant. It involves massive nuclear plant spam with a price tag in the trillions, with a shift to as much sustainable energy sources as possible. Unfortunately, alternative energy sources can only provide us with 20% the usable energy that fossil fuels do today. So planetary energy consumption must shrink by 80%, until we can develop the sort of infrastructure needed to fill the gap left by fossil fuels, and develop power sources that will enable us to start expanding. Prime candidates may be (hopefully) fusion, and space-based solar. And as the effects of global-warming induced climate change become increasingly obvious, people will want to save the environment, if only in the hope to stop the environment from sodomizing them with a telephone pole.

Flying cars? Sort of...

Somebody mass-produces affordable personal blimps for recreation, like having a picnic at a few thousand feet up. High-speed accidents are impossible as they maneuver like a beached whale, gently bump into things, and don't go anywhere fast. The little blimps came sometime after giant blimps become common for transporting equipment too bulky for helos or aircraft and premanufactured buildings. Beams from microwave cannons on the ground or in space power them, so fuel costs are nil.

Flying cars are bad sci-fi, at best. The less said about them, the better. To have a personal blimp requires ludicrously cheap helium, a lot of open space, and ten lads handy to tie the stupid thing down when you're on the ground. You'll also do no better than 35 MPH in the air, and will get into trouble the moment any weather more severe than a nice day turns up. You'd be better off renting a golf cart, or taking the bus. Airships also make poor heavy transport, since you need truly enormous gas envelopes to lift even modest weight.

The new food additives...

Simple sugars are manufactured artificially, and corporations put them everywhere to save money, like high fructose corn syrup today. Vat-grown meat is made to always have the texture of the best steaks.

HFCS will be around forever, I tell you. You could probably genetically engineer some bacteria to puke glucose and fructose. Whether or not this method will be more efficient than grinding up massive quantities of corn remains to be seen. Vat-steaks in fifty years . . . eh, while I think outgrowth of organ replacement technology will make growing them feasible, producing a steak, even a vat-grown one, will likely require more energy than feeding people vegetable-based protein. Especially since we might have 3D printing technology capable of printing vegetable protein into a block of approximately the correct texture and color, with the artificial flavor wizardry needed to make it taste like something that came from a dead animal.

Cyborgizing the elderly...

Induced human hibernation is developed. Countries put many of their elderly into hibernation by a strong incentive program. The justification is to help them by transporting them to a time of improved future medical technology, but the real reason is to reduce social security and health care budget deficits in the short-term by hosing their descendents instead.

We have to first develop a method of suspended-animation that doesn't require first killing the suspended-animee. And all these hibernating old people will take up real-estate and energy to take care of. While suspension may become a more popular medical technique, we're much more likely to deal with the costs of having old people around by prohibiting them from retiring, shoving them into old-folks' homes, and waiting till they die of old age. Pretty much like we do now, only with less retirement.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

On the other hand, technological progress over the next fifty years will likely take a significant hit as we become increasingly resource-starved, and our energies become forcibly devoted to sustainability. Presently we're well beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, running all-out on dinosaur-juice meth. Shortly, we're not going to have quite enough of it to sustain our addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms are going to hit like the proverbial ton of bricks.

Why's that? If anything, slamming up against the resource constraints, particularly in the First World, should generate a massive amount of attempts to compensate by technological means (whether or not they are successful is another story), at least in the First World. Not so much in the Third World, of course.

The obvious question becomes "Well, if the First World slams up against the resource constraint wall, where are they going to get the resources to develop and deploy the technology needed to get around the wall/make do with less?" Deficit spending only works when someone is willing to lend you something to spend. Unlike the Chinese, the planet isn't going to loan you anything to deficit-spend with.

To make it into the next century, the entire population of the planet must get by on 80% less energy than it does presently. Imagine taking the median income of $35,000 and slashing it to $7,000. Or about $580 a month. One can live off less than a sixth of that, but by then, you're living in a straw hut with no running water, no electricity, and the only reason you'd not be actively starving to death is because you're shooting chimpanzees at the local wildlife refuge.

I'm assuming that you're taking away all possibilities of usage of either petroleum and/or coal for power generation. This seems rather pessimistic, though; there are a number of alternative power generation means that could be built over the next 50 years (including widespread nuclear power), and there is always the possibility of the use of electrically-powered substitutes for a lot of the machinery we have at present. There are, after all, electrically powered furnaces, trains, and electric tractors.

The process of swapping out our dependence on fossil-fuels to something less suicidal is going to be very, very expensive. There is also the problem of overcoming significant inertia caused by political short-sightedness. You can't just drag all the NIMBYs out into the street and shoot them. Well, not without a lot of ruthlessness.

So, with that mental image firmly affixed, let's examine the implications. For a family of four living in a 3 bd/2 ba house, living the typical American lifestyle, electricity costs are at least $200 a month. This is discounting winter months, where this figure may double. And while I couldn't pin down a specific average monthly grocery budget, but it looks like the typical American spends between $5 to $10/day for food. We can assume $300 per month for communication and entertainment (internet, cable, telephone, and cellphones.) And, finally, if our putative family drives 33 miles/day, they spend at least $125/month on gas and routine vehicle maintenance. Add a $1000 mortgage and a $300 car payment, and our typical American family of four has a budget of $2355 per month.

Why are you equating energy consumption with income growth (which is more a function of productivity)?

Because income is directly related to energy consumption. To make money, say, programming computers requires that energy be spent to shove the electrons around which power the computers doing the programming. It also requires energy be spent to manufacture the computers in the first place. Everything you spend money on required energy, and resources that could've otherwise been used as energy, to make or grow.

But, to shed 80% of their wealth, this family only pulls in $580 per month. What goes? Pretty much everything but food. Rather drastic, one might say. And I promised we wouldn't have to go out to the local wildlife park and shoot the chimpanzees for supplemental protein, so obviously, the present lifestyle is going to need a drastic reworking.

This is only if you don't come up with at least partial substitution for the loss of fossil fuels. It would be difficult and somewhat costly, but a lot of electrical substitutes exist today, if not widespread.

Transitioning away from fossil fuels requires moving to energy sources with significantly lower energy content per unit. So you're expending a great amount of effort and sinking monumental costs into a system which can't provide nearly as much go-juice as the current system, and whose growth will be on the slow and steady side, at least until you can afford to spam Earth orbit with space-based solar collectors, and lots of nuclear reactors to drive the production of enough petrochemical substitutes to adequately drive the engine of civilization.

If we cut down food expenditure to $3/day per person (easily doable,) this reduces their grocery bill to a mere $365/month. So now they can eat, and they'll have electricity. Obviously, this means they can't afford a car. Even a $9000 clown car made from Tupperware and powered by a lawnmower engine will now be nearly 130% of their annual salary, as opposed to the less than a third it was before. From this, we have our first prediction:

1) The concept of a personal automobile will go away in the next fifty years. People will need to use mass-transit, or non-motorized methods of transportation.

That's only if you don't get electrically powered cars in the next 50 years that are reasonably priced - enough that any middle class family could afford one.

Even if you had dirt-cheap electrical cars, the concept of the personal automobile is still doomed. The best you might see is a sort of glorified golf cart useful for running errands in the city and taking the occasional drive out to the country.

They obviously can't afford the nine room McMansion either. However, if you cram them into an apartment with a minimum of 'bling', and centralize climate control for the building, you can cut their electricity usage to about $80/month. This leads to our second prediction:

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

I'm skeptical of this. Even before the age of cars, not everyone was living in tenements and high-rises; most neighborhoods were more like the traditional neighborhoods you get in New Urbanism planning, with a mix of stand-alone houses, row houses, small apartment buildings, and the like. They managed to get along quite nicely in an era of electric rail and the like.

True enough, except the present concept of the 'neighborhood' could still stand to use a boost in efficiency. You might still see townhomes, and other forms of low-density housing, but the city of the future is going to get much more dense.

This ties back into the first prediction, since one has to have everything conveniently located, so they won't need that car they can't possibly hope to afford. Fortunately, they won't suffer for lack of entertainment, as we've proven that we can manufacture electronics cheaply enough to give to that family shooting the chimpanzees. However, because most of what civilization produces will have to be plowed back into getting us over our collective dino juice-meth withdrawal, we're not going to have as many expensive electronic toys for the children to smash on the holidays. This leads to our third prediction:

This is where we disagree. I think over the next 50 years, it's not going to be that difficult to replace a very large, if not majority, of all that lost coal/oil power (oil is generally only used in transportation, anyways) with alternatives like nuke power and possibily solar power if it gets cheap enough (no guarantee, considering the absolute assload of subsidies it takes right now just to keep going compared to nukes and coal).

The best time to have started replacing lost petrochemicals was the 1970s, when we could've spent all the time in the world overcoming political and social inertia, so we could spend freely to extensively upgrade our power and transportation infrastructures. Now, the jump we need to take is much bigger than it was in the '70s, and we're crippled by political systems designed to have time horizons no further than the next election. And we're going to have to make the jump amid ballooning price instability as petrochemical outputs begin to decline in earnest. I would not be surprised if 50 years from now, we're either at the absolute bottom of the adjustment curve, or somewhere near it.

[Guardsman Bass]

HFCS will be around forever, I tell you. You could probably genetically engineer some bacteria to puke glucose and fructose. Whether or not this method will be more efficient than grinding up massive quantities of corn remains to be seen. Vat-steaks in fifty years . . . eh, while I think outgrowth of organ replacement technology will make growing them feasible, producing a steak, even a vat-grown one, will likely require more energy than feeding people vegetable-based protein. Especially since we might have 3D printing technology capable of printing vegetable protein into a block of approximately the correct texture and color, with the artificial flavor wizardry needed to make it taste like something that came from a dead animal.

Hell, we already have the wizardry to create the artificial smells (and probably the tastes). If we could figure out how to simulate texture and produce artificially flavored, nutrient-added, synthetic meat we'd greatly increase our amount of agricultural produce available for human consumption.

While suspension may become a more popular medical technique, we're much more likely to deal with the costs of having old people around by prohibiting them from retiring, shoving them into old-folks' homes, and waiting till they die of old age. Pretty much like we do now, only with less retirement.

Although it really depends on how technology and the public pension plans play out, if worse comes to worse, you'll see something like what retirement used to look like before the advent of public pension plans (take a look at rural China if you want an idea of what that's like). Heavy saving by the coming elderly (the current elderly are SOL), with retirement being something you do if you have the cash and investments to do it. Considering that technology may make it possible for people to continue working longer, this would probably be the case.

[Forum Troll]

First you must overcome the problem of developing a reliable high-bandwidth mind-machine interface. And, it's going to require many hooks into the brain. Depending on just how immersive you want it to be, this is going to be a very invasive sort of brain surgery, magical nanotech or no.

High-bandwidth? Ideal but not strictly necessary.

If you can get just a few bytes per second of data from your brain reading technology, you can convert that into effectively a stream of text which then can be converted by computer to audible speech, reaching a few kilobytes per second in the end but starting at a few bytes a second. If you have the technology, it goes into the auditory nerves directly, but, if you don't yet, then you just have an electronic earplug.

The high-bandwidth part is images and video, but that's to the sunglass or eye projector in the example, not into the brain directly.

When you can put electronics onto anything, you might catch clips of your favorite form of entertainment in the daily newspaper.

Possibly. I'm as happy reading things on a regular monitor screen, but some people appear to still prefer a paper version of a publication, so electronic paper might have its niche.

A family will still probably have a discrete television, only it will be a powerful computer in its own right.

Yes, TV has its niche of a display big enough that multiple people can watch in the living room, unlike regular computer monitors.

No. This sort of extravagant use of broadcast power requires that you A) Are not energy-limited

You don't need more energy for it than a portion of the sunlight hitting that city.

B) Rigorously require all electronics to adhere to the exact same voltage and power requirements

Nope. Whatever the voltage output of a standard collector, voltage conversion has long been possible. Transformers, converters using inductors / capacitors, and so on.

C) Absolutely spam the city with electromagnets, and then bake the occupants with all the waste heat, while running the risk of slowly cooking them through constant exposure to the power field.

More than a bit of an exaggeration. Once when bored I lit up a fluorescent bulb inductively from a mild distance away. People aren't affected, as they're just big sacks of water in regard to how little they absorb.

I'm not sure you realize how little power is used by most portable devices. A few watts max, compared to the thousands of watts used by household equipment like water heaters, air conditioners, and more.

No. This requires the development of extremely high-temperature (room temperature) superconductors, and that these superconductors be cheap enough to manufacture that you can lay the millions of miles of cable needed to completely revamp the world's electrical grid.

I don't mean replacing every last little power transmission line. I mean just a few long transmission lines between major countries and between continents. A cost of a few million bucks a mile is fine if you're willing to spend some billions of dollars on making thousands of miles length of them.

When you can spend up to tens of thousands of dollars per dozen feet of length, you can have liquid nitrogen coolant in the insulated underground tube, refreshed by stations a distance apart. Room temperature superconductors aren't needed for a handful of big, expensive cables.

It's the precursor to convenient mass usage of renewable energy, as you send power from the sunlit side of earth to the dark side and equalize the results of regional power production that by itself varies with local weather.

Dinosaur-juice meth. Fossil fuels must be abandoned as soon as possible. Yesterday would've been nice, but since we were all partying it up like there's no tomorrow, the transition isn't going to be at all pleasant. It involves massive nuclear plant spam with a price tag in the trillions, with a shift to as much sustainable energy sources as possible.

I agree with the idea, yet nukes aren't politically popular. Maybe it'll change before 2059 though.

Unfortunately, alternative energy sources can only provide us with 20% the usable energy that fossil fuels do today.

200000 E12 watts sunlight reaches earth. World electric generation now = 2 E12 watts.

Obviously economics will keep generation below the physical limits, but neither you nor I could possibly know the cost of year 2059 electronics well enough to pick some particular figure like 20% of current power production.

I know major energy conservation is a popular idea in theory, but somebody who spends $80 a month now on their electricity bill isn't going to go so far as to try to drop it to $16 a month if it is a big inconvenience. Even if you pessimistically supposed electricity cost doubled or tripled if from renewables instead of coal, most people would rather just spend the $160 or $240 a month than have their whole lifestyle revolve around conserving energy.

You'll also do no better than 35 MPH in the air, and will get into trouble the moment any weather more severe than a nice day turns up. You'd be better off renting a golf cart, or taking the bus.

As I said, it's affected by bad weather and not going to replace ground transport for practical uses but good fun for recreation.

Airships also make poor heavy transport, since you need truly enormous gas envelopes to lift even modest weight.

Looking into new blimps has gotten popular recently. See this SkyFreight blimp, with 220 ton payload, delivery not requiring long aircraft runways, and under $0.20 per ton/km transported. That's less fuel cost and overall expense than a helicopter, plus bigger loads.

Especially since we might have 3D printing technology capable of printing vegetable protein into a block of approximately the correct texture and color, with the artificial flavor wizardry needed to make it taste like something that came from a dead animal.

Possibly. Soy burgers now don't taste real, but you might analyze and isolate some of the compounds responsible for flavor differences. I'm pretty sure they actually cost more than the conventional alternative right now, but that's probably just from being a specialty food and lack of mass-production.

We have to first develop a method of suspended-animation that doesn't require first killing the suspended-animee. And all these hibernating old people will take up real-estate and energy to take care of. While suspension may become a more popular medical technique, we're much more likely to deal with the costs of having old people around by prohibiting them from retiring, shoving them into old-folks' homes, and waiting till they die of old age.

I was having fun and subtle humor more than an entirely serious prediction. However, health care costs are reaching tens to even hundreds of thousands annually for some elderly, so if some of the work on rats did pay off, it would be financially attractive in comparison to encourage a visit to the future.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I personally think that in the next 10-20 years, we would at least see some revolution in computer technology if we switch to graphene. Quantum dots and other related Quantum computing technologies may come later in 20-50 years. I am again going to stress that Quantum Computing has only so many limited uses, and more than 10 years since they have been suggested, there's still very limited utility for them. Some nice experiments have been done with Ion Traps and Quantum Dots, particularly Ion Traps which have the highest known coherence lifetime (like a few days). And no, though they are done at low temperatures, you can cool them with lasers.

[Broomstick]

On the other hand, technological progress over the next fifty years will likely take a significant hit as we become increasingly resource-starved, and our energies become forcibly devoted to sustainability. Presently we're well beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, running all-out on dinosaur-juice meth. Shortly, we're not going to have quite enough of it to sustain our addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms are going to hit like the proverbial ton of bricks.

Or, possibly, a large enough pandemic will reduce the population to a level more captible with long-term survival with more goodies per survivor than otherwise. Of course, getting through such a pandemic would be absolutely hellish.

Imagine taking the median income of $35,000 and slashing it to $7,000.

Don't have to imagine it - it's sort of has already happened to me.

If we cut down food expenditure to $3/day per person (easily doable,)

Oh, really? No, it's not. It's possible but such a diet, particularly in areas where the growing season is short and/or there is no land available to allow for kitchen gardens you'll be looking at massive problems with nutritional deficiencies. Yes, you can get enough calories to sustain life, but we'll be back to people losing all their teeth by 30 due to repeated bouts of scury.

Have YOU tried to live on $3/day?

Not to mention this will be even more difficult for anyone with any kind of diet-affected chronic disease, such as diabetes, celiac, etc. We'll go back to simply having such people die miserable, painful deaths at a young age.

So now they can eat, and they'll have electricity. Obviously, this means they can't afford a car

What if they want to opt for a car rather than electricity?

Also, you're assuming a $300/month car payment in perpetuity - most of my adult life I have NOT had a car payment by the simple expedient of buying a car and maintaining it for a period 2-3 times the life of the loan. Likewise, despite being a gas-guzzling American I have never had a car payment as high as $300/month, even when purchasing a new vehicle, and yes, they were large enough to seat 4-5 people.

1) The concept of a personal automobile will go away in the next fifty years. People will need to use mass-transit, or non-motorized methods of transportation.

Bullshit.

Personal vehicles are just too damn useful. I see moving to a system much like what I saw developing in Chicago back when I lived there, where people would mostly not use cars but would rent a car when they needed one or to take a road trip. You would then have the use of a car when you need it, but not have the expense of ownership or maintenance long-term.

And who the fuck cares if urban cars are "electric golf-carts"? They're still too damn useful to give up if you absolutely don't have to. Hell, even BEFORE we had cars you could a horse, a buggy, or a wagon.

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

Bullshit, again - this wasn't the case BEFORE the automobile and the rise of the Age of Petroleum, why would it be the case afterwards? Yes, there will be MORE people living in the cities (and more crowded, with more crime and social problems due to crowding) but certainly not all. Rural people are, even today, much more self-sufficient than city-folk and could become more so. Hell, the Amish have maintained a very low-energy rural lifestyle for the past century and a half. Living out in the woods will remain an option, although yes, it will probably be more of a 19th Century lifestyle than a 20th.

3) Electronics will become very green-friendly. They'll either have to be inexpensive, easily recyclable, and biodegradable . . . or else, they'll be tough enough to pass down to one's great-grandchildren. Lightweight, ultraflexible circuitry will allow us to embed electronics into just about anything, or encase it in enough resin to outlast the Pyramids.

Yeah, I could see that happeneing.

[Broomstick]

"Forum Troll"? Cripes, how do you react to a new poster with THAT name? You realize you're sort of starting off at a disadvantage here?

This has been on my mind a lot, recently. If so many things that would have been deemed technologically impossible or just weren't imagined just 50 years ago exist today, such as mobile phones, very powerful computers in the household, CAT scans, etc... what can we expect to have in 50 years

Dude, everything you just name is far newer than 50 years ago. Cripes, make me feel old, will you? NONE of that existed before I was 18 or 20... in other words, the world most of you take for granted did not exist when I was your age. That stuff is all less than 25 years old.

And miniaturized computer implants, not a scary surgical procedure with big knives and large incisions but under medical science revolutionized by microrobots.

If implants - no matter how routine - do not scare you, you have a poor understanding of medicine and how things can go wrong. Implanting shit is still surgery and still carries risk and that will not change in the foreseeable future. Even with "microrobots". Nor do I expect it to be cheap. For something like correcting deafness (think cochlear implants, another thing that didn't exist when I was the same age as most of the posters here) the benefits outweigh the risk. For communications... not so much. Especially given the popularity of things like bluetooth earpieces - much easier to have a piece of jewelry or adornment that can be removed, repaired, upgraded, changed, etc.

Millions of books and media get merged into a standard petabyte database of all human knowledge, accessible through the implants as well as conventional means. Google evolves into a set of AI helpers. Anybody can have the power of a supercomputer to assist them at any time, though as many people remain morons as ever.

Yes, I've observed a trend of that sort over the past 30 years or so...

Internet access everywhere. Tune out your immediate surroundings with a thought at any time. Displays projected onto compact sunglasses or onto your eyes directly.

...and you thought people talking on cellphones while driving was a hazard....

Flying cars? Sort of...

Somebody mass-produces affordable personal blimps for recreation, like having a picnic at a few thousand feet up. High-speed accidents are impossible as they maneuver like a beached whale, gently bump into things, and don't go anywhere fast. The little blimps came sometime after giant blimps become common for transporting equipment too bulky for helos or aircraft and premanufactured buildings. Beams from microwave cannons on the ground or in space power them, so fuel costs are nil.

Fast and reliable travel remains ground-based, especially during days of bad weather when it is too windy for small aircraft and blimps.

Holy fuck - WHERE do I begin with this?

Well haven't got time at the moment, but here some thoughts/questions to ponder:
1) What is the size of a personal "blimp" (let's just say airship) to hoist just one person?
2) How much does the helium required to lift such an airship cost at today's prices?
3) Do you know where we get most of our helium? (VERY important question!)
4) Are you familar with the licensing and training requirements for operating airships of any size in any representative country? (I happen to know them for the US, but other countries are even more regulated)

Flying vehicles are LESS practical than personal autos - I speak as a pilot and therefore have some practical basis for that statement.

[Ryan Thunder]

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

No. Fuck you, no. I'll gladly take public transit, but I'm raising my family in a home, not some goddamn human kennel.

[General Zod]

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

No. Fuck you, no. I'll gladly take public transit, but I'm raising my family in a home, not some goddamn human kennel.

On behalf of everyone who lives in one of those supposed "human kennels", kindly go fuck yourself. The idea that living in an apartment building somehow dehumanizes people and somehow isn't a viable alternative to a "real" home (whatever that means) is precisely the kind of mentality that's responsible for our current mortgage crisis.

[Bluewolf]

No. Fuck you, no. I'll gladly take public transit, but I'm raising my family in a home, not some goddamn human kennel.

Yeah, like apartments are totally like human kennels that will not become more advanced or bigger in 50 years. I mean they are just a bed and a toilet right?

If it IS like that in 50 years you will probably have little choice anyway.

[Ryan Thunder]

2) The concept of the suburb/exurb will also go away in the next fifty years. Stand-alone residences will become the plaything of the wealthy, but everyone else will live in high-rise apartments.

No. Fuck you, no. I'll gladly take public transit, but I'm raising my family in a home, not some goddamn human kennel.

On behalf of everyone who lives in one of those supposed "human kennels", kindly go fuck yourself.

I admit that my choice of words was in extremely poor taste. Sorry.

The idea that living in an apartment building somehow dehumanizes people and somehow isn't a viable alternative to a "real" home (whatever that means) is precisely the kind of mentality that's responsible for our current mortgage crisis.

Right, people were buying homes they couldn't afford because they weren't renting apartments instead. Oh, wait a minute...

Never mind the social problems associated with the sort of high-density living that GrandMasterTerwynn doubtless had in mind.