What have we got to look forward to in the next few decades? Frankly, most of it sounds straight out of the Book of Revelations – overcrowding, war, intelligent machines, a new Tool album. We’re joking, of course – a new Tool album will NEVER happen. But with car-maker Toyota already making promises about the year 2050 – when it will stop making petrol cars altogether – what else is in store?
1) Sex with robots will be common
In their paper ‘Robots, men and sex tourism’ Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars of the University of Victoria Management School in Wellington, New Zealand, say that robot prostitutes will be common – but expensive by 2050. They imagine Amsterdam brothels offering, ‘a range of sexual gods and goddesses of different ethnicities, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features.’
2) The United States will no longer be kings of the world
Jacques Attali, a writer who predicted the financial crash in 2006 – predicts that by 2050, one long-running “empire” will have fallen. ‘After a very long struggle and in the midst of a serious ecological crisis, the still dominant empire- the United States- will finally be defeated around 2035,’ writes Attali.
3) The world’s population will be nearly 10 billion
The U.N. predicts that by 2050, the population might have hit 9.6 billion.
4) The autopsy report for Elvis Presley will be unsealed – fifty years after he died
In 2027, we will finally know the truth.
5) Computers will be 1,000 times faster
Ulrich Eberl, author of Life in 2050, says computers are 1,000 times faster than they were 25 years ago – and expects that process to repeat.
6) The radio ‘time capsule’ ‘A Message From Earth’ will have reached its destination, the planet Gliese 581c
If there are aliens on the ‘habitable’ planet spotted by the Kepler telescope, they’ll receive 501 messages chosen via a competition on Bebo in 2029. They may well declare war. A message from Earth?
7) Robots will have beaten humans at football
By 2050, robots – the walking, talking sort we understand from films such as Star Wars – will be real. The Robo-Cup – held each year – believes that humanoid robots will “beat” human teams by 2050.
8) By 2030, Saudi Arabia will no longer have oil to export
By 2030, the country may have become an importer of oil, Citigroup has claimed. A general view shows the Kingdom Tower, a landmark of Riyadh.
9) Immortality expert Aubrey De Grey has said ageing will be brought under control by 2036 – the first step towards immortality
Cambridge scientist Aubrey de Grey believes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born. Ageing is a disease, suggests de Grey – and can be cured. His theories are based on the idea that treatments that extend lives will speed up, so that eventually they match the speed at which we age. “Life expectancy is growing by wo years per decade at the moment,” says de Grey. “But it will be one year per year”.
10) Expect another Y2K problem – the Year 2038 – as a common computing representation of date and time overflows
Hopefully this will be as big a damp squib as the Millennium Bug itself.
12) There could be a railway from Moscow to New York
The Kremlin suggested that a 65-mile tunnel across the Behring Strait could make railway journeys across the world possible. Vladimir Putin will, of course, still be alive to sit in First Class.
13) A Nickelodeon time capsule sealed in April 1992 will be opened
Won’t people in 2042 be excited by a CD copy of MC Hammer’s ‘Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em’.
Comments