2050

[Riedquat]

A lot of tech progress has been made - and I think we're on the cusp of some major breakthroughs.

Yet they're nothing much compared to the fundamental changes of being able to have light at the flick of a switch, being able to move faster than a horse could carry you, and being able to keep food edible for a decent length of time. Gimmicks and luxuries mostly. Go back to the 60s or 70s and you really wouldn't find life much harder or less fulfilling without your toys. Go back 200 years and it would be very different indeed (although I'd jump at it like a shot if I could be wealthy as well, but you really needed the wealth then to get a decent standard of living). I'd gladly ditch some of the "improvements" that are contributing to the world feeling smaller, more crowded, duller, and more characterless.

The reason the changes aren't so fundamental in nature, even if they represent huge shifts in purely technological ability, is because it was those basic ones that made all the real difference. The only sorts of things I can really imagine having the equivalent impact would be vastly increased longevity, or perhaps living on other worlds.

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

So what is the answer to the optimum size of a city then?

If you are referring to the Sheffield finals exam question, them I think telecommunications changes the factors in the equation and this results in a different optimal size.

[Dorkins]

So you wouldn't class the sequencing of the entire human genome, and the technology developed to do that as an achievement ?

I'm sorry, but you are utterly wrong.

I use the human genome a lot for my work. It's a fun and interesting resource to have and maybe one day it will yield some major scientific insight or economically useful application but it hasn't happened yet.

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

A lot of tech progress has been made - and I think we're on the cusp of some major breakthroughs.

Since 1980:

Computer in practically every house.

Internet - watch, read, listen to whatever you want when you want.

LEDs are incredible. I have bike lights nearly as powerful as a car for under £20 with a battery life of 4 hours+ My hallway light uses 1/15 of the energy of its predecessor and cost less than a quid delivered from China.

Smart mobile phones from £40.

Screens that are huge and cheap to run

Video conferencing

Domestic solar is basically near normal. Combined with energy efficiency you are within a whisker of being energy independent

Human genome sequenced.

Computer power still increasing at exponential rate.

I believe the next 50 years will see advances in the application of technologies we already have. Robotics will be a big one, we have had the physical systems for year, but the processing power and shrinkage of computers now makes this more applicable. I am sure we will see more in the field of personalised medicine too, we can sample genomes and to make specific treatment recommendations based on genetics just requires a huge big data effort to crunch digital genomes with field trial data from drugs.

[stormymonday_2011]

A lot of tech progress has been made - and I think we're on the cusp of some major breakthroughs.

Since 1980:

Computer in practically every house.

Internet - watch, read, listen to whatever you want when you want.

LEDs are incredible. I have bike lights nearly as powerful as a car for under £20 with a battery life of 4 hours+ My hallway light uses 1/15 of the energy of its predecessor and cost less than a quid delivered from China.

Smart mobile phones from £40.

Screens that are huge and cheap to run

Video conferencing

Domestic solar is basically near normal. Combined with energy efficiency you are within a whisker of being energy independent

Human genome sequenced.

Computer power still increasing at exponential rate.

Yes but computers, video, mobile communication systems, the Arpanet all existed before 1980 in some form

The desktop computer and the IPAD are still using the basic Von Neumann architecture developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

It is only recently that companies such as HP have started to think about challenging that model

We may have sequenced the human Genome but Crick and watson set the ball rolling decades before

I think it is too easy to confuse ubiquity with innovation

There is always an arrogance to the present whereby people assume they are the most important humans who have ever lived and that their age is the most remarkable in history. I suppose it is only natutral but in reality we are probably just midgets standing on giants shoulders

[MrPin]

Yes but computers, video, mobile communication systems, the Arpanet all existed before 1980 in some form

The desktop computer and the IPAD are still using the basic Von Neumann architecture developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

It is only recently that companies such as HP have started to think about challenging that model

We may have sequenced the human Genome but Crick and watson set the ball rolling decades before

I think it is too easy to confuse ubiquity with innovation

There is always an arrogance to the present whereby people assume they are the most important humans who have ever lived and that their age is the most remarkable in history. I suppose it is only natutral but in reality we are probably just midgets standing on giants shoulders

I'm only 6 foot tall! A lot of my friends are annoyingly talller than me!

[thecrashingisles]

So, by 2050 will the changes in technology result in bigger cities or will people spread out? And use your intuition in your answer to state why.

So far the trend has been counter-intuitive. As communication has improved, people have been more attracted to big cities.

[DeepLurker]

I find it mildly amusing that a bunch of people who have never met in person, and who have no idea if they are chatting with a middle-class mum, a vicar, a BNP activist, a dog or a computer bot, are all happily dissing the current age in which we live, and its lack of progress.

Yet this anonymous, long-distance discussion would have been impossible just 20 years ago - yes, you had online bulletin boards, but the magic incantations to set everything up meant that only a very small clique of geeks could access them. And the cost was horrendous.

Although "The Internet" has been around for a while, it's only in the last 20 years that it's really taken off - and we're barely starting to witness its impact on society. For example, my discovery of this website was almost a miracle - anyone that I spoke to in person could see nothing wrong with the housing market, and I was just being a loser. It was fantastically reassuring to finally speak with other people who had come to similar conclusions as myself about the long term effects of HPI.

Then I started reading threads about other subjects such as LVT, Citizens Income, fractional reserve banking, and, well... politically, I am far more radical (and politically active) now at 40, then I ever was at 20. And I believe that more and more people are actively getting involved in the political process as a direct consequence of the internet revolution.

Certainly, when I chat at work with the 20s crowd, they are far more politically aware than we ever were - sure, I went on protest marches (I did grow up in France, after all!) but we didn't really see beyond the simple left wing/right wing fight.

The printing press took decades, even centuries to have an impact. Likewise, the internet will take a while to change our world. But change it it will.

A pet thought experiment of mine is to consider this: the great empires of the Romans, the Incas, the Mongols have been lost in the mists of time. But the people inhabiting those lands are still the same. They have exactly the same genes! The subsistence farmer now clinging to a mountainside in Peru was once part of the most powerful empire in the Americas.

But what changed? Just the political & economic environment. Which is why I think - hope - that by 2050, we might have undergone radical political changes as a result of the internet, and be on our way to our own golden age.

Maybe...

[StainlessSteelCat]

dupe

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Yet this anonymous, long-distance discussion would have been impossible just 20 years ago - yes, you had online bulletin boards, but the magic incantations to set everything up meant that only a very small clique of geeks could access them. And the cost was horrendous.

Yup, I'd agree that the Internet has the potential to have an impact comparable to the invention of the printing press.

I'm less optimistic about that potential being permitted to be realised than I was five or ten years ago though. The appetite of TPTB to put the genie back in the box is obvious and strengthening. And most people don't seem to mind the prospect very much.

An internet successfully tamed into being no more than a portal for a handful of large corporates isn't going to change the world very much at all.

[tinker]

The internet is a wonderful thing. It has in effect been revolutionary, unfortunately too revolutionary for some. I don't think it will flourish as it should. The drip of censorship, even at ISP level, is there to see.

[oracle]

For me the real game changer in world history just about possible in the next 50 years is cheap power generation from nuclear fusion. Imagine a world with no real need for fossil fuels, no power commodity boom and bust cycle and no tinpot dictators living off oil revenue.

looking forward to that one, especially if is just a small box next to the boiler in every home- rather than being mugged by some massive power company.

DE-CENTRALISATION is the key now.

same with wireless "mesh" internet, bypassing all the main ISP hubs.

lots of big VI's won't like it at all though.

hopefully they will have gotten too greedy and after the aftermath of the crap in ME/venezuela etc gets lots of people killed there will be a change in mindset and people in general will rise up and tell them in no uncertain terms the game of monopoly is over.

[oracle]

The internet is a wonderful thing. It has in effect been revolutionary, unfortunately too revolutionary for some. I don't think it will flourish as it should. The drip of censorship, even at ISP level, is there to see.

they failed censorship of the printing press centuries ago.

they will fail with censorship of the internet too.

that's not to say they won't try.

the beauty of the internet now is there are so many people who are waking up, looking around and seeing WHO is trying to hold them back.

once the word goes viral, the people doing the holding back will have nowhere to hide.

[StainlessSteelCat]

The internet is a wonderful thing. It has in effect been revolutionary, unfortunately too revolutionary for some. I don't think it will flourish as it should. The drip of censorship, even at ISP level, is there to see.

We've definitely not going to get the cyber utopia predicted by early adopters in the 90s, but I'm not too worried. Look at content piracy. Despite concerted efforts for getting on for a decade and half to crush it - it's as popular as ever and probably easier than ever before. The genie is out - and every time the powers that be try to stuff one bit of it back in, another bit squeezes out in an unexpected way. What ISPs don't realise is that they are inadvertently and potentially sowing the seeds of their own destruction by distributing many millions of near-identical wireless router tech. Even I in my rural idyll/squalor can see several wireless networks. Add a few old smartphones into the mix and you've got a mobile mesh network. If sufficient people are annoyed by future intrusions they will not go off grid, but create their own.

More stuff since 1980

Tablets

2D and 3D printing routinely available

Civilian space flight in reusable vehicles (kinda)

Electric car on the edge of being mainstream

Virtual reality (kinda)

An awful lot of stuff thought to be rather far out in shows like Star Trek: Next Generation in the late 80s is here in its infancy or maturity and often routinely available.

I, of course, make no claims about our superiority to previous generations - we're basically the same people inside - but its probably unfair to look back and say there was a better age for most people to live in - at least from a material and opportunity perspective. Yes, it is currently the result of some serious environmental damage and I hope we can halt/reverse that. And I don't know that most of us are happier for it/further up Maslow's pyramid.

Towards 2050

A levelling out of world population as even the bottom billion will be better off than we currently are.

I hope that fusion will be solved

Major leaps in robotics, and AI

Another decade or two on the average lifespan with far better quality of life in our later years.

A return to the stars (if nothing else but to escape rampant HPI)

Vast majority of us will still be in cities - even though there's probably no need to live in one to take advantage of network effects, we'll simply enjoy it more/never known anything different.

[Bossybabe]

For me the real game changer in world history just about possible in the next 50 years is cheap power generation from nuclear fusion. Imagine a world with no real need for fossil fuels, no power commodity boom and bust cycle and no tinpot dictators living off oil revenue.

Nufu isn't going to be that cheap - and if it is, they'll tax it.

[Bossybabe]

I'm only 6 foot tall! A lot of my friends are annoyingly talller than me!

I'm only 5 foot tall - imagine how I feel.

[Guest eight]

I'm only 5 foot tall - imagine how I feel.

Are you quite sure you want Mr Pin imagining how you feel?

[bkkandrew]

A crowd in Bradford city centre. Not much of a change there.

Is this photo real?

Photoshop, surely?

[Gigantic Purple Slug]

Yes but computers, video, mobile communication systems, the Arpanet all existed before 1980 in some form

The desktop computer and the IPAD are still using the basic Von Neumann architecture developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

It is only recently that companies such as HP have started to think about challenging that model

We may have sequenced the human Genome but Crick and watson set the ball rolling decades before

I think it is too easy to confuse ubiquity with innovation

There is always an arrogance to the present whereby people assume they are the most important humans who have ever lived and that their age is the most remarkable in history. I suppose it is only natutral but in reality we are probably just midgets standing on giants shoulders

I don't think the scientists today are any better than those that were in the past. But they aren't worse - they are at least the same, and there are probably a lot more of them, so probability dictates there are going to be more discoveries. We also have a better chance today of making sure that someone who has a great mind who wants to make it into science will actually get there, whereas in the times of people like Newton only the relatively well off had a chance - a peasant who had a great mind had no chance.

We don't really stand on the shoulders of individual giants, but of collective ones of the past.

Your point about Watson and Crick is invalid. If you extrapolate that then the only reason Einstein was able to do his work was because Newton came before him, and the only reason Newton could do his work was because of Kepler (or someone/some others). I don't think anyone on here would argue that Einsteins work wasn't great because he (like all scientists) happened to build on the results/work of previous people.

[Bossybabe]

Are you quite sure you want Mr Pin imagining how you feel?

Good point. I take it back.

[Riedquat]

Yet this anonymous, long-distance discussion would have been impossible just 20 years ago - yes, you had online bulletin boards, but the magic incantations to set everything up meant that only a very small clique of geeks could access them. And the cost was horrendous.

Yet random people talked in pubs or wherever. No real fundamental change in our lives and something that most of use probably wouldn't really miss much once we'd got used to it if we were sent back in time a few decades. We're just obsesed with gimmicks and luxuries and think they're big and important when they're not.

[Gigantic Purple Slug]

Yet random people talked in pubs or wherever. No real fundamental change in our lives and something that most of use probably wouldn't really miss much once we'd got used to it if we were sent back in time a few decades. We're just obsesed with gimmicks and luxuries and think they're big and important when they're not.

You could say the same about the printing press.

People were writing books long before it appeared, but the ability to mass produce information transformed the exchange of information and the ability of people to learn and build on that information.

[Riedquat]

I'd say that's another example of a smaller step rather than the game-changer that the printing press was (although it took a long time to reach its full potential). It's like comparing the private car and the invention of the steam locomotive, the latter being the thing that really changed, the former just a refinement.

A good example of the technological obsession was an idiot arguing just how important the mobile phone was for farmers, that it was the best thing for them since pretty much ever - so they'd rather hand back their tractors and go back to horse-drawn ploughs than hand back the mobile? Sure, it might well be pretty useful but like most modern technology it really isn't anywhere near as important and life-changing as most people think. There are parts of the world where arguably it is, but I'd bet that they're places where they've jumped straight for the modern version from nothing.

[Hail the Tripod]

3D printing replacement organs using your own cells is a step change that has just begun and will radically change medicine.

[Rare Bear]

For me, the difference between pre and post 1997 is incredible. I felt such utter optimism at the time and after all "things could only get better" but the changes that have occurred make me want to weep.

Being old enough to remember Labour's antics in the past, in 1997 I thought here we go again, Labour in power for a few years, economy gets b0ll0xed, Tories get back into power an rectify what they can. No one could have anticipated how long they would manage to hold onto the reins and how much damage they could do.