2050

[Rare Bear]

Don't get me wrong, I think LEDs are the Mutt's nuts. Likewise, digital photography, solid state storage, tons of stuff. It's arguable you appreciate them more than most (younger) people if you'd worked with the tech that preceded it.

Funny enough I was on the phone to a friend of mine the other night. I'm 65 and he's about 80. I've been working with computers, programming and networking, since the mid 80's and he's an electrical engineer by profession, been programming since the year dot. I had just got a new phone for my birthday and when I mentioned it to him and remarked about just how serious a computer it really was he agreed that it was absolutely amazing how much computer power one could acquire these days for so little money. The funny thing is tha he is the one who keeps remind me that Moores's Law still applies.

[Rare Bear]

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.

I first read Neuromancer in 1986. I thought that a world where computers hooked themselves into a network wirelessly was far in the future. When I first read of the idea of the Smart Pig I thought that the idea was totally loony. All those computers built into a weapon. How wastefully expensive!

[frozen_out]

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.

At the risk of following this up in the wrong thread - I think you are right. Communication and the ability to travel long distances in short periods pretty much make the 'city' a quaint concept.

[Riedquat]

At the risk of following this up in the wrong thread - I think you are right. Communication and the ability to travel long distances in short periods pretty much make the 'city' a quaint concept.

Since it hasn't eliminated the need (or at least the advantage) of having people together on the same site the opposite is true. Speed and communication have hugely encouraged centralisation and the domination of larger businesses, and other technology has removed most of the practical need for many people to not live in cities.

[frozen_out]

Since it hasn't eliminated the need (or at least the advantage) of having people together on the same site the opposite is true. Speed and communication have hugely encouraged centralisation and the domination of larger businesses, and other technology has removed most of the practical need for many people to not live in cities.

Define 'same site'. When you're putting a train line in so that people can commute from Birmingham to London for their working day the definition of what a city is starts to get a little fuzzy. I would argue a city and a commercial centre are not the same thing.

[Riedquat]

That's extending the centralisation (a bad thing IMO), and is the same thing as towns and villages near cities being nothing more than dormitories these days, albeit on a different scale. A city and a commercial centre might not strictly speaking be the same thing but there's a large degree of overlap.

[frozen_out]

That's extending the centralisation (a bad thing IMO), and is the same thing as towns and villages near cities being nothing more than dormitories these days, albeit on a different scale. A city and a commercial centre might not strictly speaking be the same thing but there's a large degree of overlap.

I guess the point I'm trying to make (badly) is that when looking at the size of modern cities and thinking about optima you need to be careful what and how you're counting. Someone made the point that less advanced cities tend to be bigger, contrary to model predictions. I would argue that increased centralisation, better communication and faster transport has made it so that almost the entire bottom half of England could be considered to be a city. The numbers then look a little different.

[thecrashingisles]

I guess the point I'm trying to make (badly) is that when looking at the size of modern cities and thinking about optima you need to be careful what and how you're counting. Someone made the point that less advanced cities tend to be bigger, contrary to model predictions. I would argue that increased centralisation, better communication and faster transport has made it so that almost the entire bottom half of England could be considered to be a city. The numbers then look a little different.

I think you make a good point but the biggest issue with that argument is that transport is now slower, not faster.

[Riedquat]

I guess the point I'm trying to make (badly) is that when looking at the size of modern cities and thinking about optima you need to be careful what and how you're counting. Someone made the point that less advanced cities tend to be bigger, contrary to model predictions. I would argue that increased centralisation, better communication and faster transport has made it so that almost the entire bottom half of England could be considered to be a city. The numbers then look a little different.

I think I see where you're coming from. I think you're saying that the physical location of various geographically separate clumps of buildings is become less and less relevent when considering what a city actually does - people living in one part and working in another.

I think you make a good point but the biggest issue with that argument is that transport is now slower, not faster.

Not significantly for most of the country, unfortunately (I say that because for me it's far, far too rushed as it is, although slow due to being congested is hardly a good alternative).