Predict The Future

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Well, it's a new year and with it comes the usual pontification by pundits on what the future holds. Take this thread as your opportunity to predict what the future holds, what technological changes you see forthcoming, etc.

Me:

CD's will go out of style and be replaced by a flash drive style media in the next 5 years.

A world economic crisis will cause the merging of several first-world currency systems and economies into a common denomination and system. I.E the US, Australian and Canadian Dollars will merge with the Euro to start a trend towards a one world economic system. Both Dollar and Euro based economies have similar enough values and denominations that it would be simple to do this. The British Pound may also merge as well, but Asian and African currencies will stay distinct. (Not that I want to see this, but I see it coming within 10 years)

The emergence of wireless broadband replacing cable and phone-line based systems as wireless networks increase their bandwidth.

Chinese cars will be sold in the US

Iran will go nuclear

The US will experience a economic depression rivaling the 1930's due to the banking collapse coming from bad mortgage loans and over-speculation in the housing markets.

Diesel vehicles will make a comeback and will outsell hybrids by offering better mileage with lower overall costs.

Iran, Venezuela and several other countries will try to strangle the US economy with a 1970's style oil embargo.

Global Warming will go out of fashion and mankind will be proven not to have caused it in any major way.

Computers will come with 1 terabyte hard drives built in

Portable media players with video capability will become inexpensive items available for under $30

The government will mandate GPS equipment in all new cars that will transmit how the vehicle is being operated to a central location. Tickets will then be issued automatically to anyone the system says broke the law and the government will have the ability to disable your car remotely. This would also apply to emissions controls as new cars will be required to send information from a feedback sensor in the exhaust as to the operational efficiency of each vehicle. The government's computer would then be able to ticket or disable the offending vehicle without any official ever having laid hands on it.

Much like it did during the French Revolution, religious persecution will come to first world countries in the name of misguided "Freedom".

Hydrogen will not become the fuel of the future. The problem of "Global Cooling" due to the excess water vapor released by hydrogen fuel cells will turn them from the darlings of the environmentalists into pariahs.

Biofuels will be synthesized in large quantities from biomass waste recycling.

A reduction in the price of solar technology will lead to it being the rule instead of the exception for home electrical power production. Most single family homes will produce a minimum of 70% of their annual electrical demand with rooftop solar systems or the coming paint on solar systems being used on all exterior surfaces. Improvements in the technology will allow it to look just like regular house paint.

These are just a few of my ideas as to what the future will hold, and no it is not a list off any other website.

 

[srercrcr]

Most of your "predictions" are mere extrapolations of the current trend.
I guess your Global Warming thoughts are unique.
By the way, CDs are already passe.

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Most of your "predictions" are mere extrapolations of the current trend.
I guess your Global Warming thoughts are unique.
By the way, CDs are already passe.

Well, it was not intended to be some sort of psychic prediction nor was that the purpose of the question asked. All I was asking is what people see coming in the future for whatever reason they see it. For me, most of the way I see the world and life is based upon logical extrapolation and contains little or no emotion.

 

[GrandPrixJamie]

I predict that you are gonna see less and less muscle cars around. As more and more of these kids buy these Hondas and $hit, I have been noticing that there are less muscle cars riding around here. Not to mention that I just filled up the gas tank in my 2005 Dodge neon the other day and it cost me $30 to fill a 10.5 gallon tank that was still a 1/4 full. Gas up here is in the $3.30 range for regular unleaded. The garage that I work at is also a gas station.... every week the price goes up a few cents more. It unfortunately seems like hot rods and muscle cars are a dying breed. I live in upstate NY and the Junk yards around here have less and less around here. Also up here there isn't very many places were you can get performance parts either for these cars. But I can name off quite a few tuner shops. It just seems like everyone is losing the intrest

In my eyes the muscle car will always live but I think there are many others that feel differently.

 

[Derision]

CD's will go out of style and be replaced by a flash drive style media in the next 5 years.

Hasn't this already happened? I haven't bought a CD in years. I don't think they're going to go out of style, though... I think the use is going to change. For instance, I download most of my music these days. And though I still use CDs in my car, I tend to burn them myself... and I burn MP3 CDs, rather than audio CDs. In that way, you can have hundreds of songs on one CD.

Flash media is a good replacement, but there is no universal standard. Between SD cards, SmartMedia, CompactFlash... nobody has built that one universal format. And until, somehow, a universal type is proclaimed, I don't see it taking over.

A world economic crisis will cause the merging of several first-world currency systems and economies into a common denomination and system. I.E the US, Australian and Canadian Dollars will merge with the Euro to start a trend towards a one world economic system. Both Dollar and Euro based economies have similar enough values and denominations that it would be simple to do this. The British Pound may also merge as well, but Asian and African currencies will stay distinct. (Not that I want to see this, but I see it coming within 10 years)

Not a chance. I can see Canada and Australia maybe going towards that... but the US is far too isolationist to actually conform to a worldwide currency. Even if it means economic collapse.

Computers will come with 1 terabyte hard drives built in

Again... the new Mac Pro can hold up to 7TB of hard drive space.

The government will mandate GPS equipment in all new cars that will transmit how the vehicle is being operated to a central location. Tickets will then be issued automatically to anyone the system says broke the law and the government will have the ability to disable your car remotely. This would also apply to emissions controls as new cars will be required to send information from a feedback sensor in the exhaust as to the operational efficiency of each vehicle. The government's computer would then be able to ticket or disable the offending vehicle without any official ever having laid hands on it.

This creeps me out the most, and is the most likely. I've already read things about cars sending out signals to allow police to determine whether the occupant is wearing a seatbelt. That's just... I don't know, man. Really worries me.

I wonder what the penalty would be for disabling such a system.

Personally, my thoughts as to what will change in the future... not much. I mean, every so often, we think ahead to how much will change. And not a lot does. Sure, the technology gets a little bit more advanced, but unless it has something to do with p*rn or money, nothing will change. The internet will get faster (so people can get their p*rn faster), digital video will become even higher in resolution (because the p*rn industry will have adopted a new format -- this is the only reason that DVD became accepted, mind you)... everything else will stay relatively the same.

Oh well.

 

[mcsslover1987]

Global Warming will go out of fashion and mankind will be proven not to have caused it in any major way.

Dont let Algore hear you say that!! He'll accuse you of betraying your country like he did President Bush!! :shock:

 

[KrisW]

85 Cutlass Brougham,

I will be an instrumental part of the underground revolution in your world described above!!

STOP SCARING THE CRAP OUT OF ME WHILE I AM TRYING TO FIX/SEE CARS!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a nice day! 🙂

 

[Derision]

I predict that you are gonna see less and less muscle cars around. As more and more of these kids buy these Hondas and $hit, I have been noticing that there are less muscle cars riding around here. Not to mention that I just filled up the gas tank in my 2005 Dodge neon the other day and it cost me $30 to fill a 10.5 gallon tank that was still a 1/4 full. Gas up here is in the $3.30 range for regular unleaded. The garage that I work at is also a gas station.... every week the price goes up a few cents more. It unfortunately seems like hot rods and muscle cars are a dying breed. I live in upstate NY and the Junk yards around here have less and less around here. Also up here there isn't very many places were you can get performance parts either for these cars. But I can name off quite a few tuner shops. It just seems like everyone is losing the intrest

In my eyes the muscle car will always live but I think there are many others that feel differently.

I was actually just reading that lately, with new technology and whatnot, that reproduction body panels and chassis are starting to be manufactured a lot, and that in some areas, they're having difficulty telling the original muscle cars from the fake, reproduction models.

That makes me kind of happy. Imagine building a brand new G-Body out of parts manufactured today. That'd rock!

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Here's another prediction: It will become illegal to drive any car that is over 20 years old more than a small amount of miles per year in order to cut emissions. That is, if the Socialist Party...errr...Democrats get back in power.

Long term, I have to wonder of the Anime series "Ghost in the Shell" is an accurate predictor of some of the changes to come in society. The way it deals with the merging of human and machine intelligence and the future of digital data raises some intriguing questions. Not to mention the whole idea of how the internet will lead to sort of a mass consciousness with the large scale sharing of information and the questions it raises about the nature of existence and human consciousness.

We already have deconstructed most of what we used to hold so dear and made it all a matter of personal choice and opinion. Now, the nature of truth itself is in jeopardy in so far as how we as humans perceive it to be. Science and religion have started to intermingle as science is not allowed to leave the possibility of the existence of God on the table so, in essence it has become the religion of humanism. It tends to hold the belief in God's non-existence as dogma and will not allow any information in that may get in the way of that assertion. I may not be able to prove the existence of God beyond the shadow of anyone's doubt, but on the other hand science can't disprove it either. So, science and any evidence of anything it is trying to prove becomes a matter of opinion and not concrete truth. Truth is therefore relative to the individual and what that person chooses to believe, not something concrete and unmovable.

 

[85 Cutlass Brougham]

Much of what I posted was supposition. The idea of a combined first-world currency seems to make sense from a technical standpoint, but I believe it will take a collapse of the world's economic systems to bring this consolidation to be. I think the current problem with the US real estate market is one of the catalysts, but may not be what sets it off. The thing is, when the dot com boom went bust, speculators put their risk capitol into real estate instead of the stock market. Properties were being built not for their future occupants, but rather to be sold because of the appreciation they would get during the construction time. Unfortunately, many of these properties were just being sold between speculators and not going into actual use. Therefore, property values skyrocketed beyond that which end users could actually afford to pay and the market became over valued. When speculators could no longer sell their properties easily, the cheap money that had financed the boom via the sub prime mortgage industry dried up due to excessive foreclosures. This is similar to what happened when "Wall Street Laid an Egg" in 1929 (I'll spare you the details). Now, it is difficult to get a mortgage and few people can afford to buy houses. Thus, the properties held in inventory by mortgage companies are worth far less than their loan values and they are going bankrupt.

Another problem we face on the horizon is the very real possibility that the world oil market will go from a US Dollar standard to the Euro. Many countries and corporations hold Dollars to purchase oil because it is the unit of trade that is used. Now, if they switch to Euros, there will be a glut of dollars on the world currency market, further depressing it's value. THe US will therefore need to buy Euros to buy oil. An already depressed dollar will therefore go even lower as compared to the Euro as the dollars we hold will have to be used to buy Euros for the world's second largest oil market, the US ( China will likely supersede us by then).

Now, take those two things together and things look bleak for our economy. However, many countries also hold Dollars as "hard currency" and their treasuries will therefore be devalued, thus weakening them as well. Throw into all of this what I think the final blow is and you can see a collapse of the first world's economic system as it exists now. I believe the thing that will kill the markets will be a massive cyber-terrorism attack by one of our enemies that will wipe out the databases of major banking institutions globally. Remember that Al Quaieda (sp?) stated that the next attack they are planning will make 9/11 look like child's play? They attacked the World Trade Center because it was a symbol of western economics as well as a good place to get a big body count. One of their main hatreds of not only the US, but the entire "corrupt" western world is our economic might. Why not while we are all looking for a WMD problem instead figure out an attack on our electronic data where much of our money exists? The collapse of our monetary system would lead to starvation and the death of many, possibly satisfying their need to kill a huge number of us. It can be done in a much more low key way than a physical weapon if done using a number of internet cafe's which they seem to like instead of a central computer center. Or, maybe a enemy state will do something similar. A medium sized country with an idealogical bent against us like Iran or North Korea could conceivably have enough talented people to tackle such a project. Done at the right moment the results would be catastrophic. I just hope there are good people on our side (and enough of them) who will catch it before it happens.

OK, maybe I should not post all of that. I'm just a pizza delivery driver who thinks a lot due to boredom. (Please don't send men in cheap suits to visit me!) I hope I am wrong but am scared that I am not wrong about some of this.