A lot of optimism in this thread. Here's some pessimism, although I don't think it'll all be accomplished in the next 10 years I think some will be well on thei

A lot of optimism in this thread. Here's some pessimism, although I don't think it'll all be accomplished in the next 10 years I think some will be well on their way to be. Non-tech: - Remote work will become normalized. Initially it will be praised as the great revival of rural North America. North American corporates will invest heavily in knowledge-work related education in developing countries and emerging companies there. By the end of the century, most knowledge work on offer by "North American" companies will be fulfilled by people not living there, undercutting the local labour market drastically. Most tech jobs will have lost their sheen entirely. - Automation, especially around transport, logistics and retail, will decimate the labor market. A person driving a Truck/Bus/Subway/Train/Freight ships or working packing & shipping Amazon/Walmart/etc. boxes, or working at retail stores, will be virtually unheard of. We'll be lucky if they're replaced at a 10:1 ratio with bot operators. - Due to the above, the rich will get richer than we can even perceive now. The middle class will evaporate. - China, India, Saudi Arabia and their allies will become more powerful politically, economically, technologically and especially militarily, most especially in both cyber and nuclear warfare. - The above will lead to an even more dramatic rise in nationalism and the rejection of globalism in the West. The UK will be seen to have come out unscathed by leaving the EU which will cause a crisis for the EU as more states fight federalization, reject directives and propose to leave themselves. The unrest and uncertainty will drive the Euro through the floor. - Trump will be re-elected. The following government will be headed by a Democrat embracing nationalism and vowing to put American's first by taxing "the rich", implementing UBI, healthcare, creating government jobs, etc. - There will be at least one massive economic crisis in North America, likely the overvaluation of stocks through indexes held by massive pension funds causing a "re-evaluation" of many stocks we're currently taking for granted. Europe will go through far worse as mentioned above. - There will be at least 1 major cyber security related incident that will affect a country in a way that will change the nature of national access to the internet forever. - Jeffrey Epstein still won't have killed himself. Tech: - Rejection of petroleum based products in the name of battling climate change will drive up the costs of consumer goods. Stagnating or falling income will cause people to buy less goods. Working longer for less pay will give people less free time. Consumption will therefore instead be turned toward services, especially services that promise to give you back time by automating household chores, providing day-to-day needs such as food and mind-numbing entertainment, especially in VR which I expect to be gamified to be as addictive and escapist as possible. - I expect there will be little autonomous vehicles everywhere. Peace and quiet in our skies will no longer be a thing. Our sidewalks will have a lane full of autonomous delivery bots. - Coupled with the above, electric vehicles will become the norm. However, they won't be owned by consumers unless you're very rich. They'll be be predominantly available as fleets used via subscription to access. Initially it'll seem glamorous but as with the airline industry, longer term we will be compelled to share the vehicle with other riders, sat on materials that cannot stain, with targeted ads for other services played throughout the duration of the trip. - AI will prosper but not general AI, mostly very well crafted advanced automation and mostly developed in the non-West. - DevOps will move to just Dev as Ops becomes almost entirely automated. - One cloud provider will prevail, the others will be relegated to being niche afterthoughts or disregarded altogether. - Med-tech will become normalized and people will end up expected to wear at least one device that is continually monitoring and reporting on their health. That data will of course be packaged and sold to be used against them by advertisers for, again, various services we'll be told we "need". - Privacy and the expectation of privacy will be gone forever. The governments will launch their full scale attack on encryption under the guise of protecting children or terrorism, others will take advantage of the backdoors created in it, and those seen to be trying to protect their privacy will be seen as people with suspicion and therefore subject to further monitoring. - Spurred by the above, cryptocurrencies will enjoy a brief revival as some try to move money privately but will ultimately be cracked down on and controlled as a "threat". Prove me wrong 2020's! Edit: Just scheduled an email to myself with this link for 01/01/2030. It'll be incredible to read it.