Future Predictions Part One

I have been thinking about what the future might look like for a couple days now.

In regards to resources, I think that there will continue to be disparities in what people have, how they live, and what they have available to them. But these disparities will grow. As the population of the earth grows and becomes more urbanized, space will become rare and at a premium. The wealthy with have green space and their accommodations will continue to be similar to the luxury that we have now. For the rest of the planet, there will be the working class who can afford a small space for themselves and their families, but they will fuel the economies of great and sprawling slums. People will continue to leave the rural areas looking for opportunity or because they have been driven from rural lands by international agri-business that will have a strangle hold on food production. Those in the slums will create their own economy of services and goods.

Food. Food will become the defining resource of any economy. Low quality food stuffs will be made from inedible plant matter such as grass or kelp that is processed by bioengineered bacteria. Higher quality food stuffs will be grown but the corporate agri-businesses will have monopolies on seeds and the chemicals necessary to germinate and fertilize seeds.

Education. Formal education will continue to have value at the upper echelons of society which will be more strongly stratified. At the lower levels of society formal education and credentials will have far less value than being able to do a job and having information, experience, and skills. Apprenticeships and indentured servitude to gain skills will become a growing norm.

Health care. For those who can afford the treatments their life spans will be greatly lengthened. Longevity will be the privilege of the wealthy. In a world where calories are rare and the quality of food is not as high, children will be "inoculated" with beneficial and bioengineered bacteria that will enhance the flora of their gut to make it possible to more thoroughly extract nutrients and calories. A course of carefully manipulated viruses will be given to children not only to protect them from common illnesses but to create a beneficial immune response and shield them from depression and anxiety. Genetic testing and treatment will occur while a fetus is still in the womb.

For the poor, health care will be no existent except for what treatments can be concocted as home remedies.

In the next 100 years a human being's personality, memories, and thought processes will be transferred to an electronic form. The first consciousness to be transferred will go insane without the limits of the senses that act as perceptive interfaces and after this the next breakthrough will be to find ways for the consciousness to take information from the environment and process it and to use this information to feel grounded and oriented.

Ok. Enough for tonight. I will see what I can think up for tomorrow night.