31–40 of 44 posts
That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Aut…
That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Aut…
The world was very very different 100 years ago.
I think there have been much more drastic (positive) changes during the 19th century for the western world than during the 20th century.
That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Aut…
That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Aut…
10 years ago there were no smartphones. 30 years ago nearly nobody had a computer.
There is a big achievement in the 20th century, which is that the time-barrier has been slashed for spreading information, and that spreading information has become cheap. IMHO this is the biggest thing since the invention of writing (== communication over large distances) and the invention of printing (== cheap mass reproduction of information, but you still had to physically transport it around the world). The internet goes hand in hand with cheap personal communication devices, I give you that. It's a shame that it is mostly used for shopping and looking at cat images ;)
No mention of pollution or climate change? The trend for climate change been observed since the 1950's. 99% of Scientists agree that it's really happening, and it will have a major impact on how livable our planet is.
This paper[1] looks at things from the perspective of cumulative CO2 emissions, as they have a roughly linear relationship with the temperature increase. For example, over the period of 1870 to 2012 we added about 1,430 (+- 70) GtCO2 to the atmosphere, and we're already observing a +0.8°C mean global temperature increase: > Taking into account CO2 emissions prior to 2014, the remaining emissions quota (from 2015 onwa…
Anyway, I'm not a climate scientist and there are a number of people who claim that 1000 GtCO2 lead to 2 degree warming, so your 1500 GtCO2 seem only a little optimistic. However, just reducing CO2 production is not enough. We have to completely stop, because CO2 takes basically forever to sequester from the atmosphere, and every degree of warming we cause increases the likelihood that we leave the "safe" linear-relationship territory.
Sadly, I see this article as an overly optimistic view of the not-so-distant future. Maybe 40 years seems like a lot of time in some fields (electronics, software, human life-span), but not so much in some major areas (culture, some hard sciences, societies, economy). Yes, the rate of technological advances are sometimes exponential. But in some fields, they are clearly slowing down, and stabilizing. And even when te…
That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Aut…
Free public transit and easier restaurant ordering with wearables? India dominating the world? Little college campus utopias were everyone is smart and rides bikes? Sounds like someone has spent too much time in the tech industry in San Fransisco and perhaps should broaden their perspective a bit. Maybe go back to Ohio and look at the meth labs and bulldogs and then think about the future. Also, 30% of the world (at…
"It suddenly occurs to me that the hottest tech startups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that's who thinks them up."
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/change-the-worl...
In Portland maybe. In most of the developed world most of the 30% that doesn't work hasn't decided to "check out of the rat race" but just can't find anything decent (or, in some countries, anything at all).
That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Aut…
10 years ago there were no smartphones. 30 years ago nearly nobody had a computer.
Sure, one can work as a web designer now, and they couldn't before. But they'd still have some other job anyway in the past. Same with smartphones. We wouldn't have selfies, and casual surfing on a restaurant and constant BS calls while on the move. Other than that, not much would change.
Whereas things like women rights or seggregation or cars or toilets or flights or electricity etc have much more changed how we live in a much more profound way.