Originally Posted by
Mitsu3000gt
I personally don't think we will see a lot of extreme change in our lifetimes, just refinements / logical advancements for things we already have. Think about how long it would take to, say, completely change the way we view transportation and the related infrastructure. Not going to happen in the next 40-60 years IMO. It takes 2-3 full years for our city to add an extra lane to a short stretch of road... I think electric cars will get better and more common, but flying / self driving cars will remain a novelty at best. Even just looking at the last 40-50 years of automobiles, they have got way better and way safer but they haven't changed THAT much - certainly not as much as I think many would have predicted 40-50 years ago. When I was little I thought we would be flying around like the Jetsons by 2020 and here we are with most people still driving 5-10+ year old basic vehicles on roads full of potholes and horribly optimized traffic systems.
Supersonic commercial flight might become a thing again, but considering the average time for an all-new commercial plane to go from development to service is ~10 years (and that is with existing, proven tech for the most part), nothing happens fast at all, and safety is still the #1 consideration for most airlines. I think space (or outer atmosphere travel) for the uber rich will become a thing, as we are almost there already.
Delivery drones will never be viable in our lifetime, IMO as, the liability / theft / vandalism risks are way too high. Unless there is universal participation, it's very difficult to mix humans & autonomy. Not to mention the fact that after one incident of anything autonomous, you will have an army of Facebook soccer moms lobbying to have them banned, and they will probably succeed.
I think we will see the next stage of major computing advancement, whatever that may be (quantum or something). Things will keep getting smaller and smaller and more and more powerful. Enormous solid state drives, ridiculous storage capacities, etc. Smart homes much smarter. Nothing too crazy though, I don't think we will be walking around with Star Trek style glasses or anything like that. We are well past the point of diminishing return for lots of our electronics that I think progress there will be stagnant for a while relative to how quickly it changed over the last few decades.
Medically, I think we will be the last generation that doesn't get to live to 100++ on average with stem cell treatments / gene editing, etc. being the future norm. I think we need to wait for a bunch of the older generation in power to die off who are stifling many of these advancements for religious or political reasons.
We might see Fusion power plants replace standard Nuclear power plants. More efficient solar/wind/hydro generation, etc.
I'm more curious about to how we as a whole will deal with global problems like growing landfills, over population, diseases (cancer, etc.), climate change, etc. Again I think a lot of that will require new ways of thinking in government which will take a while, if it ever even happens.
Longer range tech predictions
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