Future Fact No. 1
The planet is not unchanging. We’ve passed the “tipping point,” we’re showing no signs of curtailing our climate effecting behaviour. I barely need to engage my prophetic powers to know that by 2100 we will inevitably have recognized the fact that we’ve been engaged in slowly boiling our own habitat. The polar caps will have disappeared, the oceans will have risen and fossil fuel abuse will have been criminalized as the empowered classes recognize that continued use may have catastrophic consequences within their own lifetime. There will be railing against the sins of prior generations (that’s us), but individualized self-interest will nonetheless be the motivation that causes us to curb our fossil habit. Gas use permits, issued to super-elites and certain military enterprises, will evidence this irony.
Future Fact No. 2
We’ll make it to Mars several times before the turn of the next century. It will become abundantly clear that a meaningful colonization of space will take millennia. As with all goals worthy of a species, we’ll still be putting it off in 2100. Tourist flights to the moon-base will be common; a space elevator will cheapen them considerably.
Future Fact No. 3
The Internet enables a broader portion of the population to achieve greater depths of knowledge. Though most of said capacity shall continue to serve as a platform for discussion of celebrity faux pas and the dissemination of a variety of pussy videos, the Internet will continue to grow towards the capability of providing consumers something approaching the absolute knowledge of the marketplace that pillars all models, used as evidentiary support of the superiority, of free market capitalism. As a result, more and more people will realize precisely how inefficient free market capitalism is at generating value in an imperfect universe. An entrenched plutocracy will waffle between taking on the appearance of championing limited socialist movements and magnanimously consenting to the enactment of minimalist common goods programs, all the while profiting from their insider knowledge of and influence over the very policy changes involved. Same shit, different day.
Future Fact No. 4
As a species we cast the dice when we sharpened our first rock. Either we will harness sufficient energy to survive and subsequently thrive, or we will hang around on Earth waiting for a self-imposed extinction event. Excuse me engaging in cliché here: I’m not an optimist; I’m a realist. I’m forced to take solace in what I see in the energy industries. I foresee great advances in energy technology marking the transition to the next century — thusly I avoid the Catch-22 of nobody being around long enough to sufficiently celebrate what an amazing set of predictions I’ve made. A gloomy energy sector forecast is a cry of “Doom!”
Whether or not it will have come too late, regardless of the significant risks and barriers the various methods face, nuclear plants, and hydroelectric dams alongside wind and ocean turbines will provide the majority of our consumable energy. Solar panels will have proven insufficient — oil involved in manufacture, inefficiency, etcetera. Fusion reactors will provide an increasingly large portion of the world’s power. The concept of localization of production will be thought of as a laughable artefact of an age where oil was an outdated motor in our economic growth engine.
Future Fact No. 5
By the end of the 21st century the middle class will be marginalized to the point of non-existence as the expertise utilized in production expands the gap between positions requiring specialization and those needing mere competence. This will not result in social upheaval as said advances allow oligarchs the luxury of catering to the needs (manufactured and basic) of an engorged though disengaged underclass without risk of the privileged seeing their own wants suffer. Have I mentioned: “same shit, different day”?
Speaking of which: in 2100 predictions will be made regarding 2200. They’ll be way off.
