I don't have a personal website, so I placed that post on Google+, to have it for future reference. Boy, do I suck at predictions.

Normal computers will not be permitted to produce code. All developers will have to submit passport and dna before being allowed to work. Computers capable of producing code will be accounted for centrally, it will be illegal to own one without a licence.

Cash will be done away with by the following means or similar:

https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-nega...

Resentment against entrenched industry shills and oligarchy will lead to extra judicial acts of revenge. The actors behind this will not coalesce the way religious fundamentalism has, but will be understood as a common root cause much as luddism was.

A new small C conservatism will replace radically economic reductionism of the Chicago school kind, massive public works and Keynesian intervention will predominate. Low tax regimes will find the cost of corporatism in health and lifestyle terms counter productive, extreme wealth taxes and punishments for evasion will be international.

Literacy will not fall, but writing will be uncommon.

Google will be remembered fondly before dismemberment. Facebook will be regarded as an aberation. Religions will compete on TV. Access to intelligent agents (not aware ai but ubiquitous use of ai derived optimisation and machine learning based systems) will be almost a right, where access to data is a right, albeit only if identified. Use of VPN and data hiding will be a first class felony in itself and linked to some kind of precrime with presumption of innocence lost.

Brand loyalty will merge deeper into the human experience, and in the 50-100 year timescale few living humans will be able to conceive of brands and products as separate from their personal identity. Boundaries between socio-economic groups will become more strongly reinforced along product lines (I believe this has already begun - see the Chik-fil-A/Hobby Lobby protests and reaction, or the reaction from both sides to Nike's support of Colin Kaepernick, and other recent corporate "woke" behavior).

Much more of the written words we consume in any form (newspaper, online opinion articles, listicles, etc) will be secretly sponsored, written by and for the benefit of a particular product, brand, or interest group. Even seemingly unrelated things, like local news, will be used to manage global brand visibility at scale as ML's ability to write comprehensibly comes into its own and articles are produced algorithmically.

Similar algorithmic information delivery systems will be used to drive even more granular opinion influence for things like state and county elections. Exploitation of outdated laws and regulations, and things like gerrymandering, will become even worse than we could have imagined as the tools to locate and predict vote probabilities at the individual level becomes even more powerful.

The Lasering of space junk was part of Finland's 100 year celebration, instead of fireworks the worn-out space-vessel "Kokko" was destroyed with lasers.

Reasoning: songs leading the charts are mostly written by same lyricists, music is largely dependent on auto tunes, repetitive sections, machine learning algorithms for audio processing is growing at a fast rate.

- Virtual reality headsets will replace both smartphones and desktop computers.

- Roe v. Wade will be overturned, but the constitution will be amended to protect abortion rights.

- Brexit will continue being delayed indefinitely.

- San Francisco will start its own Navy.

- White people will become a minority in the United States, but a majority in Japan.

- Cranston, Rhode Island exceed Paris, France in tourists/year, but not in total revenue from tourism.

- A saintly king[1] will take control of France, conquer Greece, and convert the entire world to Catholicism.

- The Higgs Boson particle will remain undiscovered.

- Ohio will become a Marxist-Leninist one-party state.

- The Jewish Messiah will arrive, and construct the 3rd temple. It will be converted into a Walmart due to lack of attendance.

- The Scandinavian language will split into three mutually unintelligible dialects: Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. In Iceland, everyone will just speak English.

- North and South Korea will be re-united, but subsequently re-partitioned into East and West Korea due to partisan violence.

- Harvard and MIT will be combined into a single institution, which will exclusively grant degrees in "Religious Studies," "Computer Engineering," and "Religious Studies And Computer Engineering."

- London, Chicago, and several other major cities will cease to exist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Roman_Emperor#Catholic_tr...

Elon musk will make some cash on tourists to the moon but nothing revolutional. Maybe they will make some hotel on moon for rich people to have fun.

Many juices and even some pulps, flours etc, are also largely made using engineered yeasts and bacteria. Fruit is reserved for eating directly, or adding as an additive to gain a 'made with real fruit' label.

Similarly most real meat is more a speciality food, reserved for steaks, roasts, ribs, etc, anything processed (minced beef, chicken fillets, soups, curries, pies, sausages) is made using artificial meat. Much pasture is reforested.

Economic inequality would increase manifolds. There will be less poverty but a whole lot of people struggling for basic healthcare & jobs.

Automation, Robots & AI will be an integral part of society.

Virtual worlds might be as important as real ones. Virtual real estate might be worth more than physical real estate.

People will be dumber as no real problems or creative jobs to work on.

E-sports might be more popular than actual sport.

Some cities might be lost due to sea leval rise.

And thus all we will actually learn in 50 years time is that human nature changes very little. We will still retrospectively reward success based on chance alone, not distinctive insight.

In short, statistics will continue to be an underappreciated practice.

Also, testing will be fully AI automated, other than some initial configuration there won't be the need to write tests manually.

Anything that can be done by robots and AI will be done by robots and AI. Things like driving, house cleaning and cooking (at least for restaurants) will be fully done by robots.

Geo-Political: Africa's rise. ~2.5 Billion people are going to be born in Africa in the next 50 years. By 2050, the median wage for a family in Africa is going to be ~$65k/yr (in 2010 dollars). Most families will have 2 kids or less there. Africa is transitioning from stage 1-2 into stage 3-4. From walking and bicycles to cars and planes. Those markets and those young people will be very thirsty for better goods, services, education, financial planning, democratic representation, etc. Generally, the center of global trade is going to shift from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and the people that ring the old monsoon markets. Addis Abba's already has a metro system that serves ~700k people a day. The bullet train from Nairobi to Mombassa is already going ~300km/hr. Kenya already has a ~600MW geothermal power station (~1/3 of Hoover Dam). Nigeria's Eko Atlantic project is ~half done with reclaiming ~200 Manhattan's worth of land area from the Atlantic Ocean. It's 'Great Wall of Africa' is mostly done now and is proofed to the worst climate change can throw at it, due in part to the 8 weather satellites that Nigeria has currently in orbit. Africa is going to be where a young, vibrant, well educated, culturally diverse, middle class is trying to make it's mark and improve the lives of their children. It is most assuredly not a place of 'shit-hole countries', and The Import-Export Bank of China knows this. The West should know to shelve the racism, and fast, for the good of it's geo-political future and it's pocket-book.

With lab-grown meat agriculture has mostly collapsed, since most of it was either meat or food for meat production.

Most small cities are essentially dead, at least in terms of opportunities to improve ones life, since there are no jobs for low skilled workers. Those jobs were mostly meat plants or trucking and transport is done with automated trucks. There were other jobs but those where mostly in support of those jobs, or incidental to peoples life.

High Skilled workers have moved to the cities, but most of their income is eaten up by rent. Those who got there earlier and got a reasonably affordable place to live are making a lot of money.

Both suffer a lot less because things have continued to get cheaper -- you don't need to travel the world with good enough 3d glasses, most things we have physically today are available in "phones" (though nobody knows why they are called that anymore, as nobody use them to make old style phone calls). Without meat production, most oil-based transport and most stuff the environment is doing okay. It helps that not too many babies are being born (turns out, 3d porn is just that much nicer).

On an international scene things are looking much better: most of the world has cached up to the standard of living the US had in 1980, with the exception of basket case countries that are essentially still basket cases (North Korea, Eritrea). China has court up with the US and are beginning to face the same problems the US had, though somewhat dampened by the lack of freedom. Despite this, they have had to find make work projects for their people, and have had to grant more and more freedom to stay in power.

In short the world will be a lot freer, a lot more equal, but inside countries there will be a lot less hope and those countries will be much less equal.

Given this, I find it hard to believe that future societies would somehow become more oppressive. Rather, I think true democracy will have reached virtually, if not practically, all of the world. Menial tasks have largely become automated. Most people are well fed, secure and have access to education and information. Brick and mortar stores (be they for clothing, groceries or anything else) are largely a thing of luxury.

Speaking of education, most societies do not emphasize a traditional educational path involving 3-5 years at universities like they do now. Higher institutions now play a larger role but the benefits of technology in information diffusion and communication now means we have more meaningful and regarded ways of acquiring knowledge in other places, in other periods of life and at different paces.

  - All transport is electric and self-driving
  - Most meat is made artificially or non-meat substitutes 
  - New world order will be USA-India-Japan-Iran Vs China-Russia-Vietnam. (Europe to stay neutral)
  - Home robots doing chores
  - Lots of jobs have been automated leading to change in work
  - Maximum workweek hours reduced to 4-days or flexible working
  - Trips to the moon as regular as satellite launches and ISS trips are today
  - Underground (and undersea( road tunnels connecting most of the world
  - Advances in tracking and objective measurement of *everything* (Health, happiness etc)
  - World energy needs mostly run off renewable resources (wind, solar, hydro)
  - Borderless travel for most people across most countries
  - Spread and establishment of liberal democracy across most countries
  - World population more stable

- If we have fusion power, even if the reactor is the size of a battleship, every country's military will have a space program.

- Transportation continues to become cheaper, faster and more autonomous. There's no point in owning anything any more because you can rent it and have it delivered as quickly as you could get it out of a cupboard. You just pay a flat monthly fee depending on what levels of luxury you want, and that entitles you to whatever you need.

Several city-states (notably SFBay, NYC DC, Pearl River, Amsterdam, Venice, Florida, and Houston) will be wiped off the map, either by the Drone Wars or by rising sea levels and increasingly violent storms. Also, regions like the American Midwest, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Bengal/Burma/Myanmar area will be severely depopulated as regional conflicts and border skirmishes lead to the near-extinction of the local populace from drone cleansing efforts. Sub-Saharan Africa (now split between the Corporate States of Alcoa, DeBeers, and BP) will still be populated, but not by Africans. The Corporate State of ExxonMobil in Northern Athabasca will be a rising power, as will be the Corporate States of Monsanto in Canada and Russia. The City States of Barrow, Cambridge Bay, Taloyoak, and Fort Ross will be rising economic powers on the Arctic Ocean, as will be there lesser-populated equivalents in Siberia. The Corporate State of SpaceX will just be establishing the first Mars colony.

Standards of living for the survivors will be high. The near complete destruction of existing infrastructure in the Drone Wars will allow surviving cities to rebuild with more modern technology; in particular, the widespread adoption of robotics in that conflict means that most daily transportation and logistic problems are taken care of by machines. Everything is electrified, powered by renewable solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal sources. The severe depopulation in the Drone Wars means that the survivors are able to bargain for higher wages and better working conditions, and many Corporate States are run as egalitarian worker collectives (albeit at the cost of oppressing or exterminating the native populations they displace). City States face continued inequality, though, as they struggle to care for skill-less refugees that were not killed in the Drone Wars.