2021, 2050 and 2121

I often wonder how the world will be, a hundred years from now. How will technologies evolve by then, and what kind of fundamental scientific breakthroughs will happen by 2121? For sure, there will be tectonic changes in socio-economic, climatic, cultural and political landscapes of the world in a century which will be very much interconnected to technological & scientific changes. 

One of the strongest reasons I wish to live long is to be able to see what changes the future will bring about in technology, and to witness the remarkable growth of humankind in its pursuit of scientific truths. When I die, I will miss out on all the fascinating discoveries and inventions that await humankind - this is what I sometimes feel sad about. But, we can't live forever. So, no point lamenting it. Good God! I always veer toward a discussion on 'death'! No, let me quickly swerve away from this but before that, I must admit that I sincerely do not wish to live for another 500 years even if it were possible via some divine blessing :P  ... our civilization and this planet will be unrecognizable by then, and I will be a fish out of water. No, I have no wish to see how the world looks like in 2500 A.D. But I'd certainly like to see how it looks like at the dawn of the 22nd century, something I hope my son will witness on my behalf. 

A hundred years, though a blink of eye in the cosmic time scale, is in fact a long time frame with respect to our lifespan to foresee the evolution of society and science. Any claim would be a bold claim, given that technology progresses non-linearly. It would be extremely difficult to predict about 2121 even with 1% probability of it being somewhat accurate. The socio-economic and climatic changes would be so complex and interwoven by then that merely extrapolating technological progress from 2021 to predict about 2121 would be a folly. There could be a big war, a pandemic 10 times worse than covid-19, a massive meteor strike, tsunamis unlike anything before, super-volcanoes and so on. Or, there could be extreme humanitarian & refugee crisis due to nations dissolving or new nations forming i.e. due to political reasons. The arctic may disappear by 2050s, raising the sea levels and leading to unprecedented disruptions in economy & market, in mass refugee crisis and bringing unthinkable changes to the world political order. All these would dictate, push or even throttle technological developments of humankind. 

If I Google up on how the world will look like in 2050 which is merely 28.5 years from now, I get a lot of links, websites and YouTube videos. This is expected. People feel more comfortable and confident predicting the changes that may occur in the next three decades. Extrapolation from 2021 will most likely hold water to a decent degree of accuracy, unless something like a global catastrophe poses extinction level threat. For example, I get to see many such websites/videos where people (experts?) predict that by 2050:

• there would be almost 100% internet penetration in the entire world. This would usher in trans-formative changes in life quality, communication and economy but also pose increased levels of threat in terms of data fudging, misrepresentation & distortion of facts and the ability to sway & control public opinion by those who control the internet. 
• the arctic may disappear leading to unpredictable climate and thus economic changes everywhere in the world; coastal flooding and submerging of coastal cities may become more common
• Widespread use of electric cars & 2-wheelers everywhere, which may substantially reduce CO2 emission, and may significantly reduce oil consumption (but petrol/diesel vehicles would still be there). Solar/renewables would likely contribute a large chunk to the global electricity demand. 
• A large fraction of vehicles could be fully driver-less i.e. no human occupant's control whatsoever, which may substantially bring down road accident statistics by eliminating human error (but raises serious questions of ethics in deciding 'whom' to save in case of accidents) 
• A.I/robots will be sufficiently advanced by 2050. They would perhaps replace humans in plenty of jobs & tasks, doing things cheaply, diligently, rapidly, without few errors and mistakes. Unemployment/job loss and increasing population may create a disturbing scenario here. 
• A.I. with natural language processing/deep learning will be so advanced that we can hold meaningful conversations with them, debate, argue & brainstorm with them. Humans may even develop relations with A.I., emotionally. And, A.I. would probably understand sarcasm, tease us, joke with us and also have empathy for us.  
• There could universal language translator wherein what I speak or write in Assamese, for instance, can instantaneously be translated into say, Mandarin or Spanish, absolutely error-free, spontaneous and by incorporating local phrases/idioms and dialect/accent. 
• Medical chip maybe embedded in our bodies which will continuously monitor our health in real time, perform biochemical tests to detect any disease early on. If such chips are made mandatory by govt (like Adhaar cards), then the word 'privacy' will cease to exist in the vocabulary! 
• Artificial organs + stem cell & 3D printing may lead to increased proliferation of synthetic organs which will help us remove/replace damaged tissue or organ, and this may become more commonly/easily available to all. 
• Women may have more personalized biological clocks with real-time hormonal tracker that tracks fertility and helps them decide when to have babies (if they want to), when they can no longer make babies and (this is a bit futuristic!) enable people to 'design' babies to some extent! 
• houses & buildings could be increasingly made by 3D printing with special ink of cement/sand etc. (This is already demonstrated). This, at a large scale, may cause major changes to our society, jobs, manufacturing etc. 
• there could be reduced armed conflicts internal to nations, overall in the world, especially due to more education and increased cost of warfare. But, a few nations may see increasing armed conflicts!

These are rather easy predictions to make. I would add that quantum technologies such as quantum communication/quantum sensing/quantum computation and so on, may become more commonplace by 2050. I would also like to add that the speed of the internet/mobile communication would become incredibly faster by then (6G, 7G etc.), and also cheaper probably. Most people will have smartphones which are wearable (definitely foldable), and real time monitoring of health parameters including glucose level, cholesterol and thyroid hormones maybe non-invasive, which is built-in to the wearable device. I am tempted to add that data deluge will be so severe that we will be perpetually drowned under an ocean of data & information, and if not careful, all our time & bandwidth would be spent in sieving through these oceans of information/entertainment & data. 

This makes me predict that some form of a new job or new platform may emerge which will be personalized to each individual, and which will help one filter all data from the internet such that he or she feeds on the data which is relevant, based on one's tastes, ideologies and profession. In short, data mining & data filtering at a personal level, with good control & customization. 

I feel clueless if I think of how the political order of the world will look like in 2050. Will USA still be number one in technology and military power? How will India fare? Will EU have more refugee crisis? Will Brazil suffer an economic meltdown? Will China be the new boss of the world? Similarly, I feel equally clueless when i try to imagine about the economy of the world. Will digital & cryptocurrency become mainstream to an extent that the conventional currencies like the rupee and the dollar feel threatened? Will currency notes be printed at all if almost everything is online/over digital platform (assuming 100% of the world has access to internet)?

Well, now, if I Google up on how the world will look like in 2100, I get far fewer resources and links. As expected, it's much more difficult to predict about 2100. The few existing resources mostly talk about the disruptions in the climate when they predict about 2100 A.D. such as farming the oceans to feed the population, and opening up parts of Antarctica for business. In any case, let me write about those predictions for 2100 in my next post, along with my take on the world in 2121 A.D. which is a century from now. 

By the way, I often ask myself - if a person who died in 1921 is woken up from his grave now, how shocked will he/she be to see the world of 2021? Politically - not much to be shocked perhaps (ok, the WW-2 happened, Hitler/Mussolini happened, Mao happened, Gandhi happened, the rise of China happened, the Cold war happened. Terrorism increased many-fold. What else?). Technologically? He/she will be kind of shocked, or thrilled. We landed on the moon, we built spaceships that have cross the outer edges of the solar system, we have landed unmanned spaceships on Mars which are taking 'selfie' from another planet. The electronics revolution will surely be a shocker... the smartphones, the internet, the ability to connect to anyone at anytime over any distance and that too over video! The ubiquity of camera, songs, movies in a handheld device would be a shocker, I think. Cars/automobiles/airplanes -- not much of a shocker, I'd say. 

Could he/she have predicted some or most of these in 1921?