Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2014. It was written that month, with references to this week and to now, in 2014. The one-way Mars trip with 40 Spaniards among those selected refers to the early-2014 Mars One shortlist; that project later collapsed.
This week several studies and reports have come out that try to predict what the future will look like 50 years from now. Back in 1964, the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov made his own predictions for the following 50 years, and today, in 2014, we can see that he got quite a few of them right. But it’s also true that he made some mistakes and omissions. For example, although he correctly foresaw communication through smartphones, he said nothing about the biggest change our society has undergone: the arrival of the internet.
That’s why, although people are now trying to predict what the future will be like in 50 years’ time (in 2064), we may get a great many things right and a great many wrong. Most likely of all, “things” will appear that we can’t even imagine could exist right now.
On the one hand, Métode, the magazine of the University of Valencia (Spain), has asked its scientists to make their predictions for the next 50 years. You can read the full article here. What will we be able to do? Which technologies that are unthinkable today will be part of everyday life in 2064? What will be the greatest scientific advances?…
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These scientists believe that humans will already have visited Mars and that we will find single-celled life, settling the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe. Remember that volunteers were recently being sought for a one-way trip to Mars, and 40 Spaniards were among those selected.
The scientists go further: they think that by 2064 we will also have picked up radio signals from an extraterrestrial civilisation, which would be a huge step forward for science, though also a serious problem because of the religious repercussions such a discovery could have.
They predict that our hyper-technological lifestyle will damage our personal relationships so badly that there will be a considerable rise in mental illness. On the positive side, advances in medicine would make it possible to eradicate certain degenerative diseases and to repair tissues and organs.
They expect many of today’s diseases to have been eradicated, or simply to have become chronic conditions that barely affect the patient’s quality of life.
Turning now to the Pew Research Center report (see here), it also gives a view of what advances we will see in the next 50 years.
These ideas may seem more futuristic, although they could become reality. Nobody can know yet.
According to the Pew survey, 39% of Americans believe that within the next 50 years scientists will have found a way to teleport objects. It’s worth pointing out that we already have a technology that does something similar: 3D printers. We don’t exactly teleport anything, but we can take the plans for an object and send them to the other side of the world, where the printer creates that same object. Who knows whether they’ll find a way to teleport?
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33% agree that humans will have colonised other planets.
19% believe that humans will be able to control the weather: in other words, decide when it should rain and when we should have a sunny day. In fact, several projects are already working on this.
81% believe that one of the most profitable businesses of the next 50 years will be made-to-order organs. Organs will be grown in laboratories using our own DNA, so that we can buy a lung, a kidney or a heart.
Likewise, cyborg humans are nothing new today, and over the next 50 years the bond between technology and humans may reach a point we can’t even imagine right now.
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Featured image: Phillip Leonian from New York World-Telegram & Sun, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
