• Question: what does the world look like in 50 years

    Asked by aymane21 to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Very different from what it does now!
      I expect that technology will have increased enough that most us will not talk to each other in person (kind of like we do now, actually!) but in a completely virtual world, where you can interact and touch and feel the environment that you create for yourself.
      I think that we will have come a long way with our climate – either good or bad. We will either have come up with viable solutions to tackle it, or we will be looking for new ways of sustaining human life. I like to positive about the future though – I think mankind will make some great progress in the next five decades!

    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Great question!! Hopefully there will be less pollution and more Green energy and more than likely more people!!! Its very hard to imagine what changes would happen over the next 50 years judging by the big changes in the past 50 years. But more technology, more greener travel and possibly more innovative buildings. There may well be a huge rise in the virtual world and we will work in such an environment – working from home in a virtual office!

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I think that the world will be surprisingly recognizable. If we think about the changes that have taken place in the last 50 years, there have been big technological changes, but people don’t really change. There will till be conflicts between countries (as there were 50 years ago – eg. in Vietnam; and now – Israel, tension in Korea, Iraq), we still have family units (although they are now more unstable), and people still keep in contact with one another – its just that the methods have changed.

      I think that the rate of change in computing will slow, because we’ll start to hit some physical limits on information storage and computation. However, there may be more clever uses of existing technologies.

      However, international power will probably shift to those countries with the biggest populations, which means China and India. In the past, technology, training and knowledge were kept by fewer people in “developed” countries, which could maintain power with small populations. Now that information and technology can flow more freely, I think that the balance of power will shift to those places with the biggest populations. Anyone know any Cantonese …?

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