Under the shadow of zero-carbon, some predictions for life and times in 2030 (there still seems to be a lot of devices around...)
from Kotaku
In terms of predicting where we’ll be in 2030, this blog has one overriding concern: that we will have been operationally net-zero in terms of carbon use, in industry, society and markets, for a few years by then. We share the urgency of Extinction Rebellion, 11000 scientists, David Wallace-Wells and Greta Thunberg that these ten years are the most crucial in the history of our civilisation.
But it may be of interest to sample what the media mainstream thinks might arise in 2030 - if only to register our bathos at some of these targets. We pulled these examples from the latest news feeds (they’re mostly American, but even a British publication like the Independent largely overlaps in its 2030 predictions with the anticipations below).
New York Times 2030 predictions
Edward Snowden, whistleblower
The drowned cities of tomorrow will be founded on the conveniences of today. Electricity usage by data centers is enormous and expanding, threatening to top 10 percent of global electricity consumption within the next decade and to produce roughly five times the CO2 emissions of all current global air travel. As more power is required to cool these data centers, the warmer the planet will become; and as consumer electronics get cheaper and more disposable, the more they will leach their minerals into our groundwater, poisoning the future.
To achieve sustainability we will need to treat technological change and environmental change as symbiotic. If more efforts aren’t directed toward converting data centers to renewable energy, and innovating ecologically-responsible, recyclable machines and batteries, then the internet, too, will become a weapon of the rich, even more than it already is — a tool used to seize and control ever more scarce natural resources.
Dambisa Moyo, economist, author of Edge of Chaos
Forecasts suggest the world’s population could reach a staggering 9 billion people by 2030 — triple the population of the early 1960s. Much of this increase will come from the poorest regions of India, South America and Africa. Africa alone is expected to represent nearly half of the world’s population by the middle of this century; by some estimates, India is adding 1 million people to its working age population a month. If we don’t place international cooperation over national self-interest, the world will be unprepared for this population explosion, which could become a catalyst for greater global conflict with dire implications for the global economy, migrants and the environment.
Garry Kasparov, chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and former World Chess Champion
I’ve made my share of dire forecasts — and as quite a few of them have come to pass, I’m often called a pessimist. In reality, I’m an optimist, issuing warnings in the hope of being proven wrong. Despite my professional focus on A.I. and the human-machine relationship that will define our future, the emerging trend I’m most concerned about is purely human. The free world is lurching toward a polarized, post-truth reality that reminds me of my life in the Soviet Union, where the truth was whatever the regime said it was that day. If the battle for a shared, fact-based reality is not fought and won, 2030 will make the outrages and demagogy of 2019 look like a golden age of comity.
P.W. Singer, cybersecurity specialist
Our cities, workplaces and homes will be “smarter” by 2030. That means nearly everything in our lives will be networked into profitable, energy-saving infrastructures — much of it prudently designed to ward off the worst of climate change. But the transition to an autonomous, always-watching-us internet of things will be bumpy. The economy, politics and even family life will struggle to master a world of evermore intelligent systems that operate in ways we understand less and less. Don’t expect the old sci-fi clichés of a robot uprising. Expect the rise of even more populist anger, driven by so much change so quickly; new crimes that exploit those very same networks; and a new generation of terrorists, able to hold an entire city hostage.
Wired predictions for 2030
Genomic Mega Millions
If you think you’re currently living in the age of Big DNA, think again. The next decade will see a more than hundredfold boom in the world’s output of human genetic data. The drop in sequencing costs is shifting DNA testing out of the research lab and into mainstream medical practice. Population-based sequencing projects in more than a dozen countries, including the US, are expected to produce 60 million genomes by 2025. By 2030, China hopes to add another 100 million from its own precision medicine initiative.
The impact is hard to even imagine. To date, only about a million people have had their whole genomes sequenced. And it’s not a very diverse cohort. More data from all over the globe will allow for more powerful, fine-grained analyses of how genes shape health and behavior. Very large genetic data sets are ideal for a new technique called Mendelian randomization, which mimics clinical trials, allowing researchers to tease apart causes and correlations. Bigger samples will also make it possible to forecast even complex traits—like height or susceptibility to heart disease—from DNA.
A world so saturated with genetic data will come with its own risks. The emergence of genetic surveillance states and the end of genetic privacy loom. Technical advances in encrypting genomes may help ameliorate some of those threats. But new laws will need to keep the risks and benefits of so much genetic knowledge in balance.
Goodbye, Poverty?
Predictions for the future often have a sci-fi bent: jet packs, flying cars, brain-computer hybrids. The United Nations is supposed to stick to more solid ground, but some of its Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 sound nearly as fantastical. In a mere 10 years, the UN plans to eradicate poverty “in all its forms everywhere.”
No big deal. The UN already declared October 17 International Poverty Eradication Day. But elevating the lives of those subsisting on less than $1.25 a day will take a little more.
The good news is that crushing global poverty has declined significantly: The World Bank reports that 1.1 billion fewer people live in extreme poverty than did in 1990. The organization has been working with countries to improve education, gender equality, food security, social services, and more. But the gains are unevenly distributed, and climate change now threatens to undo much of the progress, pushing millions back into destitution and creating a “climate apartheid.”
This is already happening in Central America and Africa, where drought has caused millions to leave their homes. The prospect of ending poverty seems, well, poor.
Vanity Fair predictions for 2030
“A decade from now, on the eve of 2030, we’ll look back at today in astonishment at how primitive life was in 2019”.
By then, it’s likely that cars will drive themselves. They won’t even look like cars, more like traveling gyms or gaming cars or mobile beds to nap on during your commute. Some will fly. (Maybe most of them will.)
The TV on your wall will be replaced by wallpaper that screens images. Your phone could be replaced with a contact lens, or some glasses that (finally) look like glasses. Siri or Alexa will feel like another human living in your house—a creepy, invasive, all-knowing human—that will not only be able to understand sarcasm and intonation but will be able to identify which family member is talking to it, and respond with sarcasm and intonation in kind.
You won’t shop on Amazon; Amazon will know exactly what you need, and when you need it, and boxes of groceries or diapers or dog poop bags will just show up at your house in what some people are calling “zero click shopping.”
And what little privacy you have left will vanish entirely. Camera quality will become so high-resolution that you will be able to identify a face a mile away on a smartphone. Years from now, that same face will be visible from the International Space Station, if it isn’t already.
On the flip side, health care will go through the most substantial changes since the invention of antibiotics. Artificial intelligence will be able to diagnose people with diseases they might get, long before they’re even sick. We will be printing new organs in labs, rather than harvesting them from the dead. And you might get to live until you’re 150.
Massive problems we cannot anticipate, in the same way we didn’t predict Twitter bots spreading fear and hatred, or Russians sharing fake news on Facebook, will inevitably arise. But there is one massive problem we all know is coming, and have done very little to prepare for: the endemic job loss that will pervade society over the next decade.
According to one study by researchers at Oxford Economics, robots will likely take over 20 million manufacturing jobs around the globe by 2030 alone. A McKinsey report in 2017 was much more dire, predicting the loss of as many as 800 million jobs globally by 2030. It isn’t just truck drivers and pizza delivery people who will be replaced by artificial intelligence algorithms; the carnage will hit every career imaginable.
Accountants might be the first to go. Lawyers who aren’t on the bench, who create legal documents, could be next. Journalists who write the sports stories or Wall Street updates are easily replaced by a bit of machine learning. Actors will be replaced by CGI versions. Netflix will be able to create 50 editions of a single show with characters who are black or white, Asian or African, young or old, depending on the demographics they’re trying to reach.
Search engine algorithms can already tell if you have pancreatic cancer before your doctor can based on the symptoms you look up. Smartphone video can be used to see your pulse just by looking at indecipherable motion on camera. Some doctors might simply be there to help decipher what the code finds. When truck drivers are replaced by machines, rest stops across America, the hotels and motels, the burgers and gas stations, will all dry up, and their jobs will vanish.