Don't Get Blindsided By The Future

Humanity will change more in the next 20 years than in all of human history.

By 2030 the average person in the U.S. will have 4.5 packages a week delivered with flying drones. They will travel 40% of the time in a driverless car, use a 3D printer to print hyper-individualized meals, and will spend most of their leisure time on an activity that hasn’t been invented yet.

The world will have seen over 2 billion jobs disappear, with most coming back in different forms in different industries, with over 50% structured as freelance projects rather than full-time jobs.

Over 50% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will have disappeared, over 50% of traditional colleges will have collapsed, and India will have overtaken China as the most populous country in the world.

Most people will have stopped taking pills in favor of a new device that causes the body to manufacture it’s own cures.

Space colonies, personal privacy, and flying cars will all be hot topics of discussion, but not a reality yet.

Most of today’s top causes, including climate change, gay liberation, and abortion, will all be relegated to little more than footnotes in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia itself will have lost the encyclopedia wars to an upstart company all because Jimmy Wales was taken hostage and beheaded by warring factions in the Middle East over a controversial entry belittling micro religions.

Our ability to predict the future is an inexact science. The most accurate predictions generally come from well-informed industry insiders about very near term events.

Much like predicting the weather, the farther we move into the future, the less accurate our predictions become.

So why do we make them?

In the segments below, I’ll make a series of 33 provocative predictions about 2030, and how different life will be just 17 years in the future.

I will also explain why predictions are important, even when they are wrong.

“Our greatest motivations in life
come from NOT knowing the future.”

33 Dramatic Predictions

1. By 2030 over 80% of all doctor visits will have been replaced by automated exams.
2. By 2030 over 90% of all restaurants will use some form of a 3D food printer in their meal preparations. 
3. By 2030 over 10% of all global financial transactions will be conducted through Bitcoin or Bitcoin-like crypto currencies.
4. By 2030 we will seen a growing number of highways designated as driverless-vehicle only. 
5. By 2030, a Chinese company will become the first to enter the space tourism industry by establishing regular flights to their space hotel.
6. By 2030, the world’s largest Internet company will be in the education business, and it will be a company we have not heard of yet.
7. By 2030 over 20% of all new construction will be “printed” buildings. 
8. By 2030 over 2 billion jobs will have disappeared, freeing up talent for many new fledgling industries. .
9. By 2030 a new protest group will have emerged that holds anti-cloning rallies, demonstrating against the creation of “soul-less humans.”
10. By 2030 we will see the first city to harvest 100% of its water supply from the atmosphere. 
11. By 2030 world religions will make a resurgence, with communities of faith growing by nearly 50% over what they are today.
12. By 2030 over 50% of all traditional colleges will collapse, paving the way for an entire new education industry to emerge. .
13. By 2030 we will see a surge of Micro Colleges spring to life, each requiring less than 6 months of training and apprenticeship to switch professions. 
14. By 2030 scientists will have perfected an active cross-species communication system, enabling some species to talk to each other as well as humans.
15. By 2030 we will see the first hurricane stopped by human intervention.
16. By 2030 we will see wireless power used to light up invisible light bulbs in the middle of a room.
17. By 2030 we will see the first demonstration of a technology to control gravity, reducing the pull of gravity on an object by as much as 50%.
18. By 2030 democracy will be viewed as inferior form of government.
19. By 2030 traditional police forces will be largely automated out of existence with less than 50% of current staffing levels on active duty.
20. By 2030 over 90% of all libraries will offer premium services as part of their business model.
21. By 2030 forest fires will have been reduced to less than 5% of the number today with the use of infrared drone monitoring systems. 
22. By 2030 over 30% of all cities in the U.S. will operate their electric utilities as micro grids.
23. By 2030 we will have seen a number of global elections with the intent of creating a new global mandate, forcing world leaders to take notice. 
24. By 2030 traditional pharmaceuticals will be replaced by hyper-individualized medicines that are manufactured at the time they are ordered.
25. By 2030 we will have seen the revival of the first mated pair of an extinct species. 
26. By 2030 swarms of micro flying drones – swarmbots – will be demonstrated to assemble themselves as a type of personal clothing, serving as a reconfigurable fashion statement. 
27. By 2030 marijuana will be legalized in all 50 states in the U.S. and half of all foreign countries. 
28. By 2030 cable television will no longer exist.
29. By 2030 a small number of companies will begin calculating their labor costs with something called “synaptical currency.”
30. By 2030 it will be common to use next generation search engines to search the physical world.
31. By 2030 basic computer programming will be considered a core skill required in over 20% of all jobs. 
32. By 2030 we will have seen multiple attempts to send a probe to the center of the earth.
33. By 2030 a form of tube transportation, inspired by Hyperloop and ET3, will be well on its way to becoming the world’s largest infrastructure project. 

 “Our children’s children, who haven’t
even been born yet, are counting on you!”