2015-2020

[2015] Whole Genome Sequencing for $1000 becomes available, formally marking the dawn of the new personalized medicine era.

[2015]: The US national debt up to 21 Trillion Dollars (not adjusted for inflation).

[2016] Path-tracing in games and projects to bridge uncanny valley have created a game industry that emulates near-realism. source

[2016] Smartphone software can translate spoken language at least as well as someone who studied it in high school. Speech recognition remains the greatest source of error.

[2016]: Cloud gaming as the new DRM. Physical media will become almost non existent and most Triple A games will make online functionality a standard feature.

[2017] Augmented Reality is mainstream, widely used instead of standard phones. source

[2018-20] Despite furious lobbying from the oil industry, self-driving electric cars are making a major debut on the consumer market. Elon Musk has spent a lot of time testifying before congress about depleting American jobs. World is divided into supporters/detractors of job automation. source

2020-2025

[2020] "Switching off" of fat cells becomes possible in humans, allowing us to eat whatever we want without gaining weight source

[2020] In Preparation for Mars, private companies are landing on the Moon.

[2020] Viral activism will become more prevalent. fueled by social media and viral videos AKA Kony 2012 on crack. Automation has eliminated millions of low wage fast food jobs. Robotics repair becomes the newest blue-collar industry. Unemployment continues to mount in the US as public education lags behind the needs of the job market. Families begin to remove or stop bringing their children to public school, in favor of local homeschool study groups.

[2021] Live-upstream of big data from all sorts of devices that collect information about various kinds of things. Everything you see with google glass. Everything you see gets tags. This goes into the cloud in a pool of humanitys visual organized/tagged input and produces analytical & categorizational usability. source

[2021] NASA launches exploratory mission to Europa. World waits....

[2022-25] This is a period of major economic restructuring. This is triggered by AGI becoming aware enough to handle most service jobs at above human performance levels. source

2025-2035

[2025] - 2035: The Social Crash. The next dot com crash will happen causing a huge change in the way advertising is done in the age of social media and might lead to the death of the "free model". Additionally, US insolvency can no longer be ignored, causing a massive worldwide correction.

[2025] Blue Brain Project (Also known as Human Brain Project) is completed. The result is the most accurate replica of complete human brain ever created. Possible long-term consequences of the project include, but are not limited to understanding and curing all brain diseases as well as emergence of human-level Artificial General Intelligence.

[2025]: The 5$ e-reader. Epaper technology and cost will come to the point that more than half of book sales in first world countries will be digital. HIV is eliminated. [2029] After some delays in funding and technology, Mars One finally arrives on Mars. A colony is set up by the four people who applied. The first extra-planetary colony is heralded as a massive human achievement. Plans for further colonization are put forward.

[2029] China reaches zero population growth, according to some models.

[2030]: Gene therapy, stem cell therapy and nanomedicine have cured almost all types of cancers, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

[2033] Nearly all of our energy comes from solar source

2035-2050

[2040-2050] Pioneered by Ray Kurzweil in the late 2020's, the first actual human becomes and uploaded consciousness, "living" in "The Cloud". Many religious groups and conservative members of society are up in arms about this, campaigning that it is "not-human". Early experiments likely fail in some way, but the idea is now possible - Human Immortality could be real.

[2040-2050] Population of Europe reaches zero population growth at a peak of 526 million

[2040-2050] Population of the United States reaches 400 million

[2040s] The end of aging source

2050-beyond

[2060] Japan's population has now shrunk by 33% from its peak !50 years prior.

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