The World in 2050

A very interesting video predicting how the world will be in 2050.
Goes through almost everything!

The world in 2050

[edit on 24/1/2010 by Craplegend]

Four members of the James Martin 21st Century School discuss the School's work and highlight four key areas that are likely to have a huge impact on the sustainability of the world's population: global risk; energy; human modification; and population growth and demographic shifts.

Dr Ian Goldin asks why predictions about the futrure often turn out to be wrong. He argues that the recent history of globalisation has been an incredible coming-together of humanity, and an explosion of innovation, surpassing anything seen in the last 1000 years. He claims that the biggest uncertainly is fertility, as the world is converging below replacement levels. While the ageing population will be a major burden on the youth, they may be replaced by migration. He continues by discussing the ‘information big bang’, specifically the evolution of computer power. He believes that whilst risks will continue to come from nature, they will increasingly come from human activity. The biggest threat is climate change, but these risk also include also pandemics such as H1N1. As globalisation continues to shrink the world, the frequency and severity of these threats is only likely to increase. Another great risk we face is that we are stuck with a global governance system that that has not changed since the Second World War. Finally, Goldin believes that it is in our power to eradicate poverty and disease by 2050 - but it also within our power to destroy ourselves.

Dr Malcolm McCulloch notes that human energy use is rapidly increasing, and that we are on a climate change trajectory that is far worse than the worst-case scenario predicted five years ago. He notes that in nature there is a cyclical system, whereby one animal's or organism’s waste is another’s nutrition. However humanity is addicted to single use resources. If humanity continues in the manner in which it previously has then energy use will increase by three times and the temperature of the earth by six degrees. The cost of transport and food will rise massively and humanity would likely not survive past 2100.

Professor Julian Savulescu discusses the human genome, personalised genomes, cloning, stem cells and purely artificial life. He believes we will see radical biological modification of humans. Any genes in the plant or animal kingdom can potentially be used to enhance humans – the vision of a hawk; the hearing of a dog; the sonar of a bat. He states that humans are altruistic, but only to about 150 people - their immediate and extended family and their friends. Yet the problems humanity faces, such as climate change, require humans to cooperate and act altruistically in ways they are not disposed to behave. In order to make progress we have to understand our own biological limitations. Savulescu believes that by 2050 there will be hope in bio-liberation, but that the root of bio-threat will remain large.

Professor Sarah Harper discusses the problems that are likely to arise as the world's population continues to age. By 2050 the global population is likely to swell to 9 billion people, but 3 billion people will be aged over 50. As we witness increasing age, we will also see falling fertility in most parts of the world. As medical science constantly progresses and even chronically ill people begin to live longer, generational succession will be an issue, as wealth and status will not be handed down the family line until much later in life. Harper's greatest concern is in human longevity becoming the new global inequality - the West must ensure that a child born in Africa has the same potential longevity as a child born in the West.

[edit on 24/1/2010 by Craplegend]

excellent...watching it now. Love futuretalk...one thing I find is that we always underestimate by ALOT as a general rule...I tend to have a Kurzweillian view of the next 100 years, but never know...these people might expand their mind more than the typical 20 year max meme people have always done.

Is there a way i can get this post moved?

ok, watched the video. give a quick breakdown and my thoughts

Its a bunch of stuffy professors from Oxford discussing some pretty likely senarios based on statistics and demographics trends.

I think that they may be way off, but they are (typically) counting on the old mindset of zero progression beyond what we have today (some very minor adjustments made for potential lifespan increasing 20 years).

Needless to say, they paint a doomsday senario based on this zero progression but increased population growth...fair enough...more population and more energy consumption per person in developing areas would make a sort of crisis...however, as usual they fail to recognise the high potential of technology to solve and offset these issues.

1) Genetic engineering (the glow bunny). They do have a genetic engineer there that did talk a bit about how in this timeframe, we may be able to create hybrid species (we already do..safe bet), but also alter the intellect and health of fetuses. He points out the glowing rabbit as an example of how weird we can do things today, and how they did create a embryonic model with the bioluminescense gene...which if left to develop, would have made a glow person. (it was destroyed, but they got enough data to realize it could very easily work, and would be easy to do anything...be it wings or gills on people)...this is all trivial science that serves little purpose (wings and gills may serve a purpose of course, but that wont happen in our lifetime simply because of traditionalists not accepting wingmen)

a) This one small example, even joked about, is a serious science that could have massive impact on energy savings. algae and bacteria could also be programmed with this bioluminescense, grown in tubes, and voila, you have a neverending lightsource that takes no energy...if created a balanced ecosystem within the bottle of course so generations of the life feeds on either one another, or some other element....this would require a bit of environmental science to create, but that is simply details (perhaps the thick tube material is the food source itself and would only fracture after a dozen years...)

b) custom lifeforms, again with algae or bacteria, could replace the function of trees, breathing in carbon and releasing oxygen as a biproduct, minimalizing the effect man has on the earth. such lifeforms could in fact be designed today and installed/released into industrial areas, cleaning up as nice parasites do.

c) concept again, the creation of bacteria/algae to consume salts from water...creating a mass filtering for raw ocean water into fresh water for poor developing nations. (again, we can design anything we can think of even now..the only binds are moral ones we impose on ourselves, but thats mostly because our first response is "ok, we will take some stem cells and...". we are not the only species that creates stem cells)

d) back to our favorite bacteria/algae...the grown crystal material. It would be easy to formulate a living organism that clumps together like a plant with a specific set of building directions..replacing wood not only because it would be plentiful, but also the fact that it could remain alive and have the bonus effect of being a atmosphere scrubber. This would not be "living in a treehouse" in the way you could imagine...a bioengineered plant could grow to have a perfectly symmetrical form (like a board). There are some inherent problems with this, such as keeping it alive if indeed that is the point...painting it may disable its ability to have the effects, but even if it was to die, you would still have a replacement for wood that is cost effective, plentiful, stronger, and easier to work with.

The biggest issue, as has always been and as will always be, is resource consumption...take care of the resources and voila, you can have a population of 50 billion on earth easily supported with minimal impact on the earth

2) Ageing population: in 40 years, AI will surpass the human brain in computations per second and general ability. in 40 years, we will NOT be the smartest thing on the planet. People will at that point have virtual babies just as common as regular children...there will be a debate on this as to if it is indeed the same thing, as many people will demand to be alive means to be born into skin and bone verses wires and processes. This will be a interesting debate, but the ultimate result will be that these new forms of...life...will end up being just as emotional, "real", and unpredictable as the human counterpart...with the added bonus of being able to either take on a human cybernetic body, or be fully virtual living inside virtual reality...consumption free. not sure about 2040, but in 2140, there is a chance the human count on earth may be less than a billion, but the cyberhuman (for lack of a better word) may be in the hundreds of billions

Futurist talk could go on forever...especially when you touch onto areas like nano-assemblers...but will cut it short. Will say that this speech was about as inspired as a weather forecast for next week...very factual, and non-committed to anything beyond what may likely happen in the most dry sense. These are oxford professors therefore unwilling or unable to consider anything but the most basic safe bets to put in quotes. They will be seen as exceptionally short sighted in the future, but that will keep them employeed for today.