Things in general are picking up speed. Here’s what’s happening and what things are trending towards now:
Computer chips’ abilities double and their costs half every couple of years. Robots keep getting cheaper and easier to work with. Search engines constantly provide information more quickly and easily. Advances in genetics and cosmetic medicine allow people to more closely look like they imagine they should. Daily labor is being chipped away at constantly, from electric car windows to Amazon grocery deliveries.
Here’s what I think could happen around 2025, nothing special about 2025, but around then computing will be so powerful and cheap that machine thinking and doing will radically change our condition. Human health, longevity, work, will probably be very different and improved by then.
That’s when I think our sense of nostalgia will increase:
Items made by hand, new and old, will be sought after. People will start doing more housework and gardening, without robotic help. Figuring stuff out will take on a greater role as we feel the loss of often not knowing the answer(s). This seems weird, but I think people will become more attracted to deformity and the grotesque as everyone gets more perfect. And as old or worn body parts are replaced and improved upon – pushing out our lifespans, will we embrace it or start to eventually get tired of living and even nostalgic about death?
Nobody knows what’s to come and how soon whatever that is will arrive, but big changes are only a decade or so away, and it’ll be interesting.