7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions About What The Next Decade Will Bring

[jmowreader]

53. As long as we're playing, let me...

1. The 3-d printer will be the exercise bike of the decade: everyone will have one, no one will use it.

2. Millennials' diet will change from traditional foods to wafers similar to Soylent Red, Yellow and Green - not because of any socioeconomic issues but simply because they're more convenient. A minor scandal will erupt when they learn the Soylent Green of the future isn't made out of people. Soylent Red will be fruit flavored, Yellow and Green will be vegetables, White will taste like bread and Soylent Tan will taste like meat. Because these wafers will be filling and nutritionally balanced, no one will be able to eat enough of them to get fat. Old-fashioned food will still be available to all, but the millennials won't want it.

3. Cash will die out when payment systems like Apple Pay reach critical mass, because robbing a cashless store will be pointless.

4. The "doctor's office" will succumb to high real estate values. Physicians will purchase large ambulances with four-person cabs and travel in teams of an MD, RN, either LPN or CNA, and a paramedic to drive the vehicle.

5. Plural marriage will become legal: the rich will use it as a way to skirt inheritance tax, and the banks will decide the only way a family can afford to buy a house larger than a shoebox is if they have eight full-time salaries coming in. The churches will accept it on the theory that if plural marriage was good enough for Solomon it is good enough for you, so long as couples remain monogamous within these "corporate" marriages.
5a. But the South will still be trying to ban same-sex marriage.

6. The Koch Brothers will figure out how to make more money on green technology than they do on polluting tech, and all of a sudden the GOP will get "climate change religion."

7. A $5000 kit to convert any car into an electric car with a 100-mile range will become popular immediately upon its introduction.

8. The "trusts" will return. Eventually there will be no more than two companies making any particular product line.

9. The Craft Beer industry will severely contract because there are currently more beers on the market than there are taps to pour them, and new breweries open every week. It will still exist, but it'll be less than half the size it is now.

10. Pay will not increase but employees' workloads will.