What do you imagine the world will look like in the future?

I see two options


Option one



Option two






Option two is the most likely one i think.

Wall-E

I was thinking about this the other day because I came across some old pictures of London. They're over a hundred years old, but the city actually looks much the same as it does now. There are differences, but they're not that big - it's still buildings with streets between, even a lot of the same buildings that are there now. I was thinking about what a person from then would think of today's London. I think the obvious thing that would jump out to them are all the cars. Cars would be a great rarity back then. But I think they'd get used to it fast - they'd likely know what a car was and recognise these as advanced versions of them, albeit in amazing numbers.

Of course in line with that they'd notice the lack of horses. The roads would be different, tarmac instead of cobbles.

Another big change would be the shops. Big glass store fronts, big names above. Back in the day a store looked very different.

And they'd certainly notice the changes in fashion.

But all that is pretty minor stuff, really. The city would be the same fundamentally, just with details different.


Fast forward another hundred years and I think it will be similar. The cities will look more or less the same, but with different details. Here's some guesses :

Few if any stores. The idea of going out to a shop to buy something will seem quaint and old fashioned.

Driverless cars. I doubt it will even be possible to drive most cars manually.

A lot more in the way of robots around. A lot of these will be driverless cars and work machines doing stuff like repairing buildings and cleaning streets and stuff, but there will also be genuine sci-fi style humanoid robots around the place.

Fewer cars. I'll bet there won't be a quarter of the traffic that there is today. Reason being, there won't be any need for a lot of the travel we do. For example if you want to shop, you'll do it online - and a drone will fly it to your door within an hour or so. The sky will be criss-crossed by a constant stream of drones.

Similarly, many if not most people will work from home via computer. There will be "virtual offices" with dozens of people working together in a VR environment, but no actual physical office space anywhere. So no commuting to work.

Because of the above, I'd wager the cities will seem very quiet in general. Far fewer cars, far fewer people on the street. But lots of machines bustling about the place. To a visitor from our time it will seem like everyone lives very isolated lives - quite possibly never leaving your own house or apartment for weeks at a time. In fact they'll all be interacting with one another virtually.

Radically different fashions in play when people do go outside. Impossible to predict how they will be different, but they will be.

Cities will also look amazingly clean and quiet. Clean partly because of cleaning robots, but also because we won't be using much in the way of fossil fuels any more so there won't be a lot of pollution discolouring buildings and such. Quiet because it's all electric engines.

It would seem weird to us, but just as a person from 1910 could get used to 2018 in a few days or so, so would you get used to 2118 pretty quickly.


And no, it will not be some horrific dystopia. We won't be drowning in pollution, we won't be struggling with the aftermath of World War III, we won't all have been wiped out by some terrible disease. People will, in fact, be rather wealthy and well-off compared to today. But they'll still spend a lot of their time complaining about how terrible everything is compared to the good old days.

It will look like Mad Max, but without any humans remaining.

Kind of like Ready Player One, only there's no OASIS to escape to. Overcrowded cities piling people on top of each other. Economic uncertainty for the majority. Civic participation orchestrated via popular cultural trends. I'll add soccer hooligans being in charge of the armed forces.