Trends of the 2010s

can you believe the 2010s are almost here?

what do you think this decade will bring?

 

death...for everyone! haven't you heard about 2012?

 

it will bring "interesting" changes. four and a half BILLION refugees from global climate change. but it will also bring people and nations being forced to get serious about what are still, unfortunately, being called "alternative" sources of energy and transportation.

it will FORCE a very significant proportion of even people living in the most fortunate countries, to take a long hard look at how they look at everything. at everything they have ever assumed or taken for granted.

oil dependence will no longer be an option, it won't be gone, but increasing rarity will make it no longer inexpensive. and with that realization will come demands for what will then become more affordable and realistic means of mechanical transportation.

what we got away with when there were so many fewer of us, will simply no longer be possible, even as we take for granted today. this need not mean an end to the majority of our comforts and gratifications, but it will mean whole new approaches to technologies we had previously been able to take for granted.

will one decade see such a complete transformation? i don't know. but i think most of it will have to be done within that short length of time. as much as possibly can. even then, it won't be enough soon enough to evade all of the hardships and suffering. only to minimize and reduce them.

the chance to have avoided them entirely may be already past. let slip in desperate clinging to ego driven economic regimes. but we can still avoid the worst of them.

and if we don't, there'll still be a "morning after", not for the presently best off, who will prove as vulnerable ultimately as the poorest, but only a randomly fortunate few.

it will be an interesting ten years. ten years i will wish i was still a bit younger to take in and experience all of.

a pivotal decade in the evolution of human society. as has been all of the decades i have personally lived so far. and beginning a number of them before my birth, and continuing, quite likely, for several fallowing my eventual demise.

 

i have no bloody ideal.

 

It'll be a decade of watching the skies - NEOs, UFOs, and the changeover from HST to JWST means more people will be interested in what's out there.

In the next decade the 21st Century will properly begin (in the sense that before 1914 the 20th Century hadn't really got started, and the 1960s didn't really get started until 1963.)

Americans will stop chanting "USA! USA! USA!" and acknowledge that the word "America" applies to two whole continents, and not just one of the thirtyfive countries therein.

 

Cake. There will be cake.

 

cars that drive themselves

 

oh and star shaped ice creams

 

well a world, even one dominant nation, of, by and for, self oriented interests, that benifit no one, not even themselves, other then symbolicly, destroying the only planet humanity, and every other species humans are familiar with, have to live on, is a bigger problem then any war, or threat of war, ever can be.

people, governments and even these interests themselves, are going to have to wake up and realize this.

either its going to be a decade of transitioning to solar/renewable power, little people sized trains/alternative transportation, indigenous spirituality, and an end to fanatical economic and ideological chauvinism, or a decade of famines and pandemics, in 'rich' countries as well as 'poor'. most likely some combination of both.

but the main thing to understand is that what isn't more of one, will be more of the other. if we leave our responsibilities as sentients up to nature, nature will of course solve them, but we're not going to like how it goes about doing it.

we'll be seeing a lot of really desperate innovation. sure people always rise to the occasion eventually. but will it be enough soon enough?

right now its a real nail biter for anyone who really understands what's going on. the real news that corporate media hasn't been telling us about.

i really believe this is a bigger concern then what anyone believes in, or can get conned into fighting about.

i'm not saying this as something to get scared about, because that's not going to help anything, using the good sense we all have, instead of just trying to impress each other more then caring about anything, is what will.

good intentions are a start, but even good intentions aren't enough. good intentions and doing our own leg/home 'work', really learning how to impliment those good intentions in ways that will actually work, is what it's going to take.

technology is going to continue to evolve. at some point survival will take precidence over its doing so, none the less it will. but as time goes on, its also going to have to become much more energy efficient. much which has started to happen. hopefully that is one trend that will continue to accelerate.

i think we may even see something of a return to space exploration and intrest in it, if only as a way to take our minds off our other troubles.

of course politicians who support those self oriented interests, and virtually all depend on and are supported by them, many well look to scapegoat every ethnicity and ideology and belief, anything and everything other then the real sources of the problem, which is none of those things, but rather this out of control doomsday machine of corporate economic interests.

 

I have no clue what the next decade will bring. It could be war, hunger, climate destruction etc. or it could bring a revival of human integrity. I'll wait and see when it comes.

 

most likely all of them at the same time, but over a somewhat longer period of transition then any one single day. and some other good and better things after that too.

 

Weed could be legal.

 

Probably a lot of new outrageous fashion trends. I would love if the look from the 70s came back but who knows. Even the fashion from the Roman times was pretty awesome... It's about time it made a comeback..

 

Brain chips. Laptops will be old news; nonchalantly replaced by touch screen portable computers. The movies will become less original. Can you say more remakes of classics puked on by technology? Prices will elevate and jobs will disipate.

 

A new psychedelic rock band will change the musical landscape and put the charts to shame.

Hey, one can dream, right?

 

Everything will change.
Aliens...

 

comfortably familiar lies will continue to become less comfortable, until they start becoming less familiar. this i predict will absolutely continue well into many decades to come.

 

what is an NEO?

 

I think the following is virtually guaranteed to happen in the United States over the next 10 years.

• Public tobacco smoking will be even more frowned upon. Smokers will either quit or resort to smokeless tobacco products such as snus until cigarettes become either a memory or a vice exclusive to the older generations.
• Marijuana use, while not ever fully legalized, will become decriminalized and legally regulated in enough places that the U.S. policy towards cannabis will more resemble Canada's.
• Movies and TV will decline as popular artforms but not quite disappear (after all, did television really kill radio?) and be replaced with Internet-based entertainment such as YouTube and its intellectual offspring.
• Microsoft Windows will cease to be the dominate operating system on personal computers.
• Issues of LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage, same-sex partner adoption, and employment nondiscrimination will be successfully championed for along the coasts while Middle America remains traditionally homophobic except for pockets in the more urban areas. This will be a source of cultural tension as more and more gays are able to marry in one state but not in another.
• 9/11 will no longer be a cultural touchstone when an entire generation born after the attacks enters their teens and then goes off to college. But the WTC attacks will be important historically and relevant politically, much like Kennedy's assassination.
• The U.S., no longer the world's most dominate economy, will more and more resemble Western Europe in terms of its use of resources. Emigration from the U.S. to other countries for socioeconomic reasons will be more commonplace.
• As cellphones continue to be the norm, homes will be constructed without landline phone connections. People desiring landline phones will simply have a phone at home that uses either the Internet or the pre-existing cellular networks to carry the signal.

I apologize for being long-winded, but I guess I've got a bit of the futurist in me. These are all pretty conservative guesses about the future, though, and I'm sure what really happens will be a lot worse, wonderful, and weird than we can know.

 

I assume the poster meant Near-Earth objects, such as the asteroid which was responsible for the Eastern Mediterranean event or J002E3.