What Will Life Be Like in 2050?

by Big Think Editors

June 28, 2010, 12:00 PM
By mid-century there will likely be 9 billion people on the planet, consuming
ever more resources and leading ever more technologically complex lives.
What will our cities be like? How will we eat? Will global warming trigger
catastrophic changes, or will we be able to engineer our way out of the
climate crisis?

Demographic changes will certainly be dramatic. Rockefeller University

mathematical biologist Joel Cohen says it's likely that by 2050 the majority
of the people in the world will live in urban areas, and will have a
significantly higher average age than people today. In the U.S., cities
theorist Richard Florida thinks urbanization trends will reinvent the education
system, making our economy less real estate driven and erasing the
divisions between home and work.
And rapidly advancing technology will continue ever more rapidly. According
to Bill Mitchell, the late director of MIT's Smart Cities research group, cities
of the future won't look like "some sort of science-fiction fantasy," but it's
likely that "discreet, unobtrusive" technological advances and information
overlays will change how we live in significant ways. Charles Ebinger,
Director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution also
thinks that by 2050 we will also have a so-called "smart grid" where all of
our appliances are linked directly to energy distribution systems, allowing for
real-time pricing based on supply and demand.
Meanwhile, the Internet will continue to radically transform media,
destroying the traditional model of what a news organization is, says author
and former New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent, who believes the

most common kinds of news organizations in the future will be "individuals

and small alliances of individuals" reporting and publishing on niche topics.
But what will all this new technology mean? Viktor Mayer-Schnberger, the
director of the Information & Innovation Policy Research Center at the
National University of Singapore, hopes that advances in technology will
make us more empowered, motivated and active, rather than mindless
consumers of information and entertainment. And NYU interactive
telecommunications professor Clay Shirky worries that technological threats
could endanger much of the openness that we now enjoy online.
Some predictions are downright dire. Environmentalist Bill McKibben says
that if we don't make major strides in combating global warming, it's likely
we could see out-of-control rises in sea levels, enormous crop shortfalls, and
wars over increasingly scarce freshwater resources. But information
technology may yield some optimism for our planet, says oceanographer
Sylvia Earle, who thinks that services like Google Earth have the potential to
turn everyday people into ocean conservationists.

In the financial world, things will be very different indeed, according to MIT
professor Simon Johnson, who thinks many of the financial products being
sold today, like over-the-counter derivatives, will be illegaljudged,
accurately, by regulators to not be in the best interests of consumers.
We will live longer and remain healthier. Patricia Bloom, an associate
professor in the geriatrics department of Mt. Sinai Hospital, says we may not
routinely live to be 120, but it's possible that we will be able to extend
wellness and shorten decline and disability for people as they age. AIDS

research pioneer David Ho says the HIV/AIDS epidemic will still be with us,
but we will know a lot more about the virus than we do todayand therapies
will be much more effective. Meanwhile, Jay Parkinson, the co-founder of
Hello Health, says the health care industry has a "huge opportunity" to
change the way it communicates with patients by conceiving of individual
health in relation to happiness.
In terms of how we will eat, green markets founder and "real food"
proponent Nina Planck is optimistic that there will be more small
slaughterhouses, more small creameries, and more regional food
operationsand we'll be healthier as a result. New York Times cooking
columnist Mark Bittman, similarly, thinks that people will eat fewer
processed foods, and eat foods grown closer to where they live. And Anson
Mills farmer Glenn Roberts thinks that more people will clue into the "ethical
responsibility" to grow and preserve land-raised farm systems.
And what will our culture be like? We may not get rid of racism in America
entirely in the next 40 years, but NAACP President Benjamin Jealous predicts
that in the coming decades the issue of race will become "much less
significant," even as the issue of class may rise in importance. Father James
Martin, a Jesuit priest, says it's even likely that we'll see a black pope.
Meanwhile, prisons expert Robert Perkinson says he thinks there will be
fewer Americans in prison in 2050, because we will realize that the current
high levels of incarceration are out of sync with our history and values.
Historian and social scientist Joan Wallach Scott worries, however, that
unless the countries of Europe figure out how to accommodate Muslim
immigrant populations, there will be more riots, and increasing divisions
along economic, religious and ethnic lines.