As we enter the year 2022, I’d like to share my future predictions on Space Travel, Technology, Sexuality, and Labor. I know that with COVID-19 the world seems like a doom and gloom place right now, but I’d like to assure everyone that despite all this we do have great things coming in the near future. The way I like to predict the future is like predicting anything else—the stock market—looking at historical trends for each topic.
The first area I’d like to discuss is the future of space travel. Since 1903—Wright Brothers first flight—we’ve wanted to go higher and higher. Shortly after, the first passenger flight was in 1914, Lindbergh successfully flies non-stop across the Atlantic ocean in 1927, 10 years after that Pan Am flew its first passenger plane across the Atlantic, this was not enough for mankind so in the 50’s the American’s and the Russian’s started sending man made aircraft into space successfully, In 1961 we have the first human being (Maj. Yuri Garin) goes into space, and in 1969 we had the first human to walk on the Moon. Just imagine someone being 20 years old in 1903—first flight—and then that same person being 86 witnessing the landing on the moon, this is an example of great innovation in one generation. Lets fast forward to present, and we have SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Orion Span, and Boeing—all are private companies—competing to design the best space vessels for passenger travel outside of NASA. We see on TV that Jeff Bezos, William Shatner, Michael Straham, and more are going into space in 2021. These civilians of various age, and mostly post 40’s and 50’s (William Shatner 90 years old) went into space without any major issues—it used to be not that very long ago that an individual had to be in outstanding shape to be even considered to go into space (astronaut). Some people may say that those guys are rich and they can do whatever they want—true—but this is proof of concept. Having these individuals going into space without issues—unlike Challenger in 1986—shows the world that it’s safe for an average person to do the same. Taking the historical trend into consideration, I believe that in our lifetime we will see and even be able to participate in space tourism. We have planes that are still in operation since 1980’s, so it’s about time to change the way we fly. There is a concept to creating a passenger vessel that can go from America to China in under 45 minutes by launching into space through sort of a triangular type of travel—imagine eating breakfast in New York and lunch in Shanghai—this is the future and not too far away.
The second topic of prediction I’d like to discuss is in the world of technology. The first computing device was the Abacus, which has been around for over 4,000 years, not too much has changed in thousands of years until the 1900's when computing machines became essential. The world’s first computer was the ENIAC invented during WWII that took up the whole floor of a university basement.
(ENIAC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glen Beck (background) and Betty Snyder (foreground) program the ENIAC in building 328 at the Ballistic Research Laboratory)
Fast forward to 30 years later, and we have the first personal computer Altair in 1974, then 10 years later we have the Mac, and now we have more computing power than any previous computer versions that can fit in our pocket called the cellphone, a combination of a phone, television, internet, video game console, camera, and much more than any one computer in history could ever do. Currently, we have Elon Musk working on trying for people to be able to interface with computers using their minds through a company called Neuralink. I believe that we will slowly progress to assimilate with technology like the Borg—for the Trekkies out there—first we will see replacement limbs that are better than the missing limbs for those individuals that lost their limbs like war veterans, then people may be open to augmenting themselves technologically to improve on themselves just like individuals do now with plastic surgery. In 50 to 100 years from now we will probably see a divide between the non-modified and the modified. Our computers and communication systems will probably be a part of us—connected biologically to us.
The third topic of discussion is sexuality. This is a quick and easy topic to predict. We seen in one lifetime that people get married older than 30 to 50 years ago. Divorce nowadays isn’t seen as a bad thing as it did previously. Open relationships are more acceptable in the present day. The general public is more accepting of different types of sexual encounters, so in the future I believe that sexual fluidity will be a common place or much more common than the present.
Lastly, I’d like to discuss the future of our workforce. It used to be that people worked 6 days a week and Sunday was for church. That changed when the labor unions were introduced and fought to give Saturday as another rest day. Research has shown that people are productive about four hours a day out of an eight hour work day. We’ve seen more and more people working remotely thanks to COVID-19, which sped that up into warp speed. Thanks to accessibility of computers most jobs can be done remotely other than people facing jobs such as nursing. I predict that more people will be working remotely and that we will have another reduction of work hours, since productivity is not affected by a 40 hour work week.
Let us know what your predictions are in the comments section below. Sign up for our newsletter and listen to our podcast.