11 Predictions for the World in 2030 That May Sound Outrageous Today but not in the Future.

All futurism is speculation. It's time someone made some claims. I've picked developments I honestly consider plausible. Here are my 11 predictions for the world of 2030. I'm backing these claims up with previous writings. To access the relevant article, just click the title of each point.

Alright, crystal ball time:

1. By 2030, learning a second language will no longer be necessary.

A tiny computer that fits in your ear, and translates what you hear into your own language? It’s not farfetched at all. In fact, all the requisite technology exists today, and all that’s missing is for someone to connect the dots.

2. By 2030, thousands, perhaps millions, of people will have a life expectancy of 150 years.

Aubrey de Grey says: I think we have a 50% chance of achieving medicine capable of getting people to 200 in the decade 2030-2040. Presuming we do indeed do that, the actual achievement of 200 will probably be in the decade 2140-2150 - it will be someone who was about 85-90 at the time that the relevant therapies were developed.

3. By 2030, only 2% of the world's population will live in extreme poverty.

The eradication of extreme poverty will happen in our lifetime. In 1990, 42% of the world’s population lived on less than $1.25 (constant 2000 dollars, PPP). In 2005, that number had fallen to 25%. The UN estimates that by 2020, only 10% of world citizens will live in absolute poverty. My bold estimate is that by 2030, only one in 50 will.

4. By 2030, the best food will be grown in skyscrapers.

Soil-based agriculture is so passé. Nothing short of an agricultural revolution is underway, spurred on by visionary Dr. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University. His plan is to build 30-story greenhouses in cities around the world, which will allow us to produce more food, for less money, in a healthier way, while freeing up arable land for nature.

5. By 2030, driverless cars will be commonplace.

I'm sure you've dreamed it: Getting into a car, kicking your shoes off and leaning back with a good movie and a cold beer while your self-driven car takes you safely to your destination, without your having to worry about directions or pedestrians. Well, the technology we need to make that car  exists.

6. By 2030, 18 cities will have more than 20 million inhabitants, and New York City will be the 16th largest city in the world.

I actually think this is a conservative estimate. Although global population is increasing at a staggering pace, the world's cities have an ever higher growth rate. At present, 50% of the world's population live in urban areas, but by 2030 that figure is projected at 60%. And 93% of that urban growth will occur in developing countries.

7. By 2030, automated flying drones will transport humans.

Probably a lot sooner, actually. Developing a well functioning delivery drone network will pave the way for confidence in a practical network of drones delivering people. Humans have notoriously poor navigation skills in three-dimensional environments, so unmanned aerial vehicles seem a safer option than those prone to human error.

8. By 2030, space tourism will be common, and 40,000 humans will be working in orbit.

The Space Island Group, in cooperation with British Airways, is planning to build an international, multi-purpose, commercial space station which, to begin with, will include hotels, research facilities, gourmet restaurants, and sports arenas (for new zero-gravity sports) along with dozens of other uses which can't be imagined today. SIG is but one of a handful of companies working on similar projects.

9. By 2030, most film actors will be out of work due to competition from cheap computer animated actors.

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) technology will enable us to create movies with animated characters so lifelike that they become indistinguishable from humans, rendering actors (in film anyway) obsolete.

10. By 2030, China will have 250 cities with more than one million inhabitants.

Today, 90% of people in the UK and 80% of Americans live in cities, while in China only 46% do. The UK has five urban areas with more than one million inhabitants. The US has 37. China has 90. That's today, and whereas the UK and the US have peaked in terms of urbanization, China is only half-way urbanized. The consultancy firm McKinsey predicts that China will have 220 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants by 2025.

11. By 2030, a large number of people will have robot lovers.

This is perhaps my boldest prediction.When I ask guys if they’d get a robot girlfriend, most of them intuitively say no. They think robot and they think metal, wires, awkward motions and an empty stare.  I’d say no to that too, if those were my associations with the word robot.  But what if your robot partner looked, felt, sounded and even talked like a human? Robots that are physically indistinguishable from humans are only 15-20 years away.

If you'd like to add a prediction of your own to this list, or you fervently disagree with specific claims, please let me know in the comments below.

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Comments

[Mark Plus]

Number 2 reveals serious confusion. We determine "life expectancy" retrospectively from gathering statistics about a whole population's ages when the individuals die. We have no way of knowing now if someone could even live 150 years. People might not have the ability to make that observation for several centuries, until a significant number of individuals celebrate their 150th birthdays and make it clear that they demonstrate a life expectancy breakthrough, instead of generating statistical noise as outliers.

So unless you know of several people alive now who have already lived at least 130 years, and therefore could theoretically make it to at least 150 years by 2030, then you, Aubrey de Grey and other forecasters about actuarial escape velocity just promote nonsense.

[Christian Nesheim]

Mark:
We're not talking about life span but life expectancy. Although life expectancy for a newborn Japanese girl is today 86, her generation's average life span is likely to be significantly higher. Life expectancy does not reflect current average life spans. So even if nobody has actually lived to 150 by 2030, life expectancy can be at 150 if new technologies exist to promise it.

[Chris T]

Christian, actually Mark has it right. By the CIA Fact Book's definition:

This entry contains the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

[Liam]

The maximum life span for humans at present is ~ 130 (+/-5).
It is questionable whether anyone person has achieved this target, although there have been
reports of 120+.
There is every possibility that life span will increase in the coming decade as we understand the processes of telomerase action and telomeres in more detail and we can activate these so that we minimize the risk of cancer whilst prolonging life.
As the population becomes healthier & we are able to minimize age-related ill health there
will be people who will reach 150.
If you include non-biological enhancements to this then it is almost certain that we will all be cyborgs to varying extents, while still looking human, and enjoy the benefits such as longer, healthier lives with potential to achieve more than non-enhanced humans.

[Actors Rule]

Ugh. Still with the 'no more actors' nonsense? It's one thing to predict what new technologies will appear in the future. It's another to think you can predict what old technologies will be deemed undesirable by consumers. Actors in films are here to stay, no matter how sophisticated animation becomes.

[Sara]

I would totally disagree with the predictions about actors being replaced BUT I recently did a lot of research into vaudeville. People didn't expect moving pictures to replace live entertainment, but it basically killed the industry overnight. So it might not be such a stretch to think a similar paradigm shift could occur.

[Older & Wiser Than You]

I'm sure that people will have robot sex partners. Many already do. A lover does more than sexual service, however. Unless robots replace kind-hearted and devoted friends who work towards each others' best interests with patience and good humor, no machine will replace a lover.

[Christian Nesheim]

Well, the idea is that human level AI would enable robots to do all the things you said.

[Stuart Dobson]

What, no mention of Virtual Reality? As well as sex robots, I believe that by 2030 there will be extremely sophisticated VR technology allowing for almost full physical immersion. I'm not talking about brain implants, but simply more tactile feedback. The kinect has revolutionized input overnight, I expect we're really not far from something that revolutionizes feedback/output.

[D Kunkel]

So many people talk about actors being replaced, but anyone who's ever done any acting knows that's not happening, except for extras maybe. Having a live actor is such a crucial part of the creative process that, if actors were to be replaced, movies would take a serious turn for the worse. Improvisation and deep character analysis can never be done by animation. The great Duplass Brothers film "Cyrus" was heavily improvised and was an amazing movie, and Heath Ledger's Joker in the Dark Knight is remarkably creative. Actors will be forever.

[Maico]

Your prediction for number one i can slightly agree with depending on the power or development of augmented reality and neural interfaces.
As for your prediction on age, many in the scientific community already agree that the first human to live to be 1000 has been born. So who knows how old we will live to.

Number 9 i disagree with. Animation is no easy task and even though its been done very well (final fantasy probably takes the cake as an example here) it will never be something that is "cheap" to produce in a manner of studio that seems fully realistic without the help of VERY powerful AI algorithms. What i would see happening is the technology used in Avatar becoming cheaper and more accurate way of overlaying CG onto human actors. In other words a merger of the two.
This is actually a better outcome in my opinion. Because now actors no longer have to fear falling into a single role based on their face. (home alone, harry potter, star wars) certain movies have destroyed actors as much as made them famous and in the long run this will probably be the best and most likely outcome.

[energy management]

some strange predictions for the future :) :) it is an interesting article to read ...... i wish i am alive till 2030 and enjoy these new facilities for human life :) :)

[energy management]

some strange predictions for the future :) :) it is an interesting article to read ...... i wish i am alive till 2030 and enjoy these new facilities for human life :) :)

[Pi_neutrino]

Quite a few people in this thread have made the mistake of thinking "I personally can't think of a way for this to happen, therefore it must be impossible". CGI actors replacing human actors - a huge number of things would have to be improved upon before this becomes feasible, D Kunkel listing improvisation and deep character analysis, but that doesn't mean it'll never happen. Same with robot lovers. Improvements in strong AI would eventually make robot lovers every bit as good as human lovers. A long way off, but by no means impossible.

[Jack]

Who says the robot lovers have to look human? Maybe I want an anthropomorphic squid, or an alien robot lover!

[yen]

By 2030, the best (or, at least the most expensive) food will be grown in skyscrapers.

By 2030, (lawyers specializing in lawsuits around) driverless cars will be commonplace.

By 2030, automated flying drones will kill more humans annually than old fashioned aircraft with a human seated in the cockpit

[Theo]

Food on skyscrapers? Couple of problems with that:

#1 - agriculture doesn't scale when you have hundreds of land plots of different sizes at different distances.
#2 - virtually all food now grown in cities shows levels of pollutants that are several times those allowed by law. The problem is due to auto exhaust fumes.

[Ojack]

The robot lover is almost done and is the most likely to be accurate on this list. Most of the other things on this list will take much longer than 20 more years to accomplish. We love to overstate how quickly technological advances will become a part of life.

Some examples: Paper money was supposed to be obsolete by the year 2000; We are STILL driving fossil fuel based vehicles (an old technology if there ever was one);We still don't have fully functioning, natural looking bionic body parts a la the "Six Million Dollar Man" and "Star Wars" and finally, where is my personal jet pack so I can get to work on time?

[David]

Would like to weigh about the actors being replaced, although that's technically a good prediction, technology adoption is a lot slower in artistic surroundings than in consumer area.
It's a bit like the old analogic/numeric debate, in every artistic area, lots of people still prefer using analogic devices than numeric, regardless of ergonomy and price.

That's why I think that even if we would see virtual actors appearing, they would not really compete with regular ones, it would more be like a different cinema market, a bit like blockbusters/artistic cinema.

In fact, maybe big blockbusters will not have actors anymore? (That's true that blockbusters and broad audience cinema seems to pick faster the new technologies up.)

[Lucian]

I completely agree with the predictions. The advanced technologies will explode and they will enhance the life. But the poverty will have other definitions. Maybe 30 years ago poverty was associated with hunger, nowadays poverty is associated with lacking college funds for children, in 2030 poverty will be associated maybe with lack of money to go into space.

[jar jar]

This person has no basis in reality. a futurist. haha.
I guess you haven't heard of Global Warming, Peak Oil, Peak Coal.

Without Oil there is no modern world. It takes 20 years
just to replace one dominant technology with another.
There is no tech that can replace Oil in term of EROEI.

In 30 year life will resemble like in 1900.

[KenC]

Number 10, I think China will have a thousand cities with over 1M people.

[Mr. Bee]

None of these seem unbelieveable to me or even mildly shocking except the last one about the robot girlfriend which is both stupid and highly unlikely. Robots will not be "indistinguishable from humans" in 15 to 20 years. Possibly even 100 years wouldn't be enough for that.

[Mario de Vries]

Nah, we will be able to squeeze some oil out of plants grown in skyscrapers. And for fuel there are enough alternatives already. In respect to travelling: maybe trains running on magnetism are closer than automated plains. It's safer, much less polution, more comfortable and just as fast. Trains already run 600km/hour; in 20 years we can double that and trains don't have traffic jams or weather related delays. With the growth as it is, traffic jams in the sky are a daily fact.

[ceren]

if the predictions were at least for next 60 years i would have agreed with all of them... anyway i can't deny that there are some interesting ideas :)