Predicting The Next Ten Years

Note:  This is probably the sort of stuff I should be writing in 2009 but I’m not that well organised.

There’s already been plenty of articles written about the social, political and technological changes in the last ten years.  TIME Magazine actually described it as the worst post-WWII decade that we’ve had.  It was the decade that gave us a second Iraq war, Lord of the Rings, Barack Obama and iPhones.  Generally, I thought it was a pretty good decade.  I got married, I’m employed and I saw Def Leppard in concert.  Whats not to like?

That said, I thought I would do up a quick set of predictions for what the next ten years could potentially offer us.  Then we can revisit this blog in 2020 and see how I went.  I will be thirty seven years old then.  Fucking hell.

The FAT Website

By 2020, The FAT Website will of course, still be running.  It will be the website’s 21st year in existence.  Following the current trend in cinemas of using 3D imagery, I’m thinking the website will eventually have some sort of 3D visuals in the next ten years.  As for the users, I’m going out on a limb to say that three members of the site will have had children, we’ll see another four weddings and statistically, we’ve got pretty good odds on probably one divorce.

Politics

We did discuss in the TFW Vodcast whether it would be likely that Australia would have a female or non-Caucasian prime minister in the next decade.  I think it’ll happen eventually.  Joe Hockey and Julia Gillard are both pretty prime candidates and who knows who else will pop up in the next few years.  I’m going to guess Australia will have its first female prime minister in the next ten years.  I also think we still won’t have legalised gay marriage and also I’m guessing the trend of ongoing Internet censorship will continue as both major parties currently lean centre-right.  Eventually, I believe one of the major political parties will establish a permanent mandatory internet filter. However, we should finally get that lost-awaited R-18 rating for video games by the time 2020 rolls around.  Globally, I predict that Barack Obama will win a second term, albeit by a narrow margin.

Health & Science

This should be an interesting category since I know sweet F.A about this sort of stuff.  Let’s go with the cloning of animals getting eerily closer to humans and the revival of extinct species.  I think specifically, we could see some ruffled feathers when some crazy-ass Third World country scientists clone the first ever person.  Also, the decade will continue the trend of sensationalized media stories about global epidemics that don’t amount to anything (see bird flu, swine flu, SARS etc).  Its also make or break time for the global warming crowd as some of the big predictions that Al Gore and friends made about climate-change influenced catastrophes were set to happen this decade.  I think climate-change sceptisism will reach an all time high this decade and that we’ll continue to pollute the shit out of the environment and not really make any meaningful long term changes to scale back our dependancy on fossil fuels.

I do believe that we will make some significant strides in battling major illnesses.  I believe that by 2020 there will be a vaccine discovered for HIV.

Sports

I think the ongoing arms race of billionaire tycoons buying out EPL teams will continue unabated and this decade will possibly give us a team that isn’t Man U, Chelsea or Arsenal winning the Premier League.  Also, its a pretty big call but I think Scotland might actually qualify for a World Cup this decade.  It would be nice.

I also predict that Tiger Woods will eventually return to golf and be back to business as usual winning everything and that someone will run 100 metres in under 9.5 seconds.

Media & Technology

I’m sure there will be some amazingly cool stuff developed this decade.  I’m hoping we get some sweet robots butlers and a new Super Mario brothers game.

Some actual solid predictions:  Even though many people believe it is just a fad, I’m convinced most televisions will have 3D capable displays by 2020. Naturally, they will be the kind that don’t require 3D glasses.

By 2020, films will make more money in their home releases via the medium of digital downloads through services like iTunes over physical mediums like DVD or Blu Ray.

On a personal level, I forsee that my current alienation with popular music will continue.  According to the Billboard charts, the most listened to song in the past decade was Mariah Carey’s We Belong Together.  I have never heard of that song and it makes me sad I’m already that out of touch.  I think this decade will finally see the death of the trusty audio CD as the music industry shifts to an entirely digital distribution based model.  The rest of the money will be made back through the cost of the actual shows.

In the Noughties, only 2 movies out of the twenty highest grossing films were original concepts.  The rest were comic book licenses, sequels or rehashes of TV shows.  This uber-conservative trend will continue as movies race towards costing half billion dollar production costs.  Variety points to Avatar’s production costs lying somewhere around $280 million U.S dollars, not including marketing costs.  With this in mind, I think its safe to say that the next decade will give us the first ever film that costs half a billion dollars to produce.  It will definitely be in 3D and will likely involve either a Transformer, Jack Sparrow or a super hero.  Possibly all three.

I predict that by 2020, Youtube and Facebook will both be going strong, although Youtube will be even more bloated than it is now as it introduces higher quality video streams, ongoing lawsuits and possibly some sort of subscription model for online TV.  I think social networking will become a permanent fixture of Internet usage (rather than being a fad) and I believe Facebook will still be the most popular social networking tool in the world, even a decade from now.

There we go.  Lets see how we get on with that list in ten years time.