What is a small prediction you have for the future?

Some of these will happen thanks to the technological singularity. I will paste the wiki link to this at the end.


The 'communicator' from Star Trek will become a reality soon. Basically the tech in smartphones is getting better and better all the time, and yet it is also getting smaller and smaller. Eventually it will go one step further and fit all the gear in a high tech smartphone, into a small thing you can pin to your clothing like a broach. It will be completely voice activated when you touch it, so you can tap and then say call Mom and it will call her, you can do anything you can now on a smartphone by talking to Siri or whatever equivalent, and a lot more. It will interface directly with the computer in your house or work, even if you are somewhere else, so the actual smartphone tech is just to run the broach itself, you can do much more using a real computer which it will have access to instantly. The only thing it wont do is let you watch a movie but you will be able to do that with your sunglasses and they wont look like google glass or some VR thing, they will just look like normal sunglasses. The broach will do all the hard work and will just transmit the movie (or web page etc) to the sunglasses.


Virtual Reality will take off after the Oculus Rift and more importantly, the Valve Vive, become a success. At first it will be mostly used for gaming but then it will branch out in many interesting directions. Eventually Facebook wants you to be able to go to the movies with friends even if they are in a different country. You wear the headset and suddenly you are in a cinema, and you look around and see your friends and they will be able to see you. But this will develop further in the future so you can go on very realistic and detailed tours from the safety of your home. You can visit the Pyramids, Alcatraz, Vegas, anything, and it will feel like you are there and you will even be able to interact with other people during your 'trip'.

Even further in the future from this, entertainment will take on a whole new level. Movies as you know them today will become obsolete, and eventually everyone will experience movies in 4 Dimensions. In other words, you will be inside the actual movie. So two actors are talking in a room, currently a camera would be pointing at them and that's all you would see except for occasional close ups. But in the future VR version, you will be able to go right up close to either of the actors and look them in the eye, or go over to the window of the room they are in and look outside, or go to the bookshelf in the back of the room and read what books are on there. You will be able to move around the scene and look at it from any angle. In outdoor scenes and car chases where things are moving quickly, you will be able to fly along with the action and view it from any angle. All the effects will be in 3D so it will look good no matter where you choose to view it from. The movie industry and the game industry will become closer than ever before to create these movies, and the use of actual locations will become a thing of the past as everything in the movie is eventually computer generated. A lot of it already is today and if the CGI is good enough, you don't even know. But in the future, everything will be CGI and you will never be able to tell. It will look completely real - and yet from any angle.

The distinction between movies and games will still exist, but they will look very similar. The difference will be that games will still focus on giving the player an interactive experience, where they do and control everything, every action and every bit of dialogue will be up to the player.

The primitive MMO experiences of today and things like Second Life, will go through various iterations and new generations but will eventually become so good and so involving, that many people will no longer live in reality. There will be 'games' that are actually virtual worlds that are fully functioning. You will feel like you are there thanks to VR, but when you go to a store in the game and order food or something, it will actually get delivered to your house for real. You will do a job in the game world, and this will earn you money - real money that works in real life. This already happens to some extent, but it will become bigger and will be normal for many people. So you go to work as a lumberjack in a mystical forest or something, and that money will pay your rent and medical bills and whatever else in your real life when you occasionally visit your real life. People will spend almost every waking hour in these virtual worlds, and they will be so attractive you will never want to leave, although they will contain scary places and horrifying places too, giving a full range of life experiences albeit virtual. People will occasionally leave the game a few times each day to deal with their bodily needs. But most other things in life like paying rent etc, will be very well automated. And many people will live in tiny unattractive apartments and yet not care because where they 'live' in their virtual world will be impressive and all their time and effort will be spent on improving that virtual existence. Why not succeed in the virtual world so that you can have a better real life? Because the virtual world will always be better than real life. You will have husbands/wives in there, and see and do things you can't do in real life. Real life will not be able to compete. But some people will insist it is better and will resist being 'gamers'.


/r/AskReddit Thread