This week's homework: Futureworld!

For this week's homework, Scalzi asks:

Weekend Assignment #56: What will the Earth be like 50 years from now? Will global warming have swamped Florida? Will we switch to new energy sources? Will the people of the world be more prosperous, or will they be mired in a world of trouble. Look forward and predict what our children -- and their children -- will have to look forward to in 2055.

Extra Credit: Name one thing from today that people will be nostalgic for in 2055.

Reminds me of an assignment I did in Sixth grade.  We were supposed to partner up with another student and make a little model of a house from some other time or place.  Everyone else made log cabins, farm houses, or igloos.  My friend and I made an elevated transparent pod and labelled it "The future."  I'm not sure I really imagined houses of the future would look like that, but it saved us from having to do any research beyond watching "The Jetsons."

Where was I?  Oh, right, future.  Thinking about what has happened in the last fifty years, and the projecting those trends out into the future, I imagine the planet will have gotten, as they say, even smaller.  We've made such MASSIVE strides in communication, and I think that will continue.  I mean, someone is opening an internet cafe on Mount Everest -- I think that, fifty years from now, pretty much everyone on the planet will be carrying a cell phone that never loses a signal.  Travel has also gotten massively faster and cheaper in the last five decades, and I'd like to think technological advances will make that trend continue as well.

It would, of course, be incredibly spiffy if increased communication and transportation led to peace and love and solving the world's problems -- but we'll probably be just as messed up as we are now, only with better toys.

Extra Credit:  In 2055, people will be nostalgic for "the good old days, when you voted by pulling a lever or pushing a hole through a ballot."