The year is Twenty-Fifty...

[dataDave]

All I want before I snuff it is a mechanised suit of some kind.

Preferably something with flight capability and a massive chain gun. But I'm not fussy - integrated Plasma Sword would also be acceptable.

Someone must have a huge Avatar-like mech suit in development, it can't be that hard can it? If we still had the conventional battlefields of the 1940s, instead of huge bombs that can instantly wipe out 50million civilian lives, huge suits like that would easily be a reality by now I reckon, minus the plasma sword bit.

[anephric]

That's as good a reason for going back in time and shooting Robert Oppenheimer as any I've heard.

[endo]

I'd like to see a global system of interconnected computer networks.

Apparently, so I've read, there are now upwards of 2 dozen 'websites' available on this 'internet'.

I also predict the advent of films on 'discs' and music available from this so-called 'interweb'.

[endo]

Seriously though, I think over the next 40 years or so we're going to see great advances made in medicine and significantly longer lifespans as a result.

Drugs are already becoming more targeted in their action and producing fewer side effects as their pharmacodynamics are understood in greater detail.

Advances in imaging are already making diagnostic procedures more accurate than ever and bio-tech will eventually lead to replaceable organs.

[Brats]

LoL at the pessimism on the forum today. 40 years is a long time in technology; compare today with 1970 and 1970 with 1930.

Okay then. Comparing 1970 with today, the main difference in technology is the increase in power and decrease in size and cost of computing, plus the proliferation of the internet. But it was all pretty predicatble stuff. After all, Moore's law was coined in 1970.

If you look at a typical house of the 1970s and compare it with today, it's pretty similar, bar some more labour saving devices like dishwashers and of course computers. It's not like we were all travelling around in pedal cycles and then suddenly someone invented the car.

The idea that in forty years we'll be travelling in flying cars with our own personal robot butler with sophisticated AI is a much bigger leap from 1970 to now.

Here are my (somewhat more realistic) predictions:

We will have put a man on Mars
Cars will still be the main form of transport, but they will all be electric
Devices will have wireless power
Genetic engineering of embryos will be available to those that can afford it for 'better' humans
Shenmue 3 will still be a rumour

[gunrock]

Shenmue 3 will still be a rumour

Gah!! I want to see it in full virtual reality, "live the game" interactive always-on experience. People will live inside it and the Daily Mail will print "Ban This Sick Filth!", as otaku starve to death whilst trying to collect all the capsule toys and get their name in the number 1 slot in all the games in the arcade.