This timeline of predicted inventions, adaptations, developments and discoveries offers a briefing that includes major statements made in 2006 or earlier by futurists, technologists, scientists and other experts about what they expected to be (at that time) highly likely changes to come over the next 150 years. The items that are not attributed to one or two specific individuals are developments that were commonly accepted by many experts in the earliest years of the 2000s as already proven to be likely, and they expected them to be brought to reality by a number of innovators at many locations around the world.
Use the 2046-2150 quicklinks below to jump to an item of interest or simply browse down the page.
Mars Colony
Time Travel
Brain Downloading
Many Other Possibilities
2050 – Mars Colony
A small group of scientists and explorers will form a colony on Mars. The group will be completely independent, growing their own food in greenhouses. Both the U.S. space program and the European Space Agency have projected a long-term vision of a mission to Mars before 2030, with the idea of developing a colony. Many supporters for such a colony are already making plans. You can read about them at various sites, including Red Colony.com, which offers the mars exploration illustration above.
2050 and Beyond – Time Travel
Amos Ori, a physics professor at Technion University in Israel, said in 2005 that he has compiled a mathematical model that defines the conditions under which time travel might be successful. He said our laws of physics do not rule out the possibility of time travel, and he said “I write mathematically. That doesn’t mean I know how to implement it practically. However … if inhabitants of some highly advanced civilization could set up the conditions … they might be able to travel in time.” He is quoted in an article in USA Today saying it will require “absolute emptiness – a vacuum … That means that, in principle, a closed, time-like curve could happen naturally, possibly through cataclysmic astronomical collisions in the abyss of space.”
2050 and Beyond – Brain Downloading
According to Ian Pearson, a British Telecom “futurologist,” humans will be able to download information, images, memories, feelings and more to their brains by the year 2050. Also, by this time everything already in your brain can be downloaded to a computer and saved. This will allow digital immortality, because a person’s brain activity can be saved forever and also downloaded and uploaded forever.
Other Possibilities by 2046-2150
The following are excerpted from the British Telecom Technology Timeline (information was compiled by Ian Neild and Ian Pearson from worldwide sci-tech reports in 2005):
- Political correctness creates new dark age
- Whole generation unable to effectively read, write, think, and work
- Human genetic engineering creates hostile super-race
- Humans assimilated into net
- Time travel works with humans
- Immortality chip – people move into cyberspace
- Faster-than-light travel by 2100
View predictions for other time-spans: