Lemmy, what is your "I'm calling it now" prediction for the next 10 years?

I’ll go by (very broad) regions:

The United States experiences a brain drain and Trump’s death (all but inevitable in 10 years, whether by natural causes or other means), will cause a major rift in the Republican Party. Democrats will somehow fail to capitalize on it and then blame online leftists, famously the kingmakers of American politics.

Canada will become a de facto part of Europe. Bike lanes will be added.

Europe will experience an economic boom as it’s basically forced to develop new industries, becomes the default destination for scientific research, and the Euro begins to replace the dollar as the currency of choice for international trade contracts. France, especially, will benefit as it isn’t reliant on the U.S. for military support, space launch capabilities, etc. and will become the default NATO weapons supplier.

Russia will have a deep post-war depression even if it takes Kyiv due to brain drain and sending so many young men into a meat grinder.

China will have a medium-sized economic crisis but ultimately (after Xi) enact long needed reforms (kind of like when Mao died and Deng Xiaoping enacted reforms).

India will have a major crisis as Hindu Nationalism goes too far and people begin to revolt.

Central Asia will keep on keeping on. (I don’t know a lot about Central Asia.)

Latin America will increase trade with China and Europe at the expense of the United States. Bolsonaro will go to the hospital 50 more times and be bit by an even more exotic bird. Argentina will benefit most from the decline of the U.S. as a reliable trading partner.

Israel will annex the West Bank and Arab countries will isolate it. Saudi Arabia’s line city will still be in the planning stages. Iran will develop a nuclear deterrent but the power of the Supreme Leader will be weakened and shift to the elected officials because of economic problems.

The Maghreb will benefit from Europe’s rise and increased trade. West Africa will experience an economic and population boom and become an inexpensive manufacturing hub. The Horn of Africa will probably remain a shitshow (but hopefully I’m wrong about that). Central and Southern Africa will also experience significant growth but at a slower pace than West Africa.

Australia will lose another war with emus as New Zealand wisely allies with the Emus. They will force Australia into a humiliating peace deal that ultimately leads to a third Emu War, much like WWI’s onerous peace terms led to WWII.

Ocean acidification and rising sea levels will begin to fuck everyone and scientists will scream about it but it’ll be the following decades when that sort of thing really wrecks the world economy.

Nintendo will somehow sell me the same games for the 5th time.

I'll adopt a cat. 🤞

EDIT: I read the question wrong, but I'm keeping it up.

Trump either dies suspiciously or gets openly assassinated.

California secedes from the union which starts off hopeful but ends in their own Calexit debacle.

The severing of intercontinental data cables leads to the isolation of formerly global communities.

America will suffer an economic depression and become more isolationist which will allow the depression to continue unabated. Millions die of starvation and exposure.

Ameriscum here. Trump starts a war to create plausibility for holding on to executive power past current term limits. Which has happened in American history. Not the starting part as an ends to a means though. I'm scared.

We will have The Year of Linux Desktop 3: Libre Boogaloo

More floods, storms, droughts, extreme heats, fewer animal/plant species, more garbage everywhere

Famine around the world. Global political instability + climate change + economic downturn = food scarcity.

A high profile political assassination in the US or Europe.

Trump will die and a new religious movement declaring him to be divine will gain a significant foothold among people who call themselves Christians in the US.

By level of confidence, from top to bottom:

Bitcoin will dump soon and then raise up again around 2028

Trump will stay in power until next elections (and yes, elections will still take place)

Ukraine will have to surrender to Russia around late 2025-early 2026, boosting authoritarian regimes around the world

Linux desktop share will raise to 6% by 2027

A war will happen.

It will either be a civil war within the US but involving all of North America.

Or the literal 3rd world war. With usa and Russia fighting against Europe, where Canada is one of the main battleground.

I really wish I'm wrong, but I predicted drump's colonialist ambition over Canada years ago. I also remember being laugh at by everyone around the table at a diner for saying conservatives were making nazism acceptable again. Well guess what...

GTA6 will almost be complete

Conservatives who are getting their face eaten will not learn a single thing from anything

The attacks on transgender people will spread to the rest of the LGBTQ community, then the disabled, then immigrants, then Jewish people, and so on. Because first they came for the transgender people and we didn't speak out.

Fediverse will be regulated by law or some nonsense, making it exactly like the centralized platforms.

President Elon Musk serves half of his third term as permanent president of the United States. All public transit and bike lanes are abolished in favor of cars, and many people go broke after losing their jobs after being unable to afford to make it to work. Inflation is at an all time high with everyone being nostalgic about today's prices where everything is still affordable. He also makes it illegal to be transgender. We go back to democracy when some rando who deliberately changed their name to a Mario character assassinates Musk.

The next smash cuts a character everyone loves but also has the three house leaders.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters conveniently forgot about Amazon.

Reddit shuts down or lives on as a husk like 𝕏. Or even better, Elon buys reddit, calls it 𝕏 Communities and throws out brand materials like "subreddit" in favor of generic "community". Place becomes 𝕏 Draw and is only powered by AI image generators. Each pixel costs one dogecoin and users generate ai images at the resolution of the pixels they own.

Nintendo's next console is a Switch 3.

Everyone has a folding phone now.

The today's "brave new world" will start turning into Orwellian Big Brother society. It's already happening. Of course neither option is great but I prefer drugs, orgies and idiots to surveillance, absolute police state and slaves/prisoners.

GRRM isn't going to finish the books.

By 2035 everyone who actually likes computers will be primary using Linux.

Major roadblocks to piracy and porn in the US. Piracy will never be eliminated, but the barrier to entry will become too difficult for most folks. I've subsequently been hoarding all of the media I can get my hands on in case this happens - I refuse to pay for 20 streaming services just to watch movies and TV.

It will take more than 10 yrs to repair the damage being done to our gov.

I wonder if we'll ever see amendments to the constitution, it has been a long time. I'd like to see corporations declared to not have rights as if they were citizens.

USA brain drain. Seriously, most of my friends in academia are trying to GTFO because they know they're lucky to have the credentials and money to do it.

Famine will enter the American lexicon again.

Drone attacks and drone based spying will be huge and hobby drones will be highly restricted.

As a casual drone enthusiast I'm already filling in all of my flying now because the free flying days seem to be numbered.

One or more leading countries in the world to recognize some form of AI as sentient.

"Saltwater Intrusion" is going to become a fairly common story in coastal areas in a few years, to the point it becomes normal. The way everyone has just accepted fire season in the western US.

Which, in turn, will bring more and more shady water-rights selloffs and thefts, main affecting marginalized communities.

Google goes offline for plebs, billionaires go mask off and start discussing population control via drones.

Significantly populated areas of the developed world are going to be deemed inhospitable due to climate change

I personally aerosolize psychedelic drugs over Washington D.C. This melts the rotting meat suits off the mantids and lizards.

This year will be declared the year of the linux desktop.

And so will the year after, and the one after…

I understand it is normal human behavior to focus on negative things and an evolved survival trait. But it is kind of sad that no answers have any positive thoughts about the future. So I will try one:

Computer and robotic technology will improve and get cheaper. It will become feasible for home bound people to be able to have some sort of participation in society through telepresence.

Peak human population will occur within the next ten years. Previously this was driven by falling birth rates. Now it will be driven by rapidly rising death rates. Within the next ten years, I think 300 million - 1 billion dead from starvation due to bread basket collapse is a conservative estimate.

Donald Trump will either still be President, or be dead.

The surveillance of chats and the prohibition of encryption in many Western countries must have a purpose. It mostly makes sense if democracy is dismantled.

Since the West doesn't show signs of sharing resources voluntarily, my prediction is that the West is willing to fight a nuclear war to preserve its lead which cannot happen in a democracy.

Without that war, Asia will take over as the center of commerce and innovation. The brightest will move there, which means that the remaining people in the West have to be innovative without the main ingredience for innovation.

Preperations for the 2038 bug (similar te the Y2K bug) start too late about 2035

Linux Desktop gets stronger, even if its slow

I may or may not manage to finish hosting Nextcloud mostly save on the internet

Rise in suicide rates

fall of fanservice isekai (pls)

Rise of the fediverse (could be slow)

✨ Enshitification ✨

Radio music will be almost entirely AI generated by 2035.

I am faithful that humans will continue to be the primary composers, performers, and tastemakers of music even when AI tools are involved, because music is simply fun to do for people who do it. I know I'm simply not interested in giving up my passion even though an AI could do it, and I think most musicians are with me on that. We do it because it is worth doing.

But as far as radio pop music is concerned, I think that listeners will eventually be conditioned to prefer "better than real" (but really more polished than real life) music, just like we have with modern record production, particularly auto-tune, drum sample replacement/augmentation, vocaloids, virtual analog plugin software, compression and saturation, and sample-based electronic music. And once that happens, it'll be cheaper and more predictable to ask an AI to spit out a song than to pay human producers to do it.

Russia will own Alaska.

China will take over Taiwan and Japan.

N.Korea will take over S.Korea.

That's the most obvious insanity caused by Trump love for Putin. Global borders will fall everywhere.

Humanity globally shifts to an economic system of guarantees instead of our current extortional approach as we aknowledge we are already in a post scarcity world and work to fix distribution chains of human needs.

Either that or the corporate elites start a literal apocalypse so they don't have to work a fucking job like the rest of us.

Economical collapse in multiple countries, including the US. Like Great Depression II.

@remindme@mstdn.social 10 years

The United States of America will become Ununited. A group of states will break away and wall themselves off from the rest of the country, creating their own Trump worshipping society. They will create their own version of utopia and tell stories about how the rest of the world is going to die off because they will make everyone transgender and have no more children. The rest of the world will rejoice and join together in actually fixing climate change, eradicate poverty and spread the Eurovision worldwide.

In 100 more years the walled off states will emerge to repopulate what they expect to be an empty planet with their own eugenically created race of clones and finally realise that they were completely and utterly wrong.

Following the path of other regimes around the world, the USA builds their own "great firewall", segmenting most people here away from the global internet. At around the same time, personal VPNs become explicitly illegal. We might also see the government seize control of at least one certificate registrar, if they don't fire up their own, thereby "owning" TLS online.

On the upside, there's a chance we will see more grass-roots efforts to reboot a lot of institutions that were co-opted by the rich. You're just never going to hear about that through conventional channels. For instance: local newspapers with real journalism behind them. Or more small businesses with the intent to last, rather than sell. It's possible that more of those things will be co-ops, union shops, or even Mondragon inspired. Either way, there's a path forward for more community, real communication, and eventual prosperity, provided folks keep their heads and take things offline where necessary.