[flohofwoe]

That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Autonomous cars are useless when people no longer need to travel large distances day by day.

The biggest change will be that more people in the 3rd world will enjoy better living standards, and that's a huge achievement on its own. We don't need flying cars for that.

[gozo]

Nah, it's just that much of the future won't happen in the first world which has problems keeping up with the present. China is 10 years in the past and 10 years in the future at the same time. It's going to be even more like that for India and (parts of) Africa.

[ginko]

The world was very very different 100 years ago.

[flohofwoe]

On first glance yes, but I would argue that living in a city in 1910 or 1920 was not that much different than living in a city today, look at photos or read newspapers from that time. I'm convinced that you can take a time traveler from the 1910's and he would get around in a modern western city within a week. All the basic things like electricity, sanitation, public transport, commerce, entertainment, fast communication via telegrams or phone already existed. One big difference to today is that poverty was reduced drastically, and access to these things is much easier and cheaper today. But there is a 'good enough' barrier beyond which things don't improve anymore, since they are good enough (see trans-sonic flight).

I think there have been much more drastic (positive) changes during the 19th century for the western world than during the 20th century.

[JoeAltmaier]

Yet there are measurable changes in health, lifestyle and behavior. Obesity; neighborliness; attention span; entitlement. Where once only the ruling class could afford to be snooty and entitled, now most everybody can do it.

Even access to the outdoors - a century ago everyone lived in nature, to a degree unthinkable today. Sure, some tiny fraction still take their GoPro out and record it for the rest of us. But while parks, camps, outdoor programs have growing participation they have not kept up with simple population growth. Which means outdoor activity has dropped precipitously per capita.

I blame computers and games, for the pandemic of couch-potato twitch gamer culture. Not seen since the rise and fall of the opium dens.

[qznc]

10 years ago there were no smartphones. 30 years ago nearly nobody had a computer.

[coldtea]

And now that they have them, they are not life changing in any significant way (except for niche cases, e.g. helping someone with a disabillity connect etc).

Sure, one can work as a web designer now, and they couldn't before. But they'd still have some other job anyway in the past. Same with smartphones. We wouldn't have selfies, and casual surfing on a restaurant and constant BS calls while on the move. Other than that, not much would change.

Whereas things like women rights or seggregation or cars or toilets or flights or electricity etc have much more changed how we live in a much more profound way.

[flohofwoe]

Both of these are by far not as important as sanitation, cheap food and affordable housing.

There is a big achievement in the 20th century, which is that the time-barrier has been slashed for spreading information, and that spreading information has become cheap. IMHO this is the biggest thing since the invention of writing (== communication over large distances) and the invention of printing (== cheap mass reproduction of information, but you still had to physically transport it around the world). The internet goes hand in hand with cheap personal communication devices, I give you that. It's a shame that it is mostly used for shopping and looking at cat images ;)