[lordnacho]

Some of these are science predictions, and some are economics predictions.

Here's my take:

- Replicator is unlikely. The machine that makes everything is like the drug that cures everything and the man who knows everything. We already have specialist replicators, specialist drugs, and specialist professors. For the same reason, we won't get a generalist AI, just a bunch of very good specialists.

- James Webb will tell us within a few years whether there's lots of life or none. Some realisation about just how likely life is will happen as we use the JWT to scan various planets.

- Similarly with superconductivity, we'll either find a way to do it, or a reason why it can't be done.

- Economics: the revolution here is how society changes when there's a bunch of old people around, mostly healthy and mostly skilled. I suspect people will want to be able to retrain, and so the old model where there was only time (opportunity cost) to go to school when you were young will change. It probably already has for some people.

- Tech/Econ: society will have thought hard about giving everyone a decent living while the tech people build just about everything.