Christmas in 2050

Makarand writes "A robotic kitchen assistant will help you with the Christmas meal preparations while you recieve instructions and monitoring assistance in real time from information systems for the cooking. Thanks to progress in biology and nanotechnology, the molecular processes needed to convert raw materials into turkey will be understood sufficiently well to make a good artificial turkey for the vegetarians. This is what we can expect this time in 2050 says Ian Pearson, BT's futurologist who is paid to dream, in this BBC News article. Absent family will join the celebrations virtually. There might be technology allowing us to read each others minds and being able to know what others are thinking may not always add peace and harmony to the celebrations. However on the upside, it will make charades a whole lot easier you will never get unwanted Christmas presents. Lastly, just as this Christmas was hijacked by a consumption fever, so too in 2050, Christmas will be all about presents."

Comments

AMD symbol?

[MxReb0]

So what does all these Popular Science-like predictions have to do with AMD?

Re:Where are the spaceships, flying cars, etc?

[ThinkingGuy]

As I believe Scott Adams has pointed out, predictions of future technological advances usually miss the unintended side effects. For example, the growth of Internet and the World Wide Web has brought quick access to vast amounts of information and knowledge, but has also brought us junk e-mail, pop-ups, patent abuses (Amazon). So what will Christmas 2050 bring? Here are a couple of random thoughts...
Currently kids have to wait to open their presents while dad checks his digital camera|video camera. In 2050, they'll be waiting while he hooks up everyone's head-mounted stim-sim recorders - "to capture the moment."
There's been talk lately of "intelligent paper" and "flexible displays." Extrapolating this forward, I'd expect your Christmas presents in 2050 to require you to watch a commercial before you can open them.

Re:Old news

[fucksl4shd0t]

Labour losses through technological unemployment are hurting all nations of the world

IMHO, the problem isn't labor losses through technological employment, it's the inability of society to catch up with technology. Or rather, technology has been improving so fast lately that the job market hasn't caught up with it yet.

First a new technology comes out, or an old technology becomes affordable to everyone (the internet). Next we see a bunch of hiring in that sector. Next we see a crash, and the previously fast growing sector is in a labor crunch, dumping staff left and right.

Also, overpopulation MUST be a contributing factor to the job shortages at this time. Our food methods are efficient enough to keep us all alive (for now, and I'm ignoring the countries that are still having serious hunger problems because many of them have become political balls in our own country and I'd prefer not to approach this subject at this time). Therefore, we do not need hunters. What do hunters do now? Well, they get diagnosed AD&D, er, ADHD, given drugs and spend the rest of their lives as losers living with their parents. But I digress.

When a robot does the work, someone gets paid to make the robot, somehow. Sure, a group of robots might push out cars faster than a group of people, but who builds the robots? Obviously another assembly line packed with robots. So "building" now becomes what "engineering" used to be, and the thug labor that would've done the job before has to do something else. But what?

Therein lies the problem. We don't have enough jobs to go around, but we definitely have too many people. I certainly don't wish suffering upon anybody, but perhaps some mass-killing machine would help. :)

Anyway, many of our labor problems would be solved if we entered a true state of space exploration. When overpopulation pressures hit Europe, they had the fortune of re-discovering America to relieve the pressure. Japan went to war in the '30's because of their overpopulation, and technology has helped to alleviate their problem. But there's literally no place left for us to go, unless we start building underwater or on Antarctica (problematic when the surface altitude changes seasonally, but possible).

So the magical solution to all of our problems is technology, but only insofar as technology helps us to enter either a new period of expansionism or a massively destructive war.

Which one do you *want* to have?