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.
" Dinosauria We" by Charles Bukowski
He nailed it.
Google goes offline for plebs, billionaires go mask off and start discussing population control via drones.
They made a film about it “idiocracy” and its already started.
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.
There is already a religious following in his noxious wake. They literally think he’s heaven sent.
Evangelicals will decide that, despite being nominally Protestant, they’re suddenly OK with sainthood again.
Okay, I could see this one happening.
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.
I saw an anti-drone fear article just today, actually. I hope this doesn’t happen, though.
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.
something I don’t understand about piracy is,
if you torrent to get rid of centralization, why have all the torrents saved on one website that can be taken down? Wouldn’t it be better to have them all on a torrented .html file or sthm?I imagine discoverability and avoiding forks or just stale copies would become a big issue.
The gulf monarchies’ oil will dry up, and they will collapse under their own weight.
… Probably not. But hey, a man can dream…
They’re pushing massively into green energy. I think they are the next biggest investors after China if I remember correctly.
They can try, but they don’t really have the massive advantages there. With oil they basically get >1000% margins because it’s just there and ready to be tapped, and their whole societal structure is based around spending that money like it’s water.
Wars over water in North America
Famine around the world. Global political instability + climate change + economic downturn = food scarcity.
A high profile political assassination in the US or Europe.
The first time a ceo or politician gets assassinated by drone-strike will cause some severe lockdown on those things.
No matter what country it happens in.
~the very last part at least~
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.
I’ll go with Hanlon’s razor there. The cops and politicians don’t really understand the magic boxes, let alone the game theory of adversarial uses layered on top of them.
Since the West doesn’t show signs of sharing resources voluntarily
Which resources? The only tangible advantage the West actually has is momentum and strong institutions. The science behind the technology is free for anyone to learn - if you go looking, even really niche branches like spindle metrology - and natural resources are actually less depleted in poor countries at this point.
If China escalates to cause war in Asia when other countries are sufficiently pissed off by them trying to steal territory and harass others non-stop, then that plus a potential Chinese real estate market collapse could cause pretty serious problems in the region.
Significantly populated areas of the developed world are going to be deemed inhospitable due to climate change
Parts of the American South are getting close, but are holding on as long as their power grids do.
That said, a good chunk of Texas won’t remain that way forever.
Since I’m not feeling very optimistic, and given that everything I predicted today was the exact opposite, I’ll say this.
- Campi Flegrei explodes, creating a noise louder than Krakatoa.
- Santorini sinks into the ocean.
- Nuclear war.
- Groundwater runs out all over the world.
- A massive solar emission hits earth, throwing us back into the Stone Age.
Doing my duty, to protect the world by predicting things, so the exact opposite happens 🍺.
Just to cover all the bases, some extra points.
- AI superintelligence is evil.
- A gamma-ray burst hits earth.
- Aliens are evil.
- Vacuum decay is possible and something accidentally triggers it.
- Nobody likes me romantically.
Well you probably aren’t actually meeting new people so low chance of finding love
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.
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.
Prediction: the next amendment they try is getting rid of the term limits amendment…
You’d be right, goddammit
