Welcome to the year 2122 - what does it look like?

First of all, how do we even pronounce this: 2122? Do we say twenty-one twenty-two (I think this is easier) or two one two two or the more extreme format; two thousand and twenty-two? Anyway, we shouldn't worry about the naming convention right now, we will cross that bridge when we get there. Just kidding, none of us are getting to that bridge, we are most likely all dead and buried before that year (add 100 to your current age and put into consideration the average lifespan of humans today, will you be alive at that age?)

This article is my entry for the hive Naija weekly prompts and this week's theme is: What would the world look like in 100 years? Several changes will occur in the next 100 years but I believe that most of those changes will make the world worst than it is today. Most of those changes will directly or indirectly be brought about by technology and that's the path I am going to take for this article.

A futuristic world

Think about what technology used to be about 10 years ago and what it currently is today, you will see that they have been serious advancements in a lot of aspects. We never had self-driving cars a couple of years back, Android phones were having at most 2gb RAM and blackberry was the king, Bitcoin and Blockchain were still in their infancy, virtual reality wasn't a thing, and working remotely barely existed because of the limitations in tech and a lot of other things weren't existing back then.

But now we have cars that can drive themselves to a location it has been given, Android phones have become more sophisticated and we now have phones having as much as 18gb RAM,  there have been serious advancement in Blockchain technology and now even arts can be stored on Blockchain (NFTs), virtual reality and augmented reality are now in existence, a lot of people are now working remotely from the comfort of their homes, etc.

How about 100 years from now

1. Flying cars will be a normal thing

Do you know that flying cars have been in existence since the 1960s? But they all looked weird and most of them never flew but the ones that impressed me the most and looked just like a regular car is the one in the video below, the concept is just crazy!

Now I imagine in 100 years, we will have a lot of these things flying around in the sky. Flying cars, hovercrafts, and even jetpacks will be in existence. But will that even be a good thing? Just imagine having thousands of vehicles flying in the sky, it will make things more chaotic coz the sky will always be clustered with flying vehicles.

2. Virtual and augmented realities

Source

I know a lot of you have watched some sci-fi movies where a person is controlling digital objects with their hands and things that are supposed to be on a phone or computer screen are flying right in front of them, what if I tell you that something like that is existing right now? Take a look at the video below, just think about ironman controlling Jarvis but this time around, it's real!

How about this augmented reality world by national geographic

Still not satisfied? Then you should check out the metaverse virtual reality world that is being worked on by Facebook

These things are already existing but they are not common because the technology involved is still being worked on and it's quite expensive. What about in 100 years? Think about what android phones used to be a decade ago and how it is now, then imagine what virtual and augmented realities will be in 100 years. It will actually be chaotic coz people will have a hard time differentiating between reality and the virtual world.

Did I forget to mention the long-term effects of having to wear a virtual reality glass? These days we stare at screens too much and it affects our eyes, and now we are even putting those screens very close to our eyes, can you see the problems associated with that?

3. Fewer jobs will be available

Source

We have all heard people say that most jobs will be taken over by robots and artificial intelligence in the future and yes that's true. Just think about it for a second, with the way technology is advancing and most things we usually do before are now being handled by machines, don't you think it will get to the point where a lot of human jobs will be totally taken over by machines?

At that stage, most jobs will now directly involve tech and you will have to keep up with the changing times by learning a digital skill. Constructing buildings will no longer be done by humans and the jobs done by masons and other menial laborers will be done by machines. Imagine you see a building site and instead of humans, you see robots lifting iron rods and bars, while a machine is mixing cement and laying bricks.

Are we even going to use cement at that point? Many years ago, concrete buildings weren't a thing, and people built houses with wood and clay, who is to say that things won't change in 100 years? We will probably have houses built with another material that is not cement. Let's look at another job as an example: public vehicle drivers.

With the way self-driving cars are evolving, it will get to the point where you will enter a public vehicle like a bus and nobody is driving. The vehicle has a designated route it follows and when it gets to a bus stop, it stops and you get down. You can even say "stop" at any place and it will stop, and that's because it has a voice command. That's another example of a job that has been replaced by AI.

Wrapping up

What I have said here is just a drop in the ocean of what the world will look like in 100 years. There are tons of other technologies that will be available at that time but I can't talk about all of them here and it will probably take over a hundred articles that are as long as this one just to scratch the surface.

The future is only limited by our imagination and most things that were thought of as fiction years ago are now in existence today. Things that we see in movies are now being brought into the real world and 100 years from now, we are going to have serious advancements in the level of tech. Go check out some of the things Elon Musk has in plan and is currently working on and you will be amazed and at the same time terrified (one of them is neuralink, research about it).

I didn't talk about the negative effects of all these things and believe me when I say that there are going to be a lot of negative effects brought on by all these techs and that will require another article just to talk about them. With the advancement in technology, more problems are going to be created and more technologies will be invented to solve those problems and the cycle continues to go on and on until we end up destroying the world using technology.

*First published on hive

Thanks for reading 💖💖💖

Thursday July 21, 2022