Future Predictions: What Will 2023 Bring? (Part 1)

Today we start the Predictions of the Future series, in which we ask a number of experts what they see for the year 2023, just ten years out.

Predicting the future isn’t simply difficult, it’s damn-near impossible. There’s always a curve ball about to be thrown that will change everything. Maybe it’s a natural disaster, act of war/terror, or a disease outbreak.

See the rest of the series
• Brian K. White, Satirist
• Jordan Andersen, Sr. Programmer
• Rex Talionis, Web Expert
• Danny Saunders, Marketing Manager
• Dean Chambers, Statistician (coming soon)

Whatever the case, having the smartest people you can have on hand is the best course, so I tapped into the users of Fark.com. Specifically total.fark.com, the paid, premium users. these are easily the smartest people online, and while you may doubt me, just reading the following responses will help you see what I mean.

DGS: We still won’t have hoverboards a la “back to the future”, so quit posting that stupid image on facebook.

Al_Ed: The grilled cheese sandwich will become obsolete.
– DGS: The farking hell you say.
– hurdboy: Grilled cheese will still be around. But it’ll have spinach and tomatoes on it.
– Tat’dGreaser: How does food become obsolete? It’s bread and cheese. That’s it.
– Al_Ed: If you can’t see the trend, I doubt I can explain it to you. Have you not been following the things Monsanto has been working on?!?
– xanadian: The Health Police will outlaw it, because it’s unhealthy. We’ll only be allowed to eat tofu and leafy greens.
– doglover: Tofu actually goes better with meat. That’s how the Japanese serve it.
– xanadian: Mmmmmm. Soylent Green will soon be a reality!
– Al_Ed: Famine and over population…two birds, one tasty stone!

hurdboy: Desktop PCs will be as obsolete as typewriters.
– Tat’dGreaser: Yet we’ll still have fax machines for some reason.
– hurdboy: Because Adobe. Formats that compete with PDF haven’t caught on. But I’m serious about the desktop PC thing. The days of a correspondence course in PC repair and an MCSE maning years of productive work are over. The greying fifty-somethings in management disagree. Oh well.
– spcMike: Maybe for the general publc. But I think a lot of people in science and technology will still use them as they will be more pwerful and more customizable than any laptop could be. But I think you’ll see more seamless transistioning between all forms of computing so that one could go from a desktop for intensive computing, to a laptop for mobile working, to a tablet for presentations and quick review.

xanadian: The iPhone 13 will be out, and it will please your woman in ways you can only dream of. Also: Mozilla Firefox 315.0.1.
– DGS: And it will still have memory leaks and crash on modern machines.
– brianbankerus: Your girlfriend will?

Al_Ed: I’m going to take a flyer on this one, but I’m predicting there will still be significant disagreement between Democrats and Republicans.

WI241TH: 3 boobs.

Al_Ed: The penis will continue to shrink at alarming rates to the point where it’s just long enough to successfully inseminate the female. Sex will become merely a means to transmit DNA.

LlamaGirl: I predict we will all have implants in our noggins that use the projection technology for those new glasses that google is making. Yeah, I want some.

spcMike: I do think we’ll start seeing more power lift frames, a la Aliens, and more cybernetic prosthesis.
– LlamaGirl: If that happens I am so chopping my legs off.

Phletchengreuber: Inexpensive DNA testing companies will offer services to screen potential dates. Watch out where you drop your skin cells.

Ceteris Paribus says: Athletes with proactively have the the ligaments in their knees replaced with high strength sythetic materials. This will apply to pitchers in baseball and tongues in lesbians as well.

Ceteris Paribus says: I’m surprised 3D body scanning for custom made clothing hasn’t caught on more. Shoes, pants, shirts, all perfectly fitted. Hell they could produce a toy perfectly suited to each of you ladies’ wakawakas.

robimni: We’ll develop the technology to put a man on the moon.LineNoise: Tech: In the corporate world, IT will be a commodity. Nobody is going to have large IT departments, and a good chunk of your IT operations will be offshore. You will be expected to supply your own equipment, whatever that may be, and be responsible for a large portion of your own support. Things like helpdesk, desktop support guys, etc will be a thing of the past.

Life: Self driving cars, the bulk of your white collared workforce working from home, 4 day work weeks starting to come into fashion. Unemployment of 10% will probably be a norm.

Also, americans will see things like VAT taxes on many common items, like cars, unhealthy food, etc. Most forms of cancer will be able to be treated as a chronic condition with a survival rate better than 3/4ths. Deep genetic screening and tinkering will start becoming common in pregnancies.

Endive Wombat: I honestly cannot really think of anything THAT mind blowing at this point. I am going to guess it will be more along the lines of improvements in existing technology. Better battery life, Ultra-Super-Mega HDTVs, high speed internets will reach more people both in the form of physical line to the house as well as wireless (4G or whatever it will be called at that point), there will be various improvements and permutations of phones, tablets and PCs.

The only thing that may be revolutionary will be in nanotechnology, but nothing on the consumer end will come out…it will be all military and research lab shiat.

As for medical, genetic research will continue but I seriously doubt much will come of it by then. I think that there will be “teleconference” style doctor visits for simple shiat, like “I’ve got the flu, please prescribe me something…”…and those will probably be done at a facility where you still have a nurse of some kind taking your vitals…

I do not think much will change with transportation. I do not foresee fully electric cars taking off in any meaningful way, as you cannot charge a car in the same time you can fill a gas tank. I would like to see natural gas become more available.

I think there is going to be an interesting shift in food…I am hoping that the govenrment backed agricultural subsidies, especially for corn will be reduced or even eliminated. As consumers are better informed, I think that GMO foods are going to have a tough time.

I do honestly think that the GOP will start making a push to distance themselves from the CRAZY super right (Tea Party and extreme Evangelical types for example), and will mainstream just a bit.

I foresee some change with North Korea, I do not think that it will be military based, more diplomatic as the older advisers die off/are “taken care of.”

littlett’s: I think by 2023 you will see then end of the desktop and probably even laptop PC. The sale of small electric cars will diminish other than in densely populated areas of the US in favor of probably a vehicle that runs on a hydrogen fuel cell vs. electricity. There will probably be a push to make conversion system to change traditional combustion engines (specifically gasoline) to hydrogen fuel cells or to convert them to operate on natural gas.

As far as life goes, until we have a significant change in lifestyle, I predict that the average life expectancy will start to decrease due to poor diet and lack of physical fitness for at least 5 of the next 10 years.

Earguy: Worries about breaking cell phone glass will be gone because the phone will be flexible like a credit card, and about as thick as 2 or 3 credit cards.

Marijuana will be legalized/decriminalized, not universally, but enough that pot-ingesting tech like vaporizers will expand.

Expect an expansion of download on demand programming rather than broadcast TV.

Head-level tiny video cams. Lots of people recording their entire day, mostly in a cover-your-ass mentality. “I was not driving erratically, officer…”