People often think of the future and what things will be like a hundred or even thousands of years from now. None of us are prophets and all we can hope for is to be reasonably on track. I doubt that anyone could be entirely accurate when forecasting the future, even 50 years from this date. With this in mind, let's see if we can do a little guessing of our own. I have set the dial on our time machine for 100 years in the future.

Weapons and Wars - The human species is unfortunately always at war. Knowing this, it is a sure bet that we will always be improving our weapons, because we have built huge agencies that have a mandate to do this. One area that the world is very concerned with is nuclear weapons. If a country could construct a non nuclear weapon with the same power as a nuclear one, it might eventually replace all the nuclear weapons on the planet. The specter of radiation and disease many years after a nuclear explosion is almost too much for the human race to bear. How could these weapons be developed? If scientists could find a way of storing huge amounts of energy and then releasing it all at once, they might just have the power of a nuke. The device would have to be something like a capacitor that holds electrical charges, but instead it would store energy. It would have to be small, small enough to be dropped from a plane or maybe even small enough to be carried in a vehicle. Unfortunately it would kill and injure just as many people as a nuke, but without the lingering effects. Most of the major weapons may change from explosive devices to things like microwave cannons and lazars. There may also be x-ray weapons that have the unfortunately task of blinding the enemy. One can only hope that this will be temporary blindness and that we don't create a race of blind people.

I really don't like predicting what weapons we will be using, I would much rather think about what life will be like.

Domestic Life - I could say that everyone will have flying cars, that is what everyone else says and it has been talked about for at least 60 years that I know of. Somehow I don't think that this will happen. If history is any indication of what we will be driving, I think we might have refined autos that are a type of hovercraft. I say this because the flying cars seem to present too many problems as far as traffic patterns are concerned. Imagine trying to keep people in a few lanes in the sky? It seems to me that some of them will be cutting in and out and endangering everyone unless some types of fail safes are built in to the vehicles, if that is possible. The hovercraft car would be able to go anywhere, even over water. You wouldn't have to worry about flat tires or potholes. There would be no more getting stuck anywhere. One problem in developing such a vehicle for the domestic market is what will power it? You certainly don't want millions of these things with fans on the back for propulsion. As we all know they have fans under the vehicle for lift and a sort of rubber skirt all around to direct the air flow. You don't want people being blown away by hovercraft stopped at a traffic signals and if you have a big fan or jets on the back to supply the push forward, this is likely to happen. For now lets say that we design one with a jet doing the pushing, but it is mounted under the vehicle and the exhaust is redirected by some sort of baffle, thus protecting people from it. What about our entertainment, we have tv now with high definition tv in some areas? I think tvs will be a thing of the past. I am betting that we will all sit down in our living rooms and a beam of light that contains a hologram will be sent to the middle of the room, giving us the most realistic viewing ever and from any angle. The size of the image will be adjustable right up to life size and so will the height of the projection. This will truly be entertainment and will of course be three dimensional. A much larger portion of the work force may work at home and some will be working for companies located thousands of miles away. If someone has to visit the home office, they will be able to reach anywhere in the world in 60 minutes or less. 90 minutes is about the time it takes to completely orbit the earth. You will get on a plane, it will go into orbit and leave orbit over the target destination. Homes will be self sufficient, each containing a power source, possible a fuel cell, and each home will be a smart home able to take care of many problems on its own. You may have robot assistants in the home.

Space - It was predicted way back in pre lunar landing days that we would be carrying on human exploration of the planets before the 21st century. We never met that goal, or at least we don't know about it if it is going on. I think that at the rate we are going, it will take about another 15 - 20 years before we get people out there. We now have a new, improved ion engine that can do it. I bet that in 100 years from now, there will be mining on the moon. By then, profitable ways will have been found to transport ore back to earth. Another thing that could happen is that science might find a way to create the materials that we need. For thousands of years people have been trying to turn lead into gold. We finally succeeded into creating diamonds and other precious jewels in the lab, will we be able to create things like titanium, or better yet, some futuristic material that would solve many of our problems? What about interstellar travel? Einstein stated that we couldn't travel faster than the speed of light, so how could we do this? Please forgive me all you scientists out there and don't jump down my throat, but maybe Einstein was wrong? Discounting folding space and worm holes and the such, is there any way to solve this problem? Some particles have been found that are suspected of traveling faster than light, but most scientists discount this and think that this is just an error in measurement. Maybe we will find something that does travel faster and by the time 100 years have passed, we will be zipping around among the stars and laughing at all those who thought the speed of light was our limit. Didn't this happen with the speed of sound? I wonder if more planets will be discovered in our solar system? It could be a possibility. Here is a good one for you, will we be alone? We may have been contacted by some other race out there by then, we are sending out signals and looking for intelligence in signals. This is a distinct possibility.

Time travel - Will we have invented a way to travel back and forth in time? I can only go by what I see around me. There doesn't seem to be any time travelers here right now, so I would have to say no. There was on person who went onto the internet for about 6 months who did claim to be from the future and answered questions, but he is gone. Most cases of people claiming to be time travelers are so absurd that we never give them a second thought. I think I have to stick to my first opinion and say we will not see time travel in the next 100 years.

I think that the key is going to be computers. As we develop more and more powerful ones, they may make it possible to solve problems that we never thought could be solved. Quantum computing may turn out to be only the beginning. Who knows, maybe they will even solve the meaning of life after all. (reference to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) This development could throw all my predictions right out the window because we may advance so much because of it, that it could be the equivalent of thousands or ten of thousands of years even though 100 years have only passed.

Medicine - Our bodies will be monitored every day. If you don't allow this monitoring you will not be able to get life insurance or even medical insurance. All our waste products will be analyzed ever time we go to the bathroom and the results sent to our doctor or a district health office. We may all have a chip in us that keeps track of all our bodily functions and periodically monitors our health. Many people will dislike this since the chip will allow us to be tracked. If we are not careful, the big medical corporations will have developed medicines that instead of curing us completely of a disease, will put us on some sort of maintenance where a pill will be required to be taken every day. Instead of having many different machines to test us, there will only be one or possibly two that will be capable of performing all tests. They will most likely be modular and as new modules come out, they can be plugged in, giving the machine even more capability. Smart Chips may be available for implantation so that no one will have to go to school, they could merely access the info that was already placed on the chip. Some today suspect that only the rich and powerful will get this opportunity.

Will the future be better for mankind than the present? It might generally. It is just possible that by then, the world economy might have leveled off and most, if not all, of the world will be on the same standard of living. This could become possible just by business using the cheapest labor today which will raise the standard in that country and then switching to a cheaper one and doing the same thing over and over until these countries produce many more of their own products. After that happens, labor will cost the same anywhere in the world and each country would more than likely produce their products in their own countries. There should be less disease since we are on the verge of discovering many new methods to treat it. Life expectancy is increasing so people should live longer. Maybe we will even wise up and have less wars. Let's all hope that things improve for our descendents.