On 21 December 2012, the world should have ended. Or at least that’s what the Mayan calendar predicted, if apocalyptists were to be believed. Well, they were wrong twice over. Instead, the earth continued to spin, and scientists indicated that although the Mayan calendar foresaw the end of a 400-year cycle, they did not foresee the end of the world.
Therefore, it is one thing to make predictions about the future. However, there are of course many well-founded methods of predicting future trends today. At the moment, this view into the crystal ball is particularly exciting. The world is changing before our eyes due to megatrends such as globalization, climate change and digitalization, so in this article, we will take a look at 10 visions from the year 2040 and see how our lives will change by then.
The future with a vision
In 20 years, will we be traveling to Mars? Will robots really be ever-present in our lives? Just how crowded will the Earth be? Which illnesses will we have defeated? In this article, we will take a look at 10 visions from the future. Stay tuned!
Fabrics with superpowers
We are going to learn to imitate animals like the gecko: thanks to the incredible adhesive capacity of its legs, Geokotape is inspired, an adhesive tape that can be used indefinitely. It was patented in the United States, where a costume has been created for army raiders that enables them to climb vertically on buildings.
New materials
The future has its own favourite material, and that is graphene. This is the material that will bring about the biggest technological revolution in the next twenty years, since it will change our daily lives. It is the thinnest thing that exists, made up of a single layer of atoms connected together like the nodes of a fishing net: a characteristic that makes it foldable and very light and at the same time “stronger than steel”.
Hope for AIDS in Africa
The tragedy of AIDS could see an end. The power that AIDS has in Africa is because of the virus, yes, but also because it is affecting people who are already severely wasted. And that problem could soon be solved. So in the year 2040, the situation of AIDS in Africa is going to be much better compared to today.
Home robots
“In 20 years we will be assisted in every moment of our lives by home robots, and we will have ‘power’ automata intended for heavy or dangerous work. Standing between these machines and us will be exoskeletons: humanoid parts interconnected to the human body. Meanwhile, while we wait for anthropomorphic robots, we will use avatars, sensors and other devilry…”, says Roberto Cingolani, physicist, who has directed the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa since 2005. The consequences will be seen especially in areas such as health and rehabilitation medicine.
A crowded world
In two decades, the planet’s population will be 8-8.5 billion. Then, perhaps the decrease will begin, according to the demographer Giuseppe Roma, secretary general of the Association for Italian Cities RUR. And in United States? By 2040 the population of the country will increase by around 60 million units according to reports.
Between real and virtual
The virtual life becomes stronger at the expense of the real one, and therefore in the future we could expect a vertical communication gap between generations, but also the worsening of a separation between individuals of the same generation”. The so-called social loneliness is to be increasingly monitored.
For Mars is soon
Is the human landing on the Red Planet really so soon? According to Umberto Guidoni, the first European astronaut on a mission in the International Space Station, “Mars is the next frontier in the exploration of Space, but to expect the landing of man and put a date, it is still difficult”.
The DNA of super athletes (and more)
In recent there have been technologies developed that allow not only to add pieces of DNA, but also to directly modify its sequence. Indeed, if I have a single gene that “I don’t like” and I want to change it, I can do so: we can replace exactly that. And if these are the short-term possibilities of genetics, what will we have in 2040? Maybe even the ad hoc design of children in the lab.
The hour of GMOs
By the year 2040, a very new generation of GMP plants will arrive. They are the future, especially now that we have a new technology that permits to have plants with the genome modified for a specific purpose, productive, economic or nutritive. The fact that many countries have said no to GMOs is wrong. By the way, with the new technology they will no longer be called GMOs, it’s almost the same thing… but they won’t be called that anymore.
Discovering the asteroids
According to many scientists, the next frontier of Space are the asteroids. NASA is now reasoning on what techniques to implement to go and get a piece of asteroid or even divert a whole one, place it in cislunar orbit and then study it to create a small base for drilling, in other words make it an instrument of the conquest of the Solar System. But the near future of space exploration will be above all ‘information’, experimenting in orbit with new technologies, which will allow us to inhabit space better than has been done to date.
