Ask Lemmy

✨ Enshitification ✨

@remindme@mstdn.social 10 years

Economical collapse in multiple countries, including the US. Like Great Depression II.

Russia will own Alaska.

China will take over Taiwan and Japan.

N.Korea will take over S.Korea.

That's the most obvious insanity caused by Trump love for Putin. Global borders will fall everywhere.

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.

The United States of America will become Ununited. A group of states will break away and wall themselves off from the rest of the country, creating their own Trump worshipping society. They will create their own version of utopia and tell stories about how the rest of the world is going to die off because they will make everyone transgender and have no more children. The rest of the world will rejoice and join together in actually fixing climate change, eradicate poverty and spread the Eurovision worldwide.

In 100 more years the walled off states will emerge to repopulate what they expect to be an empty planet with their own eugenically created race of clones and finally realise that they were completely and utterly wrong.

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.

2008 was known for the Great Bush recession.

2025 will be known for the Great MuskRat Depression that Trumped all other depressions.

This time though the U.S. will feel the brunt

The US falls behind more countries in average lifespan, education and avg income.

AI is going to replace a lot of peoples jobs and no real government is prepared for the aftermath.

Something like Detroit beyond human where AI is causing massive unemployment and real humans are really suffering. While the super rich are in lofts doing their own thing.

Its not all bad, Ive heard some short stories on the importance of open source and manufacturing your own thing. Theres stories on communities banding together in such times and rejecting that which makes the rich richer. But I personally think it will be far and in between. People have to want to change, and I just dont see it happening.

Since I'm not feeling very optimistic, and given that everything I predicted today was the exact opposite, I'll say this.

1. Campi Flegrei explodes, creating a noise louder than Krakatoa.
2. Santorini sinks into the ocean.
3. Nuclear war.
4. Groundwater runs out all over the world.
5. 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.

1. AI superintelligence is evil.
2. A gamma-ray burst hits earth.
3. Aliens are evil.
4. Vacuum decay is possible and something accidentally triggers it.
5. Nobody likes me romantically.

On the optimistic side, I think it's likely a gene treatment is developed that greatly extends the lives of dogs.

The collapse of the petro dollar.

Another economic depression in the US, on a similar scale to the 1930s, maybe a lot worse. Probably a lot sooner than 10 years.

For a run-down of some of the key reasons, this video is long (40m), but worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM

The gulf monarchies' oil will dry up, and they will collapse under their own weight.

... Probably not. But hey, a man can dream...

In order of hopeful least hopeful:

1. I finally create my first ever original song using something like Vocaloid or UTAU. Would absolutely prefer Vocaloid because I tried v6 once and it was so much nicer than UTAU/OpenUTAU and so much easier.
2. I actually finish a Wattpad series I started instead of letting it rot after I lose interest.
3. Pokémon Empire (my absolute favorite fan game, just below Uranium) doesn't get nuked by Sintendo.
4. The devs still working on Uranium finish the post game and let you capture the legendaries mentioned in the Tsukiyomi village museum(?).
5. I finally get the remaining books in the Bakuman manga series and actually read the whole series. I've got the first 9 volumes, so I should hopefully be done at some point before the end of the decade, assuming my favorite place to go for used manga has the other 11 volumes at some point or doesn't close down.

At least five new countries acquire nuclear weapons.

Wars over water in North America

World War 3: Return of the Civil War

Pandemic 2: Bird Measles

Depression 2

All at the same time

Communicating with AI becomes indistinguishable from human contact, unless it's face-to-face. While promising to solve the loneliness epidemic and provide safe and effective therapy for anyone who wants it, it also unleashes a torrent of convincing AI propaganda. Technocrats using AI and charismatic humans as useful idiots and a front, effectively rule the world. Most people are poor and go hungry, but resistance is futile. There is no safe way to communicate except meeting in person, and there are few safe spaces to even meet that aren't under constant surveillance. Organizing any resistance is incredibly difficult, if not hopeless. Truth is no more.

We'll have reduced the human body to basically just another machine and will be in the process of reverse-engineering it. So many new techniques and sources of data have come online all at the same time in biology.

This is in contrast to the current situation where we know a few things about select parts of the body in isolation.

"Hey, remember when everyone was so freaked out by AI?"

-The internet will become something only old people use and will fill up with old people like radio and TV before it. Something new will be the hip new thing that kids use/consume, though it technically could be considered the internet

-Coal power plants will be phased out entirely in U.S.A. with some taking credit and others morning the loss of a purely economic conversion over to natural gas power. It will look like it is solar's time to shine, but a "new" way of generating power which is cheaper and slightly cleaner will take over and slowly convert natural gas plants to whatever it is.

-There will be a detracted argument over whether or not what comes after current gen-AI is considered sapient and worthy of rights. While the debate will be straightforward in a vacuum, other semi-related topics will mix in including: the rich wanting their AI doppelgangers to keep control of the money/power they earned during life; something to do with sex and/or relationships because of course there will be; religious opposition until the poll numbers swap, then there will be some regions that view AI rights a helping the disadvantaged

-A young politician from the democrats will get elected on the back of anti-Trump hate. They will have in their first two years theoretically enough support to pass substantial legislation, but will be stopped by a small number of conservative democrats from doing anything substantial save for maybe one big accomplishment. They will loose the 2030 midterms to a bunch of republicans and a "grass-roots" organization that is paid for by rich business owners, but will come back to win the 2032 election against a rich republican from New England. However, they won't have control over the congress and by 2035 will be a lame duck.

-Someone will scrap NASA's current human space flight plans to promote their own plan, which in itself will be scrapped when a new administration comes in. By 2035, articles will be printing "it is a shame that no real current alive human has stepped foot on the moon", taking a subtle dig at China's AI-human that is currently building structures on the moon.

They made a film about it "idiocracy" and its already started.