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twoelevenjames_nicoll points out this blog post on technological and scientific optimism among different groups, mostly varying by education, though age differences are implied as well. the blog post is associated with this survey of sci/tech optimism. i recommend that if people are interested in seeing how optimistic they are compared to others that they take the survey before reading the blog post or james' commentators' discussion of it.
i tend to be a bit more optimistic than most people in the business. i guess i'm simply too stupid to be properly pessimistic.
to summarize my answers, i'm gonna talk about them by survey category, from 50-50 likelihood in the next 50 years to "f'geddaboutit".
likely in the next 50 years:
autopilots for personal vehicles: we'll probably come to regret it, but i expect they'll be adopted for cars soon enough.
likely in the next 500 years:
meta-comment: in my warped view of the world, 500 years is "beyond the next technological singularity". 500 years ago, the fastest vehicles were sailing ships, the highest density power source was falling water, nearly everybody worked on farms, and most kids died before the age of five. 500 years from now...? so, i tend to put a lot of things into this category simply because i don't think they're impossible, and they might serve a useful purpose.
so...
most transportation by personal flying machines: well, um, what transportation are we gonna need even in the next century? right now, people's most common trips involve going to work and going to buy things.
let me make a couple of random speculations about things that might happen to those. a bit of fiction i read (probably by vinge or stephenson) had fedex delivery drones: they deliver goods right to you. that's too expensive for us right now, but not unreasonable for the near future. there's a lot of stuff i could have delivered from stores if it was cheap enough to do so, and automation like that might make it cheap enough. strike (most of) one class of trips.
increasing numbers of people already telecommute to work. there's still advantages to getting people in one place at one time, though. but i don't see that it's unreasonable for us to eventually (decades) get multi-GB/sec connections to our homes, and "telepresent" to work, using virtual reality. that doesn't work for all jobs, true, but it works for a lot of them. it may work for many of the rest if they're designed that way. (right now, you have to be at a factory to make something, but that's because the tools and controls are designed for that; they could be designed for remote control.) strike another class of common trips.
that leaves travel for pleasure. with so few people routinely driving, we may start ripping up pavement, and reduce the road network. flying may become reasonable they way that traveling by river once was: it makes up for lack of roads. and there's a lovely vicious cycle with decreasing ground traffic forcing the remaining ground-pounders to take to the air: really, who's gonna pay to replace the chesapeake bay bridges a century from now?
this is, of course, speculation. but i don't see it as unreasonable, nor is the only possible future leading to most people traveling in flying cars.
FTL and related questions (wormholes, studying stars close up): i'm optimistic about hacks to GR like alcubierre's metric. we can't make one, but the math works, and that's a good start.
fusion power: why not? it should work, and unless the cost efficiency sucks mossy rocks, we'll probably use it. i suspect the cost question is the real one, not the technological one.
life extension: i don't expect to live to 200, but i think kids today have a good shot at it. life extension technologies generate virtuous cycles of life extension: if today's tech can keep you alive to 100, there's a good chance that some technology developed in during your extended lifetime will push that to 120, and in that extra 20 years, maybe a few more.
likely in the next 5000 years:
this is my catch-all for "i don't see why not". 5000 years is all of recorded human history and then some. i don't have any other basis for guessing what future human civilization will do except to say that if it's possible and somebody sees some advantage to doing it, they'll try it.
terraforming: probably not in this solar system, but since i'm optimistic about starflight... also, i have broad notions of "terraformed": if it's like any part of earth that's inhabited year-round, it counts. this includes hypothetical planets called "new siberia" and "deader valley".
ditto for talking to aliens: if FTL is possible, and the neighbors are home somewhere in the galaxy, we'll probably say hi at some point. possibly even without FTL travel.
the rest i lumped in to a bunch of categories for "probably doesn't work", "probably makes no economic sense", and "hell if i know". examples, in order: time travel, mars colonies, strong AI.
the last, i think, is not just a single technological singularity which will whack humanity upside the head. i expect a bunch of technologies leading up to it will also change civilization in unpredictable ways (vinge's "augmented intelligence", autonomous weak AI agents (both physical and virtual), the implied understanding and deliberate manipulation of "intelligence" and possibly "consciousness").
i tend to be a bit more optimistic than most people in the business. i guess i'm simply too stupid to be properly pessimistic.
to summarize my answers, i'm gonna talk about them by survey category, from 50-50 likelihood in the next 50 years to "f'geddaboutit".
likely in the next 50 years:
autopilots for personal vehicles: we'll probably come to regret it, but i expect they'll be adopted for cars soon enough.
likely in the next 500 years:
meta-comment: in my warped view of the world, 500 years is "beyond the next technological singularity". 500 years ago, the fastest vehicles were sailing ships, the highest density power source was falling water, nearly everybody worked on farms, and most kids died before the age of five. 500 years from now...? so, i tend to put a lot of things into this category simply because i don't think they're impossible, and they might serve a useful purpose.
so...
most transportation by personal flying machines: well, um, what transportation are we gonna need even in the next century? right now, people's most common trips involve going to work and going to buy things.
let me make a couple of random speculations about things that might happen to those. a bit of fiction i read (probably by vinge or stephenson) had fedex delivery drones: they deliver goods right to you. that's too expensive for us right now, but not unreasonable for the near future. there's a lot of stuff i could have delivered from stores if it was cheap enough to do so, and automation like that might make it cheap enough. strike (most of) one class of trips.
increasing numbers of people already telecommute to work. there's still advantages to getting people in one place at one time, though. but i don't see that it's unreasonable for us to eventually (decades) get multi-GB/sec connections to our homes, and "telepresent" to work, using virtual reality. that doesn't work for all jobs, true, but it works for a lot of them. it may work for many of the rest if they're designed that way. (right now, you have to be at a factory to make something, but that's because the tools and controls are designed for that; they could be designed for remote control.) strike another class of common trips.
that leaves travel for pleasure. with so few people routinely driving, we may start ripping up pavement, and reduce the road network. flying may become reasonable they way that traveling by river once was: it makes up for lack of roads. and there's a lovely vicious cycle with decreasing ground traffic forcing the remaining ground-pounders to take to the air: really, who's gonna pay to replace the chesapeake bay bridges a century from now?
this is, of course, speculation. but i don't see it as unreasonable, nor is the only possible future leading to most people traveling in flying cars.
FTL and related questions (wormholes, studying stars close up): i'm optimistic about hacks to GR like alcubierre's metric. we can't make one, but the math works, and that's a good start.
fusion power: why not? it should work, and unless the cost efficiency sucks mossy rocks, we'll probably use it. i suspect the cost question is the real one, not the technological one.
life extension: i don't expect to live to 200, but i think kids today have a good shot at it. life extension technologies generate virtuous cycles of life extension: if today's tech can keep you alive to 100, there's a good chance that some technology developed in during your extended lifetime will push that to 120, and in that extra 20 years, maybe a few more.
likely in the next 5000 years:
this is my catch-all for "i don't see why not". 5000 years is all of recorded human history and then some. i don't have any other basis for guessing what future human civilization will do except to say that if it's possible and somebody sees some advantage to doing it, they'll try it.
terraforming: probably not in this solar system, but since i'm optimistic about starflight... also, i have broad notions of "terraformed": if it's like any part of earth that's inhabited year-round, it counts. this includes hypothetical planets called "new siberia" and "deader valley".
ditto for talking to aliens: if FTL is possible, and the neighbors are home somewhere in the galaxy, we'll probably say hi at some point. possibly even without FTL travel.
the rest i lumped in to a bunch of categories for "probably doesn't work", "probably makes no economic sense", and "hell if i know". examples, in order: time travel, mars colonies, strong AI.
the last, i think, is not just a single technological singularity which will whack humanity upside the head. i expect a bunch of technologies leading up to it will also change civilization in unpredictable ways (vinge's "augmented intelligence", autonomous weak AI agents (both physical and virtual), the implied understanding and deliberate manipulation of "intelligence" and possibly "consciousness").