Ask Lemmy

I’ll go by (very broad) regions:

The United States experiences a brain drain and Trump’s death (all but inevitable in 10 years, whether by natural causes or other means), will cause a major rift in the Republican Party. Democrats will somehow fail to capitalize on it and then blame online leftists, famously the kingmakers of American politics.

Canada will become a de facto part of Europe. Bike lanes will be added.

Europe will experience an economic boom as it’s basically forced to develop new industries, becomes the default destination for scientific research, and the Euro begins to replace the dollar as the currency of choice for international trade contracts. France, especially, will benefit as it isn’t reliant on the U.S. for military support, space launch capabilities, etc. and will become the default NATO weapons supplier.

Russia will have a deep post-war depression even if it takes Kyiv due to brain drain and sending so many young men into a meat grinder.

China will have a medium-sized economic crisis but ultimately (after Xi) enact long needed reforms (kind of like when Mao died and Deng Xiaoping enacted reforms).

India will have a major crisis as Hindu Nationalism goes too far and people begin to revolt.

Central Asia will keep on keeping on. (I don’t know a lot about Central Asia.)

Latin America will increase trade with China and Europe at the expense of the United States. Bolsonaro will go to the hospital 50 more times and be bit by an even more exotic bird. Argentina will benefit most from the decline of the U.S. as a reliable trading partner.

Israel will annex the West Bank and Arab countries will isolate it. Saudi Arabia’s line city will still be in the planning stages. Iran will develop a nuclear deterrent but the power of the Supreme Leader will be weakened and shift to the elected officials because of economic problems.

The Maghreb will benefit from Europe’s rise and increased trade. West Africa will experience an economic and population boom and become an inexpensive manufacturing hub. The Horn of Africa will probably remain a shitshow (but hopefully I’m wrong about that). Central and Southern Africa will also experience significant growth but at a slower pace than West Africa.

Australia will lose another war with emus as New Zealand wisely allies with the Emus. They will force Australia into a humiliating peace deal that ultimately leads to a third Emu War, much like WWI’s onerous peace terms led to WWII.

Ocean acidification and rising sea levels will begin to fuck everyone and scientists will scream about it but it’ll be the following decades when that sort of thing really wrecks the world economy.

Nintendo will somehow sell me the same games for the 5th time.

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.

Things get "Wild in the Streets" and the voting age is lowered to 15. Everybody over 30 is put into retirement camps and fed LSD all day.

I will get up and go to work.

Humans are quite bad at predicting the future, so I'm going with an easy one.

China will do nothing and somehow win.

I'll adopt a cat. 🤞

EDIT: I read the question wrong, but I'm keeping it up.

"Saltwater Intrusion" is going to become a fairly common story in coastal areas in a few years, to the point it becomes normal. The way everyone has just accepted fire season in the western US.

Which, in turn, will bring more and more shady water-rights selloffs and thefts, main affecting marginalized communities.

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

World War 3: Return of the Civil War

Pandemic 2: Bird Measles

Depression 2

All at the same time

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

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.

I understand it is normal human behavior to focus on negative things and an evolved survival trait. But it is kind of sad that no answers have any positive thoughts about the future. So I will try one:

Computer and robotic technology will improve and get cheaper. It will become feasible for home bound people to be able to have some sort of participation in society through telepresence.

US car company collapse. A major armed conflict between two large economies

China will overtake US as the dominant economic power, exert their influence on neighbouring regions and get more push back than it thought (similar to Russia).

The world will fracture into different regions with different day to day life (even more so).

US will become the wild Wild West where everything goes in the right state.

Canada and Europe (western not Eastern) will stay put in terms of peace, but they will no longer have “the best standard of living”.

Africa will get abused by China and become the next China.

Australia will be like, wtf mate, but they’ll be dead soon… stupid kangaroos.

✨ Enshitification ✨

@[email protected] 10 years

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.

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

At least five new countries acquire nuclear weapons.

Trump either dies suspiciously or gets openly assassinated.

California secedes from the union which starts off hopeful but ends in their own Calexit debacle.

The severing of intercontinental data cables leads to the isolation of formerly global communities.

The attacks on transgender people will spread to the rest of the LGBTQ community, then the disabled, then immigrants, then Jewish people, and so on. Because first they came for the transgender people and we didn't speak out.

Fediverse will be regulated by law or some nonsense, making it exactly like the centralized platforms.

President Elon Musk serves half of his third term as permanent president of the United States. All public transit and bike lanes are abolished in favor of cars, and many people go broke after losing their jobs after being unable to afford to make it to work. Inflation is at an all time high with everyone being nostalgic about today's prices where everything is still affordable. He also makes it illegal to be transgender. We go back to democracy when some rando who deliberately changed their name to a Mario character assassinates Musk.

The next smash cuts a character everyone loves but also has the three house leaders.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters conveniently forgot about Amazon.

Reddit shuts down or lives on as a husk like 𝕏. Or even better, Elon buys reddit, calls it 𝕏 Communities and throws out brand materials like "subreddit" in favor of generic "community". Place becomes 𝕏 Draw and is only powered by AI image generators. Each pixel costs one dogecoin and users generate ai images at the resolution of the pixels they own.

Nintendo's next console is a Switch 3.

Everyone has a folding phone now.

The collapse of the petro dollar.

Ameriscum here. Trump starts a war to create plausibility for holding on to executive power past current term limits. Which has happened in American history. Not the starting part as an ends to a means though. I'm scared.

America will suffer an economic depression and become more isolationist which will allow the depression to continue unabated. Millions die of starvation and exposure.

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.

We will have The Year of Linux Desktop 3: Libre Boogaloo