Predicting the last thing you might see

I've written before about one of the disadvantages of long term planning. If you are the kind of man to project your financial position until your death, you will think about your death. The easiest projection you can make is how long you will live. Estimate your current life span and subtract your age. You can estimate the year that you may perish.

While predicting the year of your death can be depressing, there is one thing that quells that feeling. What will the world look like decades into the future?

My father is a baby boomer. He was born in 1955. He grew up watching new technology was forming. He told me stories about when color tv first hit the markets. He witnessed the first manned moon landing in 1969. At that time, he was 14 or 15. He lived to see the draft for the Vietnam War. He lived through the Cold War and the panic of the world destroying itself with nuclear weapons.

Even in my lifetime, I've seen technology advance. As a little kid, I remember the top of the line technology was VCR's and cassette players. After the introduction of the Iphone, the whole world has become apps.

I used to frequent Wikipedia a lot just looking for trivial information. In Wikipedia, you can just type in a year and you will come to a page that lists all the notable events for the year. The fun thing to do is type in a future date.

Depending one when you search Wikipedia will show different things. After 2050, there aren't any real concrete predictions. Mostly, you will just see records of what planets will do. This is to be expected. Making an accurate prediction several decades in the future will be like trying to hit a target from 1000 yards away. I typed in the year 2075 and saw nothing noteworthy.

However, by the year 2050, the Great Green Wall of China is estimated to be completed. This is a project to plant trees in order to prevent the spread of the Gobi Desert. In the same year, it is estimated that the completion of a space elevator will occur.

These predictions and estimates are always subject to change but it is nice to have a small idea of what might happen in our lifetime.