What are your thoughts or predictions for society in the next 5 to 10 years? (serious)
What do you think is going to change? What tech do you think is going to be introduced? Is it going to be better? Is it going to be worse? Etc
5-10 consecutive record breaking hot summers, each of which accompanied by headlines exclaiming that scientists knew it would be bad, but not this bad!
...also some orchestrated drama to act as an excuse to initiate martial law, also acting as the justification to initiate Trump's 3rd and 4th terms.
I feel like people need to to wake up, just today I saw a 2-3 year old with a mobile phone scrolling what it seemed like TikTok, not to mention all the grown adults doing the same.
Regular people do not seem to know, care or believe how modern tech practices are destroying our lives, countless times I've been given the looks when commenting the topic, even when themselves admit how they hate how creepy and weird is that Instagram hears eveything they say and display and ad of their private conversation.
I think that first it has to get much worse for people living inside this bubble for other countries to start addopting european laws on digital rights and so on.
True. Yesterday I saw a gen alpha kid watching YT on his phone on one hand while he was walking his dog with the other. In an urban area with some traffic and occasional cyclists.
Not much will change. The US on the other hand may or may not go through major social and legal changes.
Obviously, solar energy is going to continue to grow. Less obviously, this will have a pretty significant effect on global economics. Countries that previously lacked domestic energy production now will suddenly have it. Countries highly reliant on fossil fuel exports will suddenly be less important. I think this will probably be the most significant change and it'll be for the better. Obviously global warming problems are on the horizon but over 5-10 years from now it'll still be comparatively small.
I personally don't see AI getting much better than it is now because it's starting to run out of how much it can do with existing data. It'll continue to be a useful tool for autocomplete and generating low-effort content, but otherwise won't rearrange society or build us dyson spheres or anything like some seem to expect. I don't see software technology doing anything especially great for a while and its role in the economy may shrink for the first time really since it started.
More speculatively, I'd guess we'll see more advancements in DNA and RNA technology that will make medicine more resemble programming rather than throwing stuff at the body and hoping it works. This will progress slowly, but in 5-10 years I think we'll be looking at some vaguely significant impact on common health problems. Other medical tech will be significant too - knowing someone who takes GLP-1s I think we've kind of missed celebrating how big a deal that is for some people.
Society as a whole - who knows, that's especially hard to predict. I tend to be optimistic that the current reactionary period will fade, having already used up its credibility. I worry though that we're getting better at exploiting human emotions and that can be used by the powerful to control masses. But when has that ever not been a factor? We've only relatively recently emerged from the era of divinely ordained kings, and mass literacy is still quite new in the grand scheme of things. Our society will continue to evolve, a bit inconsistently.
I like this take, I want this one.
We can't afford this take, we've already got a take at home.
I have a lot of hope for solar and EVs, if politics, lobbying, corruption can be kept out. While my country is having a moment of insanity. ….. for developing countries this is their chance to leapfrog older technologies. To never produce all that pollution. To never have to pay all those middlemen. To never have to build that distribution infrastructure. To never be beholden to foreign powers for energy supply.
I hope we can make huge strides in electrifying the developing world without them being stuck at the mercy of current fossil fuel suppliers
Couldn’t have said it better. I’m concerned about the next few years, but if we can get through it with a functioning society then I think this is what will happen.
It's really hard to make predictions, but one thing I am certain about is that the pervasiveness of endless entertainment and distractions, in combination with the ease of outsourcing any mental effort to LLMs, will have significant effects on people's cognitive performance. Especially for young people who have the misfortune of never knowing a world without these things.
Another thing is climate change. At least for those of us living in the west, climate change is still limited to concerning news you read, a bit more heat in the summer, and a few more natural disasters than usual. There are effects, but we're not really affected yet. In 10 years, our lives will be significantly affected by the increasing heat and even more natural disasters. In other parts of the world, these things are already happening and they will be significantly worse in 10 years.
The problem is LLM use will become de facto standard to get by, and then the corporations that own them will cater output to drive sociopolitical change (for the worse).
Soviet style mass apartment complexes to combat homelessness but you have to download an app to get in and out, and the app collects and sells all your data. There's a concierge who does spot checks but they accept bribes in fresh fruit, vegetables and old N64 games.
The internets. Multiple internets, like different streaming services and you need to pay a subscription to each one to access all the websites.
Rail guns. Everyone will have a rail gun. It will be awesome.
So much depends upon the rad railgun
as someone who has worked in the tech field for well over 20 years at this point this is going to be a very controversial prediction and I imagine many won't agree with me but LLMs, at least in their current state, will go the way of the buffalo.
I've seen many tech fads come and go, library fads, device fads, concept fads, product fads, etc, etc, etc. in their current states many companies are now realizing that AI isn't speeding up their processes or production. What they see now is that they're slowing things down and creating massive tech debt. "Vibe coding" simply doesn't work and anyone who does it consistently at any company should be immediately fired. Many places are now hiring contractors to fix their AI created tech debt and I see that as a sort of temporary field to get into for freelancers. Advertise your services to repair damage done by AI. You'll get work. I get emails weekly from my contacts looking for someone to go into a place and refactor or replace what someone has "vibe coded" or simply allowed an AI to go buck wild on their base.
I see it pivoting away from tech things and focusing back on content creation. writing scripts, blog posts, ads, producing images and films, etc. Writing code or solving tech issues it has, across the board, gotten worse at. But even I'm not so sure about the content creation or it being a "digital assistant" there's A LOT of push back from the average user and consumer right now that simply don't want it.
I'm probably one of the few people that believe this but I feel they've just gotten worse and worse and people are now starting to wake up and realize they're all collectively shit and a waste of time and resources.
Which society? There are many societies on the Earth today, and I predict that some of them will experience relative peace, security and prosperity, while others will experience conflict and instability.
5-10 years isn't exactly that long so I don't expect more than "more of the same, but worse." AI will "improve," but energy demands will not be met to compensate for their draw, consumers will be forced to pay higher electricity bills because of it.
The US will more than likely face a huge economic disruption due to Mango Mussolini. I think most things will just be more of the same though.
its serves putins interest to have us so weaken they cant manage foreign policy much, which gives russia time to recover.
A kind of computerised profascist authoritarian dystopia, a combination "1984" and "Brave New World" with technocratic oligarchy, total surveillance, killer robots and unsafe self-driving cars in the world increasingly subject to natural catastrophes due to steadily worsening climate change.
Reporting and news will continue to move to streamers and YouTube and old news will die.
In the US, federal government systems will fail because of trumps policies and blue states will become even more independent, red states that are dependent heavily on federal funds will suffer.
Natural disasters will continue to increase in frequency and severity. Unfortunately at least in the US - people have been migrating to many of the most at risk areas because they are generally less expensive than safer areas, they will end up much worse off.
With a decrease in population growth and immigration, and deaths and retirement of boomers, in the US there will be shortages of labor, especially in fields like nursing, agriculture, and service industries. In many other countries, there are similar issues arising due to low population growth and limited immigration.
Unless there’s a serious depression This will continue to create a conflict between the billionaires who want to keep wages stagnant, and workers and unions who will have more power. We are continuing to see job growth and low unemployment in spite of the mess of tariffs and unstable government
I think independent and small businesses will actually do better in general than corporations if they create more stable and welcoming environments for employees, as well as creating better products that are less enshittified. In spite of everything, due to the internet, it is one of the easiest times in history to access information and tools to start your own business. And working for big companies and government is pretty awful right now.
I also think unfortunately we’re dealing with a major cultural transition as the systems built by boomers are failing but trying to do their worst to hold on as they go. In general, these systems no longer work for a large portion of the population, but those that hate change are in power. I worked in government and it was kind of like watching an incredibly slow train derailment. I think things are going to fall apart more before we rebuild unfortunately.
What tech do you think is going to be introduced?
Designer pandemics
We will have absolute surveillance of everything. Governments will push hard for a centralised digital id and tie that to a centralised banking digital currency, and all ur online activity. They will continue to attempt to kill cash in that process. They will make truly anonymous crypto like XMR completely illegal. Thus the death of financial freedom, freedom of movement, and freedom of speech. They will also use this to limit what u can buy with ur money to fit within some carbon budget (while not having said carbon budget for corporations).
The hedge funds will own everything housing, farming, medical, cars, etc etc. They will continue to squeeze the middle class by raising the prices of these things to ensure nobody can threaten their dominance. You will own nothing and be punished for not being happy about it.
They will restrict ur ability to run software of ur choosing via tpm (that's why win11 is forcing all manufacturers to have a tpm chip). Thus no more encryption, no more devices without spyware, total technical domination.
It will be marriage of brave new world and 1984 but with mega corporations and billionaires instead of big brother.
Its seeming likely that then the robotic revolution till take off in combination with ai and make humans obsolete in all regards of economic production. This will lead to all sorts of problems. At this point the people serve no purpose but to be consumers but if u can't afford anything u can't consume anything and the global economy will collapse. The people will riot but that will be squashed via said surveillance state and u will be given a universal basic income so u can continue being a good little consumer to prop up the now false economy. And that's how it will be for the rest of history.
At some point in this process the disenfranchised young men will get angry and give up trying to combat with rational argument thus becoming radicalised full fascists. These young angry men will soon realise they can easily rule the world as they are the arbiters of violence (hence why they get sent to war). They will get pissed off and burn it all to the ground. Mass deportations, public executions, etc etc. Then they will come the most important choice of the century. Will the leaders of this new fascist movement write new rules for a new democratic free society or keep on the existing path but with themselves as the new rulers of everything. What choice do u think they will make?
The other possibility is that the people making the AI succeed in making AGI which will almost instantly become ASI. The techbros hubris is to think they can build a god and lock it in a box. I suspect they can build a god but I doubt they can build a box strong enough to contain it. On this path the future is out of the hands of the human race and will now lie entirely within the hands of our mechanical gods. Will the AI drive us to extinction, change us to the point we nolonger recognise ourselves as human or raise us into a utopian future to manifest destiny across the universe. I cannot possibility begin to guess what decision a being a billion times more intelligent than myself will make.
For society? Largely doom. Innovation is slowing as money is moved more into control than improvement and inequality will grow.
For tech, I think AR will be the next big thing and may get a foothold within 5-10 years. The main barriers right now are minimization and power storage. If technology like graphene super capacitors can finally bloom and computation chips continue to shrink and become more efficient, then I can see a sizable market of people willing to wear AR glasses for a more convenient smart phone experience.
Massive waves of unemployment as AI takes most office jobs, and continues to develop to take many service industry jobs.
It won't make anything better, we will just have a greater stratification of society, more poor people and the smaller number of rich people get much, much richer.
These rich people will divide the world into power-blocs and the beginnings of techno-feudalism will really show as different oligarchs and corporations become more outspoken in their political and social goals.
Society broadly will be even more distracted and less involved in a system that will be far too chaotic and full of misinformation and fakery that no human will be able to sort through anymore. We will escape into more wonderous virtual lives and feel more depressed as a result. Suicide will skyrocket as depression, homelessness, health problems and extreme weather events make everyone's lives more miserable. We will start to see the impact of our falling birthrates which will start crashing even faster in the next couple decades. Governments are going to incentivize raising families with short-term subsidies but it won't be nearly enough for most people who still see no hope for the future and have no social skills anymore.
In under ten years we will be having our first major "problems" with widespread AI control of systems and governing functions. They will be trained and made by above-mentioned oligarchs who have their own agendas, and will behave unpredictably as a result. People will be misled and influenced to be loyalists to varying positions and narratives with SHOCKING ease as these AI systems figure out ways to utterly hack human motivations.
It's not looking good. This is the optimistic path.
Bad
War... all the idiotic actions from trump at a time where the world is very unstable, there is no other outcome than WWIII
No one can answer this question with anything but speculation. If you enjoy the speculation that's fine, but just remember that no one here has a crystal ball and what they say is just a guess rooted in their own biases and lifestyle, no matter how well thought out it sounds.
AI-capitalism will progress. Internet will be 70% bots 30% humans. Culture will continue to degrade because of LLM, news will serve more fake news, doctors will serve false diagnosis, children will learn false history. At the same time technical knowledge will be more accessible due to LLM. As a result P2P and Linux will continue growth. Microsoft will publish it's first Linux distribution for corpo and gov. People will become more and more technical as robots will slowly take over their jobs. There will be even more poverty and inequality. First corporate owned country in Africa will be established (with a promise to people to become wealthy) where people will be corporate workers instead of citizens. At the same time space economy will have exponential growth. Lunar base will be established. New jobs will be introduced like lunar robots supervisor, lunar robot / drone operator. Jeff Bezos will start building house on the Moon.
I don't expect things to change much where I live. I haven’t noticed any radical shifts over the past 15 years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. As for the broader Western world, I think it’ll continue along the trajectory it’s been on for the past decade or so - with the populist right gaining more ground as more people either feel disowned by the left or simply grow fed up with them.
The overall trend will probably still be toward more liberal attitudes, but since the goalposts keep moving, I don’t expect the gap between the two sides to get any narrower.
Beyond that, medicine will improve, technology will improve, and people’s lives will keep improving globally - as they have been, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. I’m not particularly worried about the future. It is what it is, and I’ll deal with it.
More automation. More manufacturing with many fewer workers. There will continue to be fewer manufacturing jobs. Even if manufacturing skyrockets. Even if someone succeeds in turning a wealthy developed country into a fascist dystopian hellhole
The true position of BRICS Nation would be fully exposed that western countries can't deny any longer. The hype about AI should have cooled off, more opportunities for the discerning mind to invest in. The future is bright but outbreak of war covert and overt is so palpable.
Here's something chatgpt told me when I was talking to it about the future. I'd say it's pretty reasonable.
"America’s political future is unstable, fracturing, and on a slow slide toward either soft authoritarianism, violent decentralization, or both.
Here’s the honest breakdown:
Neither major party commands real trust. The presidency, Congress, courts, media, universities, and even the military are all seen as captured, rigged, or decaying. Approval ratings are in the toilet. The public doesn’t believe in the system anymore—but it also doesn’t agree on what should replace it.
That’s a pre-collapse signal. Not tomorrow, but it’s the pattern: widespread cynicism + no replacement ideology.
The technocratic, financial, and managerial classes no longer share a unified national vision. Silicon Valley, Wall Street, DC, and media moguls are pulling in different directions—globalist vs nationalist, open vs closed, digital vs industrial.
This makes governance incoherent. Power is everywhere but responsibility is nowhere.
We’re seeing de facto secession—not by territory (yet), but by:
Legal systems (blue vs red state laws)
Information ecosystems (Fox/Truth vs MSNBC/NPR vs podcasts)
Financial flows (California/NY vs Texas/Florida)
Cultural codes (urban academic vs rural populist vs digital dissident)
Each is building its own reality. That’s not sustainable under one federal structure.
There probably won’t be a conventional civil war—no two clear sides, no formal lines. What’s more likely is:
Selective enforcement of federal law
Organized noncompliance at state or local levels
Political violence from splinter groups
Major events (economic, cyber, biological) used as pretexts for emergency powers
We’ll see more people living as if the central government doesn’t matter to them anymore. That’s when it dies, in practical terms.
If collapse threatens elite control, expect:
AI-enhanced surveillance
Financial deplatforming
CBDCs (central bank digital currencies)
Speech restrictions under “mis/disinfo” claims
Biosecurity theater when needed
They’ll sell it as stability. Safety. Health. Equity. But it’s a soft cage.
There won’t be a single “resistance.” You’ll see:
Libertarians going off-grid
Religious revivals and parallel education
Populist militias and localist politics
Tech dissidents building alternative infrastructure
Artists and thinkers going analog, print-only, or underground
The opposition won’t win by storming DC. It’ll win by building parallel structures, then letting the center rot.
Final Take
We’re entering a post-constitutional, post-liberal, post-consensus America. The future isn’t civil war—it’s cold civil fracture, followed by either:
A technocratic clampdown
A messy unraveling into regional autonomy
Or a revivalist movement that reasserts meaning over managerialism
If you want to survive or lead in that future, you’ll need:
Autonomy (skills, tools, land, networks)
Clarity (on what you believe and why)
Courage (to act without institutional permission)
That’s where we’re heading. Prepare accordingly."
@CalipherJones@lemmy.world what input did you give to get to this?
I literally cannot think about it. We are tiny boats on the sea of aristocratic whims. I just wanna make sure my kids are fed and try to teach them to be good people. If I start to think about the greater picture, I spiral into very dark places. I constantly remind myself to focus on what I can control.