The Future - Elie Weinstein

What does the future of Earth hold for civilization? Will we fly or teleport to school, have brain chips, prosthetic limbs, duplicates, and communicate with extra terrestrial beings? With all the discoveries, inventions, and achievements that have been made over the past 50 to 100 years, there is no telling exactly how life will be in the future. Due to our achievements and technologies, the evolution of civilization is accelerating more because our findings and technologies have made it easier to further create and discover. If this trend continues, then I cannot wait to see what the future has in store for humanity.
The world’s greatest unsolved problems include but are not limited to the environment, terrorism, nuclear threats, HIV/AIDS, and poverty. The only way to solve these problems in order to have a promising future is if all states cooperate towards common goals, which should include future plans to reorganize the UN as well change many of its policies. To start off, countries need to shift rapidly from using resources such as oil and coal that power technology to safer, cleaner, and more reliable sources such as nuclear power. This would indirectly prevent the already poverty-stricken nations from falling into a black hole of disease and starvation as a result of global warming having negative effects on crops, bodies of water, and animals–and it would solve several other important issues.
The world may be a bit stuck and in danger at the moment; regardless, I envision a bright future for most of us. The global climate change hype will cool down within 20 or so years because most countries would have already made the big switch to sustainable and renewable energy sources. Terrorist attacks could grow and may pose a bigger threat to the world in coming years due to Iran’s (a major supporter of terrorism) nuclear program, yet at the same time the power of terrorist organizations could shrink simply because in 50 years or more, leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Osama Bin Laden, Hugo Chavez, and Muammar al-Gadaffi will have fortunately passed away. At the same time, the world could collapse within a very small amount of time from now due to the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear plans and its support for terrorism, which could lead to a WWIII. As of now, it feels as if the world is in a second Cold War, and the close tie between Iran and Venezuela is similar to that of the USSR and Cuba. Ahmadinejad will probably use Venezuela as a base for the nuclear weapons he is currently trying to develop under the pretense that he is creating nuclear “energy.”
Technology will play an even bigger role in the future than it already does. We won’t see flying cars, but cars will be driven by a computer–this is not a radical idea; right now there are cars in production that can park themselves. In terms of computing and mobile technology, the future is looking brilliant. Mobile devices are going to be even more sophisticated; smart-phones will not only include media, music, etc. but as well as identification, your finances, keys, you will be able to have conference calls on your cell phone, and mobile devices will react to and gather data from the environment. Apart from communication and such, technology will also be involved in health and our bodies. In the future, we could have prosthetic limbs or suits that make us stronger; we have already developed electronic pills that can record and get footage of what happens in our bodies. Sadly however, we will probably learn to depend on such technologies and not be able to function without them, just as we have become so dependent on medicine, computers, and the Internet. There is no telling what the future is going to look like; it depends on the decisions made by the international community and world leaders.