What do you think life in the UK will be like 30 years from now?

[Blancmangemouse]

The year is 2053. I will hopefully be about to retire. What do you think life will be like?

I remember in my teenage years I became irrationally convinced I would die at 25. I remember reading that young people inexperienced with life can feel this way because they just can’t picture their future selves in an adult world which is unknown to them.

Now mid 30s I am getting similar feelings and it could be because the future seems so uncertain. AI, Climate Crisis, World Powers shifting- etc etc.

So what do you think 2053 will realistically look like?

This! Thank you!

Feeling torn about whether to spend my money now on having a nice life while I can, or save like crazy and become a prepper for the end times…

Maybe the government could bring it in, buying a plot in the protected Attenborough fields so you're buried beneath the wildflowers. It's clear Greens are going to win the 2055 elections AGAIN so it might happen.

You should write all this in a blog you know, it will be fascinating to return to as the years go by!

Water, housing, food, healthcare electricity being expensive luxuries.

Self driving cars.
More natural diversity as we develop more understanding of the importance of natural resources as healing the planet and humanity.
More people employed in fixing nature as AI does the other jobs.
More people employed as caring for others as AI does the other jobs.
Skiing and wine making are big business in the UK.
UK is in the EU.
The demise of the Tory Party taught in history GCSE. <<spoiler alert: It was Boris Wot Done It>>

Well thank god for small mercies. He’s a terrible actor

Like years and years

fucked

we are fuelling our own problems with idiotic behaviour. Every day. We don’t have enough doctors. We treat the ones we do have like shit so they emigrate and we don’t allow clever, motivated kids with loads of A stars into medical schools as the are “full”. So in 30 years, we’ll have no healthcare.

i hope that I’ll be dead by then and that my kids will have emigrated to somewhere more sensible.

A big divide between the rich and poor. A very small middle class. Just like countries such as India, Brazil. What we consider basic necessities will be luxuries. Most will be renting from large corporations and the wealthy few will own their own homes. Most won’t have enough money coming in to cover expenses and “slums” will be created where the poor live in inner cities.

It'll be a world without me in it, and I'm okay with that

I do expect many of the insanities presently evident to get worse during my remaining lifetime. It depresses me, not least because I've had to return to campaigning when I'd hoped today's generations would be doing the right thing!

30 Years is a full generation, however. Positions of power will be held by Gen Z & Alpha. It's a historical truism that young people observe the mistakes of their elders, and try to do better. This doesn't mean, sadly, they learn from history - they'll probably repeat the mistakes of my generation & my parents' (meaning THEIR kids will then rebel by genderqueering everything and throwing public wellbeing to the market forces) - but they're likely to both reverse the batshittery and put measures in place to deal with urgent global issues such as climate change and migration.

Geopolitics will have shifted by then, but I'm not betting on an outright win for China. It's possible there will be no clear leader for a generation or so.

Wow… you lot must be fun at parties 🤣

OP, you’re in your 30s? So born in the ‘90s? Things will be fine. It will be more or less the same.

• There will be rich people and poor people
• religious and non-religious
• More and better tech but my old timey potato masher will still work just as good as it does today.
• there will be a new environmental crisis that will be on the brink of offing the lot of us- Ozone layer anyone?
• there will be wars fought and one brimming on the horizon
• There will be people looking back at the good ol’ days of the ‘20s and someone else calling them “boomer” or equivalent and blaming them for all the current problems…psst that will be you by the way
• people will be bitching about In-laws, kids these days, dog shit, taxes, and work

A lot depends on how many lunatics vote Republican or Tory at the next elections. I tend towards a pessimistic view. Top two predictions:
1 Vast gulf between the very rich and everyone else in the West. The rich will get to live in safe and clean closed communities, with healthcare and gene-editing that renders them and their children near-as immortal. Everyone else will live in a dangerous, impoverished hellhole with lower quality of life and more crime than we have now.
2 Climate change will cause wars over resources and unimaginable scale of migration from warzones and uninhabitable areas of the planet into Europe and America that will make the last ten years look like a picnic.

Oh, I think we'll be absolutely fine.

I'm quite a bit older than you OP, there's always Casandra-like portents of near-immediate Doom.

But, life for the average human actually keeps getting a bit better. There are so many things we can do that were just inconceivable even 30 years ago.

Yes, none of that comes without ethical and political conversations and accountability.

We can bat around forever the rights and wrongs of technochracy, corpocracy, differing models of government, the data economy, AI, smart cities, block chain, the fucking singularity...

Things are moving fast, BUT, technology allows us, you, to access the world in a way humans have never been able to before. It enables people to mobilise and gather, for good or bad. Technology is just a tool. It really is. And with fire, or flint, or wheels, these things change the world.

If it all goes to shit, then maybe people are shit.

But wheels and fire and the printing press didn't just just bring bombs and tanks and propaganda.

They also brought the ability to see the world, to travel, to understand people further than the next village, to bring materials to build beautiful testaments. To keep our ourselves warm and roast chickens and to provide energy to run our homes and lives. To give the masses books, literature, emotional succour, political power over the church.

All big steps in human evolution. No doubt all viewed with suspicion at the time.

So I think we'll be ok.

And if we're not?

Well your robot overlords will be controlling your smartphone, so you won't be around to tell me I'm wrong.

Population levels will either be lower or completely out of control.

More flooding, high winds, extreme weather, and power cuts. Oh, and sewage.

A lot more moulded protein as a lot of crops will have failed (see above). Not to mention our insistence on growing just one crop in a field generally.

Clothes will be drab and utilitarian.

Transport will probably be via hydrogen cell powered vehicles.

Music and literature will be auto-generated and anyone not from the correct caste will be sent to pick turnips for life in the flatlands of Suffolk and Norfolk.

Literacy will probably be lower.

Health, education etc will be fabulous for the wealthy. The rest of us will probably have resorted to growing our own medicinal herbs by then.

The government's mates will still get richer though, whoever's in power and there will still be trash TV to keep us all quiet as we drool over the lives of the famous and mediocre.

Of course I could be totally wrong and humanity will have evolved enough to make sure everything is shared out fairly and everyone has a roof over their heads and enough good food to eat, a pleasant job that contributes to society, and the options of great education, leisure, and travel opportunities. Because look how well the last few thousand years have gone in this respect....

I do think people watch and read and actually buy into dystopian speculative fiction worlds.

Yes, of course, we could all wake up one day, it's raining heavily and Rick Deckard has come from the future to kill us because our name is Winston Smith and we didn't offer ourselves as tribute.

I get it. It's quite fun to project such grim futures because today might not be brilliant.

It's also a good mental exercise.

I do wonder though, because MN is so relentlessly negative, if it isn't an exercise in such. Or that it's populated by Russian bots that constantly promote negativity, if you have 3p a month over really basic subsistence levels you're told to 'check your privilege' or 'read the room' so that you actually start to believe that everything is shit and you should be grateful for your monthly egg.

Ha!

@Jellycatbat20, I presume your post is satire.

It was very well timed.

According to current trends and scientific projections, we will witness the extinction of many species, pollution and plastic everywhere, fires, extreme weather events, water wars and general resource wars because of water and food shortages, unbearable droughts and heat and desertification, climate refugees, starvation, and very low quality of life for all except the rich.

I have two small nephews and I don’t understand why anyone would voluntarily sentence kids to the misery that is to come. On the bright side, perhaps Elon musk will figure out how to save us all. 🙄

'Or'

The world is now very populous.

And

Countries are doing there best to feed everyone.

Plastics are a problem which is why alternatives are constantly being sought.

Species extinction? That's been a thing since cells got together. When the Earth was more oxygen rich insects were huge. Mammals are a fairly recent thing.

We, humans, are mammals. We've not been around for so long.

If out big mammal brain makes us not suitable for Earth because we fucked it.

So what?

So many species have gone extinct.

Does it matter?

I would say not.

Feeding everyone is already impossible, world hunger is increasing with the growing human population. Hotter temperatures along with droughts, desertification, and water shortages will make food production even more difficult.

Yes, extinction matters. Even if one does not care about the loss of the beautiful natural diversity we should all want to protect, many species are a barometer of environmental health and their demise is a serious warning to humans.

I think you misunderstand @LuckyPeonies.

Do humans really matter?

I'm not sure they/we do.

Extinction includes us. We are as irrelevant as large insects on a Universal level.

Pandas don't matter. Elephants don't matter. Duckbill platypus' don't matter. Blue whales don't matter.

We don't matter.

Unless you actually believe that sentience makes us special somehow?

And then we're either talkin' bout religion or human exceptionalism.

And maybe the fact we're having this conversation means that we are a bit special.

And then that's a whole new conversation.

There will still be threads about class on mumsnet, and about how to look "expensive".

Yes mebbe @Liorae.

'My body has been subsumed by the interweb. Is a floral maxi ok or too pixilated?'.

I think it will be much the same as it is now but perhaps without the nhs. I don't think things will change that much in thirty years.

Yes, I did misunderstand, and I agree that human extinction does not matter because we brought it on ourselves. But I do very much care about all the (also sentient) species who suffer as a result of our selfish, vile behavior.