If you're EVER going to buy a house, you'd better do it before April - here's why.

mystic_trev

padington wrote: »

However do consider the possibility of technological change like self diving cars and hologram technology making vast changes to our working life and productivity levels. Expect whopping great changes to life as we know it over the next 20 years. Expect a world where cities will become much cleaner and easier to navigate but also consider the possibility of talking to anyone in the world like they are in the room with you and how that might change things. Expect a world without bin men, street cleaners, taxi drivers and expect a world where salesmen, doctors and work colleagues in Hong kong appear virtually right in front of you at the click of a button and the ability to clock on from the moment you step into your Google car to the moment you step out of it.

I guess you've already gone out and bought your Orgasmatron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgasmatron

lisyloo

The only thing that can stop it is rent controls and socialist tax increases, global financial collapse or an act of terrorism that involves something like a nuclear bomb.

What about more likely things, like lower oil prices, less money available from Russia, China, Oil producing nations?

and hologram technology making vast changes to our working life and productivity levels

We were told this about people working from home.
Some people do it.
Those who do practical jobs like picking up the rubbish cannot WFH, neither can anyone doing anything that required security e.g. people working with decryption algorithms can't take their laptop on the train.
Many comapnies (like mine) require a certain amount of "collaboration".
It has changed things for some individuals but our tubes, buses, trains and roads are still rammed so it hasn't been a pradigm shift at all.

but also consider the possibility of talking to anyone in the world like they are in the room with you and how that might change things

Nightmare, all those people WFH will have to get dressed in the morning (yesterday I stayed all day in my dressing gown).

Expect a world without bin men, street cleaners

Yeah right. Can this hologram stick a syringe in me and do a blood test.

But please tell us what you're taking, I'd like some :-)

padington

The technology is already in California as we speak. Just a matter of fine tuning now. 2035 and it will all be here. London will get it quickly, maybe earlier.

Just because tomorrow's world all those years ago got it wrong doesn't mean Google and Microsoft will now. Poasibly time to think about retrainimg if you've just done the knowledge.

Expect virtual international parties to be quite normal, mingling with real and virtual people. Expect to have new virtual work mates with offices exactly the same lay out to incorporate virtual colleagues. Expect to wear glasses and ear pieces a lot.

Expect to interact with futures 'films'. Expect zombies attacking the office in the lunch hour.

Expect the new toys to mostly be enjoyed in the big cities.

Expect people to become addicted to this new technology like people are with their iPhones already. Expect viewing the real world without the virtual support as quirky and expect some people to feel anxious without their virtual world intermixing with reality.

Expect charities to start trying to help the 'virtually excluded'.

Expect nurses in the future just like now to do blood tests not doctors.

mayonnaise

lisyloo wrote: »

Apart from becoming middle-aged that's a very significant time-window for a woman (if I need to spell it out I'm talking fertility window).

I'm seriously worried about Crashy Time's fertility window now.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

padington wrote: »

Expect charities to start trying to help the 'virtually excluded'.

That'll be me. I've got a CRT telly, a stupid phone, and no computer at home. PM me if you feel like sending a charitable donation.

the_flying_pig

padington wrote: »

I expect london to become like Monaco, home of the super rich...

what rot.

monaco has, like, 35,000 people living there. a very high proportion of these people are indeed well off. certainly very few are poor. this population supported by a population of about the same number of workers who commute in every day from france.

but London is just too big to be the home of the super-rich in even nearly the same way. the areas that you're usually ramping on here, I forget which, wood green, ally pally [right?] are, well, there are easily a few million people's worth of better areas in London than those areas. there will never be nearly enough super rich people on the planet never mind in blightly to occupy even a small proportion of that total.

padington wrote: »

...consider the possibility of talking to anyone in the world like they are in the room with you and how that might change things. Expect a world without bin men, street cleaners, taxi drivers and expect a world where salesmen, doctors and work colleagues in Hong kong appear virtually right in front of you at the click of a button and the ability to clock on from the moment you step into your Google car to the moment you step out of it...

if even half all of that happened [particularly videoconferencing that's genuinely comparable with meeting face to face - which BTW I believe is a very long time off] then imo it'd be the death knell for paying stupid prices for sketchy outer London crashpads in order to brave the tube into central London every day. there'd simply be no need for all of the UK that's looking to do highly-paid work to bunch together in & around London. why not live by the sea, or in the Cotswalds, or, er, Harrogate or whatever?

unlike your example Monaco London doesn't particularly have the tax advantages, weather, yachting, or, well, all that much really aside from being the physical location of 'the city'. well, maybe nice places near hyde park or Harvey nicks or whatever do but, seriously, wood green??

buglawton

Maybe Padington already contradicted himself
"Expect the new toys to mostly be enjoyed in the big cities"
...back to square 1 then

SF author Neil Stevenson already predicted this type of 2035 supervirtual world in his 1995 book "The Diamond Age".
But even in that vision, everyone seemed to be living in a megapolis.

Fella

The article in the OP isn't scaremongering, it's just a party political broadcast by the Labour party. Freeing up pensions was a great move (one of the few from the Tories). Labour are really struggling against it & this article is a feeble attempt to portray the pensioners who'll benefit as a bunch of rich evil old boomers (i.e. Tory voters) about to push house prices even further out of reach of "hard working families" (i.e. the voters Milliband spends his life trying to woo).

Fortunately the pension freedoms will, if anything, benefit the less well off more than the loaded, which is why the Labour spin machine is struggling so much against it. Osborne out-manoeuvred them good & proper on that move. Shame he hasn't got the guts to try similarly bold moves in other areas.

chewmylegoff

Oh and expect life expectancy for new generations to get completely reconsidered ...

This has already happened really - life expectancy for people born today in this country is 100 or something like that. The trouble is we have worked out how to keep the body alive for that long but not the brain. So as well as your google card and holograms we can add millions of people with dementia living in care homes.

Plus I don't think there will be a robot apocalpyse of bin men within the next 20 years.

Loughton_Monkey

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

That'll be me. I've got a CRT telly, a stupid phone, and no computer at home. PM me if you feel like sending a charitable donation.

No need.

Someone will cotton on, soon, to the need for "Technology Banks" where you can go along and pick up a flat screen TV, and maybe a laptop, for nothing.

I would actually go myself. I've got 4 computers already for the two of us, but I've always felt that another one in the en-suite may not come amiss.

Same with televisions. We have five, but Mrs LM complains that going into the Utility room to empty the washing machine interrupts her life and is really irritating if you miss a couple of questions on University Challenge.

Before we knew it, these places would pop up all over the place with long queues, thus proving that "Computer & TV Poverty" is a large, genuine and very sad problem in today's society. Something must be done!