The Future (realistically now)

What do you 4channers see for the future?  Realistically now, taking into account all the current trends, projecting it out say, 100 years?  I'm talking technological (as far as you're able, I know that's a tough one), social, political, ETC...

My take:

We'll either be extremely egalatarian or extremely "feudal" for lack of a better word.  The technology will either be used to further the average person, or to further individuals...  A balance between capitalism and socialism will probably be possible, I mean, it's the system we have right now so I can't say for certain if we'll be unable to maintain it... I'd have said it was impossible to be the way we are now if I lived in the year 1700...

I see technology further degrading  the value of human labor.  Most people will sit at home all day, or will spend their time in clubs, leading to a huge "leisure" class, supplied with a stipend from the government.  All people in productive jobs will be there almost entirely of their own free will, and they will still be able to run a capitalistic endeavor even though the system will be largely socialist (by taking in profits ultimately from the stipends of this leisure class).  All health care ETC... with either be free or very affordable, not neccesarily by government intervention.  People will live basically forever.

Mental illness will be a HUGE problem.  Almost everyone will use a huge part of their time either going to therapy or taking certain remedies (drugs, nanotech brain re-wiring) for depression and all the other illnesses that have sprung up in the modern era.   People will be very ignorant of things, never needing to know anything to survive.  Anti-obesity measures will be something that will be instilled almost at birth.

An alternate view, as science begins to unravel the workings of the human brain and body, the value of human life will be much reduced. The nightmare scenarios that have been presented before of vast clone armies of socipathic killers controlled by a government, the human race "consolidated" or turned into a group of single minded hive workers by some sort of brain rewiring, or even the population of the human race reduced by an extreme in favor of machines that serve only world governments.  There will be no rights for anyone, because we will be reduced to the mere substance that makes up our bodies, to be manipulated as "higher" intelligences deem worthy.  In other words, the Schozophrenics are correct.

Technologically, I see nanotech beoming the norm.  Houses with walls that can turn any color or even become transparent (quantum dots) will be standard, as well as the ability to manipulate nature on a vast scale.  Expect people to be levelling mountain ranges or filling the ocean to make way for things more profitable, such as residential areas ETC.  Global warming will be defeated, and we'll turn the earth into a real "space ship" perfectly attuned and balance for our life.  Weather will be controlled, those morning rains you enjoy will be a thing of the past unless they become trendy.  Basically, science fiction is made realistic through this.    Nano machines will probably permeate everything, and skilled hackers might even be able to do things like they did in the anime Full Metal Alchemist, reforming substance however they want by instructing the machines.

Space travel will be normal, almost something easy to do, and I believe more adventurous people will bulid themselves a ship and just take off, to set up shop elsewhere in the solare system.  Hundreads of communities will dot the space scape, some as small as a single family, some as large as huge cities, all self-contained, all full of billions of nano-machines taking care of everything.   The temperament that made people travel the oceans centuries ago will hopefully not be completely bred out of the human race.

Scientific progress will most likely stall unless computer brain machines are invented.  When people reach this level of comfort, what point is there in pushing it?  

Some of this wasn't particularly original, but I believe the ideas are possible.  What are your thoughts /newpol/?

Your ideas are too 'neat.' Too absolutist. Sure, there will be people who enter catonic state to escape reality. Sure, there will be corporations who fuck up the environment. Sure, there will be huge amounts of fucked up people. What else is new?

To learn about the future take a gander at the past. What was the future like 50 years ago? They imagined jetpacks and cures. Things haven't gotten better, they've just gotten more complex and there are more luxuries separating the poor from the rich, like medicine and technology. I think the comic Transmetropolitan draws an extremely realistic view of the future, or what the future will eventually look like. More war, more people, more diseases, more sub-cultures, more capitalism.

These are always truths, the world just tries to keep up with them. We won't all have a foreign totalarian leader, not a world war that burns the planet- just more of what we have now. Our future rulers are today's distractions. Rule by capitalism, political corruption, and prejudice against new things. Just another century.