Submitted by DataPacRat in AskRaddle
What do you expect the world will be like as we get close to 2040?
I'm not asking what you'd prefer to happen, or what you're working to make happen. I'm hoping that you can take the 'outside view', remembering how successful - and unsuccessful - past lobbying and pressure groups have been. Large trends or small, worldwide or personal - when the rubber meets the road, what are the most likely items you think you should plan for?
(I'm preparing an outline for a science-fiction story, and am looking for a few perspectives that I rarely read about in SF.)
NEOalquimista wrote
For a long time the civilized world could only speak with one voice. Before widespread digital media, alternate ideas had no opportunity to grow as they do now. The advent of the Internet created, most notably, more atheists and more anarchists, but also the opportunity for more extreme religious cults and more fascist organizations.
The conflicts rising today are going to intensify even more in the coming decades. The rise of fascism (people protecting the "state of no change" or "reality crafted by and for the privileged only") happens as a response to the increase in popularity of these alternate ideas - ideas that pull the comfortable carpet where most people used to stand on. It doesn't look like it's going to slowly and silently fall to one side or the other. It might get to the point of a major confrontation of equal power that will bring the world to a halt.
And then everything could be different from what it was.