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.)

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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.

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GrimWillow wrote

Natural disaster's increase, conspiracy abound claiming it's created by powerful entities. Neo-liberal capitalists attempt to garner support, using the completely controlled commercial internet (decentralized net tech has been phased out of production and made illegal, to fight "fake news" of course), and claim to be the only force to stop the anti-capitalist fascists from taking over, as the anti-capitalist fascist's take a page out of 1984 to claim that they are finally destroying the capitalists and need all the people to stand with them or be purged as well.

Anarchists have created autonomous zones and have been more successful as people wake up to the realization that they can't trust any vertical organizing. I imagine this fight would be similar to how the FLOSS movement has been against the corporations (but with more combat robotics). After weathering the storm of capitalists and capitalist supported fascists, the Anarchists have become the only viable 3rd option for many who don't trust either the capitalists or the fascists. After many fascist groups imploded under the corruption of everyone wanting to be "on top" and the capitalists have been long understood to be devils, people are pushed to defend and hide in the Anarchist zones, and if they didn't know Anarchism before, they learn it there.

The battle is a bloody one, as liberation always has been, and eventually the struggle for horizontal organizing becomes strained by the degradation of the habitat and takes many losses on all sides.

The capitalist supported fascists are forced to use the tools and ideas of the Anarchists to survive, and the capitalists provide them even more tools as they continue claiming to be the only "heroes" to stand against Anarchists and anti-capitalist fascists.

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elyersio wrote

This sounds scary. How can I help to stop the desicration of decentralization?

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AlexanderReidRoss wrote

Desertification and flooding spurring the biggest migration North in history.

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zorblax wrote

Honestly, I have no expectations. I barely understand what's going on in the world now.

All I know is that the cyberpunk vision came true, and it's only going to get moreso.

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EdgyIndividualistBuffoon wrote

The collapse of the US, and its replacement by full Corporatocracy. The rise of egalitarian cultures elsewhere. China abandoning its 'communist' aspirations and beginning a new era of imperialism to destroy those egalitarian cultures.

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Defasher wrote (edited )

Collapse of civilisation, leading to a war between fascism and anarchism to create the new status quo.

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