- GM files for bankruptcy, puts marquees up for sale. I could see one of the Japanese big three picking up Hummer or GMC, maybe Saab. Actually, Saab might go to VW, BMW or Daimler, possibly even just spin back off on its own. Daimler might take Cadillac.

- Computing goes fully online. You walk up to any computer, log in and your virtual HD loads with all your files, software, etc. Broadband wifi is ubiquitous in metropolitan areas.

- Chinese is added to middle & high school foreign language programs in the United States.

Me3dia, I had a professor in college who also thought Chinese would be more widely taught in the near future. He mentioned it just about every class. He had his kids learning all the different dialects. That was about 10 years ago and it still hasn't happened. But maybe he was just way ahead of his time. (It is logical that we should learn to communicate with such a large segment of the earth's population.)

Metachat achieves sentience. Falls out with jonmc on second day.
Metafilter destroyed by new sentience because of 1 too many skylab jokes.
taz given Greece by mechanised killer robot bunny.
dodgy attempts Independence Day style insertion of a virus into the machine.
slashdot bickers about copyright and the difference between hackers and crackers.

far more culture wars, and censorship of everything, along with wonderful acts of rebellion, jamming, and creative disobedience. See that lottery ticket prank, but imagine it with a Rush Limbaugh show, or Fox News, etc, aired as "truth". More fake press releases being printed as news, more lies being printed as truth, and more and more fake controversies, all the time, from all sides and for a variety of reasons. More underground, wholly unpublishable and undisplayable literature and art, distributed digitally and by email and mailing lists.

more blurring between reality and cgi in movies and on tv, to the point where how someone looks onscreen won't at all match how they look off--see Kevin Costner's digitally reconstructed hair and stuff. (I bet Stallone's new movie uses it too)

more people will learn Mandarin and Arabic, and there'll be attempts to digitally record and save entire languages--Yiddish, and others.

Actually, given the fact that I haven't seen a huge change in the world in 15 years, I'd probably say that the world is going to be exactly the same. Some things may be a little bit smaller and there will be more coffee houses, but otherwise, it'll be just the same.

Woah - Max Barry. I've read that Jennifer Government book. It wasn't great.

Angelina Jolie will adopt more babies and steal more husbands. Watch out!

seanyboy: It's (surprise, surprise) being made into a film I think. The production company belonging to George Clooney and Steven Soderberg have got the rights if I remember correctly... think Oceans Eleven. The writers of Sexy Beast are writing the screenplay. I haven't read the book, but the idea seems interesting, and may be better suited to film. I guess that's my prediction: A film adaptation!

jrossi4r, I heard the same thing 10 years ago, but I think it's been delayed because of Chinese resistance to opening its cultural doors to globalization (despite having opened its workforce to it long ago). Now that the giant has begun to awake, it's going to be harder for schools to justify offering French and German but not Chinese, considering the ratio of global speakers for each language.

Spanish, on the other hand, will continue to rise in popularity in the US, if only so Bobby and Jenny can talk to the neighbor kids.

A depression/heavy-recession in the US which brings down large parts of the world economy followed by a full-blown world/resource war.

If I'm in denial about my negativity: ubiquitous portable wireless access and that someone will come up with the "killer app" of catering to retirees and end up richer than Croesus Bill Gates.

As for the Chinese language - in parts of Vancouver, a lot of kids seem to be picking up the language just because of the sheer amount of Chinese (mainland & Taiwan) immigrants in the school system.

The dollar will crash and burn. America will react badly and possibly violently.

EVERYBODY’S AN EXPERT
Putting predictions to the test.

The dollar will crash and burn. America will react badly and possibly violently.

For the life of me, i don't get why it went up throughout 2005.

Oh, another prediction: the GOP will split into 2: a Christian Religious Right party, and a Business/Corporate party.

No matter who is president the next 12-15 years will see steady erosion of free speech, privacy rights and civil liberties in the U.S.

The U.S. will still be the largest economy in the world but China will indirectly set the agenda as it's need for fossil fuels grows and it continues to fund both sides of conflicts in resource rich areas of the world.

Europe will see a slow steady increase in terrorist actions from local groups (short term).

Islam will continue to be a major factor in the world politic but the Arabs will slowly become less relevant as the Muslims from south-east Asia rise in prominence (long term).

me3dia, I think GM may file for bankruptcy but I don't think anything will be sold off.Pension obligations will be cut as they are the biggest cost factor in GM cars and one of the easiest things to cut in a Chapter 11.

For the life of me, i don't get why it went up throughout 2005.

Neither do I. I moved a substantial portion of my savings and retirement into euro and pound denominated accounts in 2002 and 2003, and looked like a genius for a bit. Now, I'm just confused.

Oh, another prediction: the GOP will split into 2: a Christian Religious Right party, and a Business/Corporate party.

This would make me incredibly happy. America would be very well served by a breakup of the current political duopoly.

I will have little mosches and moschas, and will raise them in an unimportant country that doesn't have oil.

i'd hang on to the euro ones, mosch, but dump the pound stuff...the euro is what more of the world is moving to, i think.

Re: Teaching Chinese languages - Our intern is a freshman @ a local private school, and is learning Chinese (mandarin?). It will take some time to turn the ship of public education, but the agile schools are already heading that way.

Having converted to a Service Economy, we start to find that our services suck. More specifically, I see the US losing its' dominant position in higher education on the world market. Our border-policy ass-clenching after 9/11 will continue to starve our universities of good foreign students, and US students are all in remedial reading when they get to Party U.

I agree with the forcasted steep devaluation in the US Dollar. We just don't do anything as a nation anymore that confers intrinsic value on our currency. Our monetary policy is batshit insane, and at some point our friends are going to tire of lending us money. In the near future, I believe Alcoholics Anonymous will be better at forcasting US trading relationships than our economists.

Energy, mostly oil, will continue to rise in price, and will put the hurt onto an American economy that is increasingly based upon buying & selling large houses, and buying things to fill those large houses. At some point, it's not going to be cost effective to get all of our consumer goods from China, purely in terms of cargo ship fuel. America will be punched in the gut when the WalMart model doesn't work anymore.

We will tap ANWAR and our 51st state (Iraq) for oil. At some point our politicians will tell the truth about why we send our military to the middle east, and America will collectively shrug and go shopping.

Global Catastrophic Climate Change will become ever more impossible to ignore. NOLA was just the first of a number of coastal cities that will be radically changed by weather. Insofar as the US economy is shored up by our residential housing market, this will be very bad mojo indeed. On the upside, Florida may be washed away once and for all. On the downside, all those floridians will come to pester the rest of us.

The doom and gloom that I forsee as being the logical outcome of tangible, quantifiable current conditions will not come to pass in nearly as nightmarish a fashion as I think it will.

I'm going to go practice my Chinese, shine my Krugerrands and oil my shotgun now.

The weather will get worse and more violent.

Oil prices will continue on an upward trend, with the US continuing to control the world pricing.

The epidemic of religiously-motivated terrorism will burn out, much like the anarchist movement burned out in the first half of the XXth century.

Violence will continue to be an integral part of international politics, with crises of failed expectations continuing to be the underlying motive for conflict.

Economic fluctuations will continue, but no huge boom or bust will occur because the global economy is sufficiently interconnected to buffer local excesses. There will be extreme fluctuations, but they will be localized.

Africa will be more and more chaotic and unstable.

The Republican party will be less subject to extremism as today's back-benchers move into leadership positions. This will consolidate their majority party position that began with the Reagan realignment in the late 1970's.

The Democrats will continue to screw things up by trying to entice the Republican base to switch parties. The Demos will ultimately become Republican-Lite.

As oil prices rise, coal consumption will increase to keep the energy economy expanding. There will be an increase in pollution and carbon dumping into the atmosphere. Synfuels will become a replacement stream for petrofuels, as will biofuels.

The US will continue to maintain its centrality in the world political economic stage, pretty much as Nixon envisiaged when he floated the dollar and began the arms-for-oil exchanges after the oil embargo.

American influence in Asia will decline as China's trade expands. Japanese / Chinese international relations will determine the long-term effects, but the US will be less and less a player in Asia.

Conflict in the Mid-east will continue and may see some expansion of the conflict as Arab nations realize that Israel is the pivot of all American policy in the region. All states that do not reach an accord with Israel will become the focus of American hostility and agression.

Europe will continue the process of unification and will gain more economic clout in traditionally American spheres of influence, such as the Asian periphery and South America. European influence on north Africa and particularly the Mediterranean will expand, particularly in Libya.

Castro will die and Cubans will have a very hard time.

Racial tensions in the US will increase, mostly due to attempts to adopt government policies reinstating white supremacy (such as the current fiasco over immigration.)

These aren't predictions so much as present trends that are not given as much attention as they should.

(Back for another whack at the pinata)
The decayed state of healthcare provisioning in the US will become increasingly difficult to ignore. Be it GM in bankruptcy, or the Delta pilots union, or NY Transit workers, the recent history of business collapse and labor unrest has centered around healthcare (outright fraud excepted, of course).

As the Baby Boomers cross into retirement, the political will to address the issue will build. Time will tell if the Conservative ideas about free-markets and privatization will continue to define the national debate, or if a more inclusive model can be effectively advanced. In the current political climate, I am not optimistic.