Some friends of ours have recently celebrated the arrival of their daughter Ivy. As I am not a parent, I do not know what that is like first hand but I imagine that apart from the occasional cooing from friends and family, having a very small baby is like living with a gunpowder keg; in that they require constant attention and are likely to go off and explode without warning.
A baby starts off mewling and puking and knowing nothing about the world, and then over the course of 80 years or so, learns a tiny little bit about the world, before the world inevitably changes into something unrecognisable; and they eventually end up mewling and puking before the cold embrace of death comes for them as well.
The first task of any parents is to give their new person a name. In this respect, Ivy is a brilliant name. Ivy is one of those names which is different enough that there aren't going to be three of them in her classes in school but sensible enough that it works equally as well for a small girl, as it does for a captain of industry, as it does for a grandma.
On that last point, assuming that the world doesn't chaotically spiral into a dystopian future (which is a possibility), then Ivy should have a nominal life expectancy of 84 years. 2020 + 84 = 2104. Unlike most of the twentieth century which had a surprisingly optimistic view about the year 2000 despite three world wars (two hot; one cold), I do not know if we have as optimistic view about the year 2100. I do not think that the 21st century has anything like jazz, rock and roll, or Les Trente Glorieuses to look forward to, like the 20th century had.
However, there are at least some things that we can know about the 21st century and the world of 2100, either by extrapolating what exists now or by what always was.
She will see at least three kings of England.
It is reasonable to assume that Elizabeth II will die at some point; wherein she will be followed by Charles III; who will be followed by William V; who will in turn be followed by George VII. George VII is at the moment only a wee lad and almost certainly has no real concept of the job that he will inherit.
Australia Will Probably Be A Republic In Her Lifetime.
Australia has spent the last 45 years questioning why the Governor-General had the ability to sack a Prime Minister as the representative of someone 10,000 miles away. The republican movement makes the simple argument that Australia should have its own head of state, on the basis of the rhetoric of growing up and maturing as a nation. I personally don't like the idea of Australia becoming a republic because I see the actual advantage in changing symbols (which is really all that it does) as being less than zero.
Probably during the reign of King Charles III, the republican movement will gain enough inertia to force a referendum because it will be aided and abetted by the economic right who will enjoy the ensuing media smokescreen to do something really appalling. It is really easy to stab someone in the back if you get behind them first.
There will still not be flying cars.
This was a favourite of science fiction writers of days past and the thing which always gets in the way of this is the operation of physics. The simple unavoidable truth is that it takes orders of magnitude of extra energy to fly.
Sure, we might have self-driving cars and possibly no private cars as all of the oil runs out but the smartest boffins in the world can't rewrite the rules of nature.
Koalas Will No Longer Be A Thing.
What we have learned over the past 60 years especially is that as the planet heats up (for whatever reason, including whatever idiotic non-anthropomorphic conspiracy theory that you can invent) that the incidence of bushfire has become more severe and continues to get more severe. At the same time though, as Australians continue to build houses and clear what used to be economically unproductive forest areas, the total amount of area that is viable for koalas is shrinking and will eventually become so small as to make it impossible.
Some scientists have put the date at 2050 but I think that it will certainly be inevitable by 2100.
Summers Will Be Horrible.
I expect that there will be 50°C days in Sydney in summer. When you consider that only this past month, there were 40°C temperatures recorded north of the Arctic Circle for the first time ever and that the hottest years on record have all happened this century, then the trend must invariably keep on heading up the ziggurat lickety-split.
That might mean the end of cricket on the radio; which I personally think would be a national tragedy but I would find it very easy to imagine that Ivy has bigger and more pressing things to worry about than a rising ball outside of the off-stump which leave Australia at 23-6 against India.
Life Will Get Considerably Worse For Most People.
One of the lessons that the long game of history teaches us is that people who have power like having it and want to retain it. Over the last 200 years as we've seen the franchise extended to more people, we have also seen the next form of governance emerge. Straight up rude fascism didn't work because of its brutality but it taught corporations how to manipulate power by infecting government. The period of my lifetime has been characterised by privatisation and the increasing impotence of government.
For Australia it means that the old age pension will probably be got rid of, the ABC and SBS privatised and destroyed, universities privatised; public health care, transportation, schooling and the prison system privatised as well. Corporations already act as if they are above the law because they are, and as the automation of what used to be the workforce happens even more, the underclass of people who might have been educated and cared for and who would have had a claim on a portion of the economy through their labour, will no longer do so. The bottom line for corporations is the bottom line and if they don't have to care about people then they certainly will not want to pay for them.
This Is Probably The Last Pandemic That Australia Will Actually Cope With.
If you privatise health care then the expense instead of being carried by the nation as a collective and without profit motive, gets carried by smaller entities and due to reductions in economies of scale and reduced bargaining power, then the end user costs go up. Since price supplied goes up, the corresponding amount of demand shrinks and a new smaller equilibrium point is found. Unfortunately in the case of public health care, if that equilibrium point doesn't include the entire population then in a pandemic, the people who can not afford health care will not have it. When people can not afford health care, they are either turned out onto the streets or they simply never present themselves in the first place.
Pandemics do not care about your economic status of if you die. As privatising health care in Australia will probably be a thing, then the people who control and operate health care will want to protect themselves first; even at the expense of other people's lives.
We will all be dead.
The only certain thing in life is that the circus can not go on forever. Not even the best efforts of science can fight against the laws of science and that means that the law of entropy eventually gets cited and the messengers of death come around to collect.
In the year 2100 I will be 122 years old and therefore dead. Ivy's parents will be at least 100 years old and also very likely dead. Probably everyone who is currently reading this will also be very likely dead. I have no idea of what your conception of what happens to you after you die but I am reasonably sure that after the last person who is alive when you were also dies, then you are reduced to not much more than a name in the land of the living. It demands an answer to the question of what you do about it.
I think that Generation X is probably the last to have a life that would have been seen as comfortable, Generation Y will begin to feel the effects of the world falling apart, Generation Z will be the wedge generation and Generation Alpha will be the the first generation in a while to have begun in a time period where the decisions that were taken a long time ago, will start to make their effects known.
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