In twenty years (provided the planet is ok and we regained some of our financial bearings):
* Leslie Nielsen, Betty White, Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Stiller, Sidney Poitier, Tony Bennett, Roger Moore, Lauren Bacall, and Adam West will all be over 100 years old.
* Burt Reynolds, Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, Mary Tyler Moore, James Earl Jones, Clint Eastwood, will all be pushing 100 years old.
* Harrison Ford will be over 80 years old, as will George Lucas.
* Bruce Willis will be over 70 years old.
* The Brat Pack will all be in their 60s, including unofficial member Johnny Depp.
* Christian Bale will be in his 50s.
* Dakota Fanning will already be considered "too old."
* Superman will be pushing 90 -- and DC Comics may very well not own the copyright to him anymore.
* A digital "reader" will most likely be perfected in a number of styles to fit a number of needs, including book, comic book, and newspaper.
* Paper books and other reading materials will still be purchased -- by "paper aficionados" (similar to vinyl record collectors).
* All the DVDs you own right now will be obsolete, but if you're lucky you will still have a machine that can play them.
* It will be far more common for Americans to live in other countries; they will look at what country to emigrate to the way they look for what state to live in now. South America will probably be a big choice, especially since it will be likely it will have combined with North America at some point (at least in terms of trading and currency).
* The traditional 9-to-5 office environment will be the exception, not the rule. Company-provided health care will be the exception, not the rule. Independent contractors will be the norm.
* Scientists will have probably found a way to fuck with time-travel by that point. It may not be time-travel as we think of it from the movies we watch; but I have no doubt in my mind that this frontier will be breached.
* The most popular video games will be "virtual lives" where you can "experience" the life of a certain type of person. This will be a complete, 360-degree experience. Celebrities will also be able to license out their lives for others to play.
* Cures/solutions to the major causes of death -- Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, AIDS -- will be found. This will have a dramatic impact on life-expectancy, the ramifications of which won't be fully experienced for another twenty years.
* The wedge driven between the secular and religious sectors of the world will be extremely deep. Even deeper than now. In general, I think we will get increasingly secular, to the point where following traditional religions will be discouraged by the status quo as superstitious and potentially divisive. Paradoxically, this movement will make the religious hold on to their faiths even deeper, making them feel persecuted. I think it will be a situation where there will be a pronounced lack of sensitivity for the beliefs of others on one side, and an inflamed sense of paranoia and defensiveness on the other. Good times.
* Computer animation/imaging will be perfected to the point where for some high-budget blockbuster movies there is really no need to build sets, build props, or even have the actors move a whole lot. More likely, their images and unique movements will be meticulously scanned and inputted into the film. We have a little of this now -- but this will be the norm, and with far better imaging.
* "60" will be the new "30."
* Comic books will be mostly digital and have to incorporate some degree of both movement and sound. "Voice casting" for comic books will be a regular occurrence.
* In general, listening to books will be preferred to reading them by the mass market.
* Movie players/recorders, cable box, computer, video game system, music player, TV will all come in one unit -- the Entertainment Unit. It will be a thin plasma-type screen plus a modestly-sized hard drive/keyboard.
* By the same token, we will have a convenient all-in-one slim phone/music player/movie player/computer/camera/PDA. I realize we sort of have this with the new iPhone, but this will be the norm for everyone, and far more advanced. You could just own this device and not need a laptop.
Wow, I could go on like this all day. How did I get on this futurist kick? I need a separate blog for this.
And by "twenty years" -- with the exception of the celebrity ages -- I mean more like "10-12."
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