Timeline of the future in forecasts

This timeline of the future in forecasts is a timeline of credible forecasts of near-future events and developments in all areas of science, technology, society and the environment.
Forecasting informs the planning and policy making processes within all governments and commercial organisations. Forecasts may be either qualitative extrapolations from a current state or quantitative output from models or simulations based on historical data and trends.
Forecasts are published by:

• research and statistics departments within governments and leading commercial companies in a given field.
• NGOs, think tanks and international organisations.
• professional organisations and their associations and governing bodies.
• academic bodies.

In addition, leading experts in a particular field develop and publish their own individual forecasts, and notable thinkers called futurists formulate independent visions of the future.
Forecasting is obviously not an exact science, and different experts may legitimately forecast different dates for the same event, because they use different models or assumptions. This timeline is organised by topic, allowing different forecasts of the same event to be compared side by side. Although the forecasts in this timeline are produced by professionals, no judgement is made as to their accuracy.

Contents [hide] 1 History 2 List of future events (structured by topic) 2.1 Artificial intelligence and robotics 2.2 Biology and medicine 2.3 Communications 2.4 Computing 2.5 Culture and leisure 2.6 Demographics 2.7 Energy 2.8 Environment 2.9 Nanotechnology 2.10 Politics and economics 2.11 Transportation 2.12 Space 3 Top 12 areas for innovation through 2025 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

[edit] History

As far back as the nineteenth century, scholars and scientists made predictions about the future. Lord Kelvin, "One Heck of a Prognosticator, president of the Royal Society in the 1890s, and disbeliever in virtually every scientific discovery," claimed that “Radio has no future,” “I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning,” and “X-rays will prove to be a hoax;” Orville Wright, in 1908 claimed that “No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris;” and Irving Thalberg, MGM movie producer, asserted in 1927 that “Novelty is always welcome, but talking pictures are just a fad.”^[1] Thus, making forecasts of the future's timeline has a historic basis in which many of the predictions by even experts have proven inaccurate