h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm still waiting for the flying cars. In school thirty years ago I was confidently told that the direction of the Industrial Revolution was toward shorter work weeks and more leisure time due to automation and computers (then house-sized). I am wary of any predictions then but here goes.
I don't believe that the world will collapse in an ecological nightmare. Life will change but not drastically due to pollution. Look at a drop of dye in a bucket of water and think of the size of the ecosystem. Seasons change yearly and over millenia.
I think the bigger battle will be the erosion of privacy and the commercialization of democrasy. I think that software and hardware advances will throw hundreds of thousands out of work and eventually employ millions more. Implementation of technology will cause huge displacement until it is established. The retirement of the Boomers will cause greater problems than imaginable because of an economic collapse and rebuild but ultimately they will become a profitable business for the rest of humanity. Medical advances will outpace government's ability to regulate them. And finally all those tatoos and piercings will become a huge embarasment to another aging population.

I can just imagine granny showing off her tatoos. Or talking wistfully of the hole in her tongue.

Yuk!

My niece recently got her third tattoo. Good on her I say but I mentioned that if it is in a public place (outside bikini areas) it might not age well. She replied that technology would solve the problem before she got old. So it goes..