What does the future hold?
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking. 
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Sky-trains, space travel for the masses and food pills? Future predictions haven't always hit the mark... Governments and businesses are increasingly using scenario planning - essentially a way of telling stories about the future - as an aid to policy and decision-making in a seemingly ever more unpredictable and complicated world.
What are the big issues facing us in the next 10, 20, even 50 years? How could these develop if they are not tackled now?
You sent us your visions of possible futures and we published the most pertinent, amusing and down-right absurd. Scroll down the page to read them.
This online debate is now closed.
 |  More and more people will shun technology  |
People will travel less in the future. With the rapidly depleting stocks of oil and the rapidly increasing use of oil, the price is sure to rise to a point where travelling will become very expensive.
So I'll be telling my wide-eyed grandkids about the time when everyone used to fly around in airplanes.
Colm O'Connor, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
I don't think much will change. Fundamental problems remain. Though there will be more and more people becoming rich, the rich will become ultra rich, thereby firmly maintaining the divide.
As countries like China and India flex their muscles militarily and economically, there will be an effort to push the US from its superpower slot.
Terrorism will not just be dependent on religion for its fuel, it will acquire technological and other dimensions. It will be become an academic subject in schools/colleges/universities.
Medicine, changing global weather patterns and exploration of other planets will become hot topics.
Fed up with this ever changing world and stress, more and more people will shun technology.
Dinesh, Pune, India
One of the biggest problems facing the world in the near future is undoubtedly water. It's been predicted that the next major war will be fought on this commodity. Hence planning and regulation should be put into place before it's all too late. Technologies should also be made easily obtainable especially by third world countries at reasonably cheap prices.
Sufian Zainal, Edinburgh, Scotland
| I think we are going to be overrun with disaster-mongers |
Bar codes on everybody's forehead. When you leave the house there will be a camera at the end of the garden path that will flash you, and it will know if you have ever gone too fast - ie in your car, bike, push chair or rollerskates. It will know if you paid your council tax, if you smoked or drank or anything else it can get money out of you for and then send you a bill for it. Oh, and don't forget to pay it within 7 days or that will be another fine.
Or maybe that's now without the bar code.
Jonathan Hall, Chester, UK
My predictions for the next five years:
NEGATIVE
A stark narrowing of general knowledge led by the number of television channels available, enabling viewers to watch precisely, and only, what they already know.
A loss of the most basic real world experience amongst children who are left to play computer games and watch television, resulting in people with even less common sense than today.
A general shortening of the culture's attention span, led by fast paced film, television and computer games, resulting in an abandonment of traditional, slower cultural themes and an unwillingness to participate in thoughtful conversation.
NEUTRAL
The disappearance of religion as a basic factor in British schools.
A movement to modify voting power in proportion to the voter's age.
POSITIVE
An increase in raw democracy due to the effects of email and the Internet.
Close friendships become as likely between people who have never met as between those that have, due to the Internet.
Graphic government-sponsored media campaigns against unhealthy dietary habits and lifestyles, in the same manner of the current campaigns against smoking.
Jeff Preston, Caerleon, Wales
I think we are going to be overrun with disaster-mongers. Eventually we will become so used to this that we will be incapable of functioning unless we feel we are facing imminent destruction.
Langdon Jones, Bracknell, Berks.
| The 1970s oil crisis will be a picnic compared to what's to come |
We will find masses of mineral, oil and other deposits on our neighbouring planets. We will need to build spacecraft to go and get them but, if we are not careful, we will have no oil to make the compounds and plastics needed for their production. And wooden spaceships won't get us there!
Pat Harris, London, England
Cashless society. Credit chips will be implanted into palm of hand and will also act as bio-metric DNA-based ID card.
Philip Brown, Ipswich, England
The biggest issue facing the world by far is oil depletion. Industry experts are predicting the peak of world oil production will have occurred by 2010. After that, with production declining inexorably, the oil price will go sky high. The 1970s oil crisis will be a picnic compared to what's to come. How will it pan out? Depends how quickly we can convert our transport and most importantly our agricultural systems to work with reduced and, in the long term, zero oil supply. Assuming of course that any future oil war will not go nuclear....
Andy Thomson, Reading, UK
I think it is extremely naive to think that there will be an NHS system in 2020 anyway. By then, we will have a system of personal insurance like they have in the US, with the most disadvantaged covered by medicaid. With the population living longer and with the treatment of diseases like most cancers becoming more common and more costly, the NHS will be unsustainable.
My "If" for the 21st century is a gradual move away from a centralised tax system and people providing for themselves more through direct paid insurance.
Natascha Brown, Basingstoke Broadcasting - all TV output available on the internet, all homes equipped with broadband links and good video cards. That way, no need for a range of pre-programmed channels and no need for me to sit up until 23:05 tonight to watch Frasier. Broadcasters simply sell programmes on the net. It's going to happen...
Graham Williams, Oswestry, England
It will probably not be in our lifetime, but I would like to think that there will be a time when there will be no disease, no wars, no religious intolerance, and a non-existent economy.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had a vision of a world where human civilisation existed to better themselves. In that world, there are no classes of society, money does not exist - people work equally and to better themselves and their plant. Will it take another 300 years to get to this utopia?
| The environment outside the biosphere has been all but abandoned |
I honestly think that it will take another major war (World War III) to make the inhabitants of Earth to get the wake up call they need to begin planning this Utopia. The Mars missions being planned will take the next step of populating the solar system. In the next 100 years, we will have the opportunity of looking forward to what science fiction now will become science fact.
Chris Lowe, London
The environment will have changed, so we need to enter Eden Project style biospheres in which all our needs are generated or grown.
Power will come from solar cells on the roof of the biosphere.
Waste materials are used in a special digester to produce the vital methane from which we heat the biosphere, heat our food and generate energy to power the tools we use to produce the things we need to live and work with.
We have found many new ways to grow our food inside the biosphere.
The environment outside the biosphere has been all but abandoned as it is getting too dangerous to live in the atmosphere which is now becoming very toxic.
Each biosphere has its own government elected on a one-man, one-vote proportional voting system, which means the government of a biosphere is truly representative of the people that live in it.
Paul Weaver, Poole
There will be more people holding a university degree. The population will age as birth rate and marriage rate both decrease while life expectancy increases.
Technology will play are more important part in daily lives affecting all people. More people will be lured to finance and city jobs, the traditional manufacturing industry will vanish. People will be ever more competitive to stay ahead.
| Technology will keep advancing, but the problems will remain the same |
Social, racial, and status segregation will lead to biggest conflict ever. Things can only get more complex as history leaves us with fewer feasible options
Justin, UK
A more aggressive, fast moving and consumerist society. A 24 hour society with many services open all hours and gradual disintegration of the traditional 9 till 5 work. This may solve many problems with traffic and congestion? Conditions allowing this of course. Aggressive because of future problems we will face and have to fight for survival, e.g. extreme climate conditions.
Marc Scruby, East Sussex
The technology will keep advancing, but the problems will remain the same. Since we refuse to learn from history we are compelled to repeat it. In the future we will have a boom and bust economy, a large divide between rich and poor both in terms of finance and health and there will still be wars and fallible politicians.
James, UK
Nothing will really change that dramatically. There will be the obvious improvements in medical treatment and technology, as there has been for the past 50 years.
As fossil fuels run out other sources of fuel will be found such as fusion power. Humans have found ways round these kinds of things for hundreds of years.
There will not be any nuclear wars due to their relative uselessness, because every major country will have nuclear weapons.
Ben Harris, Hull
Things will either turn sour - the world governments not sorting out the ozone, or poverty, or Aids, and things will slide into unrest and later war. Or, things will improve, change will happen, the European Union will turn into a World Union, all currencies will be integrated, economic progress will soar, and world peace will be close. It's the governments of today that decide what to do, and which course the future will take.
Joseph, UK
If the ancient Mayans were right there isn't going to be a future post December 2012.
Robert, Surrey
My vision of the future: a) intelligent homes can report fire and break ins to the appropriate emergency service and b) A train service to cross the Atlantic or maybe even a road.
Andrew Ramsbottom, Lancashire
While the oil wells will begin to dry up and scarcity of supply will start pushing up prices, this will not stop the rise of the motor car.
In developed countries land once used to produce tobacco, which will have become a socially unacceptable drug, will be used to grow crops which can produce other forms of combustible fuels such as methanol.
The "Canine flu" epidemic of 2019 (first spread to humans after Crufts 2018) has killed 10% of the UK population.
| I think that in the future we will all be issued with special magnetic boots |
Consequently 2020 saw house prices collapses as there are now far more houses than people.
Steven Finlay, Preston I predict expanding intellectual property laws will make day-to-day life increasingly difficult.
A prominent research institute will gain a number patent on the use of 3.1415, thus forcing car tyre manufacturers to either pay exorbitant licensing costs or make their tyres octagonal.
It will become possible to copyright facts, which will result in innocent toddlers being sued for simply stating "the grass is green".
Dave Hodder, Peterborough
China will emerge as a greater power, and rival America as a global super-power.
Tim Vickery, Toronto, Canada
I think that in the future we will all be issued with special magnetic boots and all the pavements in the UK will have giant electro-magnets fitted. This will enable us to glide along at high speed a few inches above the ground enabling us to reach our destinations much quicker and without effort! It will solve road congestion overnight and will boost Britain's flagging boot-making industry.
Baz Mung, UK
| I see a future where we aren't made to feel guilty for our eating habits |
My vision of the future is where a nuclear incident on a scale much greater than Chernobyl causes vast areas of the former USSR or maybe even China to be rendered uninhabitable and that millions of refugees are forced to try and reach western Europe for their very survival. How would we cope?
Richard, Billericay, UK I see a future where we aren't made to feel guilty for our eating habits. Where politicians don't feel obliged to jump on the latest band wagon and blame the problems of the world on eating hamburgers.
Instead of legislating every issue in our lives they encourage vision, common sense and a 'can do' attitude. Instead of furiously covering their backs and instigating meaningless inquiries they do the right thing in the first place.
A world where they remember the government serves its people, not the other way round.
Alex Webber, Maldon
A drop in crime, a better paid job and a decent pension.
Gordon Lyew, Birmingham
As little poverty as possible, advances in space exploration, no terrorism, a more civilised world, something like in the film "Demolition Man" apart from the corrupt government.
Dave, Nottingham
I believe that the most serious problem facing humanity in the next two decades will be oil shortages. Industrial civilization is almost entirely oil based, and the end of cheap oil supply caused by peaking of world oil production will lead to hard to predict events.
There will be no long term solution for this geological problem, and we will enter a huge and unending energy crisis, causing collapse into medieval society and significant shrinking of the population.
The worst case scenario would include world-wide resource war, including biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. On the other hand, humanity might realize the danger ahead and unite in the effort of transferring from the oil based economy to more efficient, cleaner and renewable energy.
Viktor Todorovic, Chicago, USA
Doctors will soon be prescribing "dirt" (containing benign bacteria, etc) to children, to reduce the risk of becoming asthmatic due to a bored immune system.
Philip Baker, Northampton
Longevity and genetics will bring about some of the biggest challenges to our species. Imagine living to the age of 500, 700 or even longer - in fact perhaps only dying through accidental death. Think of the challenges that the major world religions (in fact all of us) would face. We will need a complete re-definition of how we all live together, of who we are. Why have kids at all? Grandpa or Grandma would always be around too. The population would mushroom out of control - governments would need new control structures to be put in place.
Would we turn down the chance of living forever? When would we choose to die? Would we all be bored stupid after 300 years of life and end it all anyway, choosing euthanasia?
Our own ingenuity will in the end force us to examine in depth just who we are, what we are, and why we are here - and because we have the time, we may just find some answers. In 50 years, we'll all be able to live forever, imagine that!
Gerard Nath, Stratford upon Avon
A world of the very wealthy (fat cats) and the remainder living in poverty.
No public sector, all services privatised and available for those who can afford to pay.
Most leaving a debt, which is passed on to their next of kin.
Ian R Whiteway, Winkleigh
The biggest issue will be climate change. The slight warming of the past few decades is likely to get considerably worse, even if measures are taken to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions. Drastic changes in ocean circulation could happen which, in the worst case, may result in a semi-arctic climate for the UK.
Steve Zara, Coventry
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