Hopefully for profit health care, but I’m not holding my breath.
Definitely don’t hold your breath.
If you pass out and hit your head, do you know how much that would cost to go to urgent care?
I think basically every single top level comment has zero understanding of what a short time 20 years actually is.
I also expect almost everything that is acceptable today will also still be in 20 years, including nearly every example suggested in this discussion.
The world simply does not change that fast as a general rule.
Completely disagree, but if you haven’t been around for at least a couple of sets of twenty years I can see why you would think this.
Someone else gave a great set of things that were different, but really, twenty years ago was almost completely different in nearly every dimension of life I can remember.
In 2003 not only was gay marriage not legal, gay sex and relationships were illegal where I live, and was punishable by prison time.
In 2003 most of the country wasn’t online, pagers were more common than cell phones, and 3DFX VooDoo graphics cards were still a thing.
In 2003 I used to smoke inside my community college’s cafeteria, where people ate because it was the designated smoking area.
In 2003 minimum wage was $5.15 nationwide, and gas was just a little over a dollar.
In 2003 people didn’t use laptops in school and electronics were confiscated on site, sometimes teachers would ‘lose’ them and you never got it back, and somehow that was an expected outcome - I lost a laser pointer that way.
In 2003 casual homophobia was mainstream, all your friends, and probably you would be making gay jokes, and transphobia was not a concept. I thought transgender people were the same thing as intersex, I didn’t know gender transition was possible.
American society was post 9/11 and highly patriotic, even liberal people were unusually patriotic, and politics were probably the most ‘neutral’ that I’ve ever seen, it was nothing like they are now, but in general things trended towards cultural conservatism.
I remember being an outcast because I didn’t believe in God, and people would casually tell me I was going to go to Hell.
Nah, 20 years is an entirely different cultural paradigm.
23 years ago offices buildings were not locked. No doors were locked. Zero. You didn’t need a badge to be in the building. Now in most places you swipe through every single door and you need a badge on a lanyard.
I don’t know how old you are but I lived through a completely different experience than you…
I’d been selling and repairing computers for 6+ years by 2003 and had been in the workforce many years before that. I can assure you people were definitely using laptops in schools (as I sold them to them)… Maybe not as ubiquitously as they do now but it was already quite common.
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on how much things have changed since then … Now, if you want to go back 30 or 40 years then I can definitely agree we’ve seen some significant changes.
Hell, the first time I flew out of the country I didn’t even need photo ID much less a passport.
Most schools didn’t have Wifi in 2003, so it’s not clear what “using laptops” would’ve been. There were computer labs, sure (mostly desktops).
Colleges had ethernet jacks in every desk in improved/modern classrooms (and nothing outside of those). The use of laptops in college was already common, in school - not yet.
Cell phones were already common, but smartphones - not at all. Palm phones were the epitome of “smart phone” - and getting data on/off them was a pain. Many plans still didn’t include unlimited calling. Verizon was innovative with offering unlimited calls to a preselect group of numbers.
Not sure what your point is about having sold and repaired computers for 6+ years before 2003. Sure, computers had been sold for far longer than that. But we are talking about what was (and wasn’t) commonplace.
In case it still doesn’t occur to you, I pointed out that I’d been in the computer business for a number of years already by then to illustrate that I’d already been selling laptops for years to people who intended to use them in school prior to 2003.
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I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
WiFi is in no way necessary to take notes, write papers, etcetera.
College is certainly included in the definition of “school” so that seems a silly separation to try and make.
Cell phones and smart phones in particular are irrelevant to anything I said.
Do you have a point or are you just trying to disagree with me?
My point is that my experience in my life, to now, across two decades, was drastically different. People still didn’t bring a laptop to the community college I went to that year either, I had never seen or heard of it as a practice until later.
I returned back to school about five years later and laptops in classes was common.
We somehow seem to have had drastically different experiences she perspectives from a broadly large geographic region.
For additional perspective my typing class in 1999 used an actual typewriter, not a computer, so socioeconomic factors of my own high school experience and the area I grew up may have actually been that different and potentially atypical to even surrounding areas, it’s hard to tell.
That could certainly explain some things seemingly drastically different over that 20 year period for you I suppose then.
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Bro out of that entire list the only one you could contradict was computers, which I definitely don’t remember being widespread 20 years ago, and they were certainly nothing like the computers of today in terms of experience. What about, y’know, the whole gay marriage thing? Seems like a pretty dramatic change you’ve just brushed over.
I was in high school in the nineties and no one had a laptop in class, then when I went into community college, things like online classes were a novelty, with a handful of offerings and a large computer lab because most people didn’t have Internet access at home, so you would do your online work there, or at home and bring it to school to upload on a floppy disk.
This was my regional reality, southeast US, but was very much the experience of tens of thousands up until the period of time, 2003, that you’re referring to.
Up until then it was only rich people that had Internet access at home, and most of the people I knew would often lose their lights and phones from their parents not being able to pay for utilities.
Some of my experience is skewed towards poverty because that was the social circle I had, but I still never had the impression that the masses actually had Internet or even laptops at home. Most people did have an offline computer, usually five to eight years old though.
Dude… I wasn’t rich and it most certainly wasn’t “only rich people” that had internet at home.
Hell, I personally had both cable and DSL in my house from 2000-2003 so my wife downloading wouldn’t cause latency issues with my gaming.
I also lived in the southeastern US at the time.
In 2005 at a top 50 liberal arts school, I was the only person in almost every class I was in using a laptop to take notes. Huge 200 person lectures there were definitely a few, and in later years I still remember being crazy jealous of a woman who had a laptop with a stylus for drawing econ graphs - one set of classes I wrote manually in - but she was a rarity. My notes were always highly sought after for sharing because I’d have 4 pages typed instead of 2 scrawled and not keeping up.
Voodoo cards were largely irrelevant to new buyers by 2001. The Vodoo 5 line was launched in 2000 and wasn’t a terrible value, but then Nvidia launched the GeForce 3 in early 2001 and ate their lunch. 3dfx went defunct in 2002 and their assets were bought up by Nvidia.
But your point is completely valid, culture moves slow even when business and technology don’t.
I really do mean culture independent of technology though, the entire range of acceptable opinions now versus then is completely unrecognizable, and in many ways my entire thought process and range of ideas are foreign to then as well.
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I agree, but we should also remember that time is relative. In under 100 years we went from “holy shit our balsa wood plane flew 250 feet” to “one small step for man”.
Completely disagree, but if you haven’t been around for at least a couple of sets of twenty years I can see why you would think this.
Someone else gave a great set of things that were different, but really, twenty years ago was almost completely different in nearly every dimension of life I can remember.
In 2003 not only was gay marriage not legal, gay sex and relationships were illegal where I live, and was punishable by prison time.
In 2003 most of the country wasn’t online, pagers were more common than cell phones, and 3DFX VooDoo graphics cards were still a thing.
In 2003 I used to smoke inside my community college’s cafeteria, where people ate because it was the designated smoking area.
In 2003 minimum wage was $5.15 nationwide, and gas was just a little over a dollar.
In 2003 people didn’t use laptops in school and electronics were confiscated on site, sometimes teachers would ‘lose’ them and you never got it back, and somehow that was an expected outcome - I lost a laser pointer that way.
In 2003 casual homophobia was mainstream, all your friends, and probably you would be making gay jokes, and transphobia was not a concept. I thought transgender people were the same thing as intersex, I didn’t know gender transition was possible.
American society was post 9/11 and highly patriotic, even liberal people were unusually patriotic, and politics were probably the most ‘neutral’ that I’ve ever seen, it was nothing like they are now, but in general things trended towards cultural conservatism.
I remember being an outcast because I didn’t believe in God, and people would casually tell me I was going to go to Hell.
Nah, 20 years is an entirely different cultural paradigm.
Yes… The 100 year scale has been far more drastic and interesting a measure of change, particularly in the past century and a half or so.
“He’s so gay” was far less frowned upon in 2003. Shit changes.
I think that you are the one who has zero understanding of how fast culture can change. There are a LOT of things that were considered acceptable 20 years ago but aren’t today.
Like what? Keep in mind that’s 2003
Well being gay isn’t illegal in a bunch of countries, for one. Kind of a big cultural change. Can’t smoke indoors like in planes or in restaurants, those are just a couple of the most obvious off the top of my head, but they’re far from the only examples.
I know it’s just conventional wisdom, but among those who look back and forward and think about this stuff, it’s been common conventional wisdom for a century that 20 years is an exceedingly long time for change.
I like Bill Gates’ quote the best, “People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.”
Technological change is far different than social change in terms of what’s accepted and what isn’t.
Most of the people commenting to me have gotten caught up in that.
Most of the things people are pointing out in terms of social change in acceptance are things like gay marriage, smoking, and cannabis legalization.
What they fail to understand is that attitudes on many of those social issues can be somewhat cyclical and that the drastic changes they are seeing may be more surface level than as deep as they think.
Consider the overturn of Roe v Wade to understand how some of the shorter term “changes” in what’s socially acceptable may be subject to revert back in the future.
There are absolutely a shit ton of people whose attitudes towards and acceptance of these things have not changed at all in 20 years.
Anyways, I’m not planning on replying to any more comments on this topic at this point.
It’s been done to death.
20 years is a lot of time for change, looking at the speed of how the world is changing now, and looks like it will be faster
Protesting.
The future looks scary to me.
Stealing water from neighboring clans. Driving cars without spikes.
Not going to Thunderdome with your friends.
SUVs.
There really is no need to haul 3 tons of steel around with you, and as more and more extreme weather events happen you’ll have more and more people looking around for others to blame, and oversized cars which are clearly unnecessary for work (especially the ones with Internal Combustion Engines) make for big very visible targets, with the added factor that in some places they’re seen as conspicuous displays of wealth (and flaunting wealth will be another thing that’s likely to become frowned upon within the next 2 decades).
Not saying that SUVs are all to blame or even that the rich ride them (in my experience they’re more the cars of a certain middle class), but they’re in that spot of being abundant enough and yet only a minority of cars, easy to spot, often imposing in a showoffish way and logically more poluting that smaller cars, all this right when the impact of Global Warming is really and properly starting to be felt, something which at the current rate will get much worse in 2 decades.
Also, unlike big oil companies SUV owners don’t have PR departments with hundreds of millions of dollars of budget to sway the press and swindle the useful idiots.
This thread title is unfortunately about what “you think will” not “you hope and wish and pray will”, so super hard disagree. Electric cars are actually going bigger to account for huge batteries, and heavier because of them. Given that’s the upswing I find it hard to predict a sudden shift to smaller cars.
The only way it happens (and 20 years is a very long time, so it’s possible) is if cars become so expensive and mostly subscription model based like everything else, that car ownership goes down. If driverless electric cars become fleet vehicles in cities, you’d definitely see smaller cars becoming more common to have more on the road and privately replace public infrastructure because we can’t invest in that in the USA. So like Uber just illegally ran taxi services in many jurisdictions until it became too popular to fail, expect the same thing from driverless car fleets, a couple of which will get bought by Uber or Lyft. Young people are driving WAY less, so if they prefer to hail a direct driverless taxi to their destination and not pay to own a car, then the bulk of vehicles on the road could downsize. Private passenger cars though, would start being used for more long haul driving instead of the 99% short trips they’re currently used in, so I don’t see any downward size pressure on those.
Well, there have been a number of announcements of higher density energy storage technologies and that’s the direction things have been moving towards already with electric cars (in less than a decade ranges doubled with similarly sized cars), so I don’t think there is at all a trend for larger vehicles in that segment due to such pressures.
From what I read (which was not specifically for electric cars) is that SUVs are simply more profitable for manufacturers, hence their investment in designing and heavilly promoting them.
Because of those battery changes and demands for range, electric vehicle are way heavier than they used to be. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/as-heavy-evs-proliferate-their-weight-may-be-a-drag-on-safety
They also follow the same growth in size as all vehicles, due mostly to consumer demand: https://www.fastcompany.com/90793619/evs-keep-getting-bigger-and-that-could-steer-the-u-s-down-a-dangerous-road
I hope so. I was about to join the smaller end of the SUV crowd, but then I test drove a van. We have a van now. Even more space, better efficiency, and less expensive to buy. Just had to let our pride take a hit and drive the uncool-parents-mobile.
I don’t know. You don’t see many electric stationwagons around and people will want big boots after fossil cars are history. I really really hope you’re right though.
We bought a crossover earlier this year and love it, but I would have preferred to get a station wagon if they still existed. My parents had a Camry station wagon when I was a teenager and that thing was amazing.
There is also the shitty situation where because everything on US roads right now are big it actually makes smaller cars less safe in collisions due to relative mass with a likely other party. Also being at eye level with headlights kind of sucks.
SUVs are better than pickup trucks.
Current giganto tax-loophole pickups, sure. I drive a 97 standard bed, mostly for hauling (not a daily). It’s a great vehicle for the job. There’s probably a couple of safety features I wish it had but “be bigger than any potential collision target” isn’t one of them.
My concern is the MPG
Most pickups are not work trucks.
Costco trips are the hardest work they do.
My last SUV had the same engine as their smallest pickup truck.
And i bet the SUV got better mpg because of areodynamics.
Not by much, it was a beast. Got around 18 mpg, the equivalent truck gets about 16
Publicly releasing a crime suspect’s name before conviction. Can’t believe that’s legal, may as well call them guilty until proven innocent.
Daily use of fossil cars and motorcycles.
Bringing your religion into other people’s business.
Depending on how lab meats come along, meat from slaughtering animals.
I really hope making fun of gender pronouns isn’t acceptable in 20 years. My name is Ted Cruz and my pronounce are U.S.A.
Not just super lame boomer jokes but shitting on people who feel invisible and pronouns help them feel recognized as a full person.
Now I second this. As a(n aspiring) comedian, I already feel like jokes about pronouns are only playable in rural shitty areas. Nowhere in the cities does that kind of “silly gay people” humor play. because humor is about punching up, and lgbt individuals are nowhere near being a full accepted part of the human experience. we won’t have full acceptance of lgbt people in 20 years, but hey, pronoun jokes will definitely be reserved for shitty old people.
Thank you for not doing them even if you possibly could get away with it at some shows. Larry the Cable Guy is a millionaire but you know his grandchildren are going to be ashamed of him as they go to college using money made by telling jokes about trans people in bathrooms. It’s easy but it’s wrong and we all know it.
Working in the fossil fuel industry.
Not being 100% available 24/7/365 will become even less acceptable than its already become.
Daily commuting can also go.
Eating factory farmed meat. With the way politics is headed there will be some politician at some point in the future trying desperately to defend his high beef consumption in what will become known as Burgergate.
Also, islamophobia in the context of defending religious nutjobs. For instance, it is islamophobic to complain about a muslim (Sikh, in reality) man at an airport because he “looks like a terrorist”. It is not islamophobic to suggest that female students should be allowed in public schools just like male students. Both of these things have actually happened, very recently, and the latter was defended because people were scared shitless of being called islamophobic. We have to have some minimum human rights standards that religion cannot interfere with, and blatant sex-based discrimination is one of them. I do not give a flying fuck what your religion teaches you.
Preach
How much sedentary time we spend in front of screens. We already know it is ruining our eyes and our sleep cycles.
I don’t think we know it’s ruining our eyes, and screen usage probably doesn’t affect circadian rhythms unless it’s near bed time. But we do know sitting around all day increases your mortality quite a bit.
Also, blue light filter glasses are a total scam.
Screen time is definitely having a measureable impact on our ocular health
Over time, staring too long at screens can change the structure of the eyeball and lead to atrophy of the glands that keep it moist. Research is now pointing to excessive screen time for the rise in eye disorders, such as dry eye and myopia, which are becoming more common and affect more young people.
[…]
While myopia or nearsightedness has a genetic component, it has been shown to progress faster in people who overuse screens. Human eyes can also become chronically dry if the meibomian glands — a sebaceous gland that helps create protective tear film — become obstructed or atrophy. Meibomian glands secrete meibum, which is a specialized substance containing lipids that protects the eye surface.
It’s different than the watery tears that flush the eye. Without a healthy tear film, eyes become dry, sensitive to light and irritated. Research has linked staring at digital devices for long periods without proper blinking to degraded gland function, even in some children.
I stand corrected on screens not being bad for eye health, although I would still argue “ruining our eyes” is a bit of an exaggeration.
I think it depends more on what you’re doing on those screens. I regularly download books from my local library to read on my phone. People used to read paper books, newspapers, and magazines all the time. Same shit, different means of consumption.
Having an excessive amount of kids.
Dystopic I know, but hear me out. I think this is already on the cusp of falling out of social norms as there are shows that let the American public gawk on the dynamics of very large families. Of course an “excessive” amount is vague and subjective but there is growing evidence on poorer outcomes for children who may have less nurturing and less family resources due to competition from having too many siblings. I myself come from a large family - so this is casual speculation from having witnessed the VERY different family dynamics from friends who came from single or two-child households.
excessive alcohol consumption. I’m not saying I think there will be prohibition, but maybe it won’t be so normal to get almost blackout drunk, or everyone drinking at parties to be the norm.
I think the increase in really good tasting non alcoholic beer and spirits is telling.
I quit drinking last September and it was the best thing for my mental and physical health I ever did. Lemmy.world/c/stopdrinking has so many people who quit drinking for reasons other than hitting rock bottom.
I would say also the rise of really good alcoholic drinks too. Less mindless drinking, less alcoholism. I agree with this answer, the trend is already started. But think people will always want to get high in some way, do not think total sobriety is likely.
It’s one small thing to be thankful for. At the same time that I started losing my tolerance and drinking went from “yea!” to straight “blech”, sober curious became more of a trend. Any decent bar/restaurant will have a (good!) mocktail or two, and non-alcoholic beer really has lagers and IPAs figured out.
And I don’t feel like there’s any social pressure or scrutiny over what I’m (not) drinking.
People who care that you’re a non drinker are people with problems that you generally dont want to be a part of.
I can see this happening - maybe once marijuana or other recreational drugs become state or federally legalized.
Hating on trans folk
