Let’s have fun with wild improbable guesses about what will be possible in this millennium.

I’ll start off:

Transit tunnels will exist going through the Earth’s mantle and even passing close to the Earth’s core. This global engineering feat will revolutionise World Travel. This breakthrough will in part be made possible by new technologies that can withstand the extreme heat and pressure found so far underground.

Oil will become so expensive that it will spark a large war, resulting in the decimation of two thirds of the population. Then everyone will live happily ever after.

Or not much will happen.

Actually, I do think civil unrest will extend into a global affair.  Not a World War, but certainly citizens will press in solidarity to remove corrupt governments and sweeping attempts to return governing to the people by right of majority while also fighting to subdue resulting corrupt factions blossoming in an attempt to subvert public opinion in their own favor.  Such exploitative activities will become more and more difficult as policed oversight groups are also born. 

Radical forms of energy will be pressed into use while mining and use of fossil fuels becomes illegal.  In fact a large part of history will be devoted to the use of not only these kinds of fuels, but all the areas of earth pollution from plastics, freon etc.  Those pages will be marked and viewed by our descendants as the Age of Barbaric Ignorance.

We’ll be hit by a rogue asteroid. Game over.

This millennium… Will be about 1000 years long.

Tah - 16 April 2011 01:49 PM

This millennium… Will be about 1000 years long.

well yes, ‘about’ but not quite.

hulitoons - 16 April 2011 02:47 PM

Tah - 16 April 2011 01:49 PM

This millennium… Will be about 1000 years long.

well yes, ‘about’ but not quite.

I predict a new sect will form in 2138. It will not only benefit from newly discovered life extending technologies as they will also ban any use of sex for pleasure. So for them the millennium will seem longer.

Or we could let xkcd do some research.

I predict that in the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive they may find….

er, nothing apparently.  Maybe they’ll have better luck in the next millenium.

Smerk - 18 April 2011 10:40 AM

Or we could let xkcd do some research.

I suspect that there will be a myriad of small religious groups calling for Armageddon or TEOTWAWKI (the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it) on decadal time scales.  The political situation won’t change appreciably, and the economy will be, well, the economy.

(Though space travel will be conquered by a major software corporation, and the first “settlement” on Mars will be filled with salesmen and surveyors out to gut and pillage the planet.)

My guess?

Cyborgs become a reality.
The first contact with alien races is made, but hidden.
The Church acknowledges they’re completely off the rocker with many things.
And China invades the US.

Alternate forms of energy are finally advanced enough to be useful on a large scale.
The polar ice caps will melt and the seal levels will rise swamping every city near sea level.
I’ll be long dead and gone before anything major happens that will cause the earths destruction.