What Life Will Be Like in Fifty Years

The future is the most unknown frontier that exists. All a person can do in life is to take it one day at a time. In retrospect, the world has come a long way from its days of the cavemen and hunter-gatherers. But as time progresses and the future becomes the present, people years from now will be saying the same thing about our generations. It is exciting to think how much the quality of life will change in the future judging by the rate of our current changes. These changes will be both good and bad in my opinion. I believe that the future holds plenty of new finding in science and technology and at the same time, will be subject to overcrowding and less land mass in general. People in earth can be extremely productive and detrimental to the quality of life simultaneously.

Just by looking how advanced science and technology are today, it is mind boggling to think of how much more advanced both will be fifty years from not. For example, the author explains about categorizing people in the future, “…in fifty years each of us will have a copy of our own complete DNA sequence, incorporated into a highly accurate electronic medical record....” ( 5). Technology in the upcoming years that instead of using paper work and filing to keep people in order, doctors will use samples of DNA. This shows much progress. In addition to that, health in the future is being referred to when the author hypothesizes, “Health will be thought of as a global investment, not a national or corporate venture” (29). Heath will be an international concern and people will work together to come to a solution for the current problems. No one will have to worry about their health in fifty years because they will have a plan by then that helps and support the people who are in need. Lastly, the advancement of technology is being thought upon, “Leveraging the tools of technology so readily available to us, our enemies will seek to beat us at our own game. They will be able to change, react, and mutate in minutes and hours, not days weeks, months, or years” (50). Years from today technology will be able to speed every part of out daily life, and other countries that were poorer and less advanced will now become equals.

The future, I believe, also yields frightening and detrimental circumstances. For example, the author explains what the earth will be like when they say, “They will have reclaimed a good part of the remaining virgin land for growing crops and raising livestock, favoring further desertification and reducing biodiversity” (11). In the future, the demand for new opportunities will overcome the need for a diverse planet. The remaining land will be used to advance life and create more places for people to use. In doing so, it will deplete the amount of species of animals that remain. Also, public life will be unheard of as Ronald Noble explains, “People will no longer be able to travel and engage in transactions with anonymity. In other words, governments will know where people are going and what they are doing in the public realm” (61). Paranoia will reach such a high level in the future that the government will feel obligated to watch and record our every move. People will live in constant fear that they are always being watched. In conclusion, crime and violence will increase as the amount of people increase, “Large cities, crushed by overcrowding, will have degenerated into jungles ruled by crime and violence” (12). In fifty years, there will be such a problem with overcrowding that the already prevalent crime problem in our country, and the rest of the world for that matter, will only increase. The extremities of overcrowding will push people to their edges and force them into desperate measures.

Life has its ups and down. It always has, and from the look of things, it always will. Today we have completely changed the planet; physically, politically, religiously, and the list could continue. So it is only natural to believe that fifty years from now life will be completely different. The future is uncertain, and holds both the good and the bad to come. It is our job to adapt like we always have and make our lives what we of them.