What Will 2024 Bring? — Part 3/3 (Predictions from a year ago)
Things already happen and will continue, but to what extent? What else can be expected? And is it really me saying this?
(Continued)
End of freedom
We have already seen lots of restrictions on the main communication platform of our time, the Internet. Most possible ways of bringing information to the world’s attention can lead to bans and blockings, and to legal actions against the one doing it.
There is censorship all-over, often spreading far beyond the actual laws being governed — an example is the Russian censor that prevents publication also in countries in Europe (and probably elsewhere too), because the publisher has activities in Russia that would get into trouble if they would refuse to do that.
Another example is that almost everything can be considered terrorist activities by investigating authorities in most countries and lead to imprisoning without the usual rights of the accused. Courts can decide on closed doors, so that the public cannot even get information about what the charge is.
Social media are by themselves and forced by authorities removing people and contents from their platforms because of a million reasons, such as potentially being offending someone, revealing secrets, breaking a law, or whatever. And the forfeiters of immaterial rights have grown extremely powerful and are capable of everything, so they are feared and obeyed too, making such as referring to just one line of text from a song a civilian offence (even if it is breaking no laws) that could end up in million dollar lawsuits for the offender, the social medium, and anyone else within a hundred miles distance.
We have no freedom of speech any more, if we ever had it.
2024 will probably see even tougher restrictions towards social media, and they will themselves, for commercial reasons, sort out more solidly in the contents being published — Substack and Medium will probably also make new rules or implement new practices to ban whatever seems unfit for the platforms. It will happen everywhere, more and more, and will not end until everything is forbidden, banned, and deleted from all platforms.
Technology
That’s AI. This is the only new technology spoken about now, and it will continue into 2024, where some sort of separation process or merger round will start, in order to close off or consolidate some of the many platforms we see today.
The winners will be Microsoft, Google, and Apple, no matter how good or bad they are at what they do, because they have the most money and can buy or make life difficult for the others.
In order to justify solid investments in AI, people will get laid off. At the tech companies as well as their customers. In combination with the other developments I have described above, we will probably see massive lay-off rounds in 2024, and they will continue after that.
All customer companies will see internal demands to implement AI and get the benefit (in the shape of fewer employees) immediately. The bigger the company, the worse a bloodbath this will become.
As consumers, we already see everything being on a subscription basis, and this will continue. But when Microsoft gets to own even more of your life, they will bundle and change your subscriptions into something that will no longer be your choice, and probably not to your benefit either. And monopoly will lead to price increases.
Authorities have no power (or will) any more to protect their citizens against the monopolies, as they see this whole thing as not only a necessary development, but also a clear path towards full control of the citizens. Welcome, 1984 and Brave New World. Now is the time when these prophecies become true.
Research
Exoplanets are discovered at full speed, but you will not see any cold fusion or cure for cancer in 2024.
The reason is that all research apart from that about exoplanets seems to be completely in the hands of people representing economic interests, and they don’t see the point in curing cancer — it is much more beneficial to keep selling treatments that do not cure anything.
A bit tough said, and there are of course other thoughts in play, but we must realize the huge impact the commercialization of the medical research has on what is being developed. Similar for most other areas of research.
Space has the attention of governments but with a heavy business angle, and as more countries are jumping into this at full speed, we will see a race between the Western world’s commercialized research and the rest of the world’s state financed activities.
Whatever they will look after in space will not be what you need, that is for sure, but you may get fascinated about some of it. I could imagine that news like “life found on Venus” or similar could pop up in 2024, but more likely spun as “life possibly found in the planet system xyz, 2 million light-years away”.
Climate
Worse all the time. Bigger natural disasters and more starving people. Dead whales and other creatures, and a continued lack of understanding by the right-wing parties of why exactly this all is bad and should be prevented.
2024 will show solid evidence of climate changes and solid indications on what bad things these will lead to, that will then be neglected by just about every government around the world because it is easier to do nothing.
Oil crisis
Or maybe “energy crisis” is a better term now, but it will this time be released by a war in the Middle East. We will see freezing people in Europe, cars that are not being used due to ultra-high fuel prices, no matter what fuel is being used (also electricity), and serious problems for European industries.
The USA will make sure to get what it needs, and China, India, Brazil, etc., will be taken care of by their Russian, Iranian and other BRICS friends.
Due to such a crisis, probably several European countries will again buy oil and gas from Russia and may be willing to sell off Ukraine, Moldova, Finland and whatever to Russia in return for being allowed to buy the energy.
Well, okay, it will not go that far in 2024, no matter how bad an energy crisis we will see, as there is a great deal of inertia involved in such processes, but we may hear politicians beginning to speak like this.
The USA will, as mentioned before, be split in the view on Europe, but most likely the end of it will be an increased military presence but a reduced economical presence (i.e., buying less from Europe but selling more weapons to Europe).
We will see an explosion in poverty in Europe, just like we did up until WWII, and since the USA doesn’t have a mid-West to win and start exploring this time, it is not likely that the USA will get much more wealthy, but the distribution of money will no doubt continue to be skewed, letting the few rich own just about everything, and letting more people become extremely poor.
For the USA, a Venezuela/Guyana war could come in handy, as it would probably allow for the USA to obtain lots of cheap oil from either (or both) of these countries.
This was the end of the predictions!
A separate article will follow up on and evaluate them, to see how well I did and have a look at how the world developed as expected, and how it did differently.