On a scale of 1-10, (10 being highly plausible) how plausible do you think this prediction is?

Which prediction
Some of those are more plausible than others

Meh….possibility vs. probability. I’d say a 2–3 % chance in a 5–10 year span for driverless cars, same for subscribing to technology, plenty of people will still want to own their own items and less than .0.05 % chance of a new religion, which, based on the environment has already been done in eastern philosophies. The awareness of the interconnectedness of everything is nothing new, the symbiosis of all things the “harm no thing” philosophy. The popularity of eastern philosophy has been going on for decades now. There is no new news under the sun really. haha

A good 6 to 7.
Driverless cars exist, and the companies that make them are already making progress with the legal aspects.
Subscription based models are already the case for examples like the Adobe Suite and Autodesk products. Even Microsoft is planning to make their future Windows versions subscription based.
A similar model for physical products, less likely.
I completely doubt that there will be a new religion, however.

Basically what @ragingloli said above.

10. I have predicted the same thing about local transit and the results it would have on traffic congestion.
No comment about the religion thing. Sounds far-fetched.

I predict many things will be quite different from what “the experts” predict them to be in 5–10 years. I only hope streets and highways full of driverless vehicles won’t be one of them.

@Pachy Driverless vehicles will certainly be safer than ones with drivers.

That 5 year thing for driverless cars hangs on one’s definition of “share the road”. For one thing (among dozens!) who’s going to insure the enormously expensive things

Walt Disney’s Peoplemover is a driverless car. They exist (10), but I don’t think they will replace most cars in 20 years (2). I think there are too many problems and it’s an annoying thing to attempt. As for subscribing to cars rather than buying them, I don’t know; the car companies might try that, but I’d think they’d be pretty happy with their current system of leasing us cars we’re responsible for but that only they can fix by replacing with computerized components that only they can make and pick the prices for and offer the repair service for. I’m not sure why they’d prefer to give us a constant subscription fee, as I think they’d miss many profits that most people currently don’t think about.

Companies like M$ love the idea of selling us subscriptions to products we used to be able to buy and not re-buy. It’s just an extension of M$’ practice of re-making Window$ and Office over and over and getting us to re-buy the same basic software over and over, shifting in bad versions and removing features from time to time so they can offer improvements two versions later. So M$ and whoever else thinks they can do that will (10 – already happening), unless/until people hate them for it enough and/or other companies offer something not as bad. I don’t think it is a universal or necessary trend.

A new religion around nature? Well, religion is always changing, and there are certainly already a lot of strong nature themes both in new current and newish spiritual thinking, and in Buddhism and even coming from the current Pope, so that’s already happening (10) but not really a futuristic revelation. There will also probably continue to be scummy pastors preaching to ape-tards that Jesus wants them to kill homosexuals.

Assuming we survive all the environmental destruction and war and corruption we keep doing to ourselves.

Probability of 7.5 that at least 50% of the population will give up car ownership in favour of auto service subscription. Makes a lot of sense to me. As for when it would happen, I would predict within the next 20 years.

Well, good luck with that. @rockfan. You certainly have more faith in technology than I do. You also have more faith in our federal and local governing bodies to fund the kind of massive and unique infrastructure that will be needed in 5–10 years when they can’t even do it today.

That’s horseshit. I am so much better than a computer at this time. I see the first deer, I know to expect the second one, you think a computer is going to do that? I see a ball roll into the street I hit the brakes, because I kid is this next thing that’s going to appear. You have a program for that?

With respect to the purchase economy/subscribe economy question – that’s what the big corporate entities would like. I hope that people are smart enough not to get sucked into it more than they already have.

If you subscribe to things, you are dependent on others. Moving away from an ownership economy takes away our freedoms and autonomy.

As for the new religion part – not a chance. Although one could argue that it should happen, people will forever retain their beliefs in irrational philosophies. This will not change, even in 100–200 years.

2

I do not agree with Paul Saffo’s prediction that driverless cars will share roadways in urban areas first. I think that first they will be used on highways and that when reaching an urban area will require a driver to assume control, though collision avoidance systems will continue to operate.

I agree that ownership will increasingly give way to subscribership. Software, such as word processors, spreadsheets and databases soon will not reside in personal computers, instead exist in the ‘cloud’ and users will pay for their access.

Although a religion that focuses on the environment is appealing to me, I do not believe that a new religion of any significance will emerge. Beliefs established centuries ago will continue to dominate. Consider the limited appeal of Scientology, or quasi-religions such as Ken Wilber’s integral philosophy.

@Bill1939 I read a lot of Ken Wilbers work about 8–9 years ago, I found it very good.

He is a bit too optimistic in his timeline on driverless cars. They are inevitable, and will make up the majority of vehicles on the road in time, but not within the next 10 years. So on that prediction I give him a 4. Much more likely in the next decade will be the emergence of a combination of hybrid & fully electric vehicles into the majority of vehicles on the road.

Technology (devices, computers & software) as subscriptions instead of outright ownership: software, yes, hardware, unlikely. So on the hardware side, I give his prediction a 3, and a 9 on the software side. As far as Windows or Apple’s iOS, I do not see the techno-geek crowd adapting to a subscription based version because the OS is fundamental to everything a computer can do, and because it is simply easier to “tweak” the OS so it works the way each individual user needs it to.

As far as a new religion springing up, I give that prediction a 1 at best. I simply do not see it happening within the next 50 years, much less the next 10.

@Bill1939 I live in an urban area and I’ve already seen driverless cars on the road.
It’s really weird.

No kidding?????! I had no idea any of the general public had them yet. I thought they were still in the double-checking stage.

I wonder if there is a cost saving to having driverless cars. It is true that currently at any one time there are a lot of idle cars, so that having a car service would cut down on the number, but that would mean higher mileage for a smaller number of cars. While the lower accident rate of driverless cars is an important factor, I think there would need to be a significant cost saving in order for people to switch over.

As for a new religion, it is certainly true that the attitudes of most of the existing ones are outdated, but a new religion would require a gullibility factor that I don’t think exists anymore.The general trend in the industrialized world away from organized religion will continue.

@Coloma, I found the early writings of Ken Wilber interesting, however they seemed to become increasingly doctrinal over the years. This impression has been reinforced by the following website that you might want to check out. I have subscribed to it for several years.

Integral World “Exploring theories of everything”
http://www.integralworld.net

“Within five to ten years, driverless cars will share roadways with conventional cars. This will happen in urban areas first and will take a decade to fully defuse. In the long run, people won’t own cars at all. When you need to go somewhere, you’ll have a subscription to an auto service, and it will show up at your door.”

1 – The technology will be there, but the legal/political and human nature/acceptance issues will take longer to flesh out. Also, in the long run people will definitely continue to own cars. The nostalgia associated with “retro” human-drivable cars will last at least another 100 years. After that, they will continue to be prized antiques. In a world of driverless electronic subscription rental vehicles, a vintage car with a steering wheel, gas peddle and load pipes will be a prized novelty.

@Lawn I do agree with you fully, but more than just novelty, the human race is far too to enchanted with ownership to go completely out of the auto market.

I agree with you and I like the way you phrased that. The human race is definitely enchanted with ownership.

“We’re moving away from a purchase economy. We will subscribe to access rather than pay money for possessions such as smart phones. We won’t buy software anymore, we’ll subscribe to it.”

3 – People will still want to own smart phones. As mentioned, humans are enchanted with ownership – for some people Apple products (and cars) are a status thing or a part of their identity. As for subscription software, it seems more plausible. The companies that are doing it now have monopolies on their industry. I love Photoshop but when Adobe switched to a subscription model, I abandoned it. I don’t want to pay $1200 to use a piece of software for five years. Increasingly, they will have to compete with open source and independent developers.

“A new religion could emerge in the next decade or two, perhaps based around the environment. Digital technology is the solvent leaching the glue out of our global structure – including shaking our beliefs systems to the core.”

2 – There’s already Unitarian Universalism, Gaianism, Pantheism, Taoism and Neo-Paganism.