Letters to the Editor
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Squibbler has a good insight, but let me add...
at a baser level, the reason the first half of the 20th century was dominated by transportation advances (and manufacturing to massive scale) is because that was how to get rich and powerful (individually and as a nation). The latter half of the 20th Century with microchips and fiber optic data links and packet switching happened because the investors saw dollar signs in these things. If someone comes up with a business model which credibly demonstrates that hovercars would rake in trillions, there'd be a helluva lot of creative talent pushed into getting hovercars a reality.
So for the first half of the 21st Century, at least one obvious (to me) money carrot dangling out there is the environment and energy. The world's creative talent will devote more and more effort to develop green technology, renewable resources, clean energy, and sustainable development because there's fortunes to be made - especially when oil starts shooting over $100 a barrel. Solar photovoltaics (to pick one example out of many) are getting better, cheaper, and more widely available, while oil, gas, and conventionally-produced electricity are getting more expensive every year. Soon a solar roof will be an add-on to a new home just like a swimming pool or a multi-car garage...at first, a toy for the wealthy, but soon, the cost will be just a few extra percent on a mortgage, and people will see the bump in the resale value of the property, and buy in volume.
And then, energy companies will have to change. They'll become energy storage companies, providing the public with a service - buying up the excess power during sunny days, and selling the electrons back at night, for a service fee of course. Naturally, this change will be evolutionary and gradual, but eventually, a home without a solar system will look as out of place as, say, a home without central heat and air conditioning.
Those things we today call landfills will become carbon mines in the future, if the price of energy gets high enough. The way I see it, if you want to predict the future (at least the near-term future we're discussing here), then just like Watergate, follow the money.