Friday, June 29, 2018

ITS 2040 AND TRUMP IS STILL PRESIDENT

Trump is still president. He changed the constitution when in power. Jamie Oliver is the prime minister of the UK. He and another bunch of celebs won the general election a couple of years ago. Brexit never happened. The government spent billions on it and abandoned it after 10 years of failed negotiations.

I have a fully electric car now. It's good for what it is. Not much fun to drive, all roads in the UK enforce the speed limit automatically through auto management systems. 60mph is the maximum you can go on a good day. I say on a good day because depending on the weather the limit is reduced.

If it rains it's 40mph. It doesn't really matter as you don't actually do anything in a car anymore. You tell your personal assistant where you need to be and when you need to get there and they take care of the rest.

When it's time to leave your assistant tells you to get in the car. I don't travel by car much anymore, everyone works at home now. Most former service jobs are taken care of by bots. I'm partly responsible for this being a software engineer. I helped develop the first delivery bot. Amazon pushed the boundary further and got delivery of prime-down to 2 hours. All cities have an amazon warehouse.

Food is manufactured on our 3D printer, endorsed by Jamie Oliver. It's a clever device. Tesco spent a lot of money developing it. It's funny not only can't I speed in my car but I'm prevented from getting fat by my Tesco 3d printer. My personal assistant tracks my health and Tesco adjusts the nutritional value of my meals.

The average life expectancy now is 120 years of age. A good diet and excellent medical service mean that we are all living much longer. I am "still working", No one retires anymore. The government scrapped the state pension a few years ago.

The big electric companies no longer exist. They missed a trick when Tesla started producing solar roof tiles. Most UK houses are self-sufficient in their power generation. All they need comes from their house roofs. The demand is much lower and houses now run a much safer 5v supply which covers all lights and appliances in the house.

The only exception is car charging points. The supply for this is quite high and dangerous at 1200v dc. Car manufacturers had done quite well getting the range to 500 miles and a charge time of 15 minutes, but with the demise of the national grid charge times at home increased to 48 hours. It means most people don't travel far anymore.

With electric cars and hydrogen commercial vehicles big oil didn't run out more than become in less demand. As a result, the price went back up for a short period which pushed the last remaining cars off the road and reduced demand for oil even more.

Commercial flights are a big problem globally. The solution to green air travel has not been found yet so only short distances can be traveled in the new hydrogen planes. The long haul is a thing of the past. If you want to travel further than former Europe you need to take multiple flights or travel by sea. The USA is all but cut off from the rest of the world with planes not capable of traveling across the Atlantic. Volcanoes in Iceland make a landing there unsafe for the past decade now.

Traveling by sea is the only option. This can now take up to 10 days with the return of sailboats. Not the small wooden ones that were pushed along by the wind, but rather turbines attached to giant floating platforms. With prevailing wind only in one direction means the turbines face the wind and the maritime electrical generators turn propellers.

International communications have also been affected. Satellites have literally been falling out of the sky. This was planned as part of the normal lifecycle as they gradually move closer to earth and burn up in the atmosphere. The problem has been replacing them. Currently, we have no means to carry a payload into space. Lack of rocket fuel, safety concerns, and funding problems meant that satellites were never replaced. No more sky Tv. In some ways, this may be a blessing.

So yea 2040 is an ok place to be. It's certainly different from the 2020s. We still have blue skies, and the grass is still green. Local villages have shops and pubs that have reopened. You can drink and drive again. The local shop has 3D printers. Without the ability or need to travel far I know all my neighbors and see them almost every day. Work-life balance is good. Families stay together in their local community too like in the old days.