The Mindset of the Class of 2029

theodp writes "In response to Beloit College's 10th Annual Mindset List, which takes a stab at describing the worldview of the incoming Class of 2011 (grew up with bottled water; have always had the World Wide Web), Valleywag's Nick Douglas presages The Mindset of the Class of 2029 (have always been able to use a cell phone on a plane; 'Lord of the Rings' looks fake and the effects are laughable)."

Not sure thats a good thing

[also-rr]

The mindset of anyone who has had to sit on a plane for 9 hours listening to an inane cellphone call will not be healthy. The only hope of salvation is that by then your cellphone/camera/gps/projector/printer/mp8player/s extoy/flashlight/pda/radio convergence device will have a battery life of 3 seconds, and/or banned from the plane by the government to stop you pirating the in flight movie.

Re:Not sure thats a good thing

[Praedon]

The only real hope for this mindset list, is that all of us will be in power by the time it rolls around. We must spread the word about Mario, 4chan, Mr. Rodgers, and Dick Chaney. We must also clone Robin Williams. We must also keep George Lucas around to digitally remaster Lord of the Rings. We also need to conspire against silicon valley in the future. The world can never forget!

Re:

[Ayavaron]

Something tells me that even if people forget about lolcats, 4chan will stick around. lolcats are just a meme like dozens before it. There'll be new memes and the evil forces of /b/ will continue masterminding them all.

I think Nintendo will be able to keep Mario around through endless ports of old games to new portable systems and new games. They intend to keep their best franchises around forever.

Sadly, all hope is already lost for "Chaney" and "Rodgers."

Re:Not sure thats a good thing

[rhartness]

I think Nintendo will be able to keep Mario around through endless ports of old games to new portable systems and new games. They intend to keep their best franchises around forever.

I was born in 1981 so, of course, Mario in one form or another has been a constant of my life. I, personally, beleive that the video gaming industry is certainly going to continue to grow and since it is an 'industry' just like movies and music, companies like Sony, M$ and Nintendo understand the idea of branding young impressionable minds with familiar concepts.

Mario is an icon and by 2029, it wouldn't suprise me that he and his friends (Peach, Luigi, DK, etc.) are just as famous as Mickey Mouse and his firends were in the 80's (appx. fifty years after his introduction). Mario is an icon of video games that children recognize all over the world. It would be foolish for Nintendo, or any company that might buy them out in the next 18 years, to discontinue such a long running and successful trademark that literally millions of young and old people associate with happy, youthful memories.

Anyways, that's my two cents.

Re:

[reeve]

Spread the word?  About 4chan?  The mindset of a generation growing up on 4chan...  *shudder*

Re:

[hahafaha]

BUMP!

Re:

[cashman73]

We must also keep George Lucas around to digitally remaster Lord of the Rings.

George Lucas?!?! What? Are you crazy? He wouldn't DARE touch anything Peter Jackson has put together, or else the whole of slashdot would revoke HIS geek card!!!! I don't even want to think about Lucas redoing LOTR ... after what he did to the prequels. I'm sure he'd have Gollum acting like some looney gungan,... "My precious" would somehow have a jamaican accent,...

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

You know, some of us liked the prequels, so don't be too hard on Lucas. I thought they were, overall, stronger than the original trilogy. It's not as if he made movies that no one liked, and slapped the Star Wars name on them. I would even go so far as to say those fans aren't a tiny minority, but a more well-organized sample than just the people I knew in college would have to be used to determine that with reasonable accuracy.

2029 issues...

[tempest69]

They will remember that movies came in the mail when they were kids. And consider it quaint.

Photo scrapbooks will be digital, with printouts being kitschy..

Most people will max out around a terabyte of music.. because its more than they will ever get around top listening to. This will be a small chunk on their thumb drives.

The old Colbert reports will have references too obscure to follow.

South Park will be mainstream wholesome viewing... While some new show comes along to violate our sense of moral

Teledildonics

[goombah99]

I'm more worried about all 16 yearolds having neural teledildonics controlled by their skull phones, video tatoos, and computers that are smarter than they are.

Re:

[Jaknet]

Looking at some of todays teenagers I think you are a bit late with "worrying about computers that are smarter than they are." It's already here

Re:

[Iron Condor]

I'm more worried about all 16 yearolds having [...] computers that are smarter than they are.

Most 16-year-olds already have computers that are smarter than they are. Heck, when I was 16 we had Atari-400s and I'm pretty sure most of us were less smart than that...

Re:

[DeadboltX]

planes will only take 1 hour to get to the other side of the world in 2029, duh!

Cell phones on planes

[RJBeery]

Airlines don't allow cell phones on planes for a reason that most don't understand - it's about control of information. When the passengers of a plane are in danger they are frequently kept in the dark to avoid the ensuing panic, and that wouldn't be possible if they all got phone calls about their plane being on television.

As a side note, I asked a Southwest stewardess why they turn off the lights after dark, even when it's too early to sleep. She was real shifty in her response so I kept pressuring h

They can't believe...

[DynaSoar]

... that people were ever against euthanasia. If all those old people were ever to accumulate the hospital industry would collapse. Maybe that's why they called them "boomers".

Re:

[lawpoop]

If all those old people were ever to accumulate the hospital industry would collapse.

Don't you mean, 'boom'?

I don't think LOTR will look fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather, I think they'll find it boring because it's not interactive.

They will be horrified...

[nebaz]

That the government was so big and bloated before Emperor Bush dissolved the Senate.

Re:They will be horrified...

[smchris]

I was going to say the list obviously depends upon the selectors who do the selecting and it seems a bit negative this year. But you are right. It could be worse. There's already nobody under 30 who remembers a pre-Reagan world when government could do anything right like infrastructure or the space program.
 

Re:They will be horrified...

[Original Replica]

"There's already nobody under 30 who remembers a pre-Reagan world "

So in another 50 years no one will ever remember having faith and pride in the US government? I'm 32 and I have never had any faith or positive feelings towards Congress. I faintly remember liking Reagan, but at the time I knew nothing of politics or policies, just that Regan gave good speeches. Outside of that I have never felt proud of our government, or had an elected leader that I actually wanted to follow. I have often felt pride in being American, when traveling overseas or helping with my small part of some charitable work, but that is pride in our culture not our leaders. It seems to me that the USSR collapsed not too long after the last generation to actually believe in it died. I fear if things continue the way they have been, the same will happen here.

Re:

[Belacgod]

It seems to me that the USSR collapsed not too long after the last generation to actually believe in it died. I fear if things continue the way they have been, the same will happen here. The difference between the USSR and the USA is that in the USA you can believe in the USA and hate the government.

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

For now. That could still go either way, imo.

In Soviet USA, government hates you

[dn15]

The subject of this message is a joke, but there's more than a little truth to it.

Re:

[cashman73]

Don't you mean, "Emporer Cheney"? "Darth Bush" is just a servant,... ;-)

for the class of 2029, they forgot...

[wpegden]

... "grew up on bottled air"

Re:

[Praedon]

They also forgot: "Half of them didn't make it during the invasion of robots."

add another one to the list

[wwmedia]

add another one to the list

Osama Bin Laden is still the boogey man

Re:add another one to the list

[friedman101]

Believe Memphis was always a popular surfing destination

Re:

[Schemat1c]

Believe Memphis was always a popular surfing destination

And believe Elvis is actually dead.

if i have kids..

[jimbug]

They don't know what a LOLCat is or why it talks that way.

i will make sure this NEVER happens

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"They don't know what a LOLCat is or why it talks that way."

  Though ironically, Tubgirl & Goatse remained a staple of internet culture that everyone clearly understood.

In 2029...

[Stanistani]

The world's largest Theme Park is HolyLand, run by the Disney Corp. It "features the colorful and historic actual former countries of Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. Of course, all inhabitants are Disney employees wearing colorful costumes. Parting of the Red Sea at 10 am, noon, and 2 pm. When asked what happened to the former inhabitants, the tour guides always say, "We don't like to talk about that," and offer a two-for-one coupon for the donkey ride in Jerusalem.

Re:In 2029...

[GPL Apostate]

Also, people who ask how all the prop sand from the beaches of the Indian Ocean was transported onto the large sheet of glass are asked to leave.

Re:

[CheeseTroll]

Right on! I've often said (mostly to myself) that if I were ever President, I'd threaten Israel & Palestine that if they didn't try harder to abide by an existing peace plan (pick one - any one), our next idea would involve Disney mgmt taking over Jerusalem. Of course it would be a mockery to 3 major religions at once, but would it be any worse than what they've made of it already?

Not sure I'd like to ride the 'Crucifixion' ride, though.

Re:

[Stanistani]

No, that's the 'Pilates of the Mediterranean' ride.

And

[AbbyNormal]

Duke Nukem is still not out yet.

Re:

[cashman73]

And Windows Vista still won't run on any existing hardware,...

And 640 terabytes ought to be enough for anybody,...

Re:

[maxwell demon]

And Windows Vista still won't run on any existing hardware...

You do know that Vista is capable of running quite well on some existing hardware, right? Your shot at Vista doesn't hold true even now, what'll make it become true in 2029?

DirectX13. The one which no single graphics card manufacturer will get right. :-)

Re:

[ncc74656]

You do know that Vista is capable of running quite well on some existing hardware, right?

It doesn't work well on any hardware when the WGA servers are tango-uniform [slashdot.org].

Add one

[nxtr]

Current terrorist witchhunts were as laughable as the McCarthy Hearings. Oh wait, they already are.

an oldie but a goodie

[larry bagina]

2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.

100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".

399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.

A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.

A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.

A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.

A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco's passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a sever

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

There is only one question which burns, lingering, in my mind after reading this.

Who/what the hell is ESR???

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Who/what the hell is ESR???

a nobody that pretends to be somebody. Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:

[GPL Apostate]

Who/what the hell is ESR???

Don't worry about it.

It's easily wiped off with a dilute solution of bleach in water, and a garage rag.

Re:an oldie but a goodie

[Bananatree3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond [wikipedia.org]

Kiwi Mindset lists

[echucker]

clicky here [massey.ac.nz]

Or it could be really different...

[3seas]

...we could have blow ourselves up and be starting all over again...

Sea change

[lawpoop]

Last year I was walking through the Home Depot. I needed an item of certain specs for a project, but I didn't know if that item even existed. I asked several employees for help, but if it didn't have a name, the thing didn't exist, as far as they were concerned. I wandered around for a little bit, wondering which isle I might find my mythical device. Then it struck me -- "I'll look it up on google!"

In retrospect, this seems astoundingly obvious. I was using my 2400 baud modem to dial-up BBSes before "The Internet", and I was asking my college classmates if they had tried Google yet for their internet searches back in '98-'99. But even though I'm relatively young and computer savvy, the information revolution has not completely saturated my mind. I'll be a foreigner who learned to speak the language late in his teen; I'll forever have an accent. I grew up in a world of libraries and card catalogs, of unhelpful adults who knew little of the subjects I wanted to learn about, and experts who couldn't answer questions that I didn't know how to pose. The world I grew up in was opaque, by default. I grew up in an information famine. If there was a weird or esoteric subject that made itself known to me somehow -- perhaps a short reference in a comic book -- I would spend days or weeks wondering about it. I would spend fruitless hours in the library trying to look it up, or getting blank stares from librarians or store owners.

But the kids these days -- anything they might want to know is sitting there in the computer room. They will never know a world of informationlessness. Everything from obscure programming langauges to Hatian Gods to currrent events, right in front of them.

Amazing things are in the pipeline. I hope I live as long as I can!

Re:

[pete-classic]

I hope I live as long as I can!

You're in luck! I assure you that you can!

-Peter

Re:

[lawpoop]

That's wonderful news! Thanks so much :)

Re:

[superdude72]

On a semirelated note, I'm struck by how much easier kids today have it when it comes to discovering new music. I had an appallingly limited selection when I was growing up in the suburbs in the '80s. Bands that we now think of as seminal--early REM, the Pixies, Husker Du--weren't played on commercial radio, and there was no college radio in my town. A lot of these bands were actually rather obscure at the height of their careers. Maybe in Los Angeles there was a station that played them. Not in my town. My

Re:

[Guido von Guido]

No kidding! In Detroit, one or two of radio stations had "new wave" shows you could catch over the weekend. WABX was briefly an "alternative" station, before they changed formats. Close to the time I graduated, I discovered the Avondale high school radio station, which played a pretty wide range of material. I think that was about it

When I went away to college, it turned out conservative Cincinnati actually had a greatradio station, WOXY (AKA 97X) [lala.com], which has sadly left the airwaves in the last couple of y

Re:

[ottothecow]

89.3 The Current [publicradio.org]

Queue their live stream up and see what good radio should be. My two favorite DJ's on radio are on on weekdays. 3-7pm gives Mary Lucia (She used to host a "regular" show and a great local music show on Rev 105 before Disney purchased it and eventually fired the entire staff) and 7-10 has Mark Wheat (who I first discovered on the University of Minnesota's station and is so incredibly knowledgeable about music). Bonus points for not having commercials--it's a radio station you can just tu

Re:

[Guido von Guido]

The odd thing is that I've just discovered the Current. I live in Madison, but I go to Minneapolis a few times a year on business, and in June 89.3 was interfering with the signal for my iPod car radio adapter (usually set to 89.5). I haven't given it a try on the Internet, though.

Re:

[superdude72]

On the 89.3 front page right now:

Son Volt, Wilco, the Rentals... What year is this, 1996? I don't mean to snark but that is exactly what I was listening to in 1996 in Chicago. Except Son Volt and Wilco had only recently risen from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo. I'm glad to see Farrar and Tweedy reunited, if only on the same home page leading separate bands. Uncle Tupelo was the best band ever. Saw them at Lounge Ax, Chicago.

Re:Sea change

[Stiletto]

But the kids these days -- anything they might want to know is sitting there in the computer room. They will never know a world of informationlessness. Everything from obscure programming langauges to Hatian Gods to currrent events, right in front of them.

On the flip side, however, this generation is useless when the power goes out. Most of them can't recall basic historical facts, spell properly, or do basic arithmetic without a machine to help them.

It's the "I don't need to know---I'll google it!" generation.

Re:Sea change

[rantingkitten]

Well, did you find the item or not? Don't leave us hanging!

Re:

[lawpoop]

Sorry, to tell you the truth, I don't recall what it was. Could have been cactus potting soil, but I seem to remember it being a bit more complicated than that!

Re:

[c6gunner]

But the kids these days -- anything they might want to know is sitting there in the computer room. They will never know a world of informationlessness. Everything from obscure programming langauges to Hatian Gods to currrent events, right in front of them.

Yeah! For instance, they can learn that the US Government demolished the WTC with space lasers while a bunch of Jews danced, that the UFO in Roswell isn't really saucer shaped, that we never landed on the moon, the holocaust never happened, communism wi

Re:

[lawpoop]

Yes, they will 'learn' all those things, or at least be presented with them. Most people won't believe them, just like most don't believe any 9/11 conspiracy theories. No amount of web pages, youtube videos, or self-appointed researchers can convince most people that there was anything suspicious about 9/11. Forget about alien saucer crashes or the health benefits of battery acid.

It seems to only be a special variety of internet geek, the conspiracy theorist, who believes everything they read on the inte

Re:

[c6gunner]

No amount of web pages, youtube videos, or self-appointed researchers can convince most people that there was anything suspicious about 9/11. Forget about alien saucer crashes or the health benefits of battery acid.

48% of Americans believe UFO's have visited the earth [scifi.com].

And, if I remember correctly, something like 70% believe that JFK wasn't killed by Oswald.

So I think you're being overly generous (to put it mildly) in your estimation of the intelligence of others. Even the 9/11 "truth" movement - p

Movies have always come in the mail

[Aqua OS X]

Really? With OnDemand, iTunes, UnBox, Xbox Marketplace, P2P, etc. ?

Snail mailed disks are antiquated you damn old timer. Non-downloadable movies will be a laughable distant memory in 18 years.

Re:

[westlake]

Snail mailed disks are antiquated you damn old timer. Non-downloadable movies will be a laughable distant memory in 18 years

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a postal truck.

The 50 GB Blu-Ray disc is here now. The future may be the 4 TB HVD Holographic Disc [wikipedia.org]. You won't be renting a movie - you will be renting an actor, a series, a character, or genre.

Everything James Bond.

Re:Movies have always come in the mail

[Belacgod]

I'm afraid in the future, we'll just have to settle for watching edited montagues of YouToob snippets.

So they'll have won the format war with the YouToob capulets?

Re:

[ncc74656]

I'm afraid in the future, we'll just have to settle for watching edited montagues of YouToob snippets.

So they'll have won the format war with the YouToob capulets?

Well played, sir...quality humor like that is something the next generation isn't likely to grok.

Price of gas

[Matt Perry]

have always been able to use a cell phone on a plane

I imagine that by 2029 the price of gas will be so high that only the extremely wealthy will be able to afford plane travel.

The Lucas Factor

[Treskin]

'Lord of the Rings' looks fake and the effects are laughable)

My prediction: Lord of the Rings will become a cult classic among the youth of the next 20 years. When it has become accepted as a mainstay of American culture, Peter Jackson will admit he was never truly satisfied with the poor quality of the special effects and release 3 "Special Edition" movies. These will feature new special effects and opening sequence in which Sauron was just actually just kicking back in Mordor, enjoying a lemonade on his gazebo with the orphans he just adopted - when suddenly Elendil walks up and pimp slaps Sauron across the face with a mace. This will trigger a campaign known as "Sauron maced first" seeking to restore the original concept and flavor of both characters.

After meeting with some success with these Special Editions, Jackson will decide to release a 3 movie prequel based on The Hobbit which will feature the dwarf Thorin replaced by a lovable anthropomorphic fish-dwarf who likes to say "Mesa gonna havea big adventures with yousa Hobbit, sah" who everyone will hate. Following their release, the class of 2029 will complain that Peter Jackson has ruined their childhoods by destroying the movies they had grown up loving so much.

Re:

[Albert Sandberg]

... and many will insist that you should see them in order 4,5,1,2,3,6 so they don't spoil the ents.

The new mindest...

[iminplaya]

Comin' up next on The Violence Channel: An all-new "Ow, My Balls!"

Tales from a Beloit non-grad

[SuperBanana]

Just FYI- Beloit is the armpit school of the midwest. When I went there in the late 90's:

• An entire dorm left mid-term. Something like 1/4 of the freshman class was "asked to take a semester off" (I was one of them, and I suspect it had more to do with them grossly overbooking dorm rooms and classes.)
• My physics class was taught using a self-published physics textbook developed by a nearby university. The previous year's physics 101 class sent in FORTY pages of corrections, and ours were wrong in all sorts of new and exciting ways. The class was useless, because the professor had to have the entire class go over the homework together, and you never knew if you were doing the problem set wrong, or if the problemset itself was wrong.
• the facilities were a mess (we couldn't even get lightbulbs for common areas)
• students were crammed into every available space; there were 6 and 7 people in some converted lounges. I was shoved into a double with three people, and it was a fight with res life to get furniture for the third guy; they gave us two desks, TWO BEDS, and two dressers.
• They don't serve anything except brunch on Sundays. This sucks more than you could possibly believe when you're in the middle of nowhere. It's not like you can walk a block or two into town and get something tasty and cheap. Your choices: pizza and...pizza.
• The town is full of really bigoted, angry, poor people. My roommate, who was seeing another student who had come from Indonesia, had a run in with a guy who said: "Yeeer girlll-friend Chaneeeeese?" "Uh, no, she's Indonesian." "She LOOKS Chaaaaaneeeeeeese". The guy then followed them back to campus in his pickup truck.
• The only exciting thing to do in Beloit...is to drive to Madison. YEEEHAA. Sucks if you don't know anyone with a car!
• The nearest transportation to Chicago (where you will be flying in/out of) is several MILES off campus. Do you know how much that sucks any time from fall to late spring, ie, the academic season?
• My dorm freshman year was infested with cockroaches- the basement lounge was full of them, and our room had them as well, despite it being the start of the year and the room being very clean.
• By 4-5PM people are drinking and smoking pot, and every Friday/Saturday night, the lounges would turn into what a nightclub looks like after it closes; full of broken glass, beer cans/bottles everywhere, beer coating *everything* (the furniture was never cleaned, so...yeah) and recycling bins and trashcans filled to the brim with beer.
• We had wonderful militant feminists and lesbians who all strong-armed the campus into giving them the nicest dorms on campus and making them women only. One was called "The Womyn's Center". Their favorite activity was scrolling sexual slurs like "DYKE!" on the walkways to get a rise out of people.
• Relations are so good with the town that the Beloit police department spends all night "patrolling" "town property" (aka the one public road that goes through the residential section) and ticketing people for anything they possibly can. I was never ticketed, but half my dorm had been ticketed for "open container of alcohol" because they crossed the street from one dorm to another with a can of beer.
• The local canned food plant (the only real place for people to work- General Dynamics shut down its plant and is mostly why the town was/is a hell-hole) regularly belches forth clouds of artificial cheese smell or baked beans. The student-run "Coughy Haus" is named for the cough people make when they smell the "cheese breeze."
• There's a freight train line nearby that blows its horn at every crossing....at about 5AM. EVERY MORNING.
• Thefts on campus were rampant. I repeatedly had stuff stolen off my bike by townies who considered campus an convenient automatic teller machine.

It's the fucking armpit of the midwestern liberal arts schools. Give it a WIDE BERTH. If you're stupid enough to go, don't even think of staying in "810", or its nearby dorm (I forget the number...6-something?)

Re:

[Vegeta99]

Sounds like my campus. I'm an RA in this mess, but:

Relations are so good with the town that the Beloit police department spends all night "patrolling" "town property" (aka the one public road that goes through the residential section) and ticketing people for anything they possibly can. I was never ticketed, but half my dorm had been ticketed for "open container of alcohol" because they crossed the street from one dorm to another with a can of beer.

So don't violate the open container law! What's the BEST w

Re:

[IamTheRealMike]

Our campus dining services was mandatory - except if you joined a co-op or in limited other cases - and it was run by a company that specialized in prison services, while the administration admitted that funds from board fees were siphoned off to other areas of the school.

Haha, you think that's good? My college at university had mandatory charges for catering (breakfast, lunch and dinner). In my final year they admitted after a few weeks that they had used the food money to pay for a rebranding exercise.

what's mousepad?

[roman_mir]

So no more 2-dimensional information entry that is easily mappable to a 2-dimensional visual display?
Interesting. Maybe we'll have mind controlled computers finally.
If alive, in 2029 I'll be 53, ouch.

What will it really be like?

All newborns are imprinted with DNA sequences, that uniquely identify a person. Basically everyone's DNA will have a serial number. Obviously many will resist this but the anti-terrorist laws will be strong, comrades. From then on this tech will proliferate into all aspects of life, various ID schemes will be implemented on top of this tech. Obviously people will find work-arounds, but all illegal of-course.

Various genetic types of treatment, still no cure for AIDS, but people won't die from it directly anymore. Still no cure for many types of cancer, but detection is much better and if detected in time, survival rate will approach 90%.

Patented life forms used in manufacturing of goods. Patented viruses, bacteria, insects, cows, pigs, wheat, rice, corn, apples, etc. used to efficiently provide the population of 9 billion people with food, shelter, clothing, energy, entertainment and medication.

Patented people. AI built on top of a computer network that will use humans as nodes for intuition and any non-programmable functionality.

Polygamy legalized in China, one woman will be able to have many husbands at the same time.

Sex-bots.

Sex-cyborgs.

Arab Emirates run out of oil and become a gigantic Disney Land on drugs.

All legally bought electronics have built-in DRM, digital fingerprinting, watermarking and such. The feedback loops allow the content providers to identify those, who release copyrighted materials into 'the wild' without authorization. Laws are put in place to make copyright violations to be the most heinous crime of all times, worse than murder but not as bad as tax evasion.

Oh, and taxes. Well, they will grow.

Re:

[gad_zuki!]

>still no cure for AIDS, but people won't die from it directly anymore. S

Except the poor and uninsured.

Re:

[roman_mir]

I am talking about inserting DNA sequences, that are serial numbers into the original DNA of a newborn. Of-course the serial numbers of the parents will be carried to the children, but I guess the serials of the parents will be removed and a new serial will be inserted to ID the child.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Don't remember a time when George Bush...

[dircha]

...was not President!

Re:

[forkazoo]

...was not President!

Well, we already have a significant number of people who don't remember a time when there wasn't a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. And, if Hillary gets two terms, Chelsea and the Bush twins could conceivable run against each other with a populace that has gotten used to 35+ years of familial duopoly...

My lawn...

[st0rmshad0w]

...off it.

Oh wait, that's "OF the class" not "ABOUT the class"...

Onward and upward

[Animats]

Views of 2029:

• China is the superpower.
• "What's your draft status"?
• No more shaving. Laser hair removal. (It's only expensive now because the patent licensing terms are terrible.)
• Cars plug in, and mostly drive themselves.
• Getting a good job looks hopeless. Success requires picking your parents carefully.
• Being a "knowledge worker" is obsolete; it's like being a manual laborer before heavy machinery. Computers are smarter than you are.

Re:

[glwtta]

Being a "knowledge worker" is obsolete; it's like being a manual laborer before heavy machinery. Computers are smarter than you are.

Pft, yeah - that means that the people going into school now (who will design these systems) are freakin geniuses the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Special effects

[Yath]

'Lord of the Rings' looks fake and the effects are laughable

For those of you who scorn this prediction, remember that there are people alive who have seen only a few contemporary movies. For those people, LoTR effects are actually pretty good. After all, computer-generated effects, while still in their infancy, have gotten steadily better over the last couple of decades. So it's inevitable that there will be a few younger folks for whom LoTR's effects, when compared to most other contemporary movies, stand

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

I'm sure that comment will get me marked as a troll by a bunch of pimply-faced knuckleheads

No, but that shot at the mods will.

Anyways, I don't understand the big deal about CG. I am young, to be fair (22), but the CG in modern movies looks plenty realistic to me, unless I pick it apart. If I allow myself to be immersed in my entertainment, no problems. In contrast, the "real models" (as the GP said) look pretty fake to me. For all the respect I have for the original Star Wars movies for how good they were for their time, they REALLY look fake at times, and these times are often enough to get t

Car Era

[lobiusmoop]

I suspect they will only have distant childhood memories of everybody driving their own cars wherever they wanted.

Lindsay Lohan was never innocent.

[garett_spencley]

"Lindsay Lohan was never innocent."

Hopefully in the year 2025/2029 it will be "Lindsay who?" and "Paris who?" and "Britney who?". And if we're *really* lucky people might actually stop obsessing so much over the lives of people that they don't know personally or have anything to do with all together.

But I guess I'm just a dreamer :(

Re:

[tomstdenis]

Well we still talk about bands from the 60s. And they were hardly innocent either. Just now we have 24/7 news coverage to really drive in the point.

What? You think the Beatles were saints? They might have been bigger than jesus, but they're hardly without sin. Hint: They abused drugs to come up with their songs.

Like omg totally what? no wai! ya rly!

Re:

[cashman73]

You seriously can't compare bands of the 60s to Paris, Britney and Lindsey. For starters, most bands of the 60s era actually had something the latter bunch don't have any of . . . TALENT!

Re:

[garett_spencley]

You missed my point entirely.

The point was that I think it's silly that people obsess so much about other people that have nothing to do with them what-so-ever, besides the entertainment / art that they produce.

Personally, I don't care at all about any band, artist, celebrity, movie star etc. outside of the entertainment that they produce. For any time period.

I realize that I'm a minority, and that's why I have the problem to begin with (in other words, I'm the one who makes it a problem for myself by not b

There won't be a class of 2029.

[antdude]

According to this game [wikipedia.org] SkyNet is in full force. [grin]

Ignores the big picture on exponential computing

[Paul Fernhout]

Computers are increasing by a factor of about 1000X in performance per
price per decade. By the time any toddler of today is finishing
graduate school, computers will be about 1000X (for the first decade)
multiplied (not added) by 1000X (for the second decade) or about
a million times faster than they are now -- just like computers are
about a million times faster than twenty to thirty years ago (at
constant dollars, or so MIPS per $). Related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law [wikipedia.org]
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?pr intable=1 [kurzweilai.net]
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0126.html [bootstrap.org]
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm [transhumanist.com]
(The rate of exponential growth itself is even increasing!)
According to that last link, those AI computers had about 1 MIPS
processing power. (And it's a funny idea Hans Moravec had, and I think
correct, that only for the last decade or so has AI been taking
advantage of faster desktop CPUs going beyond 1 MIPS..)

As an example, compare the late 1970s Apple II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II [wikipedia.org]
with todays' (2007) eight core Mac Pro.
http://www.apple.com/macpro/ [apple.com]
Then --> Now (approximate increase)
CPU: 1 Mhz --> 8 * 3 Ghz (8000X faster, but about another 100X internal
improvements from wider data operations and pipelining and such).
(somewhere in x100000 to x1000000)
RAM: 4K --> 4GB RAM just starting to be common. (x1000000)
Disk: 300K disks --> 300 gigabyte disks. (x1000000)
And all for about the same price (adjusted for inflation).
Some other considerations:
Bandwidth: 11 bytes/sec modem at $10 / hour --> 800000 bytes/second by
cable at $60 / month (about x10000 faster, well that doesn't quite fit,
but its still a big improvement -- and if you factor in the cost for
continuous access, there is probably another 10x or 100X boost in there,
producing effectively close to a x1000000 improvement of price/performance)
Printing: about 1000 characters per minute for $1200 printer -> 10 pages
per minute each with millions of color pixels -- with the printer often
now free with the computer (not sure how to call this as a multiple,
since quality has changed so much).

So, here are possible specs for a personal computer of 2027 if it was a
million times faster than today's:
CPU: 8 * 3 Ghz --> 8000 X 3 THz (1000X more CPUs each 1000X faster,
though I think it likely such systems might just instead have a million
processors at about today's speeds, perhaps interweaving memory and
processing power)
RAM: 4GB --> 4000TB (enough to hold all of the current surface internet
in RAM, see:
http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/ho w-much-info-2003/internet.htm [berkeley.edu]
)
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte [wikipedia.org]
for MB, GB, TB, PB, EB series and their meaning
DISK: 300GB --> 300PB (which is 300,000 TB)
For reference, a DVD movie uncompressed is about 5GB.
Note that, according to:
http://elegans.uky.edu/blog/?p=49 [uky.edu]
300 TB would allow you to record your entire life in video for 16hr/day
for 100 years at 500MB/hr. So you could do that for 1000 people on just
your own $3000 2027AD personal computer. Or you could just perhaps store
the interesting bits of life video for perhaps a hundred thousand people
or so. Needless to say,

Back to the future

[Charcharodon]

'Lord of the Rings' looks fake and the effects are laughable/

They look laughable now, no need to wait 20 some odd years.

To be fair everything looks fake once you've seen a movie a few times. You spend less time engrossed in the story and more on the technical aspects. I've noticed much of it seems to be with inaccurate or sloppy lighting for composite images or things being too perfect or too perfectly imperfect (ie Star Trek & Star Wars), rather than the level of detail. That and how ridiculous the cliche flooded action scenes have become.

My take on it will be kids of that generation will either wonder about a world that isn't entirely engrossed in civil and global conflicts or be so bored out of their minds that suicide at 40 is considered a proper end to a long and full life.

Lame, yeah "lame idea" lame

[tomstdenis]

Why is it every generation thinks they're the rightful owners of society? I'm sure when the current 40-50 year olds were 16, their parents thought *they* were the rightful owners of society, and so forth.

I'm sure the same people who get "where's the beef" (btw, I was born in 1982, and I get the joke too, so it's hardly a generation defining meme), probably wouldn't get the subtle Victorian civilities that made up the 19th century.

In short, the article is full of Ric Romero substance and should be cataloge

The REAL class of 2029

[Ralph Spoilsport]

1. Will have lived most of their lives in economic recession.
2. Will ride bicycles and electric trikes - cars are too expensive.
3. Will not be able to afford air travel, which will be largely the province of the super rich and the military.
4. Will grow some fraction of their own food.
5. Will be lucky to attend university.
6. Will mostly graduate from trade schools in maintenance (plumbing, HVAC, cabinetry, ensolarisation projects, or agriculture.
7. Will remember several small limited local nuclear wars

Re:

[roman_mir]

Most of your 'predictions' are true today. Many people today have to make their own food, their own clothing, they can't afford cars, they hate the system around them and maybe their predecessors.

You are not predicting anything that isn't happening today, but you are insisting that those of us who live in societies where it is not the case today will have to change our way of life. I totally don't believe that this will be the case. I believe that our technological advances will make it possible for us t

A Truly Pointless Exercise

[some old guy]

Unless you just want to establish a baseline to prove the progression that the next generation, so full naive ideals, red-hot urine, and youthful self-righteousness, will turn out to be just as big a lot of destructive, selfish, short-sighted cretins as every other generation that has gone before.

20 years in the future?

[nurb432]

Sorry, predicting 5 years out is hard enough. We cant honestly guess what its like 20+ years out. Far too many variables involved.

A Couple More

[E++99]

* That scientists had always agreed about the global cooling problem.
* That /. had always been populated by retirees who had never had sex.

Re:

[JamesRose]

HEADLINE: 100th nuke detonated this year

Remember back when we should have taken care of those fundamentalist christian extremists running america?

Re:

[JamesRose]

It was a shot at the ignorant view that Islamic terrorists will be responsible for nuclear attacks. You know who I suspect are going to carry out nuclear attacks- PEOPLE WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Re:

[Kagura]

This is a more clever post than anything I have read today. Too bad it's AC.