To celebrate the US’s 250th birthday, I traveled to Boston with my brother. It was a fantastic place to celebrate the 4th of July given all the historical events leading up to the Declaration.
Given all of the looking back, I’ve also found myself thinking about what life will be like 250 years from now (in the year 2276). The difficult part is that we have things today that folks in 1776 couldn’t even imagine. I mean, we’re not even talking about AI, smartphones, the internet, or computers! They didn’t have electricity, the telegraph, cars, or an awareness of germs. So they couldn’t even imagine things like TV or the radio. Having 50 states wasn’t even on the horizon.
But hey, it’s fun to guess. So, here are my wild guesses.
Health
We’ll be beyond the tricorder featured in Star Trek. Not only will we be able to diagnose illness, but we’ll also create medicine uniquely tailored to each individual. There’s also a good chance that there will be new illnesses as people live longer because we understand and overcome today’s leading diseases. It’ll be a game of whack-a-mole with life expectancies slowly creeping up.
I personally want a passive way to do my strength and cardio workouts. Alas... RIP vibrating belt machine. In 250 years, I think we’ll have something that comes close to that goal.
Energy
This seems like a more urgent problem to solve. I can easily see small nuclear reactors inside each home — similar to solar panels today. Those will generate enough electricity to power everything that leaves the house. We’re still new at understanding nuclear power (mostly because of apprehension about building them), so over time our understanding will increase exponentially (similar to the CPU development trend). Is there something beyond nuclear? Probably, but just making it smaller, safer, or portable will be huge.
There will absolutely be battery breakthroughs that make our current storage solutions seem primative. I’m not talking about a 100X improvement, but a totally different way of storing & transmitting energy. This will allow devices and vehicles to either do crazy amounts more, or take totally radical form factors.
Communication
In 1776, information traveled at the speed of horse. When the telegraph was invented, information traveled ~500 miles in a single day. Today, we can instantly video call anyone around the world. Where do you go from there? I don’t think virtual reality (like in The Matrix) is it. Perhaps it’ll be calls where we feel like we’re actually there? Perhaps we’ll inhabit a robot — a cybernetic android? — with all 5 senses connected to us (like in Avatar)?
There are obvious downsides to that, and if social media is any indication, we’ll embrace it, and it’ll cause massive social problems.
Transporation
Flying cars seem inevitable, but it’s felt that way for a little over 100 years (the Wright brothers took flight in 1903, and the Model T was made in 1908). So... as inevitable as it still feels, it’ll have to wait for the energy improvements.
More interesting is long-distance travel. Traveling from Oregon to India takes 24 hours. In 1776, it would be at least a year, assuming you survived the journey... If I assume a straight line of improvement (a bad assumption since improvements were step changes). In 250 years, that same trip could only take 4 minutes! That seems impossible, but I bet 24 hours seemed impossible 250 years ago.
It’ll probably be less about humans traveling, given the improvements in communication, and more about shipping items. So constraints like g-force will be less of an issue. Would I want to live in a world where I ship my android across the globe in 4 minutes so I can “hike” Mt Everest? Something about that doesn’t feel right, but I bet it happens.
Call me a naysayer, but I don’t think we’ll have a meaningful presence on any other planets. It seems like such a huge effort with relatively small benefits. It sounds cool, but I think we’ll still be in the exploratory phase in 250 years.
Work & Wealth
I do NOT see a future like the Jetsons where work is as simple as pressing a button for a partial day. I also don’t see a post-scarcity future like Star Trek where people do their jobs out of noble virtue because material goods are essentially free and energy is abundant.
Instead, I think we’ll continue to experience scarcity and a widening wealth gap. Think about it: relative to 1776, our lives are unimaginably rich. We have indoor plumbing, washing machines, refrigerators, and penicillin — all of which we take for granted! Now I complain when I go somewhere, and my internet upload speed is “only” 5 GB. 20 years ago, nobody had a smartphone, but now we all pay for data plans (along with city water and electricity). Last year, I didn’t pay $20 a month for Claude, and now I do (and likely for the rest of my life to some AI provider).
So yes, we’re wealthier, but in addition to being bad at comparing to the previous generations, we spread our wealth across an ever-growing number of things. Our appetite for more (and better) never ceases. So, it feels like resources are still scarce.
That feeling won’t go away in 250 years.
But at the same time, we’ll make life easier for people who don’t want to work. It’s mostly the right thing to do, but I have a hunch we’ll take it too far. I’m also almost 100% certain we’ll have some sort of universal basic income, housing, and healthcare. That will enable this group to simply hang out (and entertain themselves). Will they take fancy trips and get the latest medical advancements? Probably not, but they’ll be OK with that. Unfortunately, it’ll disincentivize people who could contribute to society. But I already feel that way about social media.
Another group will want to continue competing and striving for more (while claiming a righteous high ground...). They’ll continue working long hours, increasing their productivity through automation and technology. You’ll see more and more small business owners with zero to 5 employees, with a few amassing unimaginable wealth, because they’ll be the ones driving the changes mentioned above.
This seems like a human nature trap that we won’t escape in 250 years.
Government
I still think the US will be around in 250 years. I know this current political climate feels contentious, but that started during Washington’s second term. You could almost replace any reference to Jackson with Trump, and it would be hard to tell the difference. We’ve always been a country with intense differing political beliefs.
Part of what made the Civil War happen was that fundamentally differing beliefs on slavery were clustered in two regions (the North and South). So, it was physically possible to separate. As far as I know, there aren’t any differing political beliefs (worth splitting away from) that are regional.
Having said that, I think our founding fathers would be SHOCKED by how much power is with the executive branch vs. Congress. And I think we’ll be similarly shocked looking ahead 250 years with how much it’s changed. It’s a kind of death-by-a-thousand-cuts, slowly-boiling-pot situation. Increasingly, we’ll see Living Constitutionalism winning out over Originalism.
Final Predictions
I feel like I painted a rosy picture, but that’s because life today is SO much better than it was 250 years ago. I mean, virtually unlimited clean drinking water is pretty hard to beat! I'm reading about the Wright Brothers at the moment, and their dad is constantly harping on them to watch out for contaminated water.
I'll finish with a favorite quote from George Box: "All models are wrong but some are useful." I know I'm wrong on my guess, but hopefully some of these ideas are actually being pursued.
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