The year 2020 started off great, but as always, people had many predictions about it. Decades ago, academics, government agencies, books, and even cartoon TV shows shared their predictions of what exactly will happen in the year 2020.
World leaders, people landing on Mars, flying cars, and a pneumonia-like virus are among these predictions. Read on to find out some of the most popular, crazy, and spot-on predictions and decide which one is your favorite.
A pneumonia-like virus
In 2008, a psychic named Sylvia Browne predicted a severe widespread pneumonia pandemic in her book titled End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World.
What makes this even crazier is that she predicted it would happen in the year 2020. Now with Covid-19 spreading like wildfire across the globe, this prediction couldn't be more accurate.
The second half of her 2020 pandemic prediction is that the virus will resist known treatments, then disappear as quickly as it showed up. It will then show up again 10 years later.
Should we be preparing?
Self-driving cars
In 2020, there are plenty of companies, such as Tesla or Google, who test the self-driving capabilities of cars. While it is a popular demand, we are just not there yet in terms of use by the general population.
According to experts and scientists, this might take us a couple more years or even decades until a self-driving car will be fully usable and safe for the general population.
Kurzweil once wrote that experimenting with self-driving started off strong in the late 1990s thanks to the implementation of highways.
Regarding flying cars, Porsche partnered up with Boeing in creating the first one, while Uber plans to release a flying cab in 2023.
Personal assistants
In 1999, Bill Gates predicted in his book, “Business @ the speed of thought”, that there will be a smart way to sync all your devices both at home and at work, with a simple data exchange but done in a smart way. This assistant is able to check for new emails and notifications with the option to be read out loud to you.
Gates wasn’t far from the truth with this affirmation. With personal assistants, such as Siri or Amazon Alexa, the industry slowly starts to take advantage of these smart personal assistants when creating new gadgets to create the ultimate smart home.
Humans on Mars
According to a report created by the Space Studies Board in 1996, Nasa was going to launch a mission for humans to explore Mars by 2018. Even though we haven’t landed on Mars yet, we can brag about having at least eight spacecraft on the planet with scientific purposes. These spacecraft are gathering more data every day.
Invisible computers
Kurzweil made plenty of predictions about the year 2020, including this one. At the time he made this prophecy, computers were just starting out and were becoming smaller and smaller.
He was right since computers nowadays are embedded everywhere we look. Smart homes and smart tables, chairs, and even desks are part of this prediction. He talked about a way of projecting the image directly into our eyes using lenses or glasses. While this is not yet available for the average consumer, Google Glass is pretty close to it.
No more books
Many people expected the death of physical books. A lot of them are being transferred into the digital version, and ebooks are everywhere. However, book publishing in the US alone stands strong, with nearly $26 billion in sales in 2018 and 675 million books printed.
You are being tracked everywhere
Privacy is a huge issue nowadays with the political and social interest of knowing everyone’s location. This turned out to be true, since all of your gadgets follow you, from your smartphone to your smartwatch.
We rely on tech 24/7, and they can be monitored by the manufacturers. While it might seem like a good idea to track criminals, this might not be such a good thing regarding your personal life.
The population of Earth will reach 8 billion
In a 1994 study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, they predicted that the world population will increase by 2.5 billion, reaching 8 billion by 2020. India, Bangladesh, Africa, and Pakistan alone would add 1.5 billion people, according to the study.
While this is close, we are still at 7.7 billion. It is expected to grow by 2 billion in the next 30 years. So we are not close to the real prophecy... but almost!
