In celebration of its 20th anniversary, Kaspersky labs has created a map that gives users insight of what the world might look like in the future decades. Named “Earth 2050,” It gives us a glimpse of the possible future of earth based on predictions from futurologists, professionals, and the general public.
Source: Wired UK
The globe has a bunch of hexagons scattered all over the world, with yellow hexagons representing places where events of the future have been predicted and visualized with illustrations and white hexagons being predictions without illustrations yet. These illustrations can be added by anyone, after being accepted by Kaspersky. The predictions take place in the years 2030, 2040, and 2050, resulting in a collection of 360 degree views from cities all over the world and their possible futures.
Source: Twitter
When you click on Barcelona, Spain’s Hexagon, you’re immediately greeted by the presence of electric cars and interesting buildings in the year 2030, but for the most part, it’s still familiar. Move to the year 2040 and it still remains similar; yet once you reach 2050, you notice something a little off-putting. That is, either a human or an alien spaceship obstructing the skyline, with a design ala- Millenium-Falcon.
Source: Wired UK
The 2050 prediction for Barcelona say that “by 2050, the tallest buildings may be over 50km…almost exclusively for space travel, and spaceports will be more common. Many residents will be androids, but there will also be new biological creatures, genetically designed and lab-assembled…”
While that does seem nice, there are some darker and less optimistic predictions as well. Clicking on Antarctica’s 2050 hexagon, the area has shown to have lost its protected area status. According to futurologist Ian Pearson, by 2050, Antarctica would be the new “Klondike” or Eldorado,” being a mineral and freshwater extraction site.
Dhaka, Bangladesh also has some sad news. Known as “Global Warming: Titanic City,” the UN predicts that due to sea levels rising by dozens of centimeters, the city is now submerged underwater, where scuba divers swim through the rusty, forsaken remains of the city.
Source: Twitter
The map also gives us several things to think about, with the main question being “is everything we’re doing today right or not?” It allows us to view our contrasting predictions of the future, giving us an intriguing, yet possibly dystopian look into 2050.
The map is design to give us insight of all the possibilities of the future. “the future is not a stiff monolith, it’s rather a mostly mosaic of our concepts and ideas – everyone has one’s own, that’s why there’s such a diversity of variants.” It added that Earth 2050 brings together “men and women of art and science, dreamers and innovators, to predict the world, technology and cyber threats of 2050,” explains Kaspersky.
It’s a long term project, so it’s still in development, with other cities waiting to be added.
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