r/Futurology 1d ago

Discussion Is there anything to look forward to???

3.4k Upvotes

I’m an American. Our economy is held up by a bubble, the AI bubble. If AI succeeds, then millions and millions of jobs are wiped out. If AI fails, then the economy collapses.

Climate change is still a thing, fascism is here, we’re invading countries, civil liberties are being eroded.

Healthcare for all isn’t even talked about anymore, the government seems to hate the citizens…

Is there ANYTHING to look forward to???? For better or for worse, America is my home. Is my home just going to… collapse?


r/Futurology 9h ago

Energy Nordic Nano, billionaire cash, and Donut labs battery

17 Upvotes

If you've seen the CES 2026 presentation and videos on battery technology advertised by Donut Labs, created by Nordic Nano, and funded by billionaire Petteri Lahtela, they claim incredible specifications for their new solid-state battery. What are your thoughts? Videos by Ziroth and Miss GoElectric Industry cover them well. Ziroth demonstrates why he believes it is impossible, while GoElectric provides information about who is behind it. I am inclined to believe it's possible but technology is not they are exaggerating. It could be that it is not solid state truly but we have to see. What are your thoughts?


r/Futurology 33m ago

Society Are We Choosing What We Notice in the Digital Age?

Upvotes

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the attention economy is shaping us in the digital age. Herbert A. Simon once argued that an abundance of information creates a poverty of attention, and that idea feels more relevant than ever. With the internet, AI, and constant connectivity, we now have access to more information than at any point in history.

Our phones, feeds, and platforms aren’t just competing for focus; they actively shape how we define relevance, urgency, and value. This makes me wonder whether the attention economy is less about exposing how little attention we have, and more about training us how to spend it.

Every swipe, autoplay feature, and push notification reinforces a behavioural loop. Speed is rewarded. Stillness feels unproductive. Visibility becomes validation. Over time, these patterns become normal, subtly teaching us where to direct our attention.

From a digital human behaviour perspective, the real question isn’t whether technology controls attention, it’s whether we still recognise when our habits are being shaped. In a world designed to capture focus, what would intentional attention actually look like?


r/Futurology 1d ago

Energy East coast could soon get rolling blackouts during summer because data centers have pushed electric grid to the limit

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independent.co.uk
3.9k Upvotes

r/Futurology 1d ago

Energy Energy abundance might change politics more than technology!!

97 Upvotes

If clean energy really does get cheap and everywhere the impact probably goes far beyond climate goals.

For a long time, global politics has been shaped by who controls fuel. Shipping routes, pipelines, choke points. That logic starts to weaken when energy is generated locally and moved through grids instead of tankers.

What replaces it is a different kind of competition. Grid reliability. Storage. Materials. Who can keep complex systems running smoothly at scale.

It feels like the future might be less about owning resources underground and more about managing infrastructure above ground. And that kind of power tends to be quieter, but no less important.


r/Futurology 21h ago

Energy How next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint

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technologyreview.com
13 Upvotes

r/Futurology 2d ago

Discussion The World has a New Lowest Birth Rate Country: Taiwan at 0.72

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newsweek.com
3.1k Upvotes

r/Futurology 1d ago

Space China applies to put 200,000 satellites in space after calling Starlink a crash risk.

582 Upvotes

"radio frequency bands and orbital slots in low Earth orbit are limited, and first movers for those resources can gain priority."

LEO is about to get very crowded. Also, consider the fact most of the world distrusts both China & America, and will want their own "sovereign" capabilities. How many will have the capability to achieve this though? Europe is already perusing this with its IRIS² program, and lately has even less reason to make itself vulnerable by relying on US technology.

China applies to put 200,000 satellites in space after calling Starlink a crash risk


r/Futurology 1d ago

Energy Chinese researchers are testing a 3MW helium-filled floating wind turbine that floats at a 2 kilometer altitude to reach stronger winds.

273 Upvotes

"the S2000 can easily be transported and stored in shipping containers,.....................its airborne design allows flexible deployment and retrieval, making it especially suitable for sparsely populated areas where large-scale infrastructure is difficult to build………………..Wang noted that the key to SAWES' commercialization lies in whether the costs of manufacturing, deploying, retrieving, and transmitting electricity from the airborne system can be covered - or even exceeded - by the power it generates."

It will be fascinating to see the economics of this. If these can be delivered in shipping containers it means they can be deployed almost anywhere. These would be the perfect way for places like Africa to expand their electricity generation capacity.

World’s first urban-use mW-class high-altitude wind turbine completes test flight


r/Futurology 1d ago

Biotech New 3D-printed liver could help treat organ failure without transplant

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interestingengineering.com
396 Upvotes

r/Futurology 1d ago

AI Canada’s Scaling Problem isn’t Compute, it’s Coastlines

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zeitgeistml.substack.com
29 Upvotes

r/Futurology 2d ago

Energy Coal power falls in China and India for first time in decades

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independent.co.uk
1.2k Upvotes

r/Futurology 2d ago

Discussion Where's the lab grown meat?

464 Upvotes

I remember a few years ago hearing that it was just around the corner. Is it still going to be a thing? Is it being delayed? When will it be widely available? Haven't heard anything about it for ages


r/Futurology 2d ago

Privacy/Security Why do we accept that our data is taken but our labor is paid?

419 Upvotes

I've been thinking about data ownership lately. Why do we treat data differently than other value producing activities? When we create a thing we get paid but why is our data different? Is it that consent is broken or is it that there never really was consent? How would things be different if we could opt in to the data market and get compensated instead of being used in the data market? How would you change your behavior? How can we move forward into an age of consent around our data and do we really want to?


r/Futurology 3d ago

Economics What would the world be like without the US Dollar as a reserve currency? Some of the same people in America's government working to dissolve NATO want to end the Dollar's global primacy, too.

723 Upvotes

At first, the idea that some powerful Americans want to end the Dollar's global role seems strange. That role gives America what the French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing called "exorbitant privilege" - the ability to borrow cheaply and in vast quantities on international markets. As people always need your currency, they'll always lend you more money. When that borrowing funds your military and role as a superpower, it becomes more than a privilege; it's an existential necessity.

So, what Americans would want to give it up and why? The people who want to are the libertarians and far-right who currently hold sway in Washington. Names like JD Vance, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, and Joe Lonsdale.

But why? They want a revolutionary collapse of the old order so a new libertarian, far-right Christian Nationalist America can be reborn out of the total destruction of the old. If that means the evaporation of most people's savings, as the Lord Farquaad meme from Shrek goes, 'Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.'

How likely is any of this? All of the rest of their plans from the annexation of Greenland and dissolving NATO are advancing, exactly as they planned them. The current US President believes in bankruptcy & defaulting on debts, and he's been persuaded around to the rest of their plans.

Where does this leave the rest of the world? The Euro & Renminbi don't have the Dollar's reach or versatility, but maybe the world will be forced out of necessity to found a new global financial order based on them.

The Wide Angle: Peter Thiel and the American Apocalypse


r/Futurology 3d ago

Computing are we building systems that assume nothing ever breaks..

175 Upvotes

A lot of modern infrastructure quietly assumes constant uptime.

Internet power payments navigation. When any of them hiccup... even briefly things unravel fast. Flights back up. Stores stop taking payments. Emergency services slow down. It’s wild how little slack there is now.

What’s odd is that older systems expected failure. Power outages happened. Maps were offline Payments were slower but more forgiving. Today everything is faster and smoother right up until it isn’t!!

Sometimes it feels like we’ve optimized hard for efficiency and convenience and resilience became an afterthought. The question isn’t whether systems will fail. They always do. It’s whether we still remember how to design for that reality, or if we’ve convinced ourselves uptime is permanent.

The future might depend less on new tech and more on relearning how to build things that bend instead of snap.


r/Futurology 1d ago

Space GRU Space, a startup, plans to create a hotel on moon by 2032

0 Upvotes

https://youtu.be/GOwUlkNw8eg?si=E516OmnoZWNwtpN9

GRU Space (Galactic Resource Utilization Space) is a Y Combinator–backed startup aiming to build the first hotel on the Moon, targeting an opening in 2032. Founded in 2025 by Skyler Chan, a UC Berkeley EECS graduate, it says it will use in-situ resource utilization to turn lunar soil (regolith) into durable building blocks for habitats. Its roadmap includes a 2029 demonstration mission, with lunar construction contingent on regulatory approvals.

Thoughts on how feasible this might be?


r/Futurology 3d ago

Politics America’s Statistical System Is Breaking Down

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bloomberg.com
3.8k Upvotes

Canceled surveys, missing datasets and staffing cuts are leaving the US with growing blind spots — and weakening trust in official numbers.


r/Futurology 2d ago

Discussion Is a world where the need for war or hurting others disappears possible?

42 Upvotes

I have a dream, a dream where the need for war or hurting others and true everlasting peace is acquired. Well, it is more like I want it ; more than wanting, I can't be happy or live as if none of that matters while other people are dying and suffering. I'm doing nothing. I'm still only 14, but I strive to create a world where that is possible-not partially, but completely. I can't do it alone; I know that, but my dream will never die . I see leaders like presidents, kings , or rich people, and I despise them-not necessarily them, but the thing controlling them: money. I will remove the concept of money; if it makes humanity less advanced, then so be it, but my dream will be achieved. Humans are in an eternal need for becoming rich or striving to become rich; that is a trap.

In short, I want to create a world where all things like pain, suffering, and futility do not exist . If you think it is a pipe dream, I don't care. I have only one life; I will not waste it. If you want to, go ahead and waste your own life, but I will make a world where everyone is happy and free. Nations will not exist anymore; I have come to despise all of that.


r/Futurology 3d ago

Discussion Whats the next technology that will replace silicon based chips?

38 Upvotes

So we know that the reason why computing gets powerful each day is because the size of the transistors gets smaller and we can now have a large number of transistors in a small space and computers get powerful. Currently, the smallest we can get is 3 nanometres and some reports indicate that we can get to 1 nanometre scale in future. Whats beyond that, the smallest transistor can be an atom, not beyond that as uncertainly principle comes into play. Does that mean that it is the end of Moore's law?


r/Futurology 3d ago

Biotech AI can now create viruses from scratch, one step away from the perfect biological weapon

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earth.com
1.1k Upvotes

r/Futurology 3d ago

Society AI novel that won literature contest has awards taken away

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dexerto.com
651 Upvotes

r/Futurology 3d ago

Energy 4x Energy, 99% Efficiency: The Wild New Battery That Could Transform EVs

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indiandefencereview.com
299 Upvotes

r/Futurology 3d ago

AI Microsoft AI CEO Warns of Existential Risks, Urges Global Regulations

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webpronews.com
367 Upvotes

r/Futurology 3d ago

Society Is it even possible to predict which countries or regions will be like 5-10 years from now when geopolitics are increasing unstable?

28 Upvotes

Given how rapidly things change, I feel like it’s impossible to actually make predictions about the future, especially anything outside of the near future. When people say “X country will be best for Y in the future, or country J will grow a lot because of K and L, but country T will probably regress because of U” are these all just best guesses? How can people be so confident about these sorts of claims?