Here's a quick overview of what's coming down the pipe—developments that will forever alter what we currently think of as normalcy and the human condition:
- Artificial superintelligence: Recursively self-improving expert systems endowed with significantly greater-than-human intelligence, capacity, and reach; the end of human primacy on the planet; an extinction risk and potential existential paradigm changer.
- Molecular nanotechnology: Manufacturing and materials construction at the molecular scale; the complete re-thinking of engineering and manufacturing; the rise of molecular assemblers (i.e. "replicators" or "fabricators") and the end of scarcity; the advent of molecular-scale robotics; the threat and promise of self-replication; and a serious existential risk.
- Robotics revolution: Hyper-automation and massive unemployment; the grim potential for robotic warfare/terrorism and the rise of machine ethics; the unpredictable impacts of the convergence of robotics with artificial intelligence; robots that can self-replicate, swarm, assemble, create emergent effects, self-organize, and repair; a potential existential risk.
- The ongoing biotechnological revolution: Enhanced and modified humans (i.e. cyborgs, genetically altered humans, postbiological beings), indefinite lifespans; regenerative medicine; advanced psychopharmaceuticals; the ongoing diminishment of corporeal importance (including possible mind transfers) and extended personhood; transgenics and animal enhancement.
- The ongoing communications revolution: Noosphere/global brain (where human minds are interlinked with our communications technology and the internet).
- The political and sociological impacts of these disruptive technologies: The demise of privacy and the rise of the surveillance state; the further diminishment of civil liberties and the onset of neo-authoritarianism.
- Megascale engineering: Assuming humanity will survive this far: The graduation of humanity to Kardashev I and Kardashev II civilizations through the advent of such things as the Dyson Sphere, Jupiter Brain and Matrioshka Brain; the onset of technogainism, remedial ecology and the reworking of Earth's entire ecosystem (including weather control); the permanent retiring of Darwinian processes on the planet.
So, just keep on thinking that the future is going to be more of the same.