Your 2015 Predictions

Your 2016 Predictions ←You are here!

Your 2017 Predictions

Your 2018 Predictions

Your 2019 Predictions

Your 2020 Predictions

Last year...

So the first year of The Future™ has been incredible, no doubt. Somehow, I got quite a bit of it right, and I'll create an end-of-the-year thread for it come New Year's. But now it's time to make guesses about what the world of 2016 will be like.

Just as last time, the official Timeline predictions first...

2016-2020 —

China builds the longest undersea tunnel in the world

2016 —

Completion of the Panama Canal expansion project

Microchipping of all dogs in England

Euro 2016 is held in France

Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympic Games

The first manned flight of SpaceX's Dragon V2

India's first manned space flight

India launches its second unmanned lunar probe

The International Lunar Observatory begins operations

The first hotel in space

Balloon trips up to 20 miles high

The Juno probe arrives at Jupiter

The world's largest single-aperture telescope is completed in China

The mining industry is highly automated

Agricultural robots are appearing on farms

High-definition CCTV cameras are ubiquitous

OLED displays are in widespread use

Three-person babies

New drug delivery methods for brain-related conditions

A pill to prevent sunburn

Completion of the i5K project

China completes the largest environmental cleanup in its history

Polymer banknotes are introduced by the Bank of England

United States Presidential Election

Now for my own.

Virtual reality courts the mainstream with an array of devices, including Gear VR, Oculus Rift, PS VR, and Vive

Aldebaran's Pepper is released in the US and becomes an immediate success as the first affordable artificially intelligent domestic humanoid robot

Pepper gets the Amelia deep learning system installed, further assisting its capabilities

Domestic robots begin entering middle class homes at a shockingly high rate

Various hyped augmented reality smartglasses are released

Bitcoin becomes a legitimized currency

Successful launch of the Falcon Heavy

Deep learning algorithms/spiked neural networks reach superhuman success rates

Oil prices fall to historic lows and create a new and strangely uneven recession as the oil industry collapses

Solar and wind explode into the mainstream, obliterating all previous growth expectations

Battery/supercapacitor breakthrough proves to be a quantum leap forward for energy storage, advances all estimates relating to energy storage by five years

Nuclear fission makes a comeback as the oil industry is brought to its knees and a new generation of reactors begin coming online; nuclear industry chooses to work alongside renewables

Nuclear fusion enjoys multiple unbelievable breakthroughs; doubt is cast upon ITER as investment quadruples, at the very least, into commercial fusion power

Google Fiber begins first large-scale roll out over multiple cities at once, while municipalities begin rolling out their own high-speed internet en masse

Novelty of drones begins to wear off, especially as regulations begin being put in place, and they become an accepted norm of society

The first drone-based Global Internet service scheme begins

Smart TV market booms, especially as more ditch cable companies

OLED holographic screens are put on buildings to create 3D ads, beginning in cities such as Dubai, Tokyo, and New York

Bionic hands become fluidly dexterous, imitating real hands almost perfectly

New generation of ASIMO is unveiled to the public, featuring and showing off such bionic hands and also featuring a deep-learning based CPU

Robots competing in the DARPA Robotic Challenge seem to be worlds beyond 2015 models

First robot brothel opens

Autonomous vehicle technology accelerates growth, with AVs shown as being capable of traversing hazardous environments

Robots begin appearing in commercials more regularly

First UBI experiment attempted in a European city

ISIS is defeated

Autonomous flying car unveiled by a major automaker

Pet cloning industry grows

Memristor-based computer shown off

Biotech field sees further exponential growth

First asteroid mining mission begins, more as a proof of concept

Ukrainian conflict fades

Technosexuality begins encroaching into the mainstream as "virtual waifus" take off

Global carbon emissions begin to decline

8k TVs begin entering mass market

Haptic holograms proven to be able to interact with environment, lift small objects

Holograms begin entering the mainstream as the iPhone 7 introduces 3D holographic capabilities

Smartwatch capabilities improve as more become capable of health monitoring

Bernie Sanders elected President of the United States of America, with Elizabeth Warren as vice president

Worker cooperatives begin pushing their way into the mainstream

Saudi Arabia declares $100 billion+ deficit

Marijuana legalized in the United States, Canada, and a few other nations

Talk begins of legalizing all psychoactive drugs, at least for medical purposes

Australia recommits to green energy efforts following Abbott's green dark age and the near-collapse of the oil industry

Deep learning growth begins hyperacceleration of AI progress, faster even than Moore's Law

A deep learning algorithm learns to recognize the alphabet of any language

Deep learning begins moving onto auditory and haptic recognition

Experimental hyperloop track begins construction

RFID implants begin entering the sub-mainstream, mainly for animals and newborns, to the horror of conspiracy theorists

Internet of Things begins expanding more deeply into middle class homes

Lunar rediscovery as more space agencies begin plans to send rovers to, study, and colonize the moon

NASA announces manned mission to the moon by 2019, based on Falcon Heavy's success

Supersonic commercial jets reenter airports, but yet to carry passengers

GPUs undergo extreme upgrade

7nm computer chips enter production

3D chips enter production

Memristors enter mass production

Deep learning algorithms begin accelerating scientific growth

Higher temperature sub-room temperature superconductors discovered (perhaps up to -50 ° C)

Objects discovered on the very edge of the observable universe, suggesting the first formations of large cosmic structures began immediately after the big bang

Microbots and micromachines see boomtime as people begin focusing on the easier microscale rather than nanoscale

Beijing's air quality reaches record lows before rising by the end of the year

China begins plans to generate terawatts of electricity by 2030 via an intense focus on solar, wind, nuclear, etc. energy sources