Your 2022 predictions

[urdestan]

Your 2015 Predictions
Your 2016 Predictions
Your 2017 Predictions
Your 2018 Predictions
Your 2019 Predictions
Your 2020 Predictions
Your 2021 Predictions 

Is it too early to start doing these predictions for next year? I missed these kinds of predictions in the old forums when I was a lurker, sadly many of the previous predictions kind got removed when the forums switched. Anyway, if anyone has thought of any predictions next year, be technology or politics, maybe even reserve your predictions until December, since I doubt that we’ll get anything by the end of October, feel free to put it down on this thread, I guess.

If anyone by the end of the year could at least have their 2021 predictions (that were posted on the old forums) reviewed somehow as well, that’ll be good enough.

Alternatively, someone would make a better thread than this one and this thread might be merged or sidestepped by it. Who knows.

[Ozzie guy]

Trump announces second presidency run (I think he will do this in 2023 but 2022 is possible)

A major AI development occurs that excites futurists across sites like this and Reddit (A development that is talked about for a long time like GPT3)

Elon Musk runs into some serious trouble like loss of wealth or severe reputation damage.

Less and less people care about self driving cars as they are normalised as a technology that is underdeveloped but without the original hype.

[urdestan]

Here's some of my 2022 predictions, with politics in it. (Some of them being really divisive)

• Booster shots are now commonplace across the world to keep people immunised from COVID-19 as life becomes 'normal' again, with restrictions being loosened and air travel resumes to most countries (except for China notably, which still practices a zero tolerance approach), so international tourism is returning. We might be seeing second booster shots being done in mid-late 2022.

• The Australian Labor Party is elected as government in the 2022 Australian federal election. (I won't be surprised if Liberals are still re-elected)

• Either a centre-right figure like Xavier Bertrand is elected as President of France for the 2022 election or Macron is re-elected. (I cannot see Le Pen winning 2022 unlike what I thought it could happen 2 years ago, given that her audience is now shifting to Eric Zemmour in the last few weeks, who is more extreme than her)

• Bolsonaro is re-elected in the 2022 Brazilian general election, but later reports show that the election has been partly rigged to his favour, causing further outrage in the country.

• Artemis 1's rocket finally gets launched into space, paving the way for the SLS to be used in the future, maybe for future missions by NASA.

• Roe v. Wade is overruled by the conservative-majority SCOTUS at some point in late 2022 at earliest after a few more red states try to ban abortion the same way Texas has. This means abortion is now a state-only affair at best and effectively means red states can ban and criminalise abortion as they please.

• The 2022 midterms will see the Republicans retake the Congress by some margin due to the Biden administration not living up to its promise. However, the more progressive bloc of the Democrats would continue to slowly replace the moderate Democrats. This in turn would lead to any hopes of Biden's plans being dashed without having it compromised to some extent by both progressives (they are still lukewarm to watering down some bills but they don't trust him at that point) and the Republicans who have very different agendas from the moderate Democratic agenda.

• The NFT and metaverse fad that is generated in 2021 dies down around this year. They still exist, but NFTs especially by that point would have been scrutinised heavily, but not limited to copyright infringement or environmental concerns (the environmental part is potentially solvable, but the former is more complicated).

• The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be recognised by China (and at least ten to twenty countries, all of them being non-western countries) as a legitimate government of said country by the end of 2022.

• A commercial version of DALL-E (that is better than what is available for free) is released by OpenAI, alongside 'GPT-4' (if it ever comes by). We may also see an improved version of Jukebox somewhere or an equivalent but at least 3x better.

• Space civilian tourism takes off significantly, going from approximately 20 in 2021 to at least 60 by 2022 (this also includes Virgin Galactic's flights, where it technically doesn't reach the IAU's space boundary). Don't expect prices to be dropped to an affordable price this year.

• The iPhone 14 and 14 Pro (but maybe not iPhone SE [3rd gen]) are announced to have USB-C ports instead of the Lightning port to comply with forthcoming EU regulations. Not only that, they also do the same internationally because it would be unwise for them to sell a local variant. The same goes to the iPad (10th generation). (I wish this happened)

• Chuuk votes against independence from the Federated States of Micronesia in their independence referendum held this year.

• And finally, (as we all want) Avatar 2 premieres in cinema on 16th December.

[Yuli Ban]

Is it too early to start doing these predictions for next year? I missed these kinds of predictions in the old forums when I was a lurker, sadly many of the previous predictions kind got removed when the forums switched. Anyway, if anyone has thought of any predictions next year, be technology or politics, maybe even reserve your predictions until December, since I doubt that we’ll get anything by the end of October, feel free to put it down on this thread, I guess.

If anyone by the end of the year could at least have their 2021 predictions (that were posted on the old forums) reviewed somehow as well, that’ll be good enough.

Alternatively, someone would make a better thread than this one and this thread might be merged or sidestepped by it. Who knows.

The tradition was that we wait until late December just in case certain predictions come true before the year even starts, but there's no hard rule that you have to start then.

[GTrang]

Some ideas:

• The 2022 Winter Olympics will be held in February.

• The 2022 FIFA World Cup will be held from November to December.

• iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 are expected to be announced and released.

• On June 15, Windows 10 users will no longer be able to access Internet Explorer.

• Google will discontinue support for the Google Toolbar.

• Many Windows 10 computers will get a free upgrade to Windows 11.

• Many new PCs will be shipped with Windows 11.

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

I have a few predictions. If this was a tradition then let me tell you its a great one since its nice to see when predictions come to pass.

For the USA my predictions are:

• The introduction of digital identities. At first this will be just a few states but over time it will expand and cover many others. By the end of the year it will have set a trend that eventually makes it adopted easily in all states.

• Robots will start their path to slowly becoming a normal sight in our society. Spot the robot dog will be employed in various industries while others like the Atlas robot are still being perfected. This will work towards the goal of replacing human police with robots as predicted on the Future Timeline.

I'll adjust more as time goes on and highlight my edits before 2022. This is a nice exercise to use for next year of course!

[Lariliss]

1. I would like to agree with @Nanotechandmorefuture for the ID’s. Actually they are already underway for the healthcare programs (anonymous or partially anonymous).
2. Supercomputers’ handling should make a leap. Their tasks are climate models calculations and predictions for the economy with human impact going to zero, but at the same time their consumption of energy is controversial, it needs to be optimized.
3. Local coverage for data service will be improved and we will get more data for Earth surveillance both from space and earth.
4. Space companies have the ability to do the technological tests and run enormous missions at the same time.
We are in the era when the finest cutting edge technology is mature enough to be bald with missions. Numerous tests, engineering refinements and tests again, all the precautions to eliminate any failure. The projects are confident enough to state the timelines and costs. There are too many uncertainties for the plans to be very precise. There is uncertainty on any new uncertainties to come across even. Hopefully big and smaller plans for 2022 will be achieved with no or minor deviations
5. Debates and news on robots, autonomous vehicles etcetera will remain as it is now.

The technology is on rail to go despite the hindrances. It is kind of a careful Occam's razor, and I believe it

[wjfox]

[Ozzie guy]

I think I will be pissed off if Google pathways isn't released within one year of it being announced ( bit earlier than 3:30 am August 4th 2021 Melbourne Australia time) or Google pathways isn't proto AGI.

I'm kind of setting myself up for disappointment but yeah to be truly happy with 2022 I want proto AGI by August 4th 3:30am 2022.

[Nero]

I was looking for the 2021 prediction thread to see some of the posts and whether they had been updated to reflect the year's technological progress, has anyone from that board got an updated list of predictions?

[urdestan]

I was looking for the 2021 prediction thread to see some of the posts and whether they had been updated to reflect the year's technological progress, has anyone from that board got an updated list of predictions?

not that I know of. the old forum is gone so i'm not sure there's a way to retrieve that.

[BaobabScion]

I was looking for the 2021 prediction thread to see some of the posts and whether they had been updated to reflect the year's technological progress, has anyone from that board got an updated list of predictions?

You should be able to search for the post on Internet Archive. There are over a thousand scans. You'll just have to do some digging.

[Yuli Ban]

I was looking for the 2021 prediction thread to see some of the posts and whether they had been updated to reflect the year's technological progress, has anyone from that board got an updated list of predictions?

You should be able to search for the post on Internet Archive. There are over a thousand scans. You'll just have to do some digging.

Forget that, here it is:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210420074 ... edictions/

[weatheriscool]

1. I think Russia will attack and Invade Ukraine. I don't think anyone will do anything out of fear of wwiii because china pretty much is standing with russia.
2. China will show signs of there future attack on Taiwan. One of these signs is more promotions of the attack within their society and more violent speeches.They realize that America is weak and doesn't have any thirst for a major war.
3. The star ship from space x will blow up at least once!!!
4. Some kind of advancement in fusion probably out of china will extend the surplus of energy to >5 minutes!
5. covid 19 will continue to kill people and the United states will past 1 million deaths by April.
6. There be a violent nationwide protest in the summer of 2022 nearing the levels of May-June 2020. America is very sick and is decline and that is why all these major wars will be possible with a union of China & Russia supporting each other. Different racial and ethic groups will become ever more violent towards one another.
7. A major hurricane will hit the gulf coast in the summer of 2022!
8. More censhorship will take place on youtube, facebook and twitter. Anyone with any opinion on any issue that isn't left wing approved will be banned. Even videos of people fighting or fucking things up in the massive riots will get you removed.
9. Russia and china will enter into a defense pact to counter the united states globally.
10. About 80 space tourist will go to space in 2022!!! Space-x outside of the fact that their star ship blowing up and probably becoming history will be doing well none the less.
11. The republican party will win back the house and senate in the 2022 election....Probably 230 seats in the house and 52 in the senate!
12. Biden will literally shit his pants while taking questions from reporters!
13. Gas will go up to $3.50 per gallon on avg nationally
14. inflation will get worst and worst as Biden screws things up worst and worst.
15. Willfox will finally have a girl friend!!!

[Xyls]

My predictions...

1. Ukraine will be invaded by Russia in Q1... this will also trigger a refugee crisis into Europe. NATO will respond by funnelling arms and technologies to Ukraine to try and start a Syria style insurgency against Russian invaders to mixed success. Putin's goal will be to get to the Dneiper river and potentially cause the collapse of the Kiev based government. However, unlikely to consolidate control over the whole country so likely will result in the whole Eastern part of Ukraine getting annexed. This will cost potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths and become the largest war in Europe since WWII... Putin's authority will still be damaged by this as casualties intensify, and so will Western leaders as they intensify troops in the Baltics and Eastern Europe... US will begin sabre rattling in Taiwan to deter China from getting any ideas...

2. Biden's popularity likely fatally damaged by above event causing the Democrats to lose the House and Senate...

3. Macron is re-elected president of France and sets up fight with the new chancellor in Germany over the future of nuclear power in the European Union. Likely will argue German dependency on Russian gas and climate change as reasons to accelerate construction and development of new nuclear reactors. Germany will fight as they are stubborn, further delaying any kind of climate progress in Europe.

4. Migration crisis intensifies in Europe. Famine in Afghanistan from the Taliban victory in the Afghan War will likely cause a growing migration influx towards Europe. Afghanistani/Syrian and Ukrainian refugees will again destabilize the politics of the continent...

5. The COVID pandemic will continue to rage without conclusion... Some politicians will try to argue that we have to live with this, but public will grow increasingly angry and impatient with their governments. Governments will finally realize that a UCV needs to be accelerated and fund and pressure pharma companies to make this happen, and they will also agree on third-world roll out but many incumbent governments will likely start being removed from power over lack of good performance... True UCV vaccines with the power to end the pandemic likely will not be widely available until early/mid 2023...

6. Inflationary pressures and exorbitant real estate prices continue in some high income countries (ex. Canada) which will cause further political instability.

7. Misinformation continues unabated in most Western countries, led by antivaxx conspiracies. Next year some of these turn into lone wolf attacks on health infrastructure. Primarily in the United States... There is no decent response to this and health care workers continue to quit en masse further undermining the health care system in the US and to a lesser degree other Western countries...

8. Bosnia and Herzegovina moves further towards disintegration and potentially return to ethnic conflict... Biden is loathe to intervene and seeds are planted for a the disintegration of the state by the end of the decade.

9. Ethiopian war continues without resolution. Syria continues without resolution as Assad continue to chip away at Idlib... Turkey continues to flex muscles in the Med... and Azerbaijan and Turkey try to wean Russia out of Nagorno-Karabakh... Armenia sees surge in people migrating out of the country as the nation further fades...

10. Population decline in Eastern Europe/Russia rapidly accelerates due to COVID and outmigration from instability...

11. Aggressive tornado season in April-June in the US... worst since 2011...

12. Advancements towards a cure for diabetes.

In other words... I expect next year to mostly be a big shit sandwich...

[funkervogt]

The Republicans will take control of at least one house of the U.S. Congress.

In the Developed World, the COVID-19 pandemic will recede. In 2022, things will be much better than they were in 2021.

[Yuli Ban]

Here's my list

Main Timeline Predictions

• Level 3 autonomous cars go on sale in Europe 
• Crossrail opens in London
• Germany phases out nuclear energy
• Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics
• Completion of the Northeast Corridor high-speed train upgrade
• The first flight of Ariane 6
• India's first crewed space flight
• Qatar hosts the FIFA World Cup
• China's first space station is complete
• New Horizons completes its study of the Kuiper Belt
• The AIDA mission arrives at Didymos
• The Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE) is launched
• Water is becoming a weapon of war
• The X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Transport is tested over U.S. cities
• Global reserves of antimony are running out
• Driverless hover-taxis are operational in Dubai
• VIPER mission to the lunar south pole
• First flight of the New Glenn reusable rocket

My Predictions

• Apple teases or unveils their first wearable mixed reality product
• The PSVR2 is formally teased or announced, though likely not released
• Next-generation VR headsets are unveiled by Meta, Valve, HTC, and others
• Volumetric displays begin some early phase of commercialization
• Meta will formally unveil a generalized Metaverse hub, similar to SecondLife and VR Chat, but it will be unintuitive, overly censored, and poorly received
• The chip shortage will continue throughout the year; GPUs will remain expensive
• A smartphone with projector capabilities is released, essentially allowing for ultra-wide screens on the go
• Nanomotors, nanoengines, and nanogears combined to create a (very simple) working hard nanobot
• First internationally successful powered exoskeleton enters the market, mostly for labor
• An AI will be released on the internet that will allow for users to create maps, characters, vehicles and even 3D models just from text descriptions.
• OpenAI goes on a blitz, unveiling GPT-4, Jukebox 2, DALL-E 2, and Codex 2 all in one year. 
• GPT-4 will, at maximum, have 1.2 trillion data parameters and a context window of roughly 10,000 tokens. It will be multimodal, but not to a great extent. Despite hype, it is not marketed as or considered to be artificial general intelligence, proto or otherwise.
• Jukebox 2 or some variant of it will refine audio-synthesis to be more coherent and will focus more on human speech and other sounds
• DALL-E 2 will be able to generate editable HD images from text descriptions, including detailed text descriptions (perhaps up to a paragraph long)
• Codex 2 will be able to synthesize longer passages of code, possibly allowing for simple video games to be generated
• OpenAI will tease a "major project" that will be unveiled at an unspecified future date
• This Gif Does Not Exist" will be created, formally allowing people to view or generate short (perhaps up to 10-sec) and coherent visual-only videos
• DeepMind will announce that their AI has achieved superhuman success rates at 3D and complex 2D games, as well as board games
• Artificial intelligence is used in China for some sort of municipal automation, beginning the process of automating government and community jobs
• Autonomous cars continue to progress, but development remains slow and fraught with skepticism. There are no major breakthroughs, only incremental steps forward (some of which are treated as major breakthroughs but lead to no major immediate changes) 
• Deep brain/transcranial magnetic stimulation will see progress, especially for treating certain neurological disorders
• BCIs continue to advance, with a formal release for Openwater and Kernel devices, more progress from Neuralink and Stentrode, and at least one major news story involving texting-by-thinking
• MEG, portable MRI, fNIRS become the latest hot topics in BCIs, beginning to replace EEG
• Starlink reaches 5,000 satellites in orbit
• SpaceX will accomplish at least 1 launch per week throughout the year
• The James Webb Space Telescope completes all functions and begins operations
• Solar power reaches 1 terawatt of installed capacity worldwide
• The total number of electric vehicles passes 20 million worldwide
• Nuclear energy fails to gain traction despite hype for a revival
• A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion as net energy is achieved. Commercialization remains a long way off
• The operating temperature for a high-pressure room-temperature superconductor is increased to at least 85­°F/30­°C, with the pressure requirement lowered to under 100 gigapascals (possibly as low as 10 gigapascals)
• COVID-19 resurges early in the year before becoming endemic as the year progresses
• Healthcare collapse early in the year in some areas causes the death toll to skyrocket beyond what it would otherwise be, but society and the economy recovers before the end of the year
• The early effects of Long COVID begin taking their toll
• Official COVID death toll will easily surpass seven million by the end of the year; "true" death toll will pass 30 million
• Substantial progress is made in mRNA and T-cell therapies, such as resolving certain cancers and diabetes
• USA life expectancy continues to fall, even as the pandemic starts to fade
• Cultured meat enters store shelves, as a niche product carried only by a very select few retailers
• The Biden administration formally starts a program to forgive some student debt, based heavily on income and employment status, up to $50,000
• The Chinese GDP continues growing despite setbacks
• Nord Stream 2 is not canceled
• Russia and Ukraine come to blows, but it devolves into a higher-intensity extension of the existing War in Donbas. Ukraine fights back, but likely loses a large chunk of territory
• NFTs crash hard sometime in the middle of the year
• A directed-energy weapon destroys a drone in a combat situation
• China unveils a new next-gen fighter jet that can match or exceed American capabilities
• Brexit continues going very badly for the United Kingdom
• Marijuana and psilocybin legalization spread rapidly
• First passenger drones enter commercial use
• Renewed hyperloop tests occur throughout the year
• A major infrastructural disaster will occur in the USA, highlighting (but not prompting action) the dismal state of infrastructure in the USA
• Internet infrastructure is boosted as remote work becomes entrenched, leading to the biggest improvements to internet speeds in years
• Automation begins becoming an increasingly major political discussion, but has not become a dominant topic of discussion
• Work will resume on the new tallest building in the world, whether that be Jeddah Tower or Dubai Creek Tower

¡WiLd cArDs!

• A major disaster will strike a major global city, with a death toll above 100,000
• A putsch will succeed in Brazil, granting Bolsonaro dictatorial powers
• A drone swarm is used offensively for the first time
• Google Pathways is formally unveiled, with the project outright considered an "artificial general intelligence"... except Pathways is not actually yet built, only a schematic for the future (similar to the Metaverse)
• Quirky news story of someone getting killed by a rare means that hasn't been relevant in decades or centuries (similar to the Sentinelese and Cassowary deaths)
• Queen Elizabeth II passes away
• A robot dog will kill someone (not autonomously), causing a major controversy
• A new strain of COVID arises midway through the year that's actually mild and begins the end of the pandemic. Before then, however, Omicron and a renewed Delta have caused the worst havoc of the pandemic.

For the average person: Little will change in your daily life compared to 2021. You will not be transhuman; you will not marry an AGI; you will not ride in a flying car; you will not hook your brain up to a computer. However, it's possible that Apple's MR glasses will find their way into your hands, and you might already be using VR or driving a level-2 AV. You might also see some drone shows in real life. It remains another year of watching glittery high-tech advance in the distance. 2023 won't be much different, but there will start to be some very interesting changes by 2024...

[Nero]

Very significant progress will be made with regards to autonomous vehicles, we will see drone delivery in testing phases, we will see an even larger amount of total work automated and fewer new jobs will be created.

Several companies become fully autonomous and function with effectively no full time employee other than the owner.

HSR2 continues to be built in the UK.

The UK may undergo an election which will see the Conservatives lose power and a coalition government may be formed that does not include them.

Streaming services will continue to grow and each will make a large IP acquisition

[weatheriscool]

1. I think Russia will attack and Invade Ukraine. I don't think anyone will do anything out of fear of wwiii because china pretty much is standing with russia.
2. China will show signs of there future attack on Taiwan. One of these signs is more promotions of the attack within their society and more violent speeches.They realize that America is weak and doesn't have any thirst for a major war.
3. The star ship from space x will blow up at least once!!!
4. Some kind of advancement in fusion probably out of china will extend the surplus of energy to >5 minutes!
5. covid 19 will continue to kill people and the United states will past 1 million deaths by April.
6. There be a violent nationwide protest in the summer of 2022 nearing the levels of May-June 2020. America is very sick and is decline and that is why all these major wars will be possible with a union of China & Russia supporting each other. Different racial and ethic groups will become ever more violent towards one another.
7. A major hurricane will hit the gulf coast in the summer of 2022!
8. More censhorship will take place on youtube, facebook and twitter. Anyone with any opinion on any issue that isn't left wing approved will be banned. Even videos of people fighting or fucking things up in the massive riots will get you removed.
9. Russia and china will enter into a defense pact to counter the united states globally.
10. About 80 space tourist will go to space in 2022!!! Space-x outside of the fact that their star ship blowing up and probably becoming history will be doing well none the less.
11. The republican party will win back the house and senate in the 2022 election....Probably 230 seats in the house and 52 in the senate!
12. Biden will literally shit his pants while taking questions from reporters!
13. Gas will go up to $3.50 per gallon on avg nationally
14. inflation will get worst and worst as Biden screws things up worst and worst.
15. Willfox will finally have a girl friend!!!

China just did 4#!!!!

Chinese Fusion Reactor Maintains 70 Million Degrees Celsius For More Than 17 Minutes
https://www.heise.de/news/Chinesisches- ... 16278.html
https://www.heise.de ^

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei in the east Chinese province of Anhui reports a new temperature record. At the end of last year, a plasma temperature of 70 million ° C could be maintained in the experimental nuclear fusion reactor for 1056 seconds, i.e. a good 17 minutes, reports the Institute for Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP). That is the longest time in which such a temperature could be kept constant.

This creates a solid basis for further research into energy generation from nuclear fusion, writes the ASIPP. Its general director Prof. Yuntao Song believes that the perfect ASIPP team will face any difficulty, no matter how difficult it is.

In May, the research team was able to maintain a plasma temperature of 120 million ° C for 101 seconds in the superconducting reactor of the tokamak type in an experiment, and the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported 160 million ° C for 20 seconds. An important step at the EAST is to be able to maintain a temperature of over 100 million ° C for a week. China participates in ITER

EAST is working on the international nuclear fusion project ITER in Cadarache in southern France. In addition to China, the EU, Japan, the USA, Russia, South Korea and India are involved in the project. The knowledge gained in China should help in southern France. In addition, the ASIPP is sending teams of experts to Cadarache, for example in the first quarter of 2021 when it came to installing the 330-ton PF6 field coil for the floor of the ITER, which was also manufactured in China.

[Dr. Casey]

For the average person: Little will change in your daily life compared to 2021. You will not be transhuman; you will not marry an AGI; you will not ride in a flying car; you will not hook your brain up to a computer. However, it's possible that Apple's MR glasses will find their way into your hands, and you might already be using VR or driving a level-2 AV. You might also see some drone shows in real life. It remains another year of watching glittery high-tech advance in the distance. 2023 won't be much different, but there will start to be some very interesting changes by 2024...

I basically agree, but with the huge caveat that even a small handful of changes of minor to moderate importance can change one's outlook for their future and reduce their overall stress levels. Even a change from "uhh yeah this future-related thing will be around sometime I guess idk" to "this will definitely be achieved or become possible during the next few years" can change one's mental framework a lot. Self-driving cars don't personally benefit me any more in January 2022 than they did in January 2017, but there's now more concrete short-term promises like Apple planning a vehicle without a steering wheel for 2024/2025. mRNA cancer vaccines won't benefit 99.999 percent of human beings during 2022, but if initial trials are successful that would still be a great boost to my mental health, offering reassurance that my parents are less likely to have their life cut short by cancer (they're both very healthy and active and don't possess any cancer risks aside from their age, but my anxiety doesn't listen to reason most of the time).

When it comes to technology, each year brings countless examples of small progress but only a small handful of examples of clear-cut, major progress and change - but changes that exist in the here and now, and benefit the us of January 2022, are only part of the equation. Another thing that matters a lot is the level of clarity and confidence you have when it comes to predicting future paradigm shifts. Getting from Point A to Point B might take a long time, and taken in a vacuum, the 0 percent mark and 80 percent mark when traversing that road might be almost identical. But there's still a lot of value to be had in the hope that's offered by things maturing and advancing so much that your opinion changes from "We'll reach Point B... eh... sometime I guess" to "We will definitely reach Point B in the next year/three years/five years/whatever."

But yeah, like you, I expect the 20s to change a lot. As a newbie futurist the January of 2012, if I looked outwards to the January of 2017, I would have expected some cool new fun toys to enter the marketplace and for there to be some significant victories and advancements in laboratory settings, but nothing that would really alter my happiness much. January 2022 to January 2027 I expect changes that can impact my feeling of safety, security, and independence.