New Scientist magazine is currently holding a "flash fiction" contest – submit a short story, up to 350 words, illustrating the world of 100 years from now. The best will be published in New Scientist magazine.
The deadline is October 15, so I don't yet know if it will be selected, but here's my entry:
Hey there, Sis. I'm going to try to get this done in time for the next data burst, otherwise it will be another two weeks before the next phase alignment when I can get it out. I’ve been waxing philosophical again in my old age. As you know, tomorrow's my birthday. Of course, for you it's already tomorrow; I believe the temporal compensation field slippage is up to about 18 hours. We'll be coming out in another month; they don't like us to get more than one day out of synch. The AIs and maintenance bots will stay here and keep things running. Once we pop back over the event horizon, there’s a galactic gateway near here that will get me to the Milky Way hub, where I can gate back to Earth and be home in just a few hours. I may clone Zira, the main AI, and bring a copy out with me so you can meet her; I think you two would hit it off. I can send her back in with another team later for re-integration. Incidentally, the next team in are Reshnok, the silicon-based race. I saw a few of them at the staging area on the way in. I know you’ve seen pictures, but if you ever get a chance to see on in person, you should. They’re amazing, like nothing you’ve seen before.
Anyway.... Another birthday! After so many, they kind of lose their impact, don’t they? I remember when you and I were hitting our 40’s and 50’s, thinking, “How could we possibly be this old?!” But now…meh. So what? Yet, still sometimes I pause and look back and see the long road we’ve traveled, and still marvel at it, and then consider the road ahead, and wonder just how far it will go. I remember when we were young and it seemed like we would live forever, and I wonder how it must be for the generations being born now, for whom that will always be the reality. Another birthday. 148 years. Don’t they go by in a blink?
As one of its principle devices, science fiction often endeavors to imagine the future, and while some fantastic stories have been built on this device, I believe they almost unanimously fall short in imagining the advancement of technology, and of social and cultural change for that matter. To be fair, this is generally necessary in order to tell a story, as I believe the world of 2109 would be quite alien to us.
The primary factor is the rate of advancement of technology. As technology builds on itself, not only does technology continue to advance, but the rate at which it advances increases. The advancements of the past century are far beyond those of the previous century, or even the previous millennium. For that matter, so are the advances of just the past 25 years.
I believe we are rapidly approaching an inter-disciplinary quantum leap, beyond which things will change very rapidly across the scientific spectrum, in turn driving major social and cultural changes, and beyond which it is virtually impossible to predict at this point.
In that regard, to be honest, this story is really quite mundane, compared to what I really think the world will be like in 100 years: black holes, AI, FTL travel and immortality – ho-hum. But it's the best I could do in 350 words or less.
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