Technology in 2050 – experts give their predictions

The past 25 years have seen some stunning technological changes.

At the turn of the century, most computers connected to the Internet using noisy dial-up connections, Netflix was an online DVD rental company, and the vast majority of people had never even heard of smartphones.

Fast forward two and a half decades and innovations in artificial intelligence, robotics and more are emerging at an incredible rate.

So we decided to ask the experts what the next 25 years might bring.

Here are their predictions for the technology we'll use by 2050 and how it could change our lives.

Science fiction set in the 2050s is filled with examples of people using technological improvements to feel better, happier, and more productive.

In the popular 2000 game Deus Ex, set in 2052, the player can inject himself with tiny robots called “nanites.”

These microscopic robots manipulate matter at the atomic level, granting superhuman abilities such as increased speed and the ability to see in the dark.

It sounds like something from the distant future, but nanotechnology—engineering on the scale of millionths of a millimeter—is already used in many everyday real-world technologies.

In fact, it defines the way you read these words right now: every smartphone or computer is controlled by a central chip made of billions of tiny transistors—electrical components designed at the nanoscale to speed up data processing.

Professor Stephen Bramwell London Nanotechnology Center told the BBC that by 2050 we should expect the boundaries between machines, electronics and biology to be “significantly blurred”.

This means that by then we will be able to see nanotech implants, but more for the purpose of “monitoring your health or aiding communication” rather than appearing invisible like in Deus Ex.

Medicine could also make extensive use of nanometer-scale machines to “get drugs exactly where they need to be,” Professor Bramwell said.

Cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick is equally interested in studying augmentations, going one step further than most.

In 1998, he became the first person to have a microchip implanted into his nervous system, earning him the title “Captain Cyborg.”

Professor Warwick believes that by 2050, advances in cybernetics… science that studies the connections between natural and mechanical systems can lead to innovative treatments for disease.

He predicts using “deep electronic brain stimulation” as a partial treatment for some conditions, such as schizophrenia, rather than a drug.

He adds that we'll likely see more cybernetic enhancements like the ones he's already experienced, so that “your brain and body can be in different places.”

What if we wanted to test how the latest improvements or even a new diet would affect our body, without any risk of side effects?

Professor Roger Highfield, director of the Science Museum, believes that “digital twins” – virtual versions of a physical object updated using real-time data – could become a common feature of our lives.

He envisions a world where we could each have “thousands of simplified twins,” using them to study how “different medications or lifestyle changes affect your unique biology.”

In other words, we could foresee our future before living it.

Many technology companies, including Google and IBM, are currently engaged in a multibillion-dollar race to revolutionize how we push fields like artificial intelligence even further – in the form quantum computing.

Quantum computers are machines that can perform very complex calculations at incredibly high speeds—for example, simulating molecular interactions to develop new drugs more quickly.

In January 2025, Jensen Huang, chief executive of leading chip company Nvidia, said he believed quantum computing would be “very useful” within 20 years.

AI itself will undoubtedly continue to have a major impact in our society as we approach the half-century mark.

Futurist and writer Tracy Follows, who helped write Government White Paper on UK Education in 2050believes that training will take place in “virtual and physical reality” using AI teachers who “adapt in real time.”

She predicts that children will use “immersive simulations” instead of textbooks.

Meanwhile, education will be less standardized, with each child's individual DNA or biometric data studied to understand how they learn best.

Writer Bill Douglas is good at making compelling predictions: in 2000 he won a $20,000 (£14,800) global futurist writing competition called The World in 2050.

While he still agrees that one of his original predictions – driverless aircraft – will come true by 2050, he believes we'll see more advances in driverless cars first, making traffic congestion “largely a thing of the past.”

“Cars will drive much closer together than they do now,” he told the BBC. “And if someone has to slow down, then everyone slows down.

“On private toll roads for driverless vehicles, there's no reason why traffic speeds can't reach 100 mph or so—you'll see traffic fatalities drop dramatically.”

Away from Earth, the space race will continue at the same speed, journalist and co-host of the Space Boffins podcast Sue Nelson told the BBC.

In 25 years, it's likely there will be a habitable base on the moon, she said, and some industries could be based almost entirely in space.

For example, she believes that we may see pharmaceutical companies producing next-generation drugs in microgravity, that is, on board an orbiting spacecraft.

That's because, she says, crystals grown this way rather than on Earth are “often larger and higher quality.”

Minority Report, based on the novella by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, was released in 2002 and takes place in 2054.

Three years before production began, director Steven Spielberg invited fifteen experts, including virtual reality founder Jaron Lanier, to a three-day summit to speculate on what technologies might exist in the 2050s.

The discussions shaped many of the innovations presented in the film.

If the events of the sci-fi thriller starring Tom Cruise are to be believed, by the mid-2050s we'll all be using gesture recognition (and fancy gloves) to watch videos on our see-through monitors while cops in jetpacks fight looming crime with vomit-inducing batons.

Like most science fiction in the arts, the film paints a dystopian view of our future years.

This is a sentiment that some experts have begun to echo in our current timeline, with some even suggesting that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity.

Perhaps before we get too gloomy about what we might expect in 2050, it's worth returning to the words of Philip K. K. himself.

“I, for one, am confident that science will help us,” he wrote in his 1968 personal autobiographical essay. Self-portrait.

“Science has given us more lives than it has taken,” he said.

“We have to remember that.”