Wow, there's a whole lot of "We're all going to kill each other" style comments...
I think we've seen the last of major power going toe-to-toe with each other. Where wars are fought between these powers in the future, I expect it to be proxy wars, Vietnam style. A major source of violence in the near future will be terrorism - a lot of terrorist attacks are "foiled" every week (foiled also refers to all the attacks that fail because they're stupid). Statistically speaking, a large terrorist attack is bound to succeed. Much larger than 9/11, possibly a nuke or biological attack. If there's war in the Middle East, this will be how it starts.
The world over, the gap between rich and poor will increase. Central Africa will remain this shithole it is today, minus a couple of diseases, plus a couple of different health problems. Massive advantages in technology will improve everyone's quality of life, but the rich's more than the poor's.
Overpopulation conflicts with the desire for higher birth rates - we're seeing the problem with that now. The Baby Boomers' generation starting to retire and countries across the developed world needing to increase the pension age (to decrease the number of pensioners) and increase tax rates (to pay the increased number of pensioners). The French love to protest, but we'll see those protests around the world soon, because people do not like to be told "Hey, you're going to have to work for an extra 5 years, AND pay more tax while you're doing it". Governments have to make the hard decsions to make sure the people are supported, but that will be crippled by:
Supercorporations. By 2050, and I'm fairly certain of this, borders will be of less importance than employment. Huge diversified corporations will control large parts of many industries to the point where they will run entire areas. We've seen it on the small scale for decades, where a mining company will effectively run a town. The American political scene is run by big business - politicians (and therefore administrations) always owe corportations and I don't think it's a huge step to see Corporatocracies form. These administrations will be beholden to shareholders, and will operated a socially far-right policy where everything is balanced against the bottom line.
Czerka, anyone?
History has shown us the average person's work/life ratio has continued to improve throughout history, and there's not much to suggest that won't continue. Automated systems will continue to improve and replace human workers. Where it was commonplace for people to work 50 hour weeks fifty years ago, now it's considered a lot of work which is (mostly) done by cash-strapped people. Now, people demand overtime when they work more than 40 hours, and in fifty years time, I'd expect the average working week to be more like 25 hours. As I mentioned before, the rich/poor divide will worsen so this applies more to the upper-middle class of professionals. The poor will still be working 50 hours weeks, where they can find work. Poverty will be the primary social concern of 2060.
And, because this is The Escapist: We've figured out how to project an image onto 3d refractive material to generate a 3d image. We have systems that can map an entire room in 3d. We have operate by thought technology in prototype fighter jets, and in use in assisting the physically disabled. We have everything needed that full immersive VR is possibly a decade away, maybe 15. Take this further, and we should be able to flawlessly simulate touch/taste/smell and suddenly something like the
Enterprise's holodeck doesn't seem too far away.
Ha, almost forgot resource depletion. I've written everything here assuming we solve that problem. At the moment, PV cells are really inefficient (like, 6-10%) - we'll fix that, for sure. Nuclear (fission) in the short term (the next 30-40) years is part of the soultion, moving into more efficiant and cleaner nuclear fusion after that. Organic plastics will be developed in a move away from petrochemicals. Copper is a concern, and we'll see a more public effort to recycle it soon. The worst the planet will see will be in 35-40 years, I think, and then we'll be able to start to fix the damage.
