Quote from peilthetraveler:
40 years is a long time into the future. If they were telling you about it, you would think they would say shit that doesn't make sense yet. For instance...if you went back in time 40 years and said to someone "buy Apple one day because they are going to make these cool ipods and iphones and you can text and send email and use 1000s of apps" The person is going to look at you like you are speaking another language. They will have no idea what Apple is other than a fruit, no idea what an ipod or iphone is. No idea what a text or email is, and no idea what apps are.
It would be like me telling you guys. "Ok, you want to make money in the next 40 years...heres what you do. Wait for eclads to come out and pick up about 1000 of them. When they synthesize to your maglo, resell it to the polethians who will buy it at a 1 million percent markup because they pay in monulos and we know how much people in New America want monuloses!!! You'll be totally set for life! You will be able to buy all the skav you want!! Wont that be awesome?"
I'm not buying your argument here.
40 years ago was 1972. In 1972 they had mainframes and terminals. They even had remote mainframes connected to local terminals. You wrote your basic program on your Teletype model 33 (if you're names were Bill or Paul), typed RUN, and your code would be sent back to the mainframe and forth to your terminal. That's the basic concept of email. So if you talked about email it would not be all that foreign. Same with apps, because for the scenario just mentioned to work, you'd have an interpreter (an app) installed on the mainframe.
I've only addressed those things they mentioned that are near enough to be trade-able. They've mentioned other technologies that are somewhat familiar, but for the most part, unbelievable at this time.
One of those techs would be the space cargo elevator. It would lift cargo straight up via a cable that stretches into space. From there, the cargo can orbit over to another cable in another location, where it can be downloaded (ha ha) at a cost much cheaper than shipping or airfreight.
Another tech would be the ability to travel long distances via...i can't even think of the word. It's what Scotty used to beam up Captain Kirk all the time. In this way, we will be able to explore farther.
We may be around to see the beginnings of the cargo elevator, but i don't think we will see the beam-me-up-Scotty technology. I didn't mention them because there's no way to tell if these are predictions based on information that transcends time, or just wishful science fiction.
The techs i mentioned might have been predictable to Jim Cramer in 2000, or whenever they were made. But the different directions USA and Europe would go in this regards, i don't even think Mad Money Jim could have predicted. And, as mentioned before, it would have been difficult to say for sure - like in a book - whether the president of Iran would enter office, and/or still be in high office in 2012.