The Brilliant and Scary Next Decade

My first mobile phones were a Nokia, then a Blackberry, both companies which in 2010 must have looked at their balance sheets and market share with pride and Apple's iphones were breaking through but in 2020 two are almost non-existent in the mobile phones market and one dominate so a decade can be a long time so we won't know what will be happening by 2030, most likely the the technology that will utterly dominate is barely a thing right now but there are some things which are certain.
I did ask a scientist and he got excited and said that after the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the search is now on for the hypothetical particle, the axion.
I made the mistake of saying 'What's that then?' and was told it was not a single particle, but rather a class of particles with properties that rarely interact with ordinary matter which could explain the long-standing conundrum of why the laws of physics seem to act the same on both matter particles and their antimatter partners, even when their spatial coordinates are flipped.
Nodding and feigning as if i understood a single word she said, i went away and thought of some more basic things which we can say with absolute certainty will happen in the next decade.

HABITABLE EXOPLANETS:
So far we have found 4,104 Worlds orbiting outside of our solar system and have classed 55 as possibly habitable against a small handful in 2010 so that number will only substantially increase in the next 10 years and with it our chances of finding alien life.

SPACE EXPLORATION:
NASA and the ESA were the big players in space exploration but now we have private companies run by Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos sending their own rockets and planning some exciting adventures involving Mars and the Moon and eventually sending human passengers into space.

CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS:
The decade that we just departed showed what happens when Mother Nature turns ugly and the human race will face larger and worse batterings from her as we try to get to grips with just what we have done to out atmosphere. It won't be pretty and the wake up call may be too late but we can't say we weren't warned.

DESALINATION:
Due to a changing climate, droughts, global warming and pollution will reduce the amount of drinking water available so as water shortages increase, the process of desalination, removing salt from water to make it drinkable, will have to become big business.

MEATLESS BURGERS:
Vegetarianism and it's more harsher brother Veganism is taking a hold and vegan products increased by 25% last year, and big food businesses have come to the fore and the popularity will continue to grow as people continue to seek out environmentally friendly food options.


ENGLAND'S NEW MONARCH:
Although the Royals seem to go on forever, the Queen is 93 and while she make it to see in 2030, it is unlikely so its more likely it will be King Charles or even King William doing the Christmas speech that year.

A RECESSION:
Capitalism is not great, it falls down on a regular basis and drags many down with it but as it is protected by the very people who benefit the most from it, it won't be going anywhere so as we continue to wobble horribly from the last one in 2008, another recession is inevitable.

HUMANS AND AI:
AI is now ingrained into our day to day lives and as the decade goes on it will become even more so making us even more reliant on computers to keep things running smoother until we get to a point where we cannot do without it and possibly disastrously, hand it more control over our human lives.

SHOPPING CENTRES:
Any walk through any town centre with the closed down shops and the growing list of large traditional shops going under each year and the rise of online shopping will see a stark transformation of brick and mortar shops, transforming the high street in ways we would never have thought possible.

WAR:
Unfortunately this will never go away but autonomous weapons with less human interaction will become the big thing in the business of killing another nations citizens due to their resources/politics/inhumanity/religion just the same as it has been happening for any decade you wish to choose since humans climbed down from the trees.   

I am sure there will be things coming down the line which we have no knowledge of yet but the years 2020 to 2030 will be as exciting, scary, fascinating and devastating as all the other decades.