‘Hey Bill Nye, What Technology Can We Expect to Have 50 Years From Now?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

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Hey Bill, uh my name is Salman. I'm an industrial engineering student at the University of Miami. Uh, I was wondering if you could describe, uh, how you think the world is going to look technologically and socially in say 50 or 60 years. Um, I'm pretty sure people 50 years ago didn't really, uh, imagine us having drones or, uh, taking pictures or videos or stuff like that. So can you, uh, give us an idea of what you think the world's going to be like in 50 years? Thank you.

Salman, first of all, I have no idea. Second, um, I'll make some—I give you some thoughts. I very much hope we're at a turning point. We're at a crossroads. We're at a fork in the road. I very much hope in the next 50 years virtually all of our electricity—let's shoot, let's just start with 80% of our electricity—is made renewably from wind and solar, some geothermal, some tidal energy, and we run the whole place, um, renewably. That would be fantastic.

This next thing isn't that hard to predict. There'll be very few human-driven cars. Most automobiles in 50 years will be automatic, will be driverless, in the same way, uh, you get on a train at the airport and you go from one terminal to another. You trust that train to do that. It stays on the track. It just isn't that far from now to have cars that drive themselves, especially in big cities. I'm very hopeful that the cars will almost entirely be electric. There'll be very few fuel-powered cars in 50 years. That's a tough prediction.

What I think in a more grim, or on the way to apocalyptic vision, the division between the rich people and the poor people has a very good chance of getting bigger and bigger. There'll be fewer and fewer people controlling more and more wealth. I can easily see that happening. But if people like you vote and participate, then maybe that won't happen, and we can actually make the world more fair.

And if you're at the University of Miami, you're in the U.S. The U.S. just went through an extraordinary election, like nothing I've ever seen. And, uh, not that it's all about what I've seen, but no one anticipated such a remarkable outcome. The analyses were done or polls were taken to show that if everybody your age—only your age—voted, these would be U Millennials and Generation X people. If only you had voted, the election would have overwhelmingly gone the other way.

So, I'm pretty sure the conservatives who are clinging to the old ways of making energy, the old ways of, uh, distributing energy, I'm pretty sure those people realize that they're going to age out, that their political influence will fade quickly. And this last election is almost certainly their last gasp.

It's going to be a near-run thing. Either in the next decade or 15 years, the U.S. becomes the world leader in renewable technologies, or the U.S. just continues to divide the rich and the poor, and global climate change gets stronger and stronger, and the ocean gets bigger and bigger as it gets warmer, and the quality of life for a lot of people goes down.

We'll see, but man, you've given me a lot to think about. I want you to change the world. Go get them, Salman!