What will the world look like in 2030?

In 10 years, we may be working less, paying with cryptocurrency and travelling by tunnel. Anthony Cuthbertson polishes his crystal ball and looks at how tech will transform our future

What a difference a decade makes... (Getty)

By the measure of many cultural forecasts, we are already living beyond a future that was never realised. Last year saw us pass the fictitious dystopia of Blade Runner, which foresaw flying cars and robots indistinguishable from humans. The year 2015 saw similarly unfulfilled predictions from Back to the Future II, although the film did manage to somehow call the Cubs winning the World Series after more than a century.

Cinematic prophecies may be wildly optimistic, though even science fiction has often failed to predict the remarkable technological progress of the 21st century. We now carry around the equivalent of supercomputers in our pockets, there are space rockets that can land by themselves, cars that can drive themselves, and robots that deliver our food.

Such a rate of change make predictions about the future notoriously difficult. But barring any wild breakthroughs, here’s how the evolution of current technologies could play out over the next decade.