Life, 100 Years From Now

BBC News Magazine asked its readers for their predictions of life in 100 years time.

Will there be elevators built to go up there? - Sunrise shot from Kasih Sayang Resort, K.Kinabalu.

With some inspiration from the ten 100-year predictions made by American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins in 1900, here are the readers' top 20 picks:

1. Oceans will be extensively farmed and not just for fish
2. We will have the ability to communicate through thought transmission
3. Thanks to DNA and robotic engineering, we will have created incredibly intelligent humans who are immortal
4. We will be able to control the weather
5. Antarctica will be "open for business"
6. One single worldwide currency
7. We will all be wired to computers to make our brains work faster
8. Nanorobots will flow around our body fixing cells, and will be able to record our memories
9. We will have sussed nuclear fusion
10. There will only be three languages in the world - English, Spanish and Mandarin
11. Eighty per cent of the world will have gay marriage
12. California will lead the break-up of the US
13. Space elevators will make space travel cheap and easy
14. Women will be routinely impregnated by artificial insemination rather than by a man
15. There will be museums for almost every aspect of nature, as so much of the world's natural habitat will have been destroyed
16. Deserts will become tropical forests
17. Marriage will be replaced by an annual contract
18. Sovereign nation states will cease to exist and there will be one world government
19. War by the West will be fought totally by remote control
20. Britain will have had a revolution

Read BBC News magazine to find out what futurologists think about them. As crazy and impossible as some of these may sound, many of the previous prediction by Watkins actually came true. Check out his 10 predictions one hundred years ago.

Depending on your belief, these could well be signs that the end of time is not too far away.