I have a long blog post planned covering 5 future scenarios. This thread would be a good place to test-drive an MVP...

Scenario 1 is exponential progress - the Singularity which Ray Kurzweil thinks is inevitable and which Eliezer Yudkowsky is trying to bring about. Progress feeds into progress until we enter technology heaven.

Scenario 2 is steady progress - the worldview of TED talks and most of Silicon Valley. We gradually solve social and technological problems, and the future is an improved version of the present.

Scenario 3 is stagnation. We reach a point where our ingenuity and resources are only sufficient to maintain our current level of civilisation. Peter Thiel might be a proponent of this worldview. If you think "business as usual" is taking us nowhere fast, you're likely more interested in out there ideas such as seasteading, charter cities and bitcoin which promise to open up new vistas of innovation.

Scenario 4 is steady decline. Dwindling resources lead to fraying social structures which lead to cascading problems - new problems arise faster than we can deal with them. It's not a popular viewpoint, but it's happened to many complex societies in history. Note that if scenario 2 tends to be a liberal viewpoint, and scenario 3 tends to be a somewhat libertarian viewpoint, then scenario 4 is probably a traditionalist conservative viewpoint (conservatism as in Edmund Burke, not George Bush).

Scenario 5 is sudden collapse: everything appears to be going fine until suddenly we're all killed by global warming/nuclear war/asteroids/etc. Surprisingly, scenario 5 is more popular than scenario 4, usually because certain groups believe they will live out the apocalypse and get to see the rest of decadent society destroyed.

Seems like you enumerated the possibilities, but I guess you'd also have to ask:

1. For whom? Is the divide between poor and rich people getting smaller or bigger? Is the divide between poor and rich countries getting bigger or smaller? Will there be countries?

2. What is getting better/worse? Will people be richer in the future? If they are richer, will they be happier?

There will be a breakthrough in education. MOOCs will replace physical text books and a greater part of studying and learning will take place at home, giving the teacher the oppertunity to discuss things in greater detail. International level books and Lectures will be easily available to students and teachers everywhere, especially in rural regions, bringing the students from there at par with other students from cities.

Hopefully a replacement for the united nations will come forth and abolish the super powers control over everything.

Second prediction: Hacking will become such a huge problem that fighting it will force everyone into a locked down internet with computers you can't fix or open up without breaking and new standards will be written to replace innovation with an illusion of innovation. Apple Mac Pros are just the start

Third prediction: New STDs?

No need for new STDs, the patch releases for current STDs are scary enough.

For example, Gonorrhea isn't really a serious threat right now, but the steady growth of antibiotic-resistant Gonorrhea is a different matter. Back to the fun days of inadequately-protected sex giving you infertility, arthritis and blindness...

Optimistically, 5 years from now: the list of states to follow Nevada's lead in allowing autonomous driving cars will grow to more than half. Additionally, Europe and other parts of the world begin to allow such vehicles.

Newspapers like Financial Times, NYTimes, WSJ, begin to realize paywalls/subscriptions are not necessarily the best business models. Beginning the process of realizing the old pay model does not work. While at the same time more musicians, small film projects, books get funded by sites like Rockethub, Kickstarter, Indiegogo. Adding to further weight against the old pay model of the entire content creation industry.

Part pessimistic, but will add this into optimistic as well. Already companies like JCPenney's, Macy's etc are facing the competition of not just Walmarts, Targets, but also Amazon and online stores. Optimistic being that stores closings will lead to creative destruction and reinvention of malls across the US. The reinvention wouldn't be for a bit longer however.

15 years: Malls facing near extinction will need to reinvent themselves. As city greening like in the Bronx, Philly and other cities around the world are currently in their infancy, - Malls are converted to have roof top gardens and become indoor parks for people to be able to exercise with dogs etc, during heat waves, strong winter snaps etc. The heat wave aspect will be especially important as climate change becomes more and more problematic.

Autonomous buses replace older buses which require a driver. Cities like Copenhagen, Portland, Philadelphia begin experimenting with "fast lanes" for autonomous buses, which gives them the entirety of street use of selected roadways. Autonomous cars have a quarter of the market and have over thrown the taxi industry.

25 years: Autonomous hold 100% of the market. Robotics are heavily used through the households. Households themselves evolve due to climate change, fresh water issues, and stress on waste management/sewage systems. 100% water recycling, reusing, etc per every household. Houses too will compost like how we recycle. Indoor gardening and outdoor gardening will be used more widely with robotics making gardening easier.

With the 3D printer revolution in full swing, and recycle/reuse everything rule in practice, it'll become rare that anything ends up in the trash stream. Material that will not be reused will be recycled and broken down into raw material form for 3D printers etc. Reused products will make thrift stores more in fashion, possibly taking over big box stores empty from places like JCPenney's, Bestbuys, etc going under.

3D printing, will take this role. Both low-cost and luxury. Both in big buildings and small. Skyfarms will be easy and cheap to build with such large 3D printers. Some skyfarms will take the role of organic/none-gmo, with locality in focus. Other skyfarms will take the role of massively growing gmo crops year round in a mass-controlled environment. Excess of the crops will be stored for the future, as climate change proves more costly regarding droughts...like the one the the US has been going through.

3D printers ability to build large infrastructure will show in bridges and high speed railroads/maglev lines. Particularly in the US - the dream of Boston to DC in an hour or less. Making the east cost a whole lot closer, with Erie, PA, and Buffalo NY becoming suburbs of cities like Philly and NYC, which practically become neighborhoods to one another. High speed rail emerges to compete with autonomous vehicles by providing 300mph or more travel speeds. Cars too will get faster with better technology and be able to go just as fast. Airlines return to Concorde style flights in order to make flying relevant.

50-70yrs: But eventually with high speed rails and cars that can go a whole shit ton faster, airlines only advantage is the oceans. The new concord flights are re-designed for international flights, but limited as underwater high speed trains connect the North America to Europe, which re-occurs with various spots throughout the world, some projects more challenging than others, but still achievable. I like to think of this as limited to a few instances, but I could see with 3D printing that later on these projects emerge to connect heavy island areas like the Caribbean, Asian Pacific, etc. I fear for what this might do to the marine life. None the less airlines are forced to reinvent themselves with private spacecraft, space tourism really enters into a new era as it becomes available to the masses and space hotels emerge, with space study laboratories sponsored by partnerships of Universities competing against other partnerships. The same thing emerges on the Moon, with laboratories first obviously, but then the emergence of hotels, and university partnerships laboratories. Towns emerge, mining already in process by this time.

100 years from:

Laboratories, hotels, towns, mining etc on Mars and possibly there their moons.

Mining occurring throughout the solar system.

All the while, with this 100 years of climate change, turning us more fully aware of our planet Earth. By now we've already have acted within the first 20 or so years. Wind power, solar power, conservation, recycling, reusing and composting, growing locally while also growing on mass in skyfarms, and possibly beginning to mine landfills for things that can be recycling. Science ideally comes up with ways to help the oceans, capture carbon, and slow down the extinction rate. The understanding of fixing the problems will help us better understand terraforming planets like Mars down in the next 100 years after.

Pessimistically: In short, mass job losses around the world due to these emerging technologies will cause upheaval and lead to radicalism, possibly war. I don't think we'll wipe ourselves out, but we can very well put ourselves back by a few centuries. Though..optimistically...I feel some knowledge will exist past such a war that will allow us to speedily catch back up to where we should be. Still, such a global conflict is unnecessary, as there are ways to help those displaced by technologies - without sending them to the battlefields. Also relating to this..such a war could put us behind in trying to fix key parts of the climate problem, and extinction problem - possibly missing an important prevention of an extinction that may end up proving to be a keystone species that sparks off a domino effect killing the rest of us in the process. I suspect bees as the keystone species. But then again..maybe such a war would cause a population drop off in humanity that would help radically cut carbons from the environment. While we try to regain our balance, we find it harder to deal with climate change and to get to where we were - thus taking longer and thus offsetting the carbon amounts in the atmosphere for longer helping soften the effects for the next century. But yea..such a war would still suck and be unnecessary.

I am hoping that war will become a thing of the past. Hopefully in the future we will have a better understanding of and when conflicts develop - and how to resolve them. Also communication between cultures will improve (more people speak English, machine translation, more direct communication though the internet) and cultures will become more similar.

Planets will be the new nations, teleportation will be the new transportation, and engineers will still be in demand.

Religion will be banned.