It is impossible to predict the future, although one can suggest three broad alternatives: pessimism, gradualism, and consummationism.  Beyond that, all that we can do is consider possibilities; both in terms of technologies and philosophies available today, and speculations regarding how things will turn out in years, decades, or centuries hence.

Basically, interpretations of the future fall into three categories.  I call these the pessimistic, the gradualist, and the consumationist.

The pessimistic interpretation says simply that the human race either won't survive or will be reduced to barbarism, whether through nuclear war (popular in the 50s through to 80s, rather dated now), ecological crisis, the impact of an asteroid or comet, or perhaps a man-made genetically engineered organism that got put of control.

The gradualist sees history in the future as being a continuation of the past.  Although we cannot tell exactly how things will go, it is assumed that no matter how much technology or society changes, people will still be people, that there'll still be nation states (or perhaps interplanetary empires) etc.  Most science fiction looks at the future like this.

The consummationist sees occuring in the future - and usually in the very near future -  an accelerated "future shock", culminating in total transformation, a break with the past that is such that it is impossible to envisage how things will be.  This is conceived of either technologically, as a sort of "singularity", or spiritually or metaphysically, as a transformation of the planetary consciousness (the Aurobindoan Supramentalisation being the most articulate and well-thought out of these interpretations).  Whatever the outcome, it is assumed that the human race will be replaced by something else, either spiritual or genetic superbeings, cyborgs, or super-advanced Artificial Intelligences.

	New Paradigms	what we need are new ways of thinking about the world; a getting away from old outmoded materialistic reductionism and religious and ideological dogmatism.
	Nanotech	building things with incredible speed and precision  atom by atom - the ultimate manufacturing revolution
	Science Fiction	using the imagination to speculate on how things will be decades or centuries hence. Also, a few essays of mine
	Space Exploration and Colonisation	opening up new vistas for humankind
	Transhumanism and Extropism	using new ideas and future technology to evolve beyond present human limitations.
	The Singularity	the end of history....the end of everything.  And the beginning.  Scary....!!!!
	Orion's Arm	An epic science fiction story-line set in a post-singularity future. The universe is ruled over by god-like artificial intelligences, baseline human beings have been replaced by superiors, tweaks, cyborgs, vecs, and splices, and out on the Periphery something strange is happening... - ten thousand years of future history

Links Revelations of the Future Kind - -  "MISSION: Offer readers the best index to information and opinions about the future available on the net today. In this page I include not just futurist and technology-specific sites, but also sites with ANY subject matter I consider possibly significant to the future in some way-- such as star maps, and evolving theories of cosmic collisions and/or cyclic terran catastrophes, etc., as well as some selected sci fi and sci fi review links which could provide ideas and/or perspectives helpful to anyone working to affect or predict the future in some way. " Frontier organisations on the Web - "a list of organizations engaged in various things advanced and frontierish. (This means grand-scale futurism, philosophy,personal and social liberation, and advanced technology)", by Alexander Chislenko - links to all sorts of organisations (not all are futurological though). Mark/Space Interplanetary Review - encyclopaedic - incredible, so much there.   Includes Anachron City, The Posthuman Issue, Utopia or Bust, Counterculture, Aliens, authors, references, reviews, and links, links, links.   Unfortunately this site is no longer being updated. An Illustrated Speculative Timeline of Technology and Social Change for the Next One Thousand Years - pretty much what the title says it is! Charles Ostman - the Far Frontier - Evolution into the Next Millennium - links to and short comments obout a lot of interesting ideas and themes, including nanotech, virtual realty, a-life, etc Exit Mindi - a light-hearted collection of all kinds of possible apocalyptic scenarios. Red Galaxy - a collaborative wiki-based worldbuilding project founded 2007 and set in a post-singularity future. Strongly inspired by Orion's Arm but with a less extreme upper tech range (see Founder's Canon for explanation)