Occasionally I write sci-fi stories and one of the hardest parts of writing sci-fi is: how will the future change and what technologies will be invented/come to prevalence? Writing sci-fi that takes place 1 or 2 years in the future is easy, because you can say that all current day technology is the same except the technology that's relevant to your story. The farther you move in time, the harder it gets, until you reach the hundred year mark and you basically have to play the role of a witch doctor in your predictions.
There is a cheat though; I've found that in the history of humanity, every time there is a genuine problem there will always be a duct tape solution. Let's look at the history of medicine for example: every time there has been a major epidemic science has managed to come up with a treatment and, rarely, a cure, as int he cases of polio and smallpox. But more often than not, killers like AIDS, cancer, diabetes are researched until they have a workable treatment rather than an actual cure. Conspiracy theorists claim it's because doctors and hospitals want to make money off of expensive treatments rather than curing a disease. But there are two damning flaws to this conspiracy theory: (1) every doctor and researcher on the planet wants to be known as the person who found the cure to a major disease, so there is no way that if a cure is found it will stay hidden. (2) The conspiracy theory that cures are hidden to make people take expensive treatments relies on the logical fallacy that pharma companies need a logical excuse to charge people ridiculous prices.
They don't, they
raise prices all the time for no better reason other than people can't fight them.
The truth about why we don't have a cure for AIDS or cancer is simply: it's hard. And once you reach the duct tape solution the incentive to cure a disease with a workable treatment falls off the map. Example: When AIDs was a huge epidemic and anyone who contracted it had a very short amount of time to live, there were companies and organizations working around the clock to cure AIDS. They did a tremendous amount of good and now a person with AIDS can live for 20 years if they take care of themselves. While AIDS as a killer in the
United States has rapidly declined, cancer is the biggest killer and depending on which cancer you are diagnosed with the survival period is relatively small. As such, the largest amount of funding dollars, media coverage and research is towards cancer research.
And this is how technology works: as long as you can find a solution that works relatively well, chances are things won't change. That's why doctors and lots of older professionals in Japan still use pagers instead of holograms. It's why subway systems and cars haven't all been replaced by tubes. And why duct tape will still be used for the next hundred years of human history. Yes, that is my prediction. Duct tape will be used for the next century. Why? Because duct tape is the single best 'Plan B' there is.
The perfection of technology.
Whenever people need to actually weld something together, there are Plan As, but as far as Plan Bs duct tape is so reliable that astronauts have been using it for forty years.
I'm sure someone could come up with a better product than duct tape, but there doesn't seem to be any demand. There are already better solutions to duct tape, but all those are Plan As; costlier and more permanent. If a director needs to attach a camera to a dummy for multiple runs up a roller coaster they can make a mini-crane to hold it in place. But if they just need one shot they will duct tape a roller coaster or a snowboard, or someone's helmet.
Because of the sci-fi law of Duct Tape Solutions, I'd say duct tape will be around for another hundred years. Though I'm not sure what kind of sci-fi story you could write about it...
