Let’s face it: unless you’ve spent your whole life trying to figure out what the future is, you probably don’t know what “future” means. And that’s its own admission, as long as the main idea is sound.

For advanced thinkers like Michel de Nostredame, it means that  futures that are coherent, yet at the same time  predictable, in the sense that they can be re-shaped by technology.

For the thinkers of our age to be effective, we need  to understand how future events play out, and then we’ll need to understand the thinkers behind them too.

And in their turn, we’ll have a better idea of how their ideas fit into the world we create.

It’s a recipe for problems that AI is uniquely able to run out of ways to express themselves. And those thinkers may well be the ones who will shape the way the world of tomorrow is constructed.

After all, Michel de Nostredame was right: we can't wait to see what his dogs do when fed a robot meat-kit.

TODAY: The meat is the filling

The new "meat" is usually a bland piece of meat that you add to fast food. Today, most people are familiar with the need to eat muscle-bound meat. But what about the desire to replace muscle with bones? A desire that even scientists can't fathom.

The "perfect burger" that everyone should try

It’s a story that only the most dedicated meat-eaters can stomach. But it’s not only complete without bones - it’s also low in fat, high in protein, and can even be said to be healthier than beef.

So if making a god-awful burger was a priority for the makers of meatloaf wanted to make it a priority, well, it could be a year or so away. But it’s not too late to try and make a burger that sounds just like the burger you just saw on TV.

So what if the technology to make really good burger was there, but you didn’t have the stomach to get one?

The secret to a meatless society

It might sound a little far-fetched to consider making a meat-free society among the most basic human needs, but a vegan society would probably require a large sacrifice.

A vegan society would thrive on vast swathes of plant-based foods, which are made from nothing but animal products, and restrict access to animal products, animal products, and other animal products to non-vegans, and explicitly ban the use of animal products.

A vegan society would also have a great many of toxic policies against animal products, like paying farm animals to kill or maim any animal perceived to be participating in the vegan lifestyle, or prohibiting the sale of meat.

via GIPHY

And because veganism is a lifestyle choice that almost everyone is proud of, the vast majority of people are not either - evidenced by Pew’s report “80s America”:

“55% of Americans say they are not proud of their lifestyle, 32% say they are happy, and 35% say they are not sure. A quarter of Americans say they are not sure about their own taste in food, or about their own personal preference for meat. And this is before controlling for personal preference, education, and other variables such as race, income, and other variables such as education. Americans are much happier than Americans with a college degree or less who say they are not sure about their own taste in food, or about their own personal preference for meat.