50-year predictions % of USS adults who feel that the following will/won't happen in the next 50 years
A substantial majority of Americans (81%) believe that within the next 50 years people needing an organ transplant will have new organs custom made for them in a lab. Belief that this development will occur is especially high among men (86% of whom believe this will happen), those under age 50 (86%), those who have attended college (85%), and those with relatively high household incomes. But although expectations for this development are especially high within these groups, three-quarters or more of every major demographic group feels that custom organs are likely to become a reality in the next half-century.
The public is more evenly split on whether computers will soon match humans when it comes to creating music, novels, paintings, or other important works of art: 51% think that this will happen in the next 50 years, while 45% think that it will not. In contrast to their expectations for custom-built organs, college graduates and those with high incomes are comparatively unlikely to expect that computers will advance to this level of development. Some 59% of college graduates and 57% of Americans earning $75,000 or more per year feel that computers will not be able to produce works of art that are on par with those produced by humans within the next 50 years.
Compared with custom organs and computer produced art, the public has less confidence that the two common science fiction tropes of teleportation and colonization of other planets will come to pass. Two in five Americans (39%) think that teleportation will be possible within the next 50 years, while slightly fewer—33%—expect to live in a world in which humans have long-term colonies on other planets. Young adults are especially likely to view space colonization as a long-term eventuality: 43% of 18-29 year olds see this happening in the next half-century, compared with about a quarter of those over age 50. On the other hand, high-income Americans are pessimistic about the prospects of space colonization: just 20% of those with an annual household income of $75,000 or more think this is a realistic prediction.
From a list of futuristic inventions that includes space colonies and teleportation, Americans actually have the least confidence in the prediction that humans of the future will be able to control the weather: just 19% of the public thinks that this will probably happen. Older adults are especially pessimistic about this development, as just 11% of Americans ages 65 and older think that controlling the weather is likely to happen over the next 50 years. But even among the most “optimistic” demographic groups, the expectation that humans will control the weather in the next half-century is a decidedly minority viewpoint.
50-year predictions  | % of USS adults who feel that the following will/won't  | happen in the next 50 years  | Won't happen Will happen  | Lab-grown custom  | 15  | 81  | organs for transplant  | Computers create art  | 45  | 51  | as well was humans do  | Scientists will have  | 56  | 39  | solved teleportation  | Humans will have long  | 64  | 33  | term space colonies  | Humans will control  | 77  | 19  | the weather  | Pew Research Center February13-18 2014 survey, n=1 001  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 