People seem to forget that other things use the sky. Like seagulls. And aircraft. Flying cars would be a nuisance as, as stupid as humans can be, someone is bound to cross a flight path and cause an accident. Not to mention some key routes between places are intercepted by a flight path so you would need a loooooong detour to avoid an aircraft. E.g Gibraltar Airport's runway is intersected by a busy main road! It's the only road in and out of a part of the city!
Flying cars? I don't really see the advantage. If they don't run on fuel, it's not going to happen. The oil industry is too big for that. If they required more fuel to operate, the industry would love that because it'd increase demand, but the consumer would most likely not be forced into upgrading into a flying car, and spending more money on fuel for no real benefit. If they required less fuel to operate, the industry wouldn't want it to happen because that's a decrease in demand.
We already have compact buildings like fifty-stories high with people living in them. It's called public housing. As for robots, there's really no advantage in many places. They're expensive to maintain, unreliable, limited in the actions they can carry out, unintelligent for the most part and in many cases, it's easier just to higher a fresh-out-of-college young person and pay them minimum wage. Maybe the use of artificial intelligence in factories and such will develop, but they most certainly won't be walking around on the streets for any good reason.
Yes, we will be alive.
You cannot be legitimately serious in thinking that in a decade's time flying cars will be common-sight.
As you said, you have no idea what technology is going to run the cars... Isn't that kind of an important issue? Sure it's all good to say "Don't worry about it, the computers will take care of everything" but AFAIK that technology doesn't exist yet and EVERYTHING which is automated needs to have manual fail-safes and overrides which means that even if it is automated there still needs to be a licensed Pilot.
The engine doesn't just have to fit in a car and make it fly, it has to meet certain criteria before it's even safe enough to be used commercially including somehow being able to remain stationary but airborne without the use of propellers and in the event of an accident how are the passengers going to survive? Speed is also relevant to this because how fast it goes dictates how long it takes to stop.
This is completely ignoring the fact that everything will have to be FAA regulated and the fact that there are many places which are no-fly zones including anywhere near a government building or military base, which is what i brought up the issue of height because you need to clear landscapes and buildings but you can't have 100,000 flying cars appearing on the aircraft radars.
Autopilot doesn't drive the plane, it continues at the current speed & altitude and controls the tilt to essentially just follow the plotted route. But the Pilots still have to take off and land, make major maneuvers themselves and if anything goes wrong it's all up to them. Autopilot is just a smarter cruise control.
There are a VAST number of things which have to be considered such as regulations, legislation, safety issues, hazards, infrastructure... It's not as simple as "Yup we got the tech we got the AI lets do this!".
Realistically, we will eventually have an unlimited energy source to replace primative fossil fuels. It's inevitable. I also believe the world will eventually unite together. We'll have 1 basic currency and there won't be any borders. This is also in all likelihood, inevitable. Won't happen for awhile, but believe me, it probably will as it's the most logical thing to achieve. The only thing we need to accomplish for this to happen, is to convince all the idiots who disagree with this idea. They won't realize that this is what needs to occur for us as a species to take a leap forward.
We're also in the age of science, an age of reason. Religion is finally losing its grasp on people's minds. In the future, in about hundreds or thousands of years-ish. Religious people will be a minority in our society, as more people will trust in science for more rational answers to explain the great mystery that is life as we know it.
There won't be flying cars anytime soon. Maybe in a couple thousand years when we can actually develop a flawless system for such a thing, but not soon. We're more likely to develop cars that use highly intelligent computer systems as a means for a new, intricate infrastructre.
Education will hopefully be revamped entirely, to give our kids a more reasonable education. Education in my country(Canada) and of course the U.S right now is SHIT. It is utterly pathetic. There are so many other countries right now who have better education systems in place. We could do a lot better for our kids.
Well, as evolution goes, people won't be physically the same; I don't know if they'll be smarter though, but seeing children nowadays I believe they will be disrespectful to their elders and shizz.
As for the environment, it will not be as bad as we think (for example E-Wall) cause paper will be replaced by technology, that's huge!
^ post above me said the world will unite, but if you think the world will unite in the future, you're gonna have a bad time :/