In your great-grandchildren's lifetime, dinner might be served by robots, and airplanes might fly without pilots. Who knows?

The future seems closer these days because the next millennium (muh-LEN-ee-um), or thousand-year period, is only a year away. No one alive has experienced the start of a new millennium!

“We study the future so we can prepare for tomorrow,” explains Joseph Coates, a futurist from Washington, D.C. Futurists help companies and governments plan ahead—but not too far ahead. With technology changing so quickly, predictions that look beyond the next 30 years would be mostly guesswork. “Looking into the future is an art, not a science,” says Coates.

Even if our crystal ball is cloudy, it’s fun to imagine what the next thousand years hold in store. Click on the subjects at right to learn WORLD’s best guesses about technological developments in your lifetime—and beyond.