Optimistically things will start becoming more energy-efficient, wireless, and with higher integration. Computers of some sort, with their incredibly small size, will be fitted into most electronics. It will allow for the automation of the great many things that have not yet reached that level. I can see driver-less cars becoming popular by the 2020s, with lots of funding being put into smart road systems that will increase driver security and will mean people don't need to actively operate their vehicle any more.
If biology has little if any limitations put on ideas such as genetic engineering, we may begin seeing a new agricultural revolution. Where we can pick what we want plants or animals to have in them, allowing us to tailor foods to be more nutritious, larger and requiring less resources to produce. Imagine being able to grow nutritious food at the speed of bamboo or giant kelp. That would do phenomenal things in solving food crises and malnutrition.
I can see renewable or more efficient types of energy production being used extensively by at least 2050, when naturally occurring oil reserves begin to dwindle to the point where it is no longer economically efficient to extract them. That is after a long reliance on bio-fuels that will be found to replace oil in many countries before the technology for cheap and reliable renewable energy is produced.
Cybernetics and AI will become much more sophisticated in the future. Whether the idea of a technological singularity holds true is yet to be seen. Whether silicon is even capable of producing cognitive thought like human biology can, remains to be tested. But it is a very large possibility that needs to be considered. The more complex cybernetics will allow the running of industry and engineering to be simplified, and will allow for a cheaper and more productive industry.
The development of nanotechnology will also allow us to achieve even more complex and ambitious engineering projects, and may even hold invaluable use within medicinal technology. It's a much more theoretical industry than most, but it will hold valuable use in the foreseeable future in my opinion.
Space-wise we will have the James Webb Space Telescope in 2015, and will begin discovering how unique Earth is within the universe. Allowing us to further the search for extra-terrestrial life. I'm sure that a future push by the Chinese space program will lead to a re-birth in American manned spaceflight. We may see humans on Mars by 2030. I believe that colonies in orbit will become popular in the later part of this century and that colonisation of the moon will have been extensively developed by the end of this century too.
There will be many future breakthroughs in engineering and science that I can't at this moment even begin to fathom. Which may change the course of everything. So we really don't know what will happen, all we can do is look at what's happening now and what we think will happen soon, and just project it onto the future.
