WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS, BUT SOMEHOW settled for cars that still burn fossil fuel, hackable typed passwords and tasteless processed food. Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before: That’s all about to change. Technology will touch everything we do. Entertainment will be all around us. Kitchen waste will feed the world. Cars will drive themselves (and as Dan Neil explains, they won’t even be our cars). So, buckle up. We’re almost there.  Jessica H. Green (author) “Drunk on Possibility” | Green earned a master’s degree in Renaissance Studies from Yale, but abandoned academia to follow her passion for “fermented grape juice,” as she calls it. She’s currently studying to become a Master of Wine, of which there are only 340 world-wide.  Hope for the future: “No more wine scores. They served a purpose for early adopters of fine wine, but we can go it on our own now. Trust your taste.”  Dan Neil (author) “Kiss Your Car Goodbye” | The Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive columnist likens writing about driverless cars to going back to the first day of school. “The future of how we get around,” Neil says, “will take everything we know, and turn it completely on its head.”  Hope for the future: “A feature-length romantic comedy in Minecraft (8-bit) animation. And a better chainsaw.”  Eric Ray Davidson (photographer), “Conor McGregor Has Lost His Mind” | Davidson shot the star mixed martial artist at Muscle Beach in Venice, Calif., where McGregor initiated a sparring session on a public basketball court. “Taking a celebrity down to a public space is always an adventure,” says Davidson.  Hope for the future: “A moratorium on those motorized, hands-free scooters known as a hover boards. I get the need for personal transport, but can’t you just walk while looking at your phone?”
From the end of auto ownership to America’s changing battlefields to a revolution in fast food to the next sports superstar, a special Wall Street Journal magazine asks a team of experts and reporters to tell us what lies ahead.