I am looking for the best sources for a consistent setting of a near-future Earth, extrapolating whatever one can conceivably extrapolate from the current state to something around 50 years into the future, and speculating where one cannot conceivably extrapolate. I would be okay if it were similar to ThS, but would consider the technological, economical and sociological changes of the last 10 years, but I would really like a source that is updated whenever new real-life developments cast doubt on the current predictions, because then it would not run into the problem outdating. (I don't mind if the predictions turn out false as long as I have no way of telling that from the perspective of now.)
GURPS Transhuman Space is pretty close to what I'm looking for, though I get the impression that it is starting to acquire patches of zeerust, in particular on the political front. Is there something out there noting how the setting would look like if it was published now, ten years later?
Other interesting resources are FutureTimeline.net, which has a large number of predictions and is kept “up to date” (as far as that can be said about something dealing with the future), but is – as the name says – a timeline, listing future events in order, instead of drawing a consistent picture of the world at one particular point in the future.
Eclipse Phase has some interesting things in the book, in particular I consider the political and economical systems worth stealing, but the general post-apocalyptic feeling is not my goal, I'm looking more for the Before-Fall-40 state of affairs instead of the setting's After-Fall-10.
There are some very focused pieces that go in the right direction for my taste, but they give a small excerpt of “the setting” and may be good as inspiration, but don't paint the big picture I'm looking for. (Examples: Stross' Accelerando, thinking his Halting State further, some elements from Robinson's Mars trilogy; Random articles from the Singularity Institute; The FreeMarket RPG)
