I don't claim to have a good guess. Consider, however, the young women who take up smoking or continue to smoke in order to help control their weight. Vanity runs deep, probably for evolutionary reasons.

why wouldnt it look great by 2030?

Not many people wear bulletproof vests now. Law enforcement and military people do wear them when
on duty.
Even in situations when there is higher risk of injury people, there have to laws and campaigns
to get people to wear seatbelts, bike helmets, motorcycle protective gear.

for protection people do have vaccinations.

I think that genetically engineered regeneration and faster healing will be big.
People could swap out physical appearance changes the way we change clothes now.

I do not think physical damage would be that frequent a threat and when it does happen the chance that mere body armor would change the outcome seems even more unlikely.

I think it would be more useful
1. to be linked in to the network for reports of threats
2. fast response by super-SWAT teams
3. have a utility fog for unobtrusive prototection and to help speed one away from threats

Of course we'll do things like this. Once life extension technologies become available and people stop dying of heart disease and cancer, accidents and violence will become more and more prominent as the leading causes of death. This will strike people as a greater tragedy than now because an accidental death will rob someone not just of decades but of centuries of life.

So we'll make ourselves tougher. Better able to survive accidents and better able to handle violence. But that means people interested in being violent will, in turn, upgrade their abilities.

I think that improved ability to restore damage and to automatically transmit radio-beacons for medical attention will make a much much bigger impact than increased ability to prevent it, except for the brain, especially now that we know about reperfusion and can expect to soon be able to restore tissue after hours of oxygen deprivation..
For the brain, diamondoid reinforced skull material seems easy enough to provide. Sealing the eye-sockets and replacing the eyes with enhanced optical sensors (optical phased array grids?) will protect it from penetration by anything less than a shape-charged warhead or nuke without any visible change.
Preventing vibrational damage will be a much bigger problem, and utility fog may have a role. My guess is that replacing collagin with something stronger might help a bit, but mostly you will have to depend on medicine being able to fix vibrational damage. With utterly mature nanotech, vasculoids may help, but they may be more difficult to build than uploading is to implement.
Turning off cell-suicide pathways in the brain permanently once we have cured cancer may be a good idea.
Unlike brains, bodies are disposable. Better to wear the best disposable body you can build than to compromise other features in the name of permanence.

Michael, rather than diamondoid it may be useful to be even more precise and say fullerene or nanotube-based reinforcement. And shaped-charge or nuke only is slightly too optimistic... high-velocity bullets made out of the same stuff could penetrate it, you could still be crushed, enough heat would melt it anyway... and there's always that terrifying vision of future war that you first told me about - getting put in a bag! ;)

In terms of violent death, what are the main things that kill people:
1) brain damage
2) blood loss
3) organ failure (often from blood loss or massive trauma)
4) am i missing something here?

I could envision a system with ultra-strong bones that could be very protective. Extra internal protection to stop the brain from smashing into the inside of the skull during collisions would be big. Additionally, nano-robots that could replace the capabilities of organs for extended periods would be vital as well. We will probably see violent death dramatically decreased.

Why the worry about physical harm? It is a low frequency cause of death now. Why would you not expect people to design to avoid more probable causes of death or to behave in a fashion that reduces the risk from physical harm?

homeboy, a very good point, except that both can be done. Although given finite researches, at every stage it does probably make sense to determine relative R&D funding priorities: innovating how to build safer living environments vs. social and legal reform vs. body enhancement. Also, how much of the benefits a modified skull could be achieved just by making it normative for people to wear bike helmets and plastic glasses/goggles? Similarly to wear bullet proof vests? I think the only question is to what degree is there a productivity cost to wearing that type gear which results in reduced economic efficiency that actually could become a greater contributor to our mortality odds.

Well, the skin is naturally composed of several layers. Perhaps we could add the protective material as a new sub-dermal layer, thus maintaining the traditional look and feel of the skin. Most likely, different folks will choose different protective strategies, influenced both by the evolving technologies and their personal assessments of taste and risk.

Body armor can't be very useful. Evolution has had plenty of opportunity to make it, but very rarely does except for specialists or slowpokes. I think it's obvious that the damaging forces you might encounter will always be greater than the strength of lightweight armor, diamond or not. Plus making body parts too durable can be a problem in itself - think scales forced inwards so that they cut up organs, or catching your fingertip in the wood-chipper and the skin being unable to tear. Plus some day you might be wheeled into the ER with some injury, and they'd sigh and say "we might have saved an ordinary guy, but it would take us an hour with a diamond drill to just make a hole big enough to inject morphine - sorry". In terms of safeguarding health, I would much prefer regeneration and backup organs.

homeboy,

By the time we gain the ability to genetically engineer humans for biological body armor I do not expect aging to be the biggest cause of death any more. I'm thinking ahead to that day.

I figure once murder, accidents and suicide become the major causes of death a lot of people will focus their attentions on how to reduce each remaining cause of death. I'm thinking ahead to that day and wondering what people will choose to do to reduce their risks of death from trauma.

I agree with David Young. A sub-dermal layer of protection (even if it's only 90% as good) will be much more popular. I imagine nanotech enhanced skulls, spines and rib cages (along with the blood borne improvements mentioned) will be equally of value.

I would not make arms and legs unbreakable though. If some situations it's better to "cut your losses" than be tied to a certain result. I would hate to have my brain sucked into a wood chipper just because my hand got stuck in one and the sub-dermal armor meant that "where the hand goes, the rest follows."

I'm not sure any genetically engineered enhancements of this kind would compete with armor that's worn. I disagree with the argument that if evolution didn't come up with it it's not useful. When it comes to human beings we can, have and do make and use body armor and depending on the situation it works extremely well. Police and Military use it all the time - from the humble boot to protect feet to kevlar vests, adding a tough layer where needed does have it's uses. Still I can't see any advantages to growing it in-situ. Even surgical inserts would probably give better results - the choice of materials available to do the job would be wider and probably better than biologically produced ones even if cells could be modified to produce exotics like carbon nanotubes. Still could be some military scientist types somewhen who want to grow uber-soldiers to their specs and include some tough armor. I hope we're talking gene therapy on informed consenting adults here and not doing prenatal.