Future technological innovations

In My Humble Opinion
21

Cervaise, that was more than two cents worth. That was at least a nickel.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the direction we head. I have a friend that helps research cells and DNA at a university medical center. Eventually she wants to become a genetic counselor and, who knows? Her job may very well be not only to screen the parents but to report on the sexual orientation and future adult height of the fetus.
But will religion play a part in this? Already we have parents who struggle with drugs and procedures and fertility treatments for years and finally have 8 kids because God didn’t want them to abort any. Will we have families that pop out a whole line of Perfect Kids[sub]TM[/sub] because trait X is not what God wishes? How will religious organizations view the changing biological technologies? Not that I personally care one way or the other, but you know they will and it’s best to think ahead.

AZCowboy I have the Dragon Naturally Speaking CD. It’s less than two years old and I haven’t played with it enough for it to adapt to me, just yet, so I can’t blame it for that. But it really slows down the computer.

22

Plus, you can send it back in time to assassinate Sarah Connor. Long live Skynet!

23

My predictions: Computers will keep getting hellava fast. Software will keep getting hellava slow. I predict (well, want actually) eyeglasses with a camera, two displays, and a cpu built in. I want a HUD capable of scanning faces and whatnot. And, with computers getting faster and faster, brute-force algorithms for AI will become feasible.
People will make an unholy fuss over biotechnology. People will develop bitek (points to anyone who knows whom I reference with thie abbreviation) anyway. People will way tangled moral arguments over living longer and healthier. Bitek will triumph.
Someone will come up with an energy-efficient way to cool things besides the current air conditioning model.
Computer games will lose any sembelance of plots.
The children of my generation will grow up with hi-speed internet access. What will happen when a generation of children are raised knowing C++ and Java? Picture a child’s ability to learn languages.
New and interesting drugs will be invented. They will be made illegal.
The RIAA will crash and burn. People will learn that data, like drugs, will always find a way. At least I really hope so. About the data, that is.
We’ll hit a plateau of longevity, where people can live to say 150 or so, but only by planning their lives around, well, their lives.
We’ll find out how to screw with telomeres. Those are the caps on DNA that help us age and die when we are old, and one of the really big obstacles to sci-fi style bitek. All hell will break loose.

24

One word: Biometry.

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The X Factor: The Singularity- Some science and technology prognosticators think that in the next 50 to 100 years (or even sooner) a totally unique phenomenon in history will occur that will permanently alter our civilization. The theory is that the rate of human technological progress has been increasing exponentially, and eventually the rate of change will be so fast that inventions of the Guttenberg moveable type and assembly line magnitude will be occurring around the planet every single second. Will it happen is anyone’s guess, but if it does there is absolutely no way to know what life will be like afterwards. Maybe it’s utopia, maybe apocalypse, or maybe nothing at all (shades of y2k bug). It sounds like religious prophesizing to some, but faith plays to no part here, and I for one am curious, more curious than anything else I can think of, including whether we’re alone in this universe and what happens after we die, as to whether the singularity is real and what it will be like if it occurs.

Wow, I had heard of the concept “Singularity” but I understood it to be the point in time when anybody living could potentially live forever. I had heard that some people think we might have already crossed this point. For instance, average Joe now has a lifespan average of 78 years, but when he gets to be fifty technology has pushed that up to 100 years. Joe hits 80 and is feeling good and loving life but technology marches on and has pushed the line up to 150, this just keeps going untill you get the magic tech that’ll mean practical immortality. This could mean gene therapies, nanotechnology, tissue engineering and transplantation or something we haven’t even thought of yet. I can’t say that I wouldn’t mind crossing the singularity if it should ever happen. A Singularity of the type you describe (which is probably the accepted use of the term) might be in the making now. In my opinion the big breakthrough is when technology starts to be self improving and INVENTING. I just read an article where an evolutionary software program basically taught itself to be a radio receiver… the thing is that the team that designed it didn’t intend for it to do that, the machine came up with something better than human expectations. The next 50 years have the potential to fufill many wonders, or kill us. :wink:

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It may be coming quicker than you think! The “Talking Head” has arrived.

[sub]The above link takes you to a webpage that will require you to accept the installation of a browser plug-in. If you are uncomfortable doing that by following some link some poster put on the SDMB, you can find the same link in the bottom of this Mark Gibbs column in this week’s Network World.[/sub]

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There is no single definition for the singularity.

MIT Media Lab Professor and inventor Ray Kurzweil defines it as,

“…the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered by nanotechnology, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading [minds]) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived. The Singularity is a common matter of discussion in transhumanist circles. There is no concise definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity. Another definition is the singular time when technological development will be at its fastest.”

And Singularity Watch said,

“Some 20 to 140 years from now—depending on which evolutionary or systems theorist, computer scientist, technology studies scholar, or futurist you happen to agree with—the rate of self-catalyzing, self-organizing, ever more autonomous (human-independent) technological change in our local environment will undergo a “singularity,” becoming effectively instantaneous from the perspective of current biological humanity. It has been postulated that events after this point must also be “future-incomprehensible” to existing humanity, though we disagree.”

20 to 140 years is a wide margin if they’re right at all, so I wont be quitting my day job, but man what a prediction. Hundreds of bright, devoted, and highly educated professionals believing that we may live to witness an event unlike any in human history. It’s beyond incredible. Not that is this the first time hundreds of bright, devoted, educated people expected something of cosmic importance to happen in their lifetimes, some Christians expect Christ any day now. My family is Jewish, they’re still waiting for the Messiah to arrive for the first time.

Science is not and cannot be a religion based solely on the premise that religion requires faith in the unprovable, but we all need something to look to when life is hard, at least I do. Sometimes Atheism can be a very lonely place to be, and I miss the comfort of turning to God. The idea that we as a species of thinking creatures inhabiting this marvelous planet in this awe-inspiring universe could manifest a destiny no less fantastical than anything promised by the religions is something I feel proud and honored to hold on to. Now all we need to do is give peace a chance, stop thinking so short term about our resources, prevent corporations and governments from abusing the privilege of having us as consumers and citizens, and diffuse a growing bitterness over the stark division of the first and third worlds, as well as clearing up that little land dispute in the near East. After all that we should be clear for the future, flying cars and all.

Idealistic doesn’t begin to cover it, but it’s something to shoot for. I have a friend who hates his life, hates his job, and hates his girlfriend. He thinks we were put here to be miserable. I think we’re here to change, to grow. We just grow a lot faster these days.

28

Ahem!

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I don’t think robots are going to head toward the humanoid model prevalent in a lot of science fiction. Instead, I see insect-like specialization becoming the future of robotics.

Theorizing:

Most people will own a few robots. They’ll be small, almost mindless creatures, customized for specific functions. You’ll have a bug that moves around your house continually, cleaning your floors quietly and constantly. It’ll move out of your way whenever you approach, and will be able to cover the entire house in about a day. Never sweep, mop, or vaccuum again.

Another robot will do the same for your windows, another one will be in charge of your dishes. One robot will move about your yard, eating the grass, which will also act as fuel. Any task you can do repetitively, with little thought, can have a robot designed for it.

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I think this little guy might take offense at that:

I can see robots beicoming more humanoid for a number of reasons:

-Its a form we are comfortable with in our environment (not so for a 6 ft spider)
-Our world is designed for humanoid forms and thus it would be better able to interact with it
-Its a versetile form
But you are probably right, the majority of robots are and will continue to be purpose-built non-humanoid machines like the Predator drones or current industrial robots.

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I hate to say this, but if somebody actually manages to transmit information instantaneously (you do mean faster than light, do you?) it will be all over the news for days - plus they get a couple of Nobel prizes - since this would deal a near-fatal blow to Einstein’s theories.

And I suspect (but I must think about that) that the trick could be exploited to build a communication system that allows you to talk to the past (i.e. you call somebody and he receives the call three days ago). This will create all sort of weird paradoxes…

I’d really be interested in that article. Can you tell me if you’ll dig it up?

Ciao,
Flavio

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hijack
I’m gonna be a prick, and butt in on behalf of another thread that’s dealing with technology (the wind power thread).
Technology already exists that eclipses much of our dependancies. The decisions for witholding them are baseless.
For those of you who like to taunt on about the impossibility of perpetual motion…

Is it really that big of a deal to walk over to your damn clock every week and wind it up? What if you had to drop a steel ball down a tube once a week to light all the bulbs in your house?
I think people are missing the point. A lot of what is being touted as ‘future’ technology; is the discovery of how to make something work using oil.

-Justhink

33

Plausible and popular science fiction has pretty much innoculated us to advanced technology in the sense that we’re more likely to say “Cool!” instead of “The box has a demon within it!”

As for women wearing celluloid hats, they do (or at least they should) when they go bicycling.

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The next major “Culture War” will be between those who use genetic and cybernetic modification and those who do not.

Eventually, manned fighter aircraft will be obsolete. The air forces of the world will be slow to accept this, until a war comes along where the survival rate of manned fighters against fighter drones drops to virtually zero.

True A.I. will not come along any time soon, but “genetic algorithms” will be used to develop special-purpose programs that are very smart at one limited task.

Liquid water will be discovered under the Europan ice and in subsurface aquifers on Mars. To everyone’s astonishment, the water will be found to be completely sterile.

Brain scanning will be accurate enough to use as a tool in questioning criminal suspects. The legal wrangling will go on for years.

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In instead of making a thread on this as there is a thread here.

And the future technology interest me a lot.

I was reading the US army is researching into Airship and Hybrid airship for large transportation of crew and supplies like tanks and vehicles.

I also read that some companies are researching into this for transporting large shipments of goods.

What is your thought? Do you think in 5 or 10 years it may be possible? Or is this more like 50 years out?

Some info here

Some info here

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20131027/DEFREG02/310270005/US-Military-s-Airship-Programs-Lose-Altitude

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I think in two or three years from now we will see electronic newspapers like this http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/lg-epaper-1.jpg
Yes with pictures and videos and scrolling.

Roll up ultra thin maps like in the movie Minority Report?

Very thin ipad like this

very thin flexible tablet computers and paper-thin flexible tablet computer ,paper-thin flexible roll up maps and electronic paper.

http://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2009/01/29/4f9643c6-f4d6-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc/resize/370xauto/edee6963c0b2f77973cc7f2b28caa335/ASU_Flexible_Display_mock-up.jpg

http://www.8164.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ms3.jpg

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Computers are stagnating.

A CPU from 2005 to 2010 be two or three times faster but a CPU from 2010 to late 2014 only 20% to 40% faster.

Hard-drives are being phased out with solid-state drive SSD. They found 2TB and 3 TB drives crash a lot and prone to lots of errors and don’t last long. So SSD is the future.

I see more and more computers with SSD now days.

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There are some things that don’t seem to change.

One is the pattern recognition problem. Computers are very fast, but making sense out of audio and video mages seems extraordinarily difficult. People imagine computers it can recognise words and pick out faces and it can be done, but only in very controlled conditions.

This lack of ability to interpret information from sensors we will be tapping away at keyboards for some time to come.

Having said that the rangs of very simple sensors and wifi type communication is creating the ‘internet of things’ and a flood of data being available about your house, home, car, workplace, where you go, what you do, with all the elecrical devices we have at the moment reporting their activity and associating with an individual.

This tide of data is just starting with our activities on social media. The rights to that data, how it will be used and what new things might emerge from it are not readily apparent, but they are quite worrying.

It is something like the leap between mobile phones being simply…mobile phones and the current situation where many people organise their social lives and participate in various extended communities through them. Such uses were not envisaged by the engineers who designed the phone network.

SMS texting was an engineers test facility until teenagers got hold of it and now we have twitter and microblogging.

39

hmm. thought the principle of this was that the effect is real but you can’t use it to transfer information.

We’ll have artificial wombs, DIY cloning and programmable sex-bots. In other words: women will become obsolete.

40

Or we’ll have ova-fusion and parthenogenesis, and the male will become obsolete.