How many of the technological advances of the next (past) century would you have foreseen? Even if they were “in the works” could you have imagined:
Cars
Planes (not to mention spacecraft)
Radio (except for those new-fangled telegraph contraptions)
Movies (not to mention TV)
Computers (not to mention the Internet)
Cures for all manner of diseases
The exploration of the atom and the universe
etc., etc.
Now return to 2003
What lies ahead for technology that we’ll look back on in 20 years and wonder how we ever lived without it?
In the future I think that every fabric will have sound and audio capabilities sewn into it. Basically we will be able to stitch a PC (or Mac) and a monitor into a duvet or wallpaper without any loss of comfort or the technology being visible.
For eg. If you were lying in bed one night and you remembered that you were missing the grand prix you could straighten out a part of the bed-sheet you were lying on, draw a square with your finger (perhaps using a special glove) and that square would light up and become a fabric monitor with touch screen capabilities allowing you to surf the net etc.
Same with walls, you are fed up sitting on your stool surfing, or you are in the kitchen and you want to bring up a recipe so you stand up and draw a square on the wall and bingo!! A working high definition monitor appears.
I suppose it’s a big jump from sewing L.E.D’s to your tie to raise cash for charity but there you go, I definitely believe this will be possible IMO.
Obviously Computers will change dramatically in the next century what with nanotechnology and all. Of course that doesn’t answer the question of whether I should upgrade my computer now or wait half a century for the best deal.
I think some of the most major advances will be in power generation. How we produce it and how we consume it. I was just reading about these new fuel cells that generate standard 12v DC using salt water and magnesium. This may not be new but it was news to me. In any case, it’s pure, clean energy. As seen here
Also robots. 100 years from now folks will be sick of 'em.
I read an article (in Scientific American I believe) stating that researchers now have such a good understanding of the mechanisms behind aging that they believe it is theoretically possible to switch it off or at least slow it greatly.
An average lifespan of well over 100 years could be possible be the end of the current century.
Cmon dude! It’s the guilt that makes it tasty. Some butchers will tell you it’s the marbling of fat but it’s not. FACT - eating lamb-chops whilst looking at a picture of a lamb makes it tastier.
And if you happen to be looking at an video of the actual lamb you are eating then it doesn’t get any tastier than that.
Sound effects help, too. A recording of that very lamb bleating as it sidles up to its ewe for some milk. Nothing finer tasting!
I had a friend who was going to buy a cow and keep it in his yard, and every time he got hungry he was going to go out and slice off a piece of cow for a steak or just to grind up for burger. He figured the cow would heal quickly enough so he could just keep letting it grow back and have another slice later. I told him after a few slices that part would start to get tough from scar tissue, but he persisted in his dream. I think he gave up on the cow because he went broke on some bad land speculation. He bought a huge parcel in an area where they were building a dam. You guessed it. His property is now at the bottom of a lake.
(Not all of this is true. The part about “I had a friend” is true.)
Adult performers will be heavily modified, not by surgery, but by gene therapy. Males will be prodigious in length, girth and duration, and the females will be able to handle them.
Game shows will be life or death. (I know I’m not original in predicting this, but I’m convinced it’s coming. Just look at talk shows and reality TV. They quite resemble public stonings.)
The difference between most educated and least educated will continue to grow.
Shortly after people are essentially always ‘on line,’ it will take money to stop the ads from playing in your ears most of your waking hours.
I predict the invent of commercial nano technology and its common usage. People will have cell phones wired into their mouth and constantly connected to the internet. They could wear some type of contact lenses or glasses for the display. I see a horror story here about brain control and hive mind mentality.
Everything will cost money. Want to walk in the public park, that will be X dollars an hour. Not only that, you will be bombarded by advertisements. The national do not call list will be around, but you will have to pay for it. The payment will cost more than the typical telemarketer’s spiel. No more free TV broadcasts in the states. In addition the commercials will take up much more time.
I also predict that we will be able to custom grow spare parts for people in the lab so you won’t have to worry for the perfect donor when your heart putzes out. Not to mention the need for a new liver because you drink more than the dimestore whino.
In all seriousness, I predict “interactive” television advertising. Specifically, whenever the technology mavens succeed in unifying our electronics — that is, when our TV, computer, telephone, stereo, etc., are all being controlled out of one box, as is inevitable — we will soon thereafter be subjected to, for example, “opt out” commercials, where when the ad comes on, you have to click a box for “I’m not interested,” or else a telemarketer for the product will contact you at the end of it.
Sounds awful, I know, but the only question in my mind is whether we can get to an all-subscription view-on-demand model first. In other words, if you’re paying (say) a dollar per episode of “Friends,” or twenty dollars for a full-season subscription, there won’t be any need for commercials any more, and we can escape the horror of the above. With luck, we’ll avoid it before it happens.
The Steroid Olympics, featuring grotesquely muscled athletes with necks like tree trunks and heads like pumpkins, will outstrip the actual Olympics 3-to-1. It will be owned by WWE.
Everyone will have one gizmo they carry - it’ll be PC, mobile phone, digital radio, personal organizer, camcorder, MP7 (the new format that can condense an album track down to 100K) player. It will be absolutely minute, but you’ll be able to use it with more user-friendly peripherals via wireless. It’ll incorporate a virtual reality headset that connects wirelessly to a chip implanted into the visual cortex of the brain; TV will be broadcast in 3D this way.
And finally, finally my wife’ll get the hovercraft she was promised in all those “life in 50 years’ time” books in the 70s.
My prediction is widespread use of much more durable artificial organs…not just mechanical, but biological, or combinations of the two. Hearts, livers, pancreases, maybe even kidneys and limbs.