Now that we have vat-grown meat, a la Neuromancer, what’s the most bizarre fringe technology that seems just barely possible within your lifetime? Bringing back the mammoths seems almost old hat at this point, all “haven’t they done that yet?” But I’m thinking more like:
True reanimation of the dead within some time frame. Not the current, “oh, we replaced this dog’s blood with ice cold saline and then pumped blood back into him” nonsense you can see at any party nowadays, but really most sincerely dead bodies, rendered so through accident or violence, being subject to recreation and reactivation of cells, provided there’s enough left to work with.
Past time viewing, through some quantum means. What with Google Earth Street View, it just seems like Google Past is a logical step. Somehow.
Some kind of teleportation, or something that’s called teleportation even if they haven’t got the Heisenberg compensators quite worked out yet.
360 degree movies projected right onto the eyeball, coupled with surround sound earphones.
edited to add: The first person to have a total artificial blood transfusion.
Damn, I hate making predictions like this. What I consider “plausible” I don’t think of as being “bizarre,” and vice versa.
Plus, some of the real “big changes” might be more sociological, not technological. In which case my formula for futurist prediction goes something like “what is something that would knee-jerk horrify me, a young fairly ‘with-it’ freethinker, but you could conceivably still have within an otherwise mundane, functioning society.”
For the former, I’ll guess…human memory reading technology. 'Should make debates about torture and self-incrimination a whole lot more interesting.
For the latter…in a few generations of video game development, “Massively Multiplayer Online Rape Simulators.” You switch between “-ist” and “-ee.”
Enhancing implants. Not medically required to reverse a defect but just for the purpose of enhancing typical facilities.
An implant to give you greatly enhanced vision or hearing. An implant to give constant communication (think cell phone in your head). An implant to filter alcohol from the blood stream before it reaches the liver. An implant to regulate cholesterol to prevent heart disease…
I’ll say, a real understanding of memory and learning, that leads to the ability to manipulate memory.
And that means the end of the human race, ala Dollhouse. It won’t be 1984, because the drones will be programmed to like being drones. And the drones will hunt down free human beings, strap them into the chair, and now you’ve got more drones. And eventually the guys controlling the drones will slip up and they’ll end up in the chair too.
I’d put money on pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides that target specific species. With growing globalization comes the growing impacts of invasive species. Dutch Elm Disease and the Emerald Ash Borer were devastating enough, but when … oh, the Chongqing Maple Beetle or Guangdong Wheat Aphid roll around, scientists will be forced to up their game.
Also in the next 30-40 years, in order from most to least likely:
GMO vegetation (trees, grasses,etc) used to reduce and reverse desertification.
GMO out-of-place vegetation (e.g. palms and crepe myrtles that can thrive in zones 4 and 5).
There will definitely be true virtual reality porn in our lifetime. You think that celebrity is hot? You just download their add-on file into the PornMaster 5000 and have at it. Or you can upload the face of that cute receptionist you saw from a picture onto one of several generic body/skin tone models and make your own.
I also think you’ll see safe transmittable power so that batteries can be recharged from a distance like a wifi connection, which will hopefully also be the solution to electric cars that only have a limited distance today. Thus, when you are on a major highway, you are charging, and you are only 'off grid; and using power when you are on smaller side streets. And I mentioned that they would be safe, right? As in, we don’t all get electrocuted and/or get new kinds of cancer from this technology.
Grow your own organs will also be a thing. Got diabetes and your pancreas is a piece of crap? Here are some stem cells. Come back in six months and we’ll have a new one for you. Oh, and don’t worry, we used gene therapy to get rid of the cancer that was going to grow on it 10 years from now.
I’m thirty years old - I think there are decent odds of seeing a fusion power plant that generates more power than it consumes (and in useful quantities) within my lifetime. I’m not necessarily convinced that it’ll be more than a prototype, probably not plugged into the grid, and it may well remain too expensive to be practical - but we’ll have the biggest engineering problems more-or-less licked.
I think it’s just plausible we’ll see ‘real’ artificial intelligence in my lifetime. Not likely.
More likely, I think, is molecular printing; the ability to manipulate atoms into molecules and build things with them.
Full blown automated roadways. To the point where driving your own car will be restricted to private roads and race tracks. Cars will be light and cheap because you won’t need fancy schmancy collision protection, nor the ability to do 0-60 in 3 seconds.
Personal Digital Assistants. No, not a Palm, an actual assistant. Virtual, of course, but monitoring your every move, like an annoying sycophant. Your PDA knows where you’ve been, what you like, what you have planned, they can tap into vast sources of information to instantly retrieve what you need, they can plan ahead for you, and do just about anything non-physical to get you what you need exactly when you need it.
You’re at the store, they know you’re all out of mayo, because they scanned it the last time you opened the fridge, even though you didn’t even look at it. They also know that the store has a sale on roast beef, and you LOVE roast beef. Lucky, since you weren’t planning to go all the way back to the deli.
I read Engines of Creation back in the eighties and I’m still waiting for the nanotech revolution. I think we got sidetracked by personal computers and the internet.
I’m not just waiting for this one, I’m somewhat actively involved (through investments, mostly): injected, internal nanotech that can repair and/or replace things in our bodies, right down to the DNA, thus extending lifespan tremendously.
The one that I want almost as much as that tho is the ability to stop growing hair. A pill, a treatment, a surgical procedure, whatever, as long as it means I lose my hair and don’t grow any more. Hair is stupid.
