by VorJack
I was reading through the old Slacktivist archives and laughing at his deconstruction of Left Behind. LeHaye and Jenkins did a miserable job of, among other things, predicting what their “not to distant future” would look like. They made no real attempt to predict technological change, and their work looked dated as soon as it was published.
But are we any better?
What technological changes are you predicting for the near future? What modern trends will turn out to be important?
I’d keep an eye on personal fabrication. That shaping up as the next tech revolution.
What is this? Do you mean the next level of desktop publication (OK, that’s putting it very simply, which suits me)?
Personal fabrication tends to be known as 3D printing or rapid prototyping and is similar in concept to the idea of replicators in Star Trek. Your printing apparatus uses computerised instructions to print a wide variety of shapes, patterns and components that can then be assembled into a working product. For example, you could produce a set of gears, or a simple flip-flop and there are even attempts to produce a copy of the printer (a self replicating device).
The advantage of personal fabrication is right there in the name, personal. If you need a tool to pick stuff out from behind the fridge, you can print that, if you need a disposable cup, you can print that, if you need a part for your car engine, one day soon you’ll be able to print that too. In fact, anything where you are in need of a bit of specialist equipment you can either design it yourself or search the internet for blueprints and have it on your desk in a few hours.
Anyway, it’s still niche and a little blue skies at the moment, but a very interesting field to keep an eye on.
I really don’t know what to predict- most of what I’d say is already in the works on some level. If you asked me 20 years ago, what would I expect – I never would have guessed the internet would be vital or even cell phones, nevermind for everyone,in 2003 I still felt like it was a weird device- now I can’t live without a smartphone. Then TIVO and GPS. I can’t even begin but I’d guess we’d continue to make our lives easier and Baby Boomers will continue to redefine old age and to push for ways to expand an active life
As hard as it is to be accurate here’s a trend I expect will continue: the use of alternative energies, especially in motor vehicles.
Thanks for the MST3k references. They made my morning.
Genetically engineered crops that will resist the drought that global warming is bringing our way. All sorts of water capture and purification devices. The patented Andrew Zimmern Insect Vac-’N-Toast, which hoovers up locusts at one end and ejects them as crispy morsels at the other. Cockroach saddles.
In mountain areas outside of Madrid, Spain (and, I would imagine, other places), residents use very rudimentary constructions consisting of screens, plastic, and buckets to capture and condense the large quantities of fog and collect it as usable water. It’s such a basic and wonderful idea, I’ve always wondered why we don’t see that more often.
There willl be human limb and nerve regeneration; diseases cured by nanorobots and manufactured viruses; an end to auto-immune diseases; the end of human aging (and facial cosmetic surgery); really nasty culture wars around population control; and in the far, far future – the acceptance of destructive personal greed as an institutionable offense (sorry, Dick Cheney). Bottled water will be sold laced with dopamine and seratonin. Multiple underground internets will appear in response to the takeover and commercialization of The Internet by the Shinehart Wig Company. Mushrooms will save the world. Teardrop-shaped breast implants will replace grapefruit-shaped breast implants.
Obama’s reducation camps will be converted into large cafeteria-style Starbuck’s. Jesus will return but will be shot and killed trying to cross the border into Arizona. McDonald’s will merge with the Assemblies of God – kind of like KFC and Taco Bell. Anachronism will become a major and long lasting fad and will require new legislation to accommodate its adherents in the public sphere.
People will keep mini farm animals in their yard. Mobile butchers will take care of the nasty killing/quartering stuff for you. Foodies will eat living animals as a delicacy.
The word “whom” will only become the formal tense of “who”.
The technology created to hunt for marijuana will be retooled to hunt for people growing their own food. Cell phones will be implanted. Concerns over privacy will be laughed at as anachronistic as hive benefits outweigh its usefulness. Bees will be kept in zoos. Monsanto and Dow will create self-pollinating fruits and vegetables which will be prohibitively expensive. Most people will live on a diet of starch and fat laced with vitamins and micronutrients, which will be all they can afford. Angelina Jolie will have her tattoos removed.
Spying drones will fly over American cities pulling banners advertising beer and auto insurance. Corporations will beam advertisements onto the moon. People will tour remote areas in the hopes of seeing stars drowned out by city lights.
Old people will commit crimes for three squares and a cot, rescuing the prison industrial complex.
Fascinating list. It seems you rambled off all these thoughts, though this would have taken me months to make. Anymore ideas you see important enough to state?
I’ll make one prediction – the 3D TV revolution will fail, and even in the year 3000 we’ll still be watching regular television programming on a standard screen. Fortunately by then we’ll have robot soap operas to enjoy.
All my circuits is sure to be my favorite too.
When I was kid, I always figured I’d have cybernetic implants when I got older to replace failing hips and joints. Now though, I think it’s more likely that we’ll receive gene therapy and have our DNA re-written to reverse the effects of aging.
Sex Bots!
Less importantly: nanotech cures for cancer, non-rejecting replacement organ fabrication, flying cars.
I have no other predictions than the flying cars we were promised when I was a child. I would settle for the compromise of a regular land car that folded up into the size of a briefcase like George Jetson’s. I would still like the flying car, but as I’ve been driving for over 20 years on roads, I don’t have a lot of hope for humans to grasp rules and courtesies if we were to take cars to the air. To invent flying cars is one thing, but to train human brains to figure out how to cooperate in this form of transportation is another thing. Impossible for at least a few thousand years. If we had flying cars any sooner, they would fail or we would all crash into something and die out within a couple decades. Unsafe at any speed!
In a sort of related issue, I would hope for someone to invent a way to get off a bus when you are nowhere near a door. I guess I have seen streetcars that are all open, but where I live, no one wants to move into the bus and they all crowd around the door so they aren’t stuck in the back when they get to their stop. This makes the existence of orderly seating on a bus an ineffective way to transport masses of people. It is for humans, but it is not built or designed for the way humans actually behave, so I think something needs to be done about it. Perhaps more telecommuting for work, and more popular shopping online — be able to simulate the things better that people usually like to go to the stores and see for themselves and take home right away. Also, a way to get the experience of visiting recreational sites without going out and burning gas or having to endure a bus or trolley ride.
Yet related to that, all Jetsons-like, obesity will increase due to my improvements of staying in, so better fat-free foods will have to be invented, because people still want their junk food instead of eating healthy, I think the Jetsons had a lot of gadgets like food pills and exercise machines so they wouldn’t be sedentary obese people from the future. I guess I see the future to decrease pollution (and the aggravation of dealing with all the annoying people who do everything wrong) by cutting down on transportation needs and leaving the comforts of one’s home, which will have to be offset by reinventing food and exercise.
We already have sex bots: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/10/roxxxy-sex-robot-photo-wo_n_417976.html and http://www.realtouch.com.
And if you buy a RT, you’ll be helping me pay my mortgage. =)
Meh most of the above is here in Japan .. :P
Though I think stem cell and cyrogenics and biotech will be the future things. I won’t post names of the biotech companies here (they are publicy traded) . I also think the flying car one company(publicy traded) is making has great potential and will change the way people commute. Oh and i like the one company turning algae into fuel/oil. All those I think will be the future things that reshape the world
There is a company doing the algae to fuel thing? Which one?
President Palin declares the US a christian nation and authorize militia groups, modeled after the Saudi religious police, to initiate a campaign of forced conversion to evangelical christianity. All regulations on the oil industry are removed leading to widespread increase in ocean pollution and greenhouse gases. Droughts caused by climate change lead to crop failures and famine all over the world. The success of the anti-vaxers allow plagues to spread and decimate whole populations. purges against atheistic materialists halt all scientific and technological development and humanity is knocked back to the stone age.
In Computers, I’d say a return to less ambitious but more powerful devices – the iPad revolution is a remarkable thing for revealing a heretofore untapped consumer need. Essentially, instead of having devices that do all things at a mediocre level, you’ll have a device that retains complexity but is used to do a handful of things (or to fill a specific role) at a high level of polish. The iPad, for instance, is a device for media consumption, not a computer. Similarly, your cellphone is becoming a full social and communications medium, not just a ‘thing for making calls’.
How long until Surface becomes viable, and turns your kitchen table (for instance) into a place for working on family unity and communication, or your garage workbench into a plans-and-instructions-on-demand delivery system?
With devices of this stripe, you enter a world where your tools communicate their purpose moment to moment. Where information is literally at your fingertips and brought to you seamlessly in the process of doing whatever task it is you’re intent upon.
Agumented reality indeed.
Nanites
The possibilities are endless.
Nanites? You’d better hope they are NOT programmed by bible believing fundamentalists or we’ll have “Jesus-robots” running around!
So nothing new.
:) You win.
As a web developer, I’d say our future is in the web, especially with the rise of Cloud Computing. We put a lot of our information into internet apps already, think about what it’ll be like in the future.
Extirmination camp technology. If the religious nuts had their way, all those that don’t follow doctrine will be done away with. Islam is bad enough but christianity is much worse. Take the Catholic verdict on the Cathars and it is possible to see what may happen today if the fundamentalists get their hands on the reigns of power. The problem with christianity is that there are too many diverse groups that all don’t agree on anything except the issues that DO unite them: homosexuality, abortion, evolution, liberal thinking….etc. On these issues they can even count on the Muslims and Jews to unite with them. Maybe I’m too pessimistic but history proves that when the religious get to power, nothing good ever happens. An excellent example is: Bloody Mary, who ruled before Elizabeth I came to the throne of England. Should the fundamentalists ever come to power, run for the hills!
Another important development will be building machines to make oxygen for us to breath after the last tree is chopped down to make a meal of Kraft Dinner or make yet another copy of the bible. Or how about mile high apartment towers, for humanity to live in after the population of this planet reaches 50 or 100 billion.
Did we ever imagine 40 years ago that we’d be plagued with environmental problems, a lack of natural resources and religious zealots(Christian and Muslim) terrorizing our somewhat peaceful existence? Back then it was thought we’d have flying cars and cities on the moon!
The way alternative energy is progressing, I predict a return to the horse drawn carriage.
There might also be a big boom in the hurricane oil lamp industry. Id buy stock in buggy whip manufacturers and tool companies that make shovels, hoes and hammers.
Nerve regeneration
Control of metabolism to increase fat burning
Huge solar farms in most deserts
Computer interfaces more intuitive, many people will opt for permanent personal connection to the internet cloud no matter where they roam.
The USA is supplanted by China as the strongest superpower. (oops, already happened.)
Lots more weird weather.
Pretty much everybody misses the mark on predicting technology, primarily because knowledge builds on knowledge. This applies to all kinds of predictions. I look at the global warming predictions and wonder if they will hold up out to the century and a half that was originally predicted. If you went back the same distance you would find that the concerns about the environment would have centered on sewage and horse manure in the burgeoning cities. While there were many efforts made at addressing these, the second was addressed not by street sweepers but by the invention of the automobile, one of the main causes of our current problems. So it may be with global warming that a change we cannot now predict will both eliminate that problem and create others to be solved later by another generation. Even going ten years out is fraught with difficulties as technology is evolving faster each year. I am amazed by what I have seen change over the fifty three years I have been on the planet. I also tend to be more optimistic about what we will achieve while many seem only to see a bleak future. Left Behind is but one example. Overwhelmingly I have seen that most views of the future seem pessimistic. Movies almost always show even in the best of futures some dark menace that will overpower us. I call it the chicken little syndrome. We see one possibility, one trend, and decide that it is the unavoidable future. Over and over again we see it as the enemy of the moment is cited as “the new Hitler” – I personally immediately tune out anyone who uses Hitler comparisons as idiots not worth listening to.
I see us doing great things in the remaining years of my life but any crystal ball that even gets a bit of it right is just lucky, not clairvoyant.
These posts added new directions to my thinking: I was thinking more distant future. As in the title of a chapter in one of Scott Adams’ books, “Life Will Never Be like Star Trek”. I still remember the sinking, depressing feeling when I realized it before Scott came along and said it. People in Star Trek were just too mature and too darn ethical. People’ll never be like that, and an honor system doesn’t work when there isn’t honor.
But technology improvements will accompany “planned” obsolescence. Some thrift stores don’t accept old TVs; people probably don’t bother to steal them. VCR players and tape rentals are out; DVD may soon be like them if Blu-Ray takes over.
I read an anthology of sci-fi nanotech stories; there wasn’t a happy one in the bunch. Possibilities are grisly and chilling. Any tech or medical procedure also goes wrong, or the unethical users of it go wrong, and disease or disaster results. (Same pattern, whether high fructose corn syrup and fast food, offshore drilling, iatrogenic diseases in hospitals, scared people putting up with strip searches in airports, everyone having a gas-powered vehicle, banking over the internet…)
I thought in the 70s that we would see our overpopulation and wake up and correct it, choosing birth control over control by mass death. Now it looks like Thomas Malthus was right: if you keep feeding, they’ll keep breeding.
People keep pushing toward individual rights and freedoms, and the religious right (aren’t those two words together a violation of separation of church and state?) will get more and more hate-filled and extreme in an attempt to control people that are slipping out of their control. Pick any reproductive issue. Pick any issue of rights eroded as security ramps up as terrorists increase and frightened people say, “Oh well, it’s worth it.”
Nuclear Power is where I’d be putting my money. Between Mid-East instability and the growing understanding that fossil fuels are filthy and damaging (exacerbated by the current Oil Spill), and the fact that “alternative” energy sources won’t do what is needed, Nuclear is the only remaining option.
How do you use nuclear energy to power a car? Or perhaps we have electric cars that plug into our homes, which run on nuclear energy?
This is all assuming, of course, that we don’t manage to blow ourselves up.