Predicting the future is so tricky; the error margin increases exponentially the further one projects. It's almost a sure thing that in 2008 we'll see cheaper flat big screen TVs, and it's more likely than not that we'll see a lot of HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray movies finally moving towards mainstream this Christmas season. But, a thousand years from now, it could be anything from global mass extinction to evolution into pure energy beings and the obsolescence of linear time.
I've had some interesting dreams over the years, imagining strange stuff that I would later learn could in fact be plausible. Here's some of them...
I once dreamed I got to ride around in a flying car. It was first referred to as a "helicopter," but it basically consisted of a two-seater vehicle housed on top of a giant fan, with safety covers in place so you could get in and out without worrying about the spinning blades, and computer-controlled center of balance. A few days later, I saw a documentary showing a "flying device" that worked on the same principle. And, a few months later, the movie
Terminator 3 showed some flying machinery employing a similar principle. There are concept models of flying cars that work with this principle, but they're limited to only a minute or two of flight. However, anticipated advances in nanotechnology project lighter weight strong materials and advances in battery tech make this a very plausible premonition.
I dream frequently of buildings with very bizarre, seemingly impossible architecture. One example in particular that I recall is a building that was mostly a very large cylinder sitting upright, but held up on a very narrow stilt. It was an apartment complex with a garage underneath, but very little holding the building up. I've also dreamed of buildings that seemed suspended in mid-air by very thin support structures. Again, learning about developments in nanotechnology have shown these things to be plausible. I about fell over backwards when I saw this Discovery Channel documentary about the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid:
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/3D87D357- ... 98715B7C0/
It's almost straight out of some of those dreams, and it's considered a plausible concept.
I dreamed I was in the 25th century, wandering around a futuristic mall and stopping to look at a "retro" tabletop "radio," designed to look like a (modern) desktop radio. It downloaded out of the air any song ever recorded; whatever you wanted to hear, it could play. I had this dream when Wi-Fi was still 802.11b, but it was hardly an Earth-shaking prophesy, as iTunes and the legal, subscription-based Napster were already in motion. It was basically a matter of pairing Wi-Fi with Napster or iTunes and throwing in a social revolution that resolves the free music but paid artist dilemma of today, and you've got it. This year, the iPhone added Wi-Fi access to iTunes, making a range-limited, price-limited version of my "radio" a reality, though the iPhone is hardly retro. (I suspect that 20 or 30 years from now, though, we may see "retro" appliances designed to look like iPhones.)
A few months ago, I dreamed I jumped ahead 200 years and flew over Dallas and Fort Worth. The two cities and the surrounding Metroplex had grown to take up half of Texas. But, advances in energy efficiency and green technology made for better climate conditions and a very beautiful city landscape, with curved and rounded buildings surrounded by forests and water features. Plausible, but it requires a sustained ecology-minded movement--and not just brief fads in which people drive hybrids and swap out light bulbs one year and then go back to Hummers and incandescents the next. The look and feel of this dream may have been influenced by watching the development of Dubai, a futuristic city landscape going up in the United Arab Emirates, as well as plans for Kuwait's future. (Contrary to popular belief, many in the Middle East are interested in building the world's tallest buildings rather than blowing them up.) Though they may not have the green technology foreseen in the dream, they've got the look of the dream down pretty good. (No paranormal claims on this one; I saw these pictures before having the dream.)
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/c ... dise2.html
http://www.designbuild-network.com/feat ... image1355/
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/278077 ... 6599Rftmzi
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/228984 ... 6599YShDAY
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/280835 ... 6599cLnUXG
I've harped and ranted and posted, and blathered on and on about transhumanism, so I'll save you the details on that topic. Suffice it to say, I see life today as a race between our aging and the development of technology that can transcribe consciousness. I'm really hoping the neccessary breakthroughs happen in my lifetime, as I'd hate to die of old age only a few years before the technology exists to live forever. If I could survive and outlive this human lifetime, there's some pretty ambitious ideas I have of what I'd like to do in the coming millennia. I am very encouraged when I see people like the guy who first hacked and unlocked the iPhone, talking about becoming a neurology scientist, planning on doing the same thing with the human brain. I am equally depressed when I hold conversations with everyday people about this kind of technology and their response is either how God wouldn't approve or how the whole idea is just too far-fetched. Some people question the ethics of doing away with death and suffering; I question the ethics of allowing it to exist any longer than can possibly be avoided.
As said before, I fear that werewolves aren't exactly a top priority of biomedical research, and the "moral" hurtles of genetic engineering will likely stall out a lot of important steps between today and the first real-world physical shifters. But, I do hope that advances in artificial intelligence as well as advances in our own intelligence will make it possible some day. Along the way, we'd develop a cure for about everything--except, oddly enough, lycanthropy.
In the more immediate future, here's some things to which to look forward:
1. Cleaner cars: Necessity has forced the issue of fuel economy and emissions. Clean diesel and hybrid-electric cars are already on the market today, and they're becoming increasingly mainstream. From the $100,000 dream cars like the Lexus LX600h-L (a hybrid luxury sedan) or the Tesla Roadster (an all-electric sports car that rivals Ferraris but mathematically is twice as clean in terms of CO2 emissions as a Prius) to ultimate economy cars like the Smart fortwo, driving greener is gaining ground. Hybrids are showing us that one can actually boost power and performance while improving efficiency at the same time. All-electric is not yet feasible for the mainstream, but it's moving forward amazingly quickly. In the next ten years, expect to see diesel hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and even some all-electric niche cars. Expect to see all the cool gadgetry that goes with it--silent movement at low speeds, touch screen displays that can either show the hybrid power plant at work or give elegant interfaces for other controls such as air conditioning.
2. More car tech in general: Luxury cars of today are mainstream cars of tomorrow, and what's in a Lexus today is a good predictor of what a regular Toyota will offer five or ten years down the road. Hard drives with GPS navigation and extra storage for mp3s, bluetooth hands-free mobile phone connectivity, and push-button start (with a wireless key that stays in your pocket or purse) are showing up already. Some luxury cars and even the Nissan Altima can download traffic information to the GPS navigation system and advise you of traffic jams and ways around them. Over the next ten years, expect to see broadband wireless connectivity, probably at first using the same standards as mobile phones but later some of the newer standards that don't exist yet. This will allow cars to function as wireless communications nodes to advise you of traffic conditions, continuously update your GPS navigation map databases, provide streaming Internet radio, VOIP telephone, and so forth. Expect your car to help you drive or advise you when you're not up to the task; "lane departure warnings" and parking assist technology already exists, and backup cameras are already showing up on mainstream vehicles like the Toyota Highlander. As GPS tech and networking improves, we may in 20 years or so see sections of road in which cars are allowed to drive themselves. In 50 years time, it may be safer to let the cars do the driving for us, with auto accidents becoming as rare and news-breaking as plane crashes are today.
3. The Internet isn't going away: Mobile phones, iPods, digital cameras, PDAs, and camcorders as stand alone devices may be a thing of the present. As one iPhone commercial likes pointing out, there is a growing convergence, and all-in-one tech is likely to put a hand-held computer that does all of the above in all our pockets in ten years' time. Telephone service is in the long run an endangered species, as there's a lot of disruptive technologies just waiting to render it obsolete. So far, no one has yet offered free VOIP; they've offered free Skype-to-Skype or This Instant Messenger-to-This Instant Messenger, plus cheap calls to the outside world. But, all it will take is someone to develop an open standard VOIP or VOIP equivalent. Then, include it with hand-held devices with broadband wireless, and cell phones are obsolete. Land lines are already endangered. Google is already threatening to be at work on something along these lines. I suspect that by 2015 or 2020, most of us won't have a phone service so much as a log-in account to a "phone" account, accessible through web browsers on both mobile and notebook computers. (Or even desktops, game consoles, or whatever replaces them.) Expect the phrase "web 3.0" or something like it to describe transitions to tech services like this, which will make the "web 2.0" of today look like little more than a buzz word to describe MySpace and YouTube. Web 3.0 will also include the above-mentioned cars that network, as well as other gadgets that we'll wonder how we got along without.
4. Don't expect high tech to replace old fashioned methods that are simple, easy, and efficient, or that bring emotional comfort: I think eBook readers will bomb. My convertible tablet PC can do the same thing, and tablet PCs are gaining ground. It's likely that a lot of laptops will swivel around and fold down into handy little digital pads by 2015. Electronic word processors didn't replace typewriters, because by the time they were readily available, the desktop computer was already replacing typewriters. But, there's another reason why eBook readers are doomed. People like reading actual books. Sure, if you're looking up a word in the dictionary, you can't beat typing in a Google search applet sitting on your desktop rather than the old "
lycanthrope: see
werewolf;
werewolf: see
lycanthrope." But, if you're reading to enjoy a story, it's quite possible that you'd rather have an actual book in your hands. Reference books, textbooks, and phone directories may be rendered obsolete by 2020, saving a lot of trees, but don't expect the demise of paperbacks, deluxe hard-back first editions, or the paper edition of the
New York Times any time soon. Likewise, if a technology is overly complicated, don't expect it to catch on. I've read about ideas for Internet-connected refrigerators that keep an inventory of their contents; you scan the UPC code of the food product as it goes in, and it lets you know when you're running low. Would you use this? Is there anyone you know who would? Don't expect it to be around in 2020.
5. Tech that does things more efficiently in a way that's unobtrusive will be almost inevitable: As I type this, my desk lamp has an LED light bulb. I actually removed a compact fluorescent to put the LED light in. That compact fluorescent in turn will soon replace an incandescent somewhere else. Right now, LED bulbs run about $35 and are only available online. But, I'm getting about the equivalent of 40 Watts of light using a 1.5 Watt bulb, and the bulb itself will likely be around in 2020 or even 2050. Expect LEDs to go down in price and to start showing up in places where people can find them. In the short term, 10-15 years, expect compact fluorescents to become the mainstream, and expect the familiar incandescent bulb to be to your kids what the typewriter is to you. "I remember..." For old nostalgia's sake, expect a "retro" bulb that looks like an incandescent but contains a tiny but really bright clump of fluorescent coils or LED pimply things to appeal to us old codgers, or for the luxury market in order to create a certain quaint look.
