Prediction
of Technology
If we look at the
technological advances of the past 90 years, we can anticipate that those of
the next 90 will be equally spellbinding. As a result of a new understandings of how
our bodies work, the better nutrition and a complete mapping of the human genome,
those that are born near the 22nd century can expect lifetimes of perhaps
several hundred years. Preventive medicine will begin in the womb with gene
therapy. We can expect organ replacement and repairing of fractured DNA to be
commonplace. With our aging population we can expect greater challenges in
improving the quality of life, while working on ways to save our planet from
natural resource exploitation that may ultimately limits its ability to produce
food.
Our greatest
technological advances will be in the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic scale. We
will truly become latter-day alchemists ... combining the elements to build
custom molecules, that will give us new materials and medicines. We will have miniature bulldozers,
excavators, sewage filters and power plants. These machines will be able to reproduce
themselves and infiltrate those areas of our environment and bodies where they
can build and maintain the miniature vasculature of our world.
Computing will also
advance to the nanoscale, with storage of information within electron orbitals
and spin. Binary will be replaced by tristate and multistate machines that will have the
capacity to process and store terabytes of information in microseconds. Sensors
and computers will be implanted within our bodies and embedded within the very fabric of
what we wear, in the walls of our home and in our places of business. We will have personal information spaces that provide access to vast storehouses of knowledge that
we can access and mine instantaneously, using intelligent agents that will
filter and reconstruct three dimensional representations of information. Other
software and hardware robots will assist us in our work, play and home
maintenance. Money will not be needed ... just our physical characteristics act
as a "fingerprint" to signal our identity with electronic processing
of transactions that automatically adjusts our instantaneous net worth. Since
we will be able to track the identity of
everybody with sensors within our environment, the nature of crime will change ... indeed, prisons as we know them will become obsolete as
we will use new therapies to rehabilitate.
Our transportation
systems will become more efficient, and less polluting. But there will be less need to move
our bodies to go places, for we will have transportation systems for our senses
that use virtual reality to create synthesized 3D spaces, much like the
holodeck of Star Trek, where we visit with our friends and family
and conduct our business and education.
Everything will be wireless. Central
power generation will not be needed as we will have self-contained generators
in our homes that use fusion as a means of powering our appliances. Perhaps
many of our appliances may be powered by the metabolism of our own bodies.
Our power will be in our knowledge and the ability to integrate and exploit the new affordances provided to us
by our technology. The human adventure will
continue as we explore our remaining frontiers
of the ocean, space and the domains and very limits of human thought. In 90
years we will understand more about consciousness and the way the mind works.
But will we be happy?--Human
Interface Technology Lab Director Thomas
Furness.
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