Predictions of the future! (1 Viewer)

[Rob_J]

Check out this white paper that predicts how technology will evolve in the future (and not so future).
http://www.btexact.com/white_papers/downloads/WP106.pdf
My favorites so far are: confessions to AI priest, nanobot toothpaste, and robots physically and mentally superior to humans... by 2030! They should have included references to T2 if you ask me

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Excellent site. It seems like life will to get more complex out for the 25-50 years that this report covers. My hope would be that life would get simpler through technology. Certainly the drain on resources will begin to affect the quality of life unless...

I predict:

In the year 2150 US population can be expected to go grow to around 2.25 to 2.5 or even 3 Billion. The US populatin in 1850 was about 31 million so extending this unscientific trend would push the present population of about 283 million to to my figures.

Energy use will fall at an exponetionally increasing rate, exponetionally. Energy usage should drop to about a tenth of present usage. Extrapolating the growth in population would mean that the 2.5 billion populatin would be using the same amount of engegy as we use today. That is the exponential decrease, but my comment was the the decreast would decrease exponentially, so that the usage would be about 10% of what is used TODAY.

Actual energy usage lower than today is hard to grasp, but to add even further to the reduction is that solar, wind, and maybe hydro will supply 90% of this energy.

Cars and trucks will become obsolete even without government edict. Why? Look in the above link provided by Rob and see the references to Holodecks. We leave home to go to work, shop, and for recreation. Holodecks will give face to face access to customers, clients, friends, etc. The real luxuries in 2150 will be face to face contacts with other real humans. We won't leave home to shop as everything can be delivered to us via pneumatic tubes.

Energy costs and the size of of our homes will be drastically reduced. If we pay $100 per month for level pay electric now (adjust up or down for your own situation) we will be paying the equivalent of $1 per month.

Why? Homes will be heated and cooled passivly with no heating or cooling systems.

Kitchens are eliminated as pnuematic tubes deliver prepared meals to the home on whatever schedule the individual or family desires. The servings are always appropriate as we will be constantly monitored via computer chips or the equivalent so that if we have just had a work out or are sedentary the meal serving will automatically adjust. Food costs will also drop to perhaps a tenth of what they cost today and each meal can be of the highest gourmet quality that we can imagine today.

If you eliminate a kitchen you eliminate the cost of the appliances, cupboards, electric, plumbing, dishes, cleaners, etc. The size of the home has just decreased about 100-150 feet but the cost reduction has exceeded the reductin in physical size.

Furniture? With a holodeck system, why maintain actual physical objects, nick-nacks?

Bedrooms and Closets? We will all wear a simple garmet that will emit a signal to the holodeck generating devices that will paint whatever image on our suit that we deem appropriate. The garmet may even be worn for days or weeks at a time and can process our emmisions of water vapor, oils and skin cells.

Bathrooms. Showers? Gone, see above, Toilets - self contained in the residence with the prospect that the foods we eat will have an effect on our bodily functions to reduce the frequency for elimination of waste products.

What about the professions? Doctors are quaint artifacts as all medical knowledge is contained on computer chips. All foods are delivered to us from a central source with additives that will eliminate many of the diseases that kill us now. Heart disease, cancer, and many other are eliminated and humans start to extend life to the 125-150 year span. Hence the rise in the population, the growth of which I think will be even greater than I predicted above.

Work? We have just reduced the cost outlay of a typical family by 90-95%. Physical labor may become the highest paying job as the labor supply curve will become back bending meaning that we can work for a few hours a week or month and obtain all of the necessities that now consumes most of our labor. So what do we work for? Luxuries?

This is too fun. I'll have to come back later.

 

[SteveGon]

To heck with all of the above! I just wanna know if and when Emmanuelle Beart is gonna call me!

 

[Rob_J]

Ashley, how can you say energy usage will drop so dramatically if everyone is using holodecks and vacuum tubes? Let alone no vehicles powered by fossil fuels?
Wind and solar energy are both very clean, but they are not able to supply baseline energy to the grid. Unless you're talking about everyone having their own windmill on top of their house, then I could see energy usage dropping.
As for interacting over holodecks, well, I don't know about you, but when it comes to a girlfriend or a wife, I think I'd rather have the real thing. But of course, to each his own
(But now that I think about it, a holo-mate could be nice--just turn them off when you're annoyed with them )

 

[AaronNWilson]

I would seriously doubt that back breaking physical labour would be in any sort of demand in an era when a holodeck exists. I would think that bionic arms and legs increasing our strength 50x would make back breaking physical labour absolutely nonsensical.

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Rob_L

Like most everything 150 years from, holodecks are virtual. There is no room to go into like on the Enterprise. First a set of glasses will paint a high definition image directly on your retina and by by 2150, a chip will be implated in your body to generate the image direct to your optic nerves and the brain.

What vacuum tubes? For that matter, what projection TV or Plasma or flat screen TV. All long gone as images are directed to the eye or brain as described above.

How much energy would it take to heat and cool a 400 sq ft home, especially if constructed from materials that conserve and radiate heat and that may be joined together in a manner to reduce heat loss and gain. I have known people from Hawaii who say they don't have heating or cooling systems in their homes. Maybe an exageration, but the energy required to heat, and cool your home, to heat hot water, to cook meals and to wash and dry clothes consumes most of our energy in the home.

A windmill and/or solar panels on your roof may generate enough energy to power a 100 homes. Not because of huge increased in efficiency (though there will be these gains) but because of the drastic reduction in energy useage. We aren't going to get to 50 Billion people in the world consuming 10 times our present energy useage, or even our current rate of usage, but by using 10% of our present consumption. And our standard of living will be many times higher than it is today.

With a reduced need to travel cars are no longer used, and even public transportation is greatly reduced. People have lived in large metropolitan areas for thousands of years without the need for cars or even horse travel.

We treasure our space and because of the automobile, have spread out over an area many times larger than our urban ancestors lived. Buckminster Fuller designed a tetrahedron 200 story apartment building that he said would give people as much or more space than the average person now alive has available. He also said he could house the entire population of the world on the island of Manhattan.

Interacting. I am not saying my visions are desirable to me, but what will be technologically possible. Your point is very well taken because one of the luxuries in the future will be face to face contact with real people. Virtual people, virtual experiences, virtual sex will be seductive and as addictive as crack cocaine is to us today. Unless psychological science and possibly religion act as a mitigating influence. The conflict between real and virtual interaction may become THE moral issue in 2150.

We may have people decide to forgo procreation because of genetic scans have determined a higher incidence for illness. Or we may chose our mate and repoductive partner out of a higher understanding of our joint genetic makeup. Some people may just say, the heckwith the real thing. Like Paul Simon sang in Kodacrome, "nothing can beat my sweet imagination." I don't think the adult film industry will every want for eager consumers.

 

[JasenP]

I don't care about any future technology except:

1) Flying Cars

2) Laser Pistols

3) Jet Packs

All of these were promised to us in the 1950's and dammit, I am getting impatient.

Instead of flying cars, laser pistols, and jet packs we have Tang, Velcro, and plastics.

Is anyone else upset?

 

[Julie K]

I'm with you there Jasen. I want a flying car, laser pistol, and jet pack as well. Forget holodecks and a virtual world - flying cars, laser pistols, and jet packs are where it's at. We were supposed to have all that by 2000 and I'm damn upset.

 

[Bill Catherall]

Well, I could go on and argue with many of Ashley's predictions. Some of it seems very illogical to me, but hey, it's speculation, and fun speculation at that...so why bother.
I predict in the very near future (5, 10 years?) that the US mints will no longer produce pennies and all prices will be rounded off to the nearest nickel. So save those pennies people. They'll be obsolete soon!

 

[Rob_J]

I heard recently that the Canadian mint was thinking of getting rid of our $1 coin (the Loony). It doesn't bother me too much though, as I rarely pay for anything with actual money anymore. It's all direct payment (debit) or visa. I guess that would make another good prediction of future technology: no cash or credit cards, just a single means of identifying a person and charging to your account. Now that would be very handy! Never have to worry about losing your wallet again
Ashley, you must have a vivid imagination! I think it is great to think outside of the box. If we didn't, I doubt we would get very far. However, there are some things that I just don't think society will accept. Because of this, I think lifestyles will change very little in the next 100 years, with the exception of transportation, which I'm sure will evolve. It definitely will be interesting though, and I hope they figure out a way of keeping me around long enough to witness some of it

 

[Ashley Seymour]

there are some things that I just don't think society will accept. Because of this, I think lifestyles will change very little in the next 100 years, with the exception of transportation, which I'm sure will evolve.

I like to throw out a lot of ideas to generate discussion, but unfortunately there does not appear to be a lot of other people who want to think outside the box. Pick one of the many controversial, dubious or whatever you consider weird I have predicted and give a good argument to support or refute it. None of us can know the future, but what I try to do is to think of what is likely given changes in technology.

Rob doesn't think society will change much in 100 years. My predictions are running out 150 years so I'll take a look back 150 to see if society has changed much since then. Keep in mind that technological change over the net 150 years will be on an order of 1000 to 10,000 times as great as over the last 150 years.

Society the world over was still striated and stagnate based on the class system. The rich and the many poor, but with a growing middle class. Today the middle class in the industrial world has taken over and generated incredible wealth compared with past societies.

Consider our housing and transportation. We think of our house and car as a nessessity. In reality, they are status symbols, sexual totems. Some friends recently added a detached double car garage to their home at a cost of $8,000. This sturcture is on the level of sophistication as an average home in 1850, but the median priced home today is around $150,000. When you analyze what goes into a modern home, what accounts for the difference is all inventions made since 1850 and which would be considered luxury items in that age. Even the location of our homes is dictated by our use of automobiles, the ultimate status symbol.

The future in 2150 may be more different today than from 1850 till now. Judging what future status symbols will be is the real challenge of futurists. Will house size grow evern bigger due to decreasing costs? Will they grow smaller out of a changing role due to revolutionary new technologies? If they grow smaller, what will take their place as a status sysbol?

A recent History Channel show on the Egyptians told that families of 3-4000 years ago could and did grow large because the cost of raising children was very low. If costs go down, will we see an increase in family size as a result of our instinctive drive to reproduce and spread our genes? If society grows by about 1.5% per year till 2150 we will have a population in the range of 2.25-3. Billion people in this country. What if average family size grew to 6-8 at that time. Our population might explode up to 5-10 Billion? I don't have enough imagination to know if this scenaro is possible or likely. Even with exponential reductions in energy costs, housing and transportation need, this is still a hell of a lot of people.

What things will be luxuries in the future? What technological advances will translate into human plumage?

Feel free to tackle some of these questions.

 

[Bill Catherall]

Well Ashley...since you want a discussion of your ideas, here's exactly what I find illogical: (I like your ideas...I like "out of the box" thinking, but I can't wrap my brain around some of these.)

Quote:

These two statement contradict each other. In the first, the holo-images are physical enough to act as furniture. In the second, they are only images electronically entered into your brain.
I like your ideas on energy usage. Hmmm...more "users" but less usage. Pretty cool!
But the one underlying problem that I just can't handle is that everything you mention will not be what everybody experiences. This all sounds like an upperclass luxury. Somebody has to produce all this. Somebody needs to build the houses, somebody needs to build the power plants, somebody has to keep everything running smoothly. One thing we have found through advances in technology is that technology needs people just as much as people need technology. Will you have to be a holo-certified systems engineer to keep the holograms from crashing?
Years ago people thought computers would make paperless offices, when in actuallity it's increased the paper usage. Just look at my desk in our "paperless" office! Microwave ovens were suppose to give us more free time...so why is everybody so busy?

 

[Chris Gio]

This stuff is strongly intriguing...and creepy as hell, too. I hate seeing the future mapped out in front of me, but a lot of it just kept me wanting to read more into the future.
And my biggest laugh was the "Orgasm by Email"...HA! All I have to say is if that technology ever rolls along, I hope it does a much better job than humans.

 

[Julie K]

The future isn't what it used to be.

I never really pay attention to any predictions of the future. Past predictions rarely yield any real value (witness the sad lack of flying cars, laser pistols, and jet packs).

No one, 100 years ago, was able to guess at such a thing called a computer and how it is invaded not only our offices but our homes. And had anyone gotten a glimmer, I doubt they would have been honest enough about human nature to say that this fantastical communications and computation device would be used mostly for playing games, chatting about unforseen ways of watching movies (in color!) at home (!), and looking at porn.

Future predictions and extrapolations are more about the present than the future. They reflect the present desires, goals, and anxieties. The actual future is not predictable and what life will be like in 100 years will likely be influenced by innovations we can't conceive of. (And innovations we know of, and happily extrapolate, may turn to nothing). But I will say it's likley, that whatever marvels may come in 100 years will, by the same all too human creatures that live in that time, be put to uses mostly involving playing games, watching movies, and, alas, looking at porn.

 

[Josh_Hill]

I can predict the future. See: I will see AOTC 25 times. Ohhhh.....

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Bill, excellent questions. Just the kind I was hoping to generate.

The risk with any forecast is that one development leads to another that leads to another; way beyond our ability to to factor, with or without computer support.

You have a hard time getting your mind around a population of up to 3 billion people. I don't know if you mean that you are worried about the effect on the environment, or that the US will look like China three times over. With present energy usage or even increased usage the image is indeed chilling. We would be talking about fusion plants, satelites focusing solar energy onto earth based collectors, etc. In that scenario I think Greenland would start to live up to it's name.

May may and probably will have more face to face contact. And this contact will be a luxury. Those "pnuematic" tubes will offer us an amazing amound of flexibility. A central processor will always know where you are and in many cases will be. If your meals can be delivered to your home, at a specific time, in the proper mix and condition, why can it not be delivered to you at a central meeting place where you and several other friends or couples meet for fun. This place would not be a restaurant as we know it, but it would have a place where everyone at your table, say three couples, have their individual meals delivered and you all dine together and enjoy conversation, or maybe you are viewing a sporting event, (real or virtual) or watching the latest satelite feed from a moon of Jupiter. Why we get together may be beyond our imagination. But it will still be for the same basic reasons we engage in group social behavior. It is as humans what we do.

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Furniture? With a holodeck system, why maintain actual physical objects, nick-nacks?...

Like most everything 150 years from, holodecks are virtual.

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These two statement contradict each other. In the first, the holo-images are physical enough to act as furniture. In the second, they are only images electronically entered into your brain.

I don't see the contradiction. In your house you may only need your pneumatic tube table, chairs, a bed and a toilet. Presently, a chair is both a place to recline and an object of art. I may choose to have an image projected to my brain that that chair looks like king Arthur's thone, or a bean bag chair. The physical chair would look pretty bland, but my perception of it would be quite imaginitive.

Your walls would be blank. Yet as you look at it, you may see an image of a great art master, or a landscape vista, or a video presentation of your choosing. No actual art work, family photo, TV set, radio, entertainment center, end table, etc. That wall may be six feet from your chair, but it could give the illusion of endless depth.

Living in a cell? Scary, in our context, but your observation follows exactly from what I have laid out.

Upperclass luxury. Bill, compared to 150 years ago, we in the middle and lower economic classes live a life of luxury above even the richest people at that time. Maybe in the future, all we do is generage images-experiences for each other. Labor will displaced in ways we do have a hard time imagining now. If a home costs $150,000 today, it consumes about 2-3 man years to produce. If a future home, stiped of most of the "things" in it now can be made for say $25,000, then we have greatly displaced a large part of our work force. Now image that with other "advancements" that home may be produced for the equilavent of $5,000 in today's dollars. Labor becomes almost insignificant and the people who toil today on construction are employed elsewhere. No cars means no roads. Think of the amount of labor and money invested in these two areas. Where will these workers be employed? Working in other fields, or each of us laboring a great deal less.

Microwave ovens were suppose to give us more free time...so why is everybody so busy?

Because you didn't have to go out and plow 40 acres of corn, and didn't have to bring in some lettuce from the garden, a few tomatoes and cucumbers, milked the cow and churned some butter, baked a loaf of bread, and slaughter that pig for your chops tonight; you probably popped something in the microwave for a couple of minutes, saving you enough time to sit down and compose and share your thoughts for me and several dozen others who have read this post.

 

[RobertR]

Ashley, I think your projections about US population growth are based on a wrong assumption. You extrapolate future growth rate based on past growth rate. Who says the two have to be related? The growth rate in wealthy industrialized nations is QUITE low. The bulk of world population growth is in the dirt poor third world, not countries such as the US. The fact is that wealthy people on average do NOT have a lot of children (they don't say "oh boy, I'm gonna have half a dozen kids 'cuz I'm rich"). I don't think the US population is going to be anywhere near what you suggest. Of course, as Julie pointed out, no one really knows. For example, everyone assumed that the Cold War would go on and on.

 

[Jack Briggs]

There was an excellent book that was published in 1975, but I don't know if it's still in print: The Next 50,000 Years, by Adrian Berry. It was a liberating revelation to this ever-hopeful futurist. Essentially, Mr. Berry challenged the gloom-and-doom report issued in 1974 by the Club of Rome, which focused on the "limits" of human growth and expansion. Berry lit into the report's basic flaw: It didn't even touch upon the concept of humanity migrating offworld.

As long as we treat this planet as the precious resource and sustainer-of-life that it is and as long as the human race doesn't anihilate itself via its mass-destructive capabilities, the future looks soooo bright. My only regret: I won't get to see that future.

When I was a teenager, going ga-ga over the Apollo missions, I felt it was my birthright to see humans set foot on Mars. Now it's a hope that grows dimmer with each day.

We'll get there, though. We have to.

 

[Greg_Y]

I won't get to see that future.

Says who?
Advances in fields such as nanotechnology and cryogenics could mean that, some day, the concept of death is considered an absurdity.

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Robert re: Population growth rates. You are right, we probably cant accurately predict growth rates, but my use of a figure was to put our life in context and input a shock value. You tell anyone today that the population will be 2.5 Billion and they start to hyper-ventilate. Maybe today the population of China and India together is 2.5 billion, but they survive and most people enjoy life. Our perception is that our 2.5 Billion people in our country would consume vastly greater amounts of energy that we do now and that may not even be available. My point is that if we grow to that size or the 10 Billion I also mentioned, so do not have to cause a drag on the earth's resources.

A tragedy would be the loss of wild places like the Serengi in Africa, the rain forests of Africa and South America. Hey even the polar ice caps! I can envision the US with these levels of population and with hugh areas given back to wilderness. The Dakotas turned back to open grazing for the Bison herds. Wetland areas returned to their natural state. I don't see us so much spreading out as contracting to conserve resources.

Julia,

alas, looking at porn.

My, how quaint. We won't be doing much looking. That holodeck will be one rocking place! We will engage in virtual sex and as I mentioned above, this could be the future's version of crack cocaine.

Jack,

Gerard Keiper (sp) wrote an article for Penthouse in the mid 70's (I used to read them for the articles!) about mining the moon for materials to build space stations large enough to house a million people. I still think if you can get people to live that close together in space, that it would be as easy to do so on earth. If we look to space to solve our population problems, then we are out there 500 to 1000 years.