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Science

Peering Into the Future 48

Posted by Hemos from the anticipating-the-changes dept.
fRy hooked us up with a cool story on MSNBC (originally on Feed) about what we can anticipate coming in the future. Covering everything from nanotechnology [?] to toys, genetics to espionage, it's a fun read with loads of interviews with smart people.
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Peering Into the Future More

Peering Into the Future

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  • Why do you want to terraform Mars? "Because it's there"?
    We are not dealing very well with the Earth. Leave Mars for future generations.
    This pioneer spirit is dangerous.
    --
  • Now imagine full color LCD pixel displays under every square inch of your skin.

    I imagine that designing patterns for this will become a hobby as extended as designing "skins" for some program is now.

    That's why Bill Gates is getting the rights for so many images. Uhm.
    --
  • Recently, I was reading David Packard's book, "the H-P Way", and there is something here I find quite apropos. You see, Bill Hewlett sometimes had the delicate task of deciding which inventions were worthy of funding. He devised a process known as the "Three Hats".

    First, there was the enthusiastic hat. He would meet with the inventor, express general interest and encouragement, enthusiasm when merited, and shared in the inventor's general euphoria in a completed creation. He'd ask questions, but mostly of a general, non-probing, nature, to feel out what the new widget would do.

    Then, came the inquisition hat. He'd wait a few days, come back, and ask as many questions he could: upsides, downsides, potential problems, potential benefits, and so forth and so on. He would appear as dispassionate as possible: it might be something, it might be nothing, let me find out.

    Last, came the decision hat. He'd wait a bit more, make a decision, and confront the inventor with his choice as gently as possible.

    "Even when the decision went against the inventor" marveled Packard, "it never disappointed anyone."

    I believe that this is because the process mimicked the way that innovations are received in the real world: there is a period of enthusiasm ("Ever cook a turkey dinner in five minutes? You will!" Wow!), a period of inquisition ("I can't use foil, cake comes out rubbery, and nothing browns..."), and one of decision ("I love my microwave, but I wouldn't want my gas turned off, either..."). The truth is that all three hats are as necessary as they are inevitable. Some innovations stay and become universal (electrical service, automobiles, radio), some, after a period of enthusiasm, become a part of the American scene, but remain limited to specialized niches (helicopters, geodesic and other prefab buildings, paper clothing) and some simply slip out of sight and mind (eight-track tapes, record players with synchronized slide shows, amphicars). If it weren't for the "Gee whiz!" phase, home computers wouldn't have caught on at all: there are still people out there who can't understand why they need a word processor/web browser/game machine when there are typewriters, TV's, and decks of cards out there. If it weren't for the decision phase, audio formats would be in even more of a mess than they are now: we would have to deal with everything from wax cylinders to DAT tapes at the same time. And if it weren't for the probing phase, we wouldn't know the capabilities of all of them (there are advantages to pinhole cameras, Pixel videos, and analog computers, but only in very small niches.) However, because we're in an age where we have both blind faith and cynicism, but not rational doubt, this tends to get overlooked.

    I don't regret having bought Mondo 2000, or even having kept them, even if some of their predictions were way off. I don't regret having kept some of the stuff I read in the Seventies, either, or having been awed by Bell Labs films (the ultimate in whiz bangery) that showed fingernail-sized IC's and punched cards as being "futuristic". I also don't regret tossing out my ZX-81 for a Performa, or realizing that Multiples will never catch on as ordinary clothing, or that they'll never sell "Meals for Millions" in the grocery.

    But I'll never lose my sense of wonder....

  • Well... there's ONE thing that isn't covered... And what good is all this progress if we can't do anything about first posts?

    --

  • Use the sine waves, m'boy! They're telling us what will happen, you just have to listen!
  • I think that the world will change more than even these people predict. So many little inventions have such huge implications when people start using them in ways that weren't initially thought of.

    I read about a very thin LCD display which could be implanted under the skin as a "wrist watch" (literally!) Now imagine full color LCD pixel displays under every square inch of your skin. People would be able to change their skin to match their mood, display art, hide in the dark (no more face paint for marines...) and so on. That is like evolution on an incredibly fast scale. The rules of fundamentals like social interaction and sexual attraction can change overnight.

    I have a theory that children are gaining the ability to switch gears from trend to trend, absorbing new technologies much more quickly than adults. Look at the "crazes" that hit every year...partly due to marketing but partly due to the transivity of childrens' attention. No generation before has had the expectation to be living in a completely different world every 5 or 10 years. Will we be able to keep up?
  • ...aaaand my #1 reason for dumping on Mondo 2000:
    I had a website more than 2 years before they did.
    For a bunch of "netheads" (used very loosely), this alone damns them to the hype-dumpster.

    Pope
  • charles duell never said that, thats a famous piece of urban legend.
  • I feel it is obvious that the world, technology wise, will improve more and more quickly. Things will be faster, smaller, and cheaper as the technology advances.

    -PovRayMan
  • Oh my ghod, someone remembers Mondo 2000. I can't belive I bought several issues of that awful rag. Most of the articles were pretty much devoid of anything, and they always had to mention the WELL. If someone wore a toaster on their heads, Mondo 2000 considered it fashion, and did a whole article on it.
  • The most amusing one is that in 1950, he predicted the fall of communism, but in his 1980 update, only ten years before the fall of the Soviet Union, backed off on that claim.

    He also predicted that we'd be rationing food by now because of overpopulation, but that cancer would be cured and aircars and commutes of two hundred miles would be common.

    But to give him credit, he states up front that he is likely wrong about many things. And he makes one great prediction. He predicted, in 1950, that some new invention, existing in 1950, would transform American society the way the car did in the first half of the century, but he had no idea which invention that was. I bet most here can figure it out.
  • Telepathy on tv and in books and such is often portraited as a power exploited for gain - monetary, power, etc... but the most profound, would be the ability to understand the perspective and feelings of others.

    Imagine being able to 'see' or rather feel the structure of another persons mind... hear the way that they think, the way that they feel - the ability to offer that person the same of you. This way, people would know eachothers fear, loves, memories and pains and know that what those other people do is because of things and feeings not so different from their own. I think that there would no longer be war, there would no longer be hate, and there would be far more love or at least understanding.

    If there is one thing that I would want for the future for our civilization it is some kind of telepathy - not because it can be exploited, but because it can connect people at the most fundamental level and no one would really need to exploit another.
  • hahahaha. mark me down as a troll, but i have to give this guy support. where everyone else in the next story is bitching about this and that, this dude's talking about pouring grits down his pants. why doesn't everyone take a step back and look at how ridiculous this world is?
  • anonymous cowards are given the same rights as any other poster. they can say what they want.
  • Don't take it one day at a time. That opening paragraph was right...we as human beings must keep on using our imaginations and hypothesizing about the future.It's the only way things truly can get done the way they do, otherwise there would be no inspiration and all would be relatively apathetic about advancing the way we live our lives. Besides, reading these things make you appreciate the human ingeniousness buried among all of the stupidity.

    "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."


  • 2.) There's the famous Bill Gates "640k should be enough for anybody." quote from '81


    that is becoming tiresome. Bill Gates did not mean enough for anybody for the entire future. He meant then and there. Just like if i were to tell someone who wanted to buy a PC today, 64MB will be enough for you.
    Bill Gates if anything, has always had vision, he's a technologist and a geek, don't play him for a fool.
  • Smart polymers? wow.....who here has wanted to be that "fly on the wall at *fillinplacehere*"? i tell you, female locker rooms, and dorm showers will get lots of "visitors". and think of the bank robbers....imagine, with the polymers embedded into their skin, they can be any size, shape, color, ect they want. this also allows for celebrity look-alikes, and for realistic "role playing" in the bedroom. pretty boys will be a thing of the past. actors will be chosen for their talent, not on their looks (remember, it can be anything they want)

    Not all of these things are evil of course, but you have to be able to look at things with a dose of realism. all it takes is one of the people who has it to slip up somewhere (as in the DeCSS fiasco) and the black market will have a field day.

    i personaly would like a neural connection to the net, ala count zero. maybe a food replicator, or converter (pound of dirt, becomes a pound of steak...for example)

  • Man, that cyberette sounds alot like pot.
    As you drag on it, your mood will be altered.
    Unfortunately the article didnt tell you how such a thing would even work.

    Although I do understand that cerain EM fields and waves can affect mood, I can't imagine that holding that in your mouth or constantly beaming energy into your head wont screw you up.

    Dangerous....

  • Hehe.
    Unfortunately, as in politics, the "talking heads" are just that. Spouting off their "vision of the future" and tossing a a liberal amount of their own agenda.
    Of those "futurists" of the 60s and 70s, who predicted that pr0n would be one of the largest businesses in the "information wants to be free" times to come?
    I can say this with certainty about the future. If a new technology comes out, and porno can be used on it, with it, etc. rest assured it will be. Look at VHS/Beta and porn. DVDs and porn. God forbid somebody invents cybersuits. Lets hope you can dry clean them. They'll be messier than hell.
  • So now Dr. Seuss becomes classified as a science fiction writer. Remember Bartholomew and the Green Goo? I think that's what the title was... anyway, here we have it, except he got the colour wrong (like everybody did with the dinosaurs).

    Danny Boy
  • Interesting as the Dream Machine invention sounds....

    How about actually raising your own kids instead of placing that responsibility on the anonymous world, and than placing blame on it for failing to do it well?
  • In my humble opinion, I don't understand why everyone sees the future as a dead filled one. Sure we'll get old and die, but why are some people convinced the entire world will end?

    -PovRayMan
  • Sort of like people do with television?
  • The technology that I think is most promising and -gasp- practical and affordable today that might be a staple of the future, instead of most high-tech throwaway toys, are the Mind Machines. They're devices that combine sound and light at specific frequencies to cause electro-checmical shifts in the brain, sometimes known as entrainment, usually to produce alpha, theta, or delta waves.

    Unfortunatly they're clumped together with New Age crap like orgone fields and psycho-magnets, but there's studies that show their effectiveness.
    For more info consult your local library or goto http://www.us-shamanics.com/mm-faq.html

  • In reading the article on nanotech I was dismayed about the potential uses attributed to the research at NASA Ames. Are they really thinking that small and are only working on robotic sensors. They should be thinking big and thinking about the logical use for nanotech on a hostile world like Mars. Gray Goo could in fact be green goo and would be the the most obvious approach for terraforming Mars into a habitable planet. Assuming the atomic components are present they could presumably produce water and oxygen and dispose of the the toxic components of the atomosphere. They could produce a green house effect to warm the environment. They could potentially produce a habitable world. Hopefully they would also design in safe gaurds to kill the nanobots once the work was done. I've always thought the "Genesis Effect" in Star Trek was simply a wave of nanobots.
  • I strongly recommend that anyone interested in this topic read this month's issue of _Scientific American_ magazine, interesting snippets of which can be found on their website ( http://www.sciam.com [sciam.com] ).

    This special issue of the magazine is devoted to the topic of "What Science Will Know in 2050," and includes viewpoints from many prominent names in biology, cosmology, mathematics and physics.

    Sir John Maddox opens the section with his article entitled "The Unexpected Science of the Future" in which he posits that "the questions we do not yet have the wit to ask will be a growing preoccupation of science in the next 50 years." For support, he analyzes several 50-year periods in the past. In each analysis he contends that science, at the beginning of the period was unable to predict the upcoming advances.

    For example, who in 1950 could have imagined the e-commerce explosion of the late 1990's? Even as late as 1980, the upcoming prominence of the personal computer was widely doubted. Or who could have reasonably imagined that we would clone a sheep? DNA had not yet been discovered!

    And, if this were not enough evidence, consider that the rate of technical innovation and discovery is accelerating!

    In the next 50 years, could we see the dawn of artificial intelligence? Will that intelligence petition for civil rights? Will it be vastly more intelligent than us? If so, will it share its discoveries with humanity? What new directions might they take us?

    Will we unify physics? What will the completion of the human genome project yield? Will we drastically alter our climate? Will we discover life outside Earth?

    I believe that we might be able to reasonably predict discovery 10-15 years out, with rapidly decreasing success beyond that.

    dp

  • I'll have to dissagree, albeit only on certain parts. Yes, it is almost impossible to predict what will happend in 100 years time. But it is possible to say which direction the world is most likely to take.

    About a year ago Swedish television showed a rerun of a documetary series from the 60s, about what the world would be like at the turn of the millenium. Sure, it had it's share of the wildly optimistic futurists who predicted everything from private spacecraft to meeting god. But most of those asked had a relatively sane, and in retrospect true, view of what would happend.

    One of the subjects, a nuclear scientist, analyzed how technology was developing trough the 40s, 50s and early 60s. He predicted that it would continue in the same direction, with increased minimization, increased availability and increased usage of technology. He also predicted that communications would explode, allowing people to communicate cheap and fast across the entire globe (internet & iridium anyone?).

    There were lots of scientists expressing their opinons, and mostly they have come true. Families have become less solid and divorce rates have climbed. People have become more mobile and we are moving around more than ever, to study, to work and for pure recreation. Airtravel is safe and relatively fast. Computers have shrunk and are available to the common man (although the CS professor that spoke of computers had the modest vision of them taking up the space of a small table).

    So it is possible to predict the future in broad strokes, although anyone predicting model ZK-33 neural interfaces should stick to writting SF.

  • Problem with articles such as this.. (Score:3)

    by Listerine ( 7695 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @12:30PM (#1502484) Homepage
    The problem is that these people speculate based on what they want to happen... like the whole stupid flying cars thing.

    They dont take into account things like market pressures and horde magnetism. The only reason that some bad products succeed over good products in marketing. And when something looks better than something else, no matter if it really is, hordes of peope will be drawn to it (ie MSWindows).

    Bah.

  • dont like "futurists" (Score:3)

    by Pope ( 17780 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @09:04AM (#1502485)
    I don't like so-called "Futurists" who make all sorts of wild predictions about the future.
    The early days of "Wired" and "Mondo 2000" magazines were full of these pundits, trying to convince us that the internet was some fabulous egalitarian anarchistic collection of like-minded individuals, that the 'net would allow virtual sex and avatars and the whole shebang. Not one of them mentioned consumer-priced broadband, or mass censorship like what's happening in Australia these days.
    Mondo 2000 was particularly bad at this, saying how the online world would replace real life and everything would be a massive technohippy psychedelic wonderland where everything would be free.
    Wired promised much the same thing, except that we'd all get fabulously rich selling the aforementioned wonderland.

    Now, after I've brought everybody down with my ramblings, a positive note:
    I've seen the LEGO 2000 catalogue, and the new X-Wing [brickshelf.com] is pretty sweet! So there is hope for the future.

    Pope

  • if your intrested in nanotechnology ... (Score:3)

    by da5id.p ( 56992 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @11:07AM (#1502486) Homepage
    Read Neal Stephonson's book The Diamond Age, its fiction to be sure, but it explores some of the cool ideas of nanotechnology and the efect they would have on life.

  • Heinlein's Expanded Universe (Score:3)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @01:29PM (#1502487) Homepage Journal
    In Heinlein's Expanded Universe, there is an essay written in 1950 called "Pandora's Box" in which he predicts what the year 2000 will be like. (He also updated it in 1965 and 1980 and kept track of how he did.) Anyone wanting to predict the future of technology should read this. If nothing else, it shows how hard it is to write something that doesn't seem silly in fifty years.

  • My fav one: “Cyberette" (Score:3)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @08:56AM (#1502488)
    From the Timothy-Leary-would-be-proud dept. :

    The Cyberette [msnbc.com] sounds like a digital hallucinogen that leaves the user completely functional, except for certain parts of certain senses are replaced to the users specifications.

    I know of one co-worker that I'de like to 'dial-out' of my day. It would make me a lot more productive.

    Now only if we could teach 'Cheech and Chong' to hack a bit ;)

  • Hmmmm (Score:4)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @02:25PM (#1502489)
    So far, the most accurate prediction (in my opinion) was from Gordon Moore in 1965 stating that the density of transistors on integrated circuits would double every 18 months. Other then that, I think we can learn from the past when it comes to trying to predict the future. Take these examples:

    1.) When Woz took the Apple I into work to see if they were going to hold him to his IP contract with them, they laughed at the notion of a Personal Computer.

    2.) There's the famous Bill Gates "640k should be enough for anybody." quote from '81.

    3.) "...There are no significant threats to the Intel or Microsoft desktop PC franchises through 2003," -Chris Goodhue, PC analyst with the Gartner Group, 1998

    4.) The Titanic was deemed unsinkable by the press and media because of the technological achievement of the watertight compartments. (As a matter of fact, White Star Line never advertised it as unsinkable. An article in in an engineering magazine during the period was quoted as saying the Titanic was "virtually unsinkable" which started the hype.

    5.) According to Xerox, paper usage is growing 7% annually. We were supposed to have a paperless society by now.

    6.) In 1899, Charles Duell, the director of the U.S. Patent office stated "Everything that can be invented already has been." (GASP! Exactly 100 years ago!)

    Plus, about 50 years ago, computer companies scoffed at the idea of any kind of portable computer. Shall I go on?

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Not possible (Score:4)

    by ranton ( 36917 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @08:55AM (#1502490)
    How can anyone think that they can predict what will happen in 100 years? It would be tough to even guess which technologies will shape the next century, let alone what their effects will be. Anything that actually comes true will be pure luck. The only prediction I am going to make is that we will still be here, and even that isnt definete. Im just content with taking it one day at a time.

  • The failure of futurism (Score:4)

    by Mr. Protocol ( 73424 ) on Friday November 26, 1999 @11:14AM (#1502491)
    Futurists are just never right. I mean, never. The only spot-on predictions I can think of offhand came from people who were just grotting over the facts and came up with something - they were labeled 'futurists' after the fact.

    What futurists come up with sounds plausible because their scenarios allow for the interplay of a few more factors than we generally allow ourselves to play with when we daydream. This air of verisimilitude breaks down when confronted with the real world's blizzard of interacting effects.

    Take personal fliers. When you read about it in Popular Science it sounds reasonable enough: you avoid poky ground traffic and zip from here to there. Economies of scale would allow anyone to afford one, just like a car.

    We still don't have 'em. The energy budget just isn't there - they still cost too much to fly - and besides, The Vision doesn't allow for what will happen when one comes crashing down into a neighborhood. At least autos mostly only crash into other autos. Only extraordinarily do they crash into living rooms. Not so personal fliers.

    This makes it sound like futurism is a useless occupation. Not so. It at least provokes valuable discussion. Epcot Center, the subject of a bunch of use and abuse on /. recently, is a prime example. Many of the arguments against it, why it's a failure, etc., are arguments against it, not as an example of successful or failed futurism, but against the vision of the future that it represents: that there are fundamental flaws in that vision, which we need to scramble to avoid in building the real future. Similarly, Buckminster Fuller's designs arent universal today. We have no Dymaxion Cars, geodesic domes are prevalent only in certain specific arenas, such as highway equipment maintenance huts. Nevertheless, his way of looking at the world, and the principles behind his designs, have influenced a generation not just of futurists, but of actual designers.

    It isn't the confection that's important, but the flavor is.

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