Future Technology
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Remember when you first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey? Or Flash Gordon? Or read a novel by Robert Heinlein in the 60s or 70s? I think that was my first glimpse of the future, or what I might want in the future. From Starship Troopers to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to Starman Jones, these were the books through which I dreamed the future.
This short list of future technologies from eWeek wasn't that thrilling to me, but it had me wondering about what the future might bring. The 100-Terabyte thumb drive was kind of cool, and something that I could see happening in the next decade. Being able to carry around a good slice of your life in text, audio, and video, would be cool. Can you imagine how many memories could you keep with you?
Quite a few of the other technologies I didn't think were that interesting, or even that wanted. You can probably guess I'd like to see better energy production, probably some type of fusion, space travel for others (not me), and even the ability to live under the ocean.
However the Virtual Reality would be cool, especially if you could walk around and really interact with an environment. Maybe then we could really have remote meetings, like in Star Wars that really work.
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eWeek have now confused me slightly.On the one hand you have the top 10 technologies that flopped, including Voice Recognition. Citing that in 10 years there has been little advancement in development for this particular technology.
Yet on the other hand you have the top 10 most wanted technologies, including (strangely enough) a Universal Translator - a device requiring voice recognition.
Now is it just me, or does that not make sense? I know that you can want something you can't have, but surely you'd be better off wanting something that is possible?
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From our perspective in Britain, bearing in mind Tony Blair's most recent surrender of powers to our "European partners" in Brussels (i.e. creation of a European state by another name), for the most amazing thing to happen in the future, I would like to suggest A Decentralised Government That Listens To Its Voters.
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The future isn't what it used to be.
For some stuff that didn't quite work out as planned:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/06/26/translation-by-machine/
"In answer to the question “When shall we see a machine translate?” my best guess is, within five years. By that time there should be in operation one or more models turning out a good deal better than a word-by-word translation." (1956)
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/07/14/we-can-control-the-weather/
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/01/12/automation-edges-out-tunesters-writes-songs-wholesale/
The pianist above is playing a tune as it is composed by the electronic brain he gazes at wistfully. The complicated Burroughs machine can turn out 1,000 tunes an hour – all mathematically calculated to be popular
Start browsing at the home page http://blog.modernmechanix.com/ and you will probably waste the rest of your day.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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Excellent point Adrian.
I love new technology. I got my first computer in 1982, when I was 9 year old, and have worked with computers ever since.
However, during the last two years I have spent some time on thinking and reading about what is exactly told to us by the mainstream media. These new technologies are beeing used to put every human beeing in databases everywhere. How much liberty do we have left?
Now it should be very, very evident to everyone who reads just a tiny bit about Sep 11 2001, that it was an inside job in order to put fear in people, to accomplish whatever these people want to accomplish, and not something done by 19 al-Qaida members. Now they are going to build new military bases in central europe, in Poland and czech republic. 911 is central to all this. How could we allow this going on? Why is the US going to have military bases here in our backyards?
The Bush/Cheney government has lied to us about this from scrach. Look at the official conspiracy theory, and if you can find any facts there that support their story. Look at the twin towers for instance, they came down in free fall speed, in free fall speed. How could that happen? Only by in advance well placed explosives. And how came building 7 (WTC 7) down, also in free fall speed. What about pentagon, there is no boeing to be found there. they have lied about that too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCv0Px1EIRk
Best regards,
Johan Tiberg
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Hi,
A friend and I had a discussion about this in the pub the other night. He suggested that a lie detector built into tv's and radios that would tell you when a politician was fibbing, I suggested this was called the On button
K.
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Feasible superconductivity, i.e., at normal temperatures and using affordable materials, and the brain-machine interface, are the two technologies I want to see happen, post-haste!!
As for the lie-detection technology, I think I read something recently about Google working on just such a thing: put a politician's speech through it, and it tells you how true or false the speech is.
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After doing 2 seperate road trips in the last two weeks, longest one was 1150 miles in 2.5 days (including watching races Saturday and Sunday....), I want an autopilot for my car!
Then I want a USB jack for my brain so I could feed in video straight into my brain! Mostly to watch movies or surf the internet or play games, while my car is driving where I want to go.
Alternative would of course be teleportation, which I don't see happening in my lifetime.
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I'm looking for increased technology that will allow us to drive less by virtualizing face-to-face envrionments like most high schools, colleges, and many office environments. Not only will this save on fuel and wear-and-tear on vehicles it will also dramatically increase discretionary time by cutting out the average commute of 1 hour or so. Most of the technology is there but it needs to be packaged better and cheaper and marketed better.
To make my point, think of all he face-to-face encounters that you have throughout your day that you wouldn't necessarily desire to have if you could do it online from the confort of your home. Then you would choose your face to face encounters with people you truly want to be face to face with - for entertainment, fun, pleasure, etc... rather than for work, buying groceries and sundries, and school.
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I think they call this "Second Life"...
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I think Steve and I must be reading the same newsletters... these blogs keep being one day late. I read that article yesterday too... really wanted the 10 minutes of my life back.
These things just don't amuse me anymore. We were supposed to have flying cars and robot maids by now. I'm not listening to any more predictions of the future unless I hear them on the radio in my nuclear-powered FLYING CAR!
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At one point in my life I was considering becoming a History teacher... until I realized there was no future in it.
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