war will be over, and we finally will have gotten the environment under

control, but skin cancer will be up 12%. And we will not longer have a

national debt.

about the aging of the population? With medical advances and DNA

research, will people be living longer? Will the median age of the

population continue to increase? What will the retirement age be? What

are the social implications? How many more golf courses will be

required 🙂

what is new is harder than imagining what we won’t have. Probably won’t

be importing produce from Asia; I imagine we will be buying more

hyper-local produce. Home BBQ probably illegal (carbon footprint).

Airline industry? Pricey if it exists at all.

panels will exist that are capable of displaying images (very much like

an LCD panel today), and will have thermal conductivity (like

Peltier-effect modules, only more efficient) and probably limited audio

transducer capabilities.

Businesses will cover walls with them

and will use applied advertising psychology to determine which

hues/temperature ranges will encourage more consumption.

Some kind of vocal link always up. Have a question, comment, idea you want to discuss.
… Read More
“Anybody know ….”

Other

folks who are lonely, unoccupied, bored and on your list hear the

question come out of the air (quietly, unless you say “what?” and then

it pipes up) and can respond… (would the computer automatically

filter who it’s sent to by content?)

I’m thinking of walking along in the woods and finding a mushroom.
“Anybody

have time to look at this mushroom and tell me what it is? Any chance

it’s edible?” accompanied by a picture I’ve just taken of the mushroom

projected onto the wall beside them

“Hi, Kel,” pipes up my

friend Pete who is walking down the street in Burlington, “It’s a

polypore of some kind, few of them are edible, but look in the same

area, there are often chanterelles nearby when you see those.”

“Thanks Pete, if I find a big stash I’ll bring you some”

Boy

we think cellphones are intrusive… how would we ever deal with

this… the social and distractable among us would go crazy…

As it is, jumping up to google stuff is distracting enough… what if I could just speak my idea, question etc into space…
ADD heaven or hell?

I

think our bodies are destined to become the new frontier in technology

development. Probably more easily replaceable (mechanical?) parts

(though we’re doing pretty well on that today). Probably more capacity

to “customize” ourselves (i.e., eyecolor, height, etc.) though, that’s

begun as well, but is more at the genetic stage currrently.

I

envision technology that “enables” us to interact with our environment

without actually having to make physical contact with those objects.

Like a remote control, without the remote itself. We’ll have to

re-define the phrase “universal remote control.” Personal note: I

don’t like the idea that we’ll continue to perpetuate a co-existence

whereby individuals continue to increase the physical distance between

each other, but, alas, I don’t make the trends, I just see them.… Read More

Capturing

information, experiences, and such will be first nature, and completely

integrated into daily life. No more taking your cell phone out of your

pocket to point, click, send, post, etc. All those steps will be

combined and made virtually invisible.

That’s off the top of my head.

will no longer exist. your personal id card will be a multifunctional

driver’s license, passport, debit card, will contain all of your medial

information and will contain a copy of your hard drive (big strides in

memory….). You will not need to travel with a laptop because you will

carry your hard drive in your wallet. Cooler yet, combine my idea with

Scott’s.

think “trends” can be deceptive. When we were kids, time sharing and

mainframes were all the rage. Then PCs were king. Now, it’s all about

cloud computing. The world tends to bounce around more than we care to

admit. So here are some counter-intuitive predictions. Divergence will

be more important than convergence for the same reason screwdrivers… Read More

outsell Swiss army knives. Screens, which seem to be everywhere in

visions of the future, will not be nearly as ubiquitous or as relevant

as predicted. In a world of virtual experiences, people will

increasingly crave the real thing. That’s good news for parks (local,

national and theme), bad news for theaters. Universities, which have

thrived in recent years, will be failing in droves as the economy

recovers and the demographic bubble bursts. I’m guessing that something

similar to what’s been happening in healthcare will happen to education

– massive consolidation to the most successful brands. In any case, the

model where more and more people go to college and tuition increases

vastly out-pace inflation is fundamentally unsustainable. Something

will eventually break. More and more stuff will be made in China, until

the world moves on to the next low cost manufacturer (India, Brazil,

and ultimately, African countries?). Finally, most predictions will

ultimately be proven wrong, including these, except the ones that were

right…

will be eliminated. All of our energy will come from renewable sources.

There will be a cure for cancer. There will be no wars.

happiest people will avoid technology whenever possible and strive for

simplicity (perhaps live off the land if we haven’t poisoned it all.)

automated, if not a smoldering ruin. I’m greatly looking forward to

bio-electric computers, cybernetics, cryogenics, carbon nanofibers, and

nanotech. Of course, the huge amount of resources required to produce

technology like that means that our supply chains must grow and

strengthen in order to maintain sustainability. I would also like… Read More

to see more community responsibility from our corporations and more

arts and humanities taught in schools. Just because science and

mathematics are becoming more necessary doesn’t mean that humanities

are expendable.

I was thinking about what the government would look like and I thought

of the “Idiocracy” movie (very funny but R-rated for sure). It seems

like we are heading towards complete reliance on the government. Will

we all end up working for the government producing for and providing

services to one another? Will the entitlement culture continue to grow?

I hope not but I’m thinking yes…

C. I like what you wrote. Someplace I read a quote that basically

shared the message that one of the wonderful ways we use science is to

create beautiful art.
I also love science for its own sake. No argument from me there!

think the Illuminati will be exposed and defeated creating a world of

peace and abundance. Watch the movie Zeitgesit for free on google video.

Thanks. I’ve been reading up on the Kardashev scale and Olduvai theory.

As humanity comes to gather more and more energy resources around the

planet, I think that monetary systems will go the way of the dodo, and

people will use energy as a form of currency. At this point. if you

examine how much embodied energy our products contain, it … Read Moreseems

like so much energy goes into producing more energy that we’re

spiraling out of control. If we can’t maintain our focus and create

more with less then we will never reach Type 1 threshold, and most

likely we will end up destroying our civilization in wars over energy

resources. Also, if we don’t ensure a sustainable industrial

sector,America isn’t going to enjoy much progress when the Chinese and

Indian economies move towards global dominance.