If you could predict the technological innovations of the next 100 years you'd be rich. Before 1903 few people thought heavier than air flight was impossible (similar to how today the notion of teleportation seems like a tv pipe dream). Before TV the commoner could not comprehend the concept. Get a time machine and go back 100 years and try to explain the internet. People wont be awe-struk, but rather won't be able to comprehend the gravity. Try inventing a new color [not shade of color] then predict the upcoming revolutionary tech innovations.
I certainly hope that regular cars and flying cars have a 5 point seat belt. I wish I had one with the way folks drive here in CA. That stupid L belt is rediculous. I want one that crosses my chest on both sides to feel safe. Let's hope the saftey innovations improve!
" I predict that humans will be bombed or self destruct back to the stone age or whatever age came before that"
Well before that time was the Garden of Eden......where lots of funny stuff happened with a cast of characters including Adam, Eve & APPLE......
The Devil tricks the couple into thinking differently with an 17" Mac Laptop.
They get to taste heaven with the tempting fruit but then get kicked out to work in crappy 6 ft square office cubicles using the devils own real software............................Micr S ft.........
NO WAY, we are going back to WHOLE FOODS. it is SO the trend. Eventually all the studies will come out proving that cancer is caused by all the preservatives/chemicals/pesticides we ingest...the whole world will be paranoid and start growing their own foods again! YEAH!!!! Vegans unite! Long live the BROCCOLI!!! VIOLA ROMA!!!
i will become the unholy and unquestioned dictator of Earth, and be the first dictator to ever voluntarily resign, because, afterall, i'm just too sweet?. let's not forget, "Most of their free time is spent flying, but sometimes they stab. (Ask Mark if you don't believe me.)". pardon if this seemed off-topic, but my humours seemed to be off balance tonight. time for a blood letting.
I think your friend has been reading the Left Behind book series. That or her pastor/priest/cult leader/whatever is "teaching" from it. The series seems pretty interesting, it is a retelling of the "end times" story, and actually seems pretty interesting, whether or not you believe it. (note: this 11+ book series is FICTION)
the rest of you:
I agree that it is difficult to predict the future, so I will limit myself to saying that sex, drugs, and greed will drive innovation for the (non)foreseeable future.
Lucy, you are correct. And when Milly does speak in REF. to those books, she does know that they are fictional predictions that seem to hold some truth. After 911, the books sales went up big time...big scoop about the series in time mag too.
2003 Friendly-Spam hits the world when nefarious forces figure create a relational database that allows them to spoof spammed messages between email addresses that have communicated in the past. Relying on chrononlogical harvesting of email addresses in forwarded emails, there is a boom in email petitions and you still receive the forwarded garbage from your Aunt Edna.
2004 Sony's first robotic humanoid is finally released to great fanfare. The little guy is a bigger hit in Asia than the Aibo and they begin ramping up sales of full-scale 'bots for entertainment industry. Small start-ups scramble to utilize similar off-the-shelf technology to introduce mechanical robots into a variety of industries. Robotic development and assembly is the next tech boom.
2007 Chrysler and Chevrolet announce separately that they will be entering production of the "kit of parts" concept and will be ready for consumers within two years. The kit of parts will come with a standard "base frame" which has an integrated motor assembly that can accept four different body shells, each of which has over 100 different customizations pertinent to that shell. Other automakers indicate that they will offer a similar purchasing option within the decade. Car enthusiasts the world over grumble loudly about the neutering of the automobile but are intrigued by the purported lowered cost of the new vehicles.
2008 McDonald's introduces robotic cooking devices, removing human error from the equation. Load-in of foodstuffs and "guest services" chores are still done by human employees. The cash registers are also manned by employees but within six years the self-order card-registers are the preferred method of purchasing a tasty meal. Staffing is effectively reduced by 1/3 in all Ultra McDonald's stores and projections indicate that number may drop even more in ten years.
2009 Return to the Moon by humankind, specifically: the Chinese. First Lunar colony established by a Pan-Asiatic Consortium. Flights are sold to civilians.
2010 Ubiquitous Communications, formerly AOL, is now being used by 60% of the American population and 40% of the global population and the numbers keep increasing. Stock prices soar for this service which allows you to seamlessly manage all of your voice, video and data communications from any location. The writing is on the wall when WalMart becomes the biggest retailer of low-cost devices for the service and Target sells special designer versions of the hardware. K-Mart still sucks.
First, if I take one look back to the way things were in 1900, I have no confidence in my ability to predict the future.
I'll post more on this later, because it's an interesting topic, but it belongs in General Discussion, so I'll move it there.
I agree. I think Michael Crichton summed it up quite nicely in the introduction to Timeline:
Quote:
A hundred years ago, as the 19th century drew to a close, scientists around the world were satisfied that they had arrived at an accurate picture of the physical world. As physicist Alastair Rae put it, "By the end of the nineteenth century it seemed that the basic fundamental principles governing the behavior of the physical universe were known." Indeed, many scientists said that the study of physics was nearly completed: no big discoveries remained to be made, only details and finishing touches.
But late in the final decade, a few curiosities came to light. Roentgen discovered rays that passed though flesh; because they were unexplained, he called them X rays. Two months later, Henri Becquerel accidentally found that a piece of uranium ore emitted something that fogged photographic plates. And the electron, the carrier of electricity, was discovered in 1897.
Yet on the whole, physicists remained calm, expecting that these oddities would eventually be explained by existing theory. No one would have predicted that within five years their complacent view of the world would be shockingly upended, producing an entirely new conception of the universe and entirely new technologies that would transform daily life in the twentieth century in unimaginable ways.
If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later, moving images would be transmitted into homes all over the world from satellites in the sky; that bombs of unimaginable power would threaten the species; that antibiotics would abolish infectious disease but that disease would fight back, that women would have the vote, and pills to control reproduction; that millions of people would take to the air every hour in aircraft capable of taking off and landing without human touch; that you could cross the Atlantic at two thousand miles an hour; that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest; that microscopes would be able to see individual atoms; that people would carry telephones weighing a few ounces, and speak anywhere in the world without wires; or that most of these miracles depended on devices the size of a postage stamp, which utilized a new theory called quantum mechanics--if you said all this, the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.
Most of these developments could not have been predicted in 1899, because prevailing scientific theory said they were impossible. And for the few developments that were not impossible, such as airplanes, the sheer scale of their eventual use would have defied comprehension. One might have imagined an airplane--but ten thousand airplanes in the air at the same time would have been beyond imagining.
So it is fair to say that even the most informed scientists, standing on the threshold of the twentieth century, had no idea what was to come.
***
Now that we stand on the threshold of the twenty-first century, the situation is oddly similar. Once again, physicists believe the physical world has been explained, and that no further revolutions lie ahead. Because of prior history, they no longer express this view publicly, but they think it just the same. Some observers have even gone so far as to argue that science as a discipline has finished its work; that there is nothing important left for science to discover.
Comments
FLYING CARS
Originally posted by groverat
Two words:
FLYING CARS
Two words: Falling Kills
[B]um,
" I predict that humans will be bombed or self destruct back to the stone age or whatever age came before that"
Well before that time was the Garden of Eden......where lots of funny stuff happened with a cast of characters including Adam, Eve & APPLE......
The Devil tricks the couple into thinking differently with an 17" Mac Laptop.
They get to taste heaven with the tempting fruit but then get kicked out to work in crappy 6 ft square office cubicles using the devils own real software............................Micr
g
i will become the unholy and unquestioned dictator of Earth, and be the first dictator to ever voluntarily resign, because, afterall, i'm just too sweet?. let's not forget, "Most of their free time is spent flying, but sometimes they stab. (Ask Mark if you don't believe me.)". pardon if this seemed off-topic, but my humours seemed to be off balance tonight. time for a blood letting.
I think your friend has been reading the Left Behind book series. That or her pastor/priest/cult leader/whatever is "teaching" from it. The series seems pretty interesting, it is a retelling of the "end times" story, and actually seems pretty interesting, whether or not you believe it. (note: this 11+ book series is FICTION)
the rest of you:
I agree that it is difficult to predict the future, so I will limit myself to saying that sex, drugs, and greed will drive innovation for the (non)foreseeable future.
2004 Sony's first robotic humanoid is finally released to great fanfare. The little guy is a bigger hit in Asia than the Aibo and they begin ramping up sales of full-scale 'bots for entertainment industry. Small start-ups scramble to utilize similar off-the-shelf technology to introduce mechanical robots into a variety of industries. Robotic development and assembly is the next tech boom.
2007 Chrysler and Chevrolet announce separately that they will be entering production of the "kit of parts" concept and will be ready for consumers within two years. The kit of parts will come with a standard "base frame" which has an integrated motor assembly that can accept four different body shells, each of which has over 100 different customizations pertinent to that shell. Other automakers indicate that they will offer a similar purchasing option within the decade. Car enthusiasts the world over grumble loudly about the neutering of the automobile but are intrigued by the purported lowered cost of the new vehicles.
2008 McDonald's introduces robotic cooking devices, removing human error from the equation. Load-in of foodstuffs and "guest services" chores are still done by human employees. The cash registers are also manned by employees but within six years the self-order card-registers are the preferred method of purchasing a tasty meal. Staffing is effectively reduced by 1/3 in all Ultra McDonald's stores and projections indicate that number may drop even more in ten years.
2009 Return to the Moon by humankind, specifically: the Chinese. First Lunar colony established by a Pan-Asiatic Consortium. Flights are sold to civilians.
2010 Ubiquitous Communications, formerly AOL, is now being used by 60% of the American population and 40% of the global population and the numbers keep increasing. Stock prices soar for this service which allows you to seamlessly manage all of your voice, video and data communications from any location. The writing is on the wall when WalMart becomes the biggest retailer of low-cost devices for the service and Target sells special designer versions of the hardware. K-Mart still sucks.
This is fun.....
Originally posted by Amorph
First, if I take one look back to the way things were in 1900, I have no confidence in my ability to predict the future.
I'll post more on this later, because it's an interesting topic, but it belongs in General Discussion, so I'll move it there.
I agree. I think Michael Crichton summed it up quite nicely in the introduction to Timeline:
A hundred years ago, as the 19th century drew to a close, scientists around the world were satisfied that they had arrived at an accurate picture of the physical world. As physicist Alastair Rae put it, "By the end of the nineteenth century it seemed that the basic fundamental principles governing the behavior of the physical universe were known." Indeed, many scientists said that the study of physics was nearly completed: no big discoveries remained to be made, only details and finishing touches.
But late in the final decade, a few curiosities came to light. Roentgen discovered rays that passed though flesh; because they were unexplained, he called them X rays. Two months later, Henri Becquerel accidentally found that a piece of uranium ore emitted something that fogged photographic plates. And the electron, the carrier of electricity, was discovered in 1897.
Yet on the whole, physicists remained calm, expecting that these oddities would eventually be explained by existing theory. No one would have predicted that within five years their complacent view of the world would be shockingly upended, producing an entirely new conception of the universe and entirely new technologies that would transform daily life in the twentieth century in unimaginable ways.
If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later, moving images would be transmitted into homes all over the world from satellites in the sky; that bombs of unimaginable power would threaten the species; that antibiotics would abolish infectious disease but that disease would fight back, that women would have the vote, and pills to control reproduction; that millions of people would take to the air every hour in aircraft capable of taking off and landing without human touch; that you could cross the Atlantic at two thousand miles an hour; that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest; that microscopes would be able to see individual atoms; that people would carry telephones weighing a few ounces, and speak anywhere in the world without wires; or that most of these miracles depended on devices the size of a postage stamp, which utilized a new theory called quantum mechanics--if you said all this, the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.
Most of these developments could not have been predicted in 1899, because prevailing scientific theory said they were impossible. And for the few developments that were not impossible, such as airplanes, the sheer scale of their eventual use would have defied comprehension. One might have imagined an airplane--but ten thousand airplanes in the air at the same time would have been beyond imagining.
So it is fair to say that even the most informed scientists, standing on the threshold of the twentieth century, had no idea what was to come.
***
Now that we stand on the threshold of the twenty-first century, the situation is oddly similar. Once again, physicists believe the physical world has been explained, and that no further revolutions lie ahead. Because of prior history, they no longer express this view publicly, but they think it just the same. Some observers have even gone so far as to argue that science as a discipline has finished its work; that there is nothing important left for science to discover.