Christmas in 2050

Makarand writes "A robotic kitchen assistant will help you with the Christmas meal preparations while you recieve instructions and monitoring assistance in real time from information systems for the cooking. Thanks to progress in biology and nanotechnology, the molecular processes needed to convert raw materials into turkey will be understood sufficiently well to make a good artificial turkey for the vegetarians. This is what we can expect this time in 2050 says Ian Pearson, BT's futurologist who is paid to dream, in this BBC News article. Absent family will join the celebrations virtually. There might be technology allowing us to read each others minds and being able to know what others are thinking may not always add peace and harmony to the celebrations. However on the upside, it will make charades a whole lot easier you will never get unwanted Christmas presents. Lastly, just as this Christmas was hijacked by a consumption fever, so too in 2050, Christmas will be all about presents."

Comments

Old news

[GlassUser]

We were hearing about this in the 1940's. Sooo where's our jet packs, personal helicopters, and automated kitchens?

Seriously, I think the people that dream up this stuff reduce the time to market by a factor of at least three. The dreams are great and all, but obviously not realistic.

Re:Old news

[JebusIsLord]

I think, and I borrow loosely from Arthur C Clarke, that people always seem to underestimate human inginutity and overestimate the abundance of resources in the future. So for instance, the 60s view of 2002 looked like the 60s only with infinite resources to do whatever they wanted with simply improved 60s tech. We don't have hundreds of space stations, personal shuttles and such because we don't have infinite money, but we DO have computers that fit in the palms our our hands, and who would have thought that back then?

Re:Old news

[fucksl4shd0t]

Labour losses through technological unemployment are hurting all nations of the world

IMHO, the problem isn't labor losses through technological employment, it's the inability of society to catch up with technology. Or rather, technology has been improving so fast lately that the job market hasn't caught up with it yet.

First a new technology comes out, or an old technology becomes affordable to everyone (the internet). Next we see a bunch of hiring in that sector. Next we see a crash, and the previously fast growing sector is in a labor crunch, dumping staff left and right.

Also, overpopulation MUST be a contributing factor to the job shortages at this time. Our food methods are efficient enough to keep us all alive (for now, and I'm ignoring the countries that are still having serious hunger problems because many of them have become political balls in our own country and I'd prefer not to approach this subject at this time). Therefore, we do not need hunters. What do hunters do now? Well, they get diagnosed AD&D, er, ADHD, given drugs and spend the rest of their lives as losers living with their parents. But I digress.

When a robot does the work, someone gets paid to make the robot, somehow. Sure, a group of robots might push out cars faster than a group of people, but who builds the robots? Obviously another assembly line packed with robots. So "building" now becomes what "engineering" used to be, and the thug labor that would've done the job before has to do something else. But what?

Therein lies the problem. We don't have enough jobs to go around, but we definitely have too many people. I certainly don't wish suffering upon anybody, but perhaps some mass-killing machine would help. :)

Anyway, many of our labor problems would be solved if we entered a true state of space exploration. When overpopulation pressures hit Europe, they had the fortune of re-discovering America to relieve the pressure. Japan went to war in the '30's because of their overpopulation, and technology has helped to alleviate their problem. But there's literally no place left for us to go, unless we start building underwater or on Antarctica (problematic when the surface altitude changes seasonally, but possible).

So the magical solution to all of our problems is technology, but only insofar as technology helps us to enter either a new period of expansionism or a massively destructive war.

Which one do you *want* to have?

AMD symbol?

[MxReb0]

So what does all these Popular Science-like predictions have to do with AMD?

Where are the spaceships, flying cars, etc?

[mesocyclone]

When I was a kid in the '50s, the futurists predicted routine space travel by now, commuting by flying automobiles, the hyrdrogen economy, copious nuclear power production, intelligent robots, oh - and the end of the world by nuclear war.

Hmmm...

And they missed the information age, microchips, the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, the air bag in cars, AIDS, velcro and genetic engineering.

So much for futurists.

Re:Where are the spaceships, flying cars, etc?

[ThinkingGuy]

As I believe Scott Adams has pointed out, predictions of future technological advances usually miss the unintended side effects. For example, the growth of Internet and the World Wide Web has brought quick access to vast amounts of information and knowledge, but has also brought us junk e-mail, pop-ups, patent abuses (Amazon). So what will Christmas 2050 bring? Here are a couple of random thoughts...
Currently kids have to wait to open their presents while dad checks his digital camera|video camera. In 2050, they'll be waiting while he hooks up everyone's head-mounted stim-sim recorders - "to capture the moment."
There's been talk lately of "intelligent paper" and "flexible displays." Extrapolating this forward, I'd expect your Christmas presents in 2050 to require you to watch a commercial before you can open them.

In the year 2050

[teamhasnoi]

Your mom will be asking when you are going to get a job and move the hell out of the basement.

Virtual Hot Grits will be the to-get gift of the season.

Linux will be ready for the desktop, but all the desktops will have shrunk to fit in a pill that you swallow.

The entire B*ush family will have died from a drug overdose.

Cheney's heart will continue beating in a small bell jar at the McDonalds Intel Smithsonian.

Michael Jackson will have transparent skin, and have Liz Taylors uterus 'installed' to give birth to an endless stream of monkeys.

Music will be beamed directly into your head, and tinfoil hats make a fashion comeback.

Steven Speilbergs 'Taken' will be on its final installment.

The music industry finally disposes with allusion and inference, and two new acts hit the stage: Britney Bigtits and the boy band "Humpin' Yer Daughters"

Slashdot's Karma will actually apply to real life, and trolls are forced to live underground, cracking human bones for the tasty marrow inside.

Reality shows will move into your own home, with prizes for the 'best'(dysfuntional) family.

The first frozen dead guy is revived, and by an incredible twist of fate, is named 'Fry'.

Dick Clark will be suspended in ammniotic fluid. Just for the hell of it.

The U.S., long since disbanded for mismanagement, will relocate to Kamchaka, and attempt to defend all those borders.

Steven King will be found dead in his home. Even if you didn't like his books, you have to admit the affect he had on late 20th century literature.

Cmdr Taco's daughter will run Slashdot, and in hopes of giving her a better life than he had, he will buy her a dictionary chip.

Go Carts will still be fun, but pale in comparison to GyroCarts which will be super strong, cool and powerful.

Soviet Russia will be a new Disney/AOL/TimeWarner/Microsoft/RedHat theme park, where the attractions ride YOU. Ok. It's a whorehouse.

Steve Balmer will live his dream, starring in "Gorillas in the Mist: Lard of the Jungle"

Grand Theft Auto 2050 is released. It's not a game anymore.

Duke Nukem (We Told Ya!) is finally released, and it like totally blows.

We already can convert raw material into turkey

[Artifice_Eternity]

...by feeding it to a small turkey, until said turkey is big enough to eat.

A real "advance" would be the growth of free range and organic farming -- doing away with industrial farming techniques that involve shutting animals into crates, cramming them with chemical- and antibiotic-laden feed, and generally turning them into objects instead of living beings.

Many people who now object to eating meat might change their minds, if they felt that the animals they consumed were raised in a healthy manner and treated humanely.

I eat some meat, but try to steer clear of the more factory-farmed stuff in favor of organic/free-range products. It's preferable in so many ways: hygeinically, nutritionally, ethically, etc.

How do you like the taste of shoe leather?

[alizard]

Pull your foot out of your mouth before responding. I'm amazed you managed to find 3 moderators having off-days at the same time, even here. Technology is something we're supposed to know about. At least some of us.

I found most of the projections timid.

The "kitchen assistant" stuff is largely available in component form (mixers, ovens, etc. that can sync to a recipe and will tell the chef what to put in when, monitor quantities of ingredients, turn the oven on to a defined time/temperature, etc.) NOW. Ambitious would be to project that we'll have fully automated kitchens. That can be done in today's technology, though not in a form that'll fit a household kitchen. In the 2050 fast food restaurant, you'll be able to get things ranging from the current menu to anything available at the 5 star restaurants of today, but fast food restaurants will have disappeared as a separate category whose memory will linger only in brand names. Restaurants with human cooks and service will be considered superpremium places and will have prices to match.

"there will be screens lining the wall."

The price of flat-panel display technology is dropping and the availability is increasing. OLED is screen-printed, not vacuum deposited.

Do you really think that videophones that can be attached to the network aren't going to be available for the price of a cheap one-piece deskphone now, and that the problems building a Net appliance that'll be secure and "Just Works" and of universal broadband availability won't be solved in 48 years?

With the exception of thought recording and transference hardware, everything discussed is in either research or early pre-alpha. It is hardly the author's fault you haven't been paying attention, most of what's in the article has been bloglinked from here.

The problem with this kind of futurism is that the futurist considers the future to be a linear extension of the present... while his predictions might be accurate, they look more like 2012 than 2050 to me.

The problems with a robotic household all-purpose servant that can use human tools will be solved by then, but people may be so used to intelligent point-solution household appliances (automated vacuum cleaners, etc.) that nobody will care.

The writer doesn't deal with space at all. One prediction I'm certain of. Either the human race will be exploiting the Solar System as a whole by then or nobody will have pleasant Xmases by then, people will be too busy suffering the kind of deprivations that go with cultures in a state of permanent war, in this case, over who gets enough of the Earth's dwindling resources of materials required to sustain technological society in order to keep one. I'm not talking about oil here, by then, we won't have a technological culture burning oil for fuel. That's why auto manufacturers are converting their assembly lines over to high-efficiency or fuel-cell vehicles. Even Toyota, who's going over to superefficient hybrid engines says that the vehicles are intended for easy conversion to fuel cells.

However, some dreams are less likely than others. The problem with a personal jet pack is sort of obvious, a device that has to provide all its lift as well as forward motion via reaction sucks up a hell of a lot of fuel.

Will we ever find the exceptions or reinterpetation of physical law that'll make a starship possible? I certainly don't know. Check the NASA "Warp Drive When" site for their Advanced Propulsion project for the latest.