SF Author Robert J. Sawyer Looks at 2014

Alex writes "Canadian science fiction author Robert J Sawyer takes a positive look at a typical day in 2014 for Backbone Magazine, looking at where both scientific and sociological advances of the next decade will take us. Sawyer is a multi-Aurora, Hugo, and Nebula award winner, and was one of the first major authors to use a website to promote his work. Readers might associate some of these innovations and ideas from his fiction."

Comments

Re:I gotta have more blink tag!

[AKAImBatman]

This seems to be pretty standard with Science Fiction authors (although I can't fathom why). Try navigating Baen's website sometime for a perfect example of a functional but aesthetically poor website.

Minor quibbles

[Dark Paladin]

I must say, I like a lot of the ideas - even if I think that many of them (such as the car driving itself) is about 10 years too early on his time table. Not because we technologically can't do it - but because of the politics.

Take the urine testing/saliva testing devices. Personally, I wouldn't sweat over it. Car driving itself? Sure - go for it!

But there are those who will fear their loss of privacy (you can track where I go on the road through all the sensors! The Bible says that the Anti-Christ will put computer chips on our foreheads - cars are the first step!).

I love the wake-up system. I believe I read about something like that in Scientific American once - a column about a gentleman who created a hack that would open his blinds a little at a time based on the alarm clock, so that when he was suppose to be awake, he was being his full on the face with sunlight, a little at a time. Then he modified it to just lights, so you didn't need the blinds. But brain wave monitoring? Personally, that's fine with me, as long as my wife doesn't discover my secret dream involving her, Utena and Selfie Tilmitt in a hot tub full of green lime jello.

But a lot of people will balk at some things for reasons of fear. I still like a lot of the ideas, and who knows - a good chunk of them might come true. I personally hope the concepts of "data analyses and understanding over memorization" comes true. I get so frustrated when I hear the words "No open book tests". Last time I checked, my boss didn't tell me to make a program, then told me he'd fire me if I opened a book or looked up the data I needed through the newsgroups. Why? Because he knows that my ability to think through the data and see what's been done before is the reason he hired me, not to be able to rattle off information that might or might not apply at this second.

I mean, that's what we have MCSE's for. (And yes, I'm one of those too ;) ).

Re:Minor quibbles

[Kismet]

must say, I like a lot of the ideas - even if I think that many of them (such as the car driving itself) is about 10 years too early on his time table. Not because we technologically can't do it - but because of the politics.

Agreed.

I don't think we'll have such advances in computing, though. I think Moore's law will take a break for a while (if it hasn't started already). The technology to keep Moore's law going for the next decade may exist, but it will be too expensive to develop and put out to the masses because of economic trends in tech markets.

Of course, we will have faster machines that cost more (less, when adjusted for inflation), and more people will have them worldwide.

The Internet will be far more pervasive. Dial-up will have all but disappeared - and won't be supported by most ISPs. Even the poorest of people will have access to broadband, except in the poorest nations, which will remain largely unchanged.

All of the fancy goodies described in the article will exist (if they don't already), but still be too expensive and rare for any but the richest of people to afford.

You won't be able to buy a CRT. A 19" flat-panel will cost $1000 (really $200, adjusted for inflation). However, wages won't have increased at the rate of inflation. Things will continue to lose wires and gain wireless capabilities. Land lines for public telecommunications will be unheard of.

Technophiles will have gotten bored with Linux and with OSX - too mainstream. Windows will still be dominant on the desktop, but Microsoft will have long stopped their enormous profit-mongering and will have re-invented and diversified. Bill Gates might lose interest and go into some other business. Windows will cost next to nothing. A previously obscure OS will be getting popular with geeks who want something different. Maybe it will even be the Hurd.

Gasoline fossil fuel will still be the dominant fuel for automobiles, but there will now be a significant minority of vehicles fueled by alternate means. Probably bio-diesel or improved hybrids, but still no fuel cells. Gasoline will be very expensive, and we'll still be talking about all of the research going into alternate fuels, except that we'll really be serious about it. Public transportation will improve slightly - dramatically in some areas. SUVs will be out. Thousands of people will still die in their vehicles.

The low-carb craze will have ended. Nutrition won't have changed much - most people will still eat junk (cheap junk).

Healthcare in America will have worsened, but improved in other nations. Fewer Americans will afford healthcare, and the quality of doctors will decline, prompting socialized medicine to become an attractive proposition for the first time (although still not quite there). More doctors will be unable to afford malpractice insurance and quit the practice altogether. People won't have fancy gadgets that assess their health status at home. They might add a few features to the standard thermometer and gain a blood pressure cuff as a standard item in the medicine closet. A few more controlled substances will make it Over the Counter. They will be harmless drugs, though.

Advances in medicine will continue. New drugs, procedures, and equipment will arrive on the scene. These will open up new possibilities, but will come with new risks and new expenses. Ultimately, they will only produce marginal benefits.

We will not find a cure for cancer, but we will come somewhat closer to making it a treatable illness that is regarded as a minor setback rather than a life-changing event.

World hunger will be as prevalent as it is today. AIDS will continue to exact huge tolls on certain populations. No big break-throughs will help us there. Developed nations will experience significant population decreases as fewer children are born and the age demographic increases. Undeveloped nations will continue to increase their populations.

The working cl

Tech/ Power Reliance

[StevenHenderson]

Assuming he's correct, does anyone else find it alarming how fucked we are in the event of a power outage or continual rise in fuel prices?

Why a wrist band?

[rward]

Why not implanted circuitry? I for one gave up a watch a long time ago. The way he describes this all-in-one-device reminds me of the talking watch calculators of the past.

Official "Pfft! I can do better than that!" thread

[Dan Crash]

I admit, I thought Mr. Sawyer's vision of the future only a decade away wasn't very good. (What are the "enhanced reality contact lenses" powered by? Happy thoughts?) But I'd be interested to hear other Slashdotters attempts at describing the tech of a typcial day in 2014. Go for it.

Ten years is not enough for this stuff

[twoshortplanks]

I don't think he's really thought some of these things through.

I mean, contact lenses that act as video screens? I haven't seen the prototype yet. Let's assume we have some in three years. two years to design the production model. Tack on a couple of years to tool up a production facility. Add on a couple of years for FDA approval. That leaves us just a year for them to become commonplace in the market place. Hell, we haven't all moved over to flatpanel screens yet, and they've been out for *years*.

Oh, and someone's going to have to write software for these to make them do something useful. A large number of people are still running Windows 95 and that was developed...what fifteen years ago.

Of course I could just be horseless carriage thinking

thank god for school!

[chocolatetrumpet]

socialization still happens best in a real school and at a real playground

Ahh, yes... segregated by age and ability level, this is definitly the best socialization!

Gotta keep those pesky parents out of the picture... and grandparents, my my - go back to the home!

So, the rich are Eloi, huh?

[TomorrowPlusX]

Sounds to me that, if you can afford it, you too can be a soft childlike Eloi in the future. Great, sign me up.

I think that some of these may come to pass, but 10 years is WAY too soon. What I mean here is, how different is today from ten years ago? Sure, the web and all, but they had BBSs and other similar tech since the 70s.

My car today isn't significantly different than a car bought in the 80s or early 90s, except its mileage is worse ( and my car's a small 2-door stickshift ).

My computer's essentially the same, just it's faster. Mac OS X is better than system 6, but really I use it for the same things: design & programming.

I hate the idea that we've plateau-ed technologically, but I think we have. We've reached a point of massive polishing and it might be decades before something new hits. And I don't mean computers... I mean something really new that changes everything, like free, infinite energy or anti-gravity or something.

The really big advances will be held back, possibly forever, because nobody will take liability when they ( inevitably ) fail in some way. Who is liable when two self-driving electric cars crash? The manufacturer? The city that lined the streets with sensors? The passengers, because they paid for the car and signed the EULA? For this reason flying cars won't happen, and pervasive nanotech will similarly be constrained.

I predict ten years from now won't be a whole lot different, except 3d graphics will be a lot better, my car will get worse mileage, and all consumer products will be built in china and will break in two years ( no offense to chinese, but man, quality control seems pretty lax there ).

Re:Too Many Connections?

[fyngyrz]

As a cynic whoose outlook has been validated by events for over forty years, I predict:

In ten years, computers will be 128 times "Moore powerful." However, Microsoft, now involved in world government (now simply called, "gummint"), has continued to develop, and use, higher and higher level languages to write the (only remaining legal) operating system in, and the operating system and its native applications are now 256 times larger and slower - so computers will do things for us as 1/2 the rate they do today.

Our mornings will still begin with waking up. Mornings will still suck, and you still won't like them.

Today, your coffee can be brewed while you sleep. Tomorrow's robokitchen won't allow you to have coffee, because in doses roughly equivalant to pouring the Black Sea down their little throats, it causes cancer in laboratory mice (who now have been specially bred to have no immune system at all.)

Of course, you aren't the only one who has to get going in the morning. Your spouse and kids will be taken care of, too. One morning you'll get up, and find that your children have been permanently taken to a "re-education facility" because the "smart toilet" reported to the Federal government that they had marijuana in their system from the junior prom, the night before. Your spouse is presently at the lawyers, suing for divorce (in 2014, 3 out of 4 people in the world are now lawyers.)

Your spouse might telecommute - but for the lawyer, she has to be there in person. You won't have to take the kids to school, because they've been taken away from you by the gummint. School based education and socialization - Cliquing 101, pre-teen sexual activity, learning to crib, mandatory studies of how God(tm) created the earth in 4000 B.C. and the gummint in 2008 A.D. - that's all over for now. Your kids will be learning how to hack the universal credit machine at the mall from the other kids in gummint custody.

Although you have an advanced degree, you work at McDonalds because the gummint doesn't like your attitude. So you drive to work. On your bicycle, because that's all you can afford. You'll arrive at work windblown and very sweaty. No one will want to venture very close to you. You won't have to worry about car keys, because you (and 99% of the rest of the population, which is huge because the pope, now a cabinet level post in the gummint, has told everyone to have plenty of children, bless you, bless you) can't afford a car.

Throughout the day, your non-removable wristband, a mandated citizen ID technology, will keep the gummint apprised of your wearabouts, alert to report any transaction upon which you fail to pay taxes, any jaywalking event, or use/consumption of banned substances such as coffee or pornography.

Recording your entire life will take a lot of storage, but the cost of gummint data storage will be entirely paid by your taxes, so that's no problem. The images of your life will be beamed through the air to an archive that only the gummint can access. Step over the line just once, and you'll automatically be tried, convicted and punished, all without the intervention of a human being.

Your McDonald's sales kiosk will have a smart wall of its own, giving every worker a chemical and hormonal scan for banned substances. And no matter which chair you sit on anywhere, the chair will monitor your nervous system for anti-gummint reactions to gummint infomercials, which are projected in the air 22 hours a day from your gummint wristband. The chair is networked to the gummint, of course.

On the way home from work, you'll stop to pick up a few things at the grocery store. No standing in line, though, to check out: you'll just waltz out the front door, as the Radio Frequency ID chips in the products you've bought allow their highly inflated costs to be tallied and your account automatically debited. You won't have enough credit left to pay for heating again next January. Your personality profile will be analyzed as you walk out the door to see if you

Re:Too Many Connections?

[Mr_Silver]

Right, like your boss is going to let you waltz in at 10:30 because your brain-wave monitor didn't deem you rested until after 9. (And if you've had enough rest, don't you wake up naturally? Why use a device to do it for you?)

Your sleep cycle is approximately 4 hours long and during that time you go through 4 states from drowsyness to REM.

If you are woken by your alarm clock during REM (the deepest) then you feel the worst. If you are woken during the lightest, then you feel the best. This is why sometimes you can have 4 hours of sleep and feel better than if you have 10.

I would guess that the band would monitor how "deep" you are and wake you up at the nearest time when you are at the lightest.

If I have to be awake at 7am, I'd rather be woken up at 5 and feel good, than wake up bang on 7 and feel crap all day.

Old people

[michael_cain]

I find it interesting that futurists (which is the role he's playing here) always talk about what life will be like for a 30-something who's married and has kids. Maybe it's not as true in Canada, but society is increasingly single people or people whose children are grown and gone. I'm 50, and both my children will be out of the house at college this fall. The IRS actuarial tables say I can expect another 34 years, significantly longer than the 20 years when I had children in the house. In ten years the "typical" person will be older than the typical person of today. In 50 years, we'll be up to our elbows in old people (well, you'll be up to your elbows -- the chances I'll still be here are small).

Future tech will be oriented more and more towards the needs of the elderly. AI that helps them keep track of their schedules and medication. Spoken interfaces to that AI because typing is very hard when your arthritis acts up. Always-on wireless communication so that "I've fallen and I can't get up" is not an issue. Appliances with sensors and network connections so the AI can remind you that you left the stove on or didn't turn on the washing machine. A shift towards smaller homes, all on one level, and the disappearance of bathtubs (bathtubs turn out to be incredibly hazardous for the elderly).