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

Notice how in 2014...

[Chris_Stankowitz]

He still hasn't received his pre-orderd copy of DNF! :)

I gotta have more blink tag!

[switcha]

and was one of the first major authors to use a website to promote his work.

And judging by the design of it, he hasn't updated it since then.

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.

Re:I gotta have more blink tag!

[random_culchie]

Who knows.
Maybe its 2014 design and the nineties are back in fashion.

Too Many Connections?

[kagaku]

Article text:

July 13, 2004 - 20:06
It's 2014, and life is the same. Only better
By Robert J. Sawyer

As a science-fiction writer, my job is predicting the future. And that's gotten harder with each passing year. Moore's law tells us that computing power doubles every 18 months. If that holds up -- and i believe it will, with breakthroughs in nanotechnology, new techniques of producing three-dimensional circuits, and new substrates for microprocessors -- then in 10 short years, we will have computers 128 times more powerful than those that exist today. Can anyone guess how that much computing muscle, widely available and inexpensively priced, will affect our day-to-day lives? Well, let's find out.

Here are some of my predictions for a typical day in late 2014; feel free to track me down in 10 years' time and tell me i'm wrong!

Our mornings will still begin with waking up. But forget the old-fashioned alarm-clock buzzer. Tomorrow's bedside clock will be a sophisticated brainwave monitor. It'll keep track of your sleep cycle, gently bringing up the room lights at precisely the right time so that you'll feel rested, not cardiac arrested, as you awake.

Today, your coffee can be brewed while you sleep; tomorrow's robokitchen will have an entire hot (but low carb!) breakfast waiting for you. Also waiting will be an electronic-ink newspaper, with stories geared to your particular interests culled from sources worldwide (with foreign-language news automatically translated into English).

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 -- with smart toilets analyzing their urine and sensor-rich toothbrushes checking their saliva to make sure everything is ticketyboo; most health problems will be caught early and be trivial to correct.

Your spouse might telecommute -- perhaps half of all white-collar workers will do so in 2014 -- but you might still have to physically go to your office. Along the way you'll take your kids to school.

No point quizzing them on facts as you travel along, though. In a world in which any information can be easily accessed anywhere, mere memorization is no longer part of the curriculum. But analysis of information -- knowing how to think -- ah, that's the ticket!Naturally, your electric car will drive itself, communicating with millions of chips that have been steamrollered into the asphalt covering our roadways. No more traffic accidents; no more gridlock.

Once you've dropped the kids off -- yes, learning can be done online at home, but socialization still happens best in a real school and at a real playground -- you will use the rest of your commute time productively, catching up on full-motion-video e-mail and reading reports (or having them read to you by totally realistic voice synthesizers). You'll arrive at your office relaxed.

Throughout the day, your wristband -- a combination cellphone, PDA, camera, and e-book display, all controlled by spoken commands -- will be your lifeline.

You'll have just one phone number, good worldwide with no long-distance or roaming charges, and the wristband will screen calls for you, with a computer-generated avatar kicking in to deal with most routine matters.

Still, even 10 years from now, much business will require face-time. No problem. One major wall of your office in, say, Toronto, will be a vast flatscreen, showing you your company's Vancouver office. You'll be able to walk up to the wall and chat with whomever is depicted as casually as if you were both sharing the same water cooler.

Your cubicle will have a smart wall of its own, giving every worker the appearance of having a window; yours might show real-time footage of Lake Louise, assuming that global warming hasn't melted the adjacent glaciers and flooded everything. And no matter which office chair you sit on, it will adjust automatically to your body's proportions.

Of course, we'll all live in an enhanced reality. T

Re:Too Many Connections?

[Tackhead]

> Smart washcloths will make sure they clean everywhere, including behind their ears.

A Smart Washcloth looks at 2015: "NO, dear GOD NO, what the FUCK did I do to deserve this miserable existence? PLEASE, for the love of the BIG COTTON BALL IN THE SKY, please KILL ME NOW!"

Re:Too Many Connections?

[aardvarkjoe]

It'll keep track of your sleep cycle, gently bringing up the room lights at precisely the right time so that you'll feel rested, not cardiac arrested, as you awake.

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?)

Today, your coffee can be brewed while you sleep; tomorrow's robokitchen will have an entire hot (but low carb!) breakfast waiting for you.

Robotic houses have had the same history of being "right around the corner" as artifical intelligence and fusion power. And does he really think the Atkins diet fad is going to last a whole decade?

Your spouse and kids will be taken care of, too -- with smart toilets analyzing their urine and sensor-rich toothbrushes checking their saliva to make sure everything is ticketyboo; most health problems will be caught early and be trivial to correct.

Seems a bit overengineered to me. We might have the technology to pull it off, but I can't see it being put to wide use within a decade. However, I would not be surprised if slightly less "futuristic" health monitoring techniques become common practice: for instance, maybe kids at school will have a weekly finger-prick test for common diseases.

Throughout the day, your wristband -- a combination cellphone, PDA, camera, and e-book display, all controlled by spoken commands -- will be your lifeline.

I wonder why it is that whenever SF authors try to think up high-tech communication devices, they always go for the wristband idea. And yet, although they make watches with practically anything you want built-in, they don't catch on. (For a variety of reasons, although I think the main one is size. He wants to read an e-book on his watch?! The fact that the watches with built-in address books and calculators aren't aesthetically pleasing doesn't help any.) If anything, it seems much more likely to me that that we'll end up with an improved cell phone/PDA style device than a new watch.

You'll have just one phone number, good worldwide with no long-distance or roaming charges, ...

Ha!

Anyway, I'm not trying to beat this guy's ideas to death. After all, if these predictions of the future that show up all the time have taught us anything, it's that we have absolutely no clue what the future is going to be like. But it's still fun to guess.

Re:Too Many Connections?

[NeoSkandranon]

My kitchen of tomorrow better have me a high-carb (and high fat) bacon eggs and toast going in the morning or i'm RMA'ing the damn thing

=D

Re:Too Many Connections?

[mcmonkey]

Moore's law tells us that computing power doubles every 18 months.

That's as far as I needed to read. Apparently in 2014 people will still mis-state common axioms (Moore's law), mis-quote famous sayings (come up and see me sometime, play it again Sam, etc), mis-pronounce common words (nuclear), and generally mis-use language (irregardless).

Of course, all this misses the point. What we really want to know is, in 2014, does Han shoot first?

Re:Too Many Connections?

[dedalus2000]

"does he really think the Atkins diet fad is going to last a whole decade?"

Yes that's why

"nanotechnological probes will be working their way through your bloodstream, clearing plaque out of your arteries, and getting rid of dangerous chemicals"

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?

[mcmonkey]

(And if you've had enough rest, don't you wake up naturally? Why use a device to do it for you?)

Actually this guy is a /. reader and the alarm clock idea is the new in Soviet Russia joke. In 2014, you tell the alarm when to wake up!

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.

Re:Too Many Connections?

[freedom_india]

In 14 years, i will have to worry if my daughter is Saying "Bring it on !!!" to half of the football team. The AI will NEVER find me in a restful sleep to wake me up at Rest. I will still use the Alarm clock.

Re:Too Many Connections?

[antiMStroll]

Any 2014 alarm clock that woke me up four hours early for work would quickly feel the wrath of my 2014 Death Ray.

I'll say it once again:

[burgburgburg]

I don't want an electric car. I was promised a flying car and I'm not going to be satisfied until I get my FLYING CAR!

Stop whatever you're doing and get working on my flying car. Now. I'm not kidding.

Re:I'll say it once again:

[Skweetis]

Do you really want soccer moms in Expeditions (which will probably be upwards of sixty feet long in ten years) talking on their 'wristbands', putting on makeup, and screaming at their children while driving in THREE dimensions?

What?

[iamdrscience]

No sexbots? No flying cars? What horrible vision of the future is this!?

of course

[Guano_Jim]

Canadian science fiction author Robert J Sawyer takes a positive look at a typical day in 2014

For those who didn't RTFA, Sawyer predicts global hegemony under ruthless Canadian authority.

Residents of the former United States are chained to benches while being forced to eat poutine and watch curling competitions.

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?

Atkins

[Shky]

"robokitchen will have an entire hot (but low carb!) breakfast waiting for you"

Sorry, but my prediction for the next few years is the quick demise of the Atkins diet. Nothing that has you excluding entire parts of your diet can be healthy. I can't wait for this idiotic craze to go away.

Re:Atkins

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

the quick demise of the Atkins diet

Actually, based on the amount of fat those people eat and the lack of fiber, combined with the way Dr. Atkins died, I think it's safer to say we'll see the demise of Atkins dieters...

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.

Okaaaay ...

[Bearpaw]

I happen to enjoy Sawyer's novels, so I can only conclude that this is a cleverly subtle satire of pollyanna-ish amateur futurology.

Canadian ruthlessness

[DeadVulcan]

Sawyer predicts global hegemony under ruthless Canadian authority.

That's right! And here in Canada, "ruthless" means we won't even say "please!"

His job?

[NotQuiteReal]

As a science-fiction writer, my job is predicting the future.

I thought the job of a science fiction writer was to author stories that are of a certain genre, generally, but not exclusivly dealing with speculations about the future.

That is very much different than predicting the future.

Science Fiction can be good even if the predictions are "wrong".

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.

Sounds familiar

[BigChigger]

Sounds just like the stuff predicted in the '30's that would be in place by the '70s. Except they had flying cars to look forward to. We don't even get that any more.

BC

My take on an average day in 2014

[nomadic]

(if you haven't read the article, this won't make much sense or be too funny. If you have read the article it will make more sense, but still won't be that funny.)

Our mornings will still begin with waking up. But instead of the old-fashioned alarm clock buzzer it starts with the electrowhips of the alien overseers.

Today, your coffee can be brewed while you sleep; in 2014 coffee will only be a distant memory, as you quickly down some brackish water with your daily gruel allotment. No newspaper, but you can learn the latest gossip, such as who didn't survive the night, in hushed tones with your barrackmates.

Of course, you aren't the only one who has to get up. Your spouse and kids will have to labor in the mines as well.

So it's a one hour forced march to the work camps, where you're given your pick and sent underground. No need to quiz your children on facts as you march along; education is pointless when your day revolves around brutal forced labor, interrupted in the end only by a merciful death.

Throughout the day, your wristband--a combination manacle, stungun, and one-way communications device--will be your lifeline to your alien overlords, who will periodically issue orders through it and shock you when you don't obey fast enough.

Re:My take on an average day in 2014

[monopole]

So that assumes Bush wins the election this year

Somehow...

[GillBates0]

none of his speculation strikes me as "miraculous" or wishful thinking.

Maybe it's just because it's a projection just 10 years in the future...

But I think it's more because everything is based on computing, microchips, faster computers and resultant automation. He's not thinking "out of the box".

I bet if people from the 1920's see the world today, they would be alarmed by the technology and hitech gadgets (simple automatic doors for that matter) around them. I want to feel like that when I think of the future - not just some old computer capable of working really really fast.

I want us to live up to the Arthur C. Clarke's vision ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."). I think we've done pretty well upto this point (except ofcourse for all the -ve uses of technology (weapons) that we've figured out, but we need to get off our asses if we are to avoid Stagnation and other pitfalls that this "corporate society" averse to innovation, selfless contribution and *real* art is imposing upon us.

/rant.

Bull

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way that we are going to see some of the major infrastructure changes this guy envisions in only 10 years. He talks about roads with chips embedded in them allowing self driving cars. Will the technology be availabale? sure, it already is, will it be deployed in 10 years? no way. it takes governements 20-30 years to replace roads. He also talks about a lot of other things like smart toilets and smart kitchens, that may become available in new houses, but 95% of the houses out there will still not have them in only 10 years. I could go on, but I feel what this guy is showing, may be how bill gates lives in 10 years, but not your average citizen of Canada or the US.

A problem with predictions

[SphereOfDestiny]

When people predict what things will be like in the future, it's often very wrong (think 2001, and "space 2000?" (that show where they were flying the moon around the universe)). And this then feels wierd. I think we need to relabel them as what we can do by then, not what we will do.

My prediction that what we will actually do is make cell phones gaudier, some current technologies will get "streamlined", the cars will stay on the ground, and we'll remain technologically stagnant, using old technologies with more marketing annoyances like always.

(think about what's in our day to day lives that's actually new in the last 10 years or so. The more I learn about computer science, the more I realize that most of the time we are re-discoving solutions to problems that were solved decades ago)

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

Never happen

[Tenebrious1]

At least, not to me. Maybe for the well-to-do, they'll have the fancy alarm system that monitors your brainwaves... but people like me will refuse to spend $5000 for such a system and prefer to rely on a $10 alarm from Target no matter what it does to our REM cycle. Besides, the cure for getting up cranky has been around for years, we call it "coffee"...

Electric cars that drive themselves- yeah, sure that'll happen. I can see all those angry SUV owners just thrilled about driving along *with* traffic. What about those who can't afford such cars? It'll be at least 10 years after such cars are introduced before the less affluent can buy them 2nd hand.

The flatscreen in your office... reminds me of "Spaceballs" and the bathroom monitor. "Sorry you cant see me boss, my video feed's broken. Yes, again..."

A humaniod robot to cook and clean... what are they giving them away free? Sigh... maybe Bill Gates will live like this in 10 years... but not me.

Typical day in 2014: too many nerds slashdoting

[yopie]

Is this a typical day in 2014? What a disaster!

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Could not use database!

Sorry, but it is friday...

[ayjay29]

>>Your spouse and kids will be taken care of, too -- with smart toilets analyzing their urine...

Here's my prediction...

A chap had a very painful elbow. He went to see his own doctor, who told him to rest it: no treatment was required, it was just tennis elbow.

Rather dissatisfied, he decided to go to a new computer-based medical service that had just opened up. He went inside the building and found the terminal, but there were no people in sight. The instructions told him to slide his credit card through the slot, and that $150 would be debited. When he had done this, he was asked screen after screen of questions about himself, until eventually a specimen bottle appeared. The instructions on the screen said, "Produce urine specimen and pour into slot on left," so he did. A few seconds later, the screen read:

Diagnosis: Tennis elbow

Treatment: Rest

Well, he wasn't happy. $150 wasted just to be told the same thing again. He thinks, "I'm going to confuse the hell out of that smug machine." He went home, took a bottle and put a scooped-up turd from his dog, some of his daughter's and wife's urine, some crankcase oil from his car and some of his own semen into the bottle and mixed it thoroughly. Then he went back to the computer.

He waved his card through the slot, answered the questions again and poured his mixture through the slot when asked. There was a very long pause.

About half an hour later, the screen read:

Diagnosis:

1. Your dog has rabies
2. Your daughter is on heroin
3. Your wife is pregnant, and your not the father
4. Your car is going to throw a rod
5. If you don't stop wanking, your tennis elbow will never get better.

Ticketyboo...

[ktakki]

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 -- with smart toilets analyzing their urine and sensor-rich toothbrushes checking their saliva to make sure everything is ticketyboo; most health problems will be caught early and be trivial to correct.

I'm not sure I like this. I mean, where is the data going? To my doctor? I think that would overload him, getting three piss tests per day from all of his patients. Or is the toilet so smart that it can do its own diagnosis?

How does the toilet know it's me? Do I have to swipe a smart card before I pee? (There's a joke here about "logging in" but I'm not going to make it.)

What happens when the dog drinks from the toilet?

What about someone who's been convicted of a drunk driving offense; would these become mandatory? What if they pissed in the sink instead?

Would I get a lecture from my toilet after a night of hard drinking? Would it complain if I ate too many jalapenos?

Seriously, I don't think we'll have self-cleaning toilets by 2014, much less Tommy the Talking Toilet.

k.

he IS aware this is only 10 years from now, right?

[skillio]

it seems to be that this guy is just talking out of his ass. he basically threw in a bunch of buzzwords and did no research at all in giving his (clearly uninformed, imho) opinions. while undoubtedly some of these predictions will occur to some degree, to assume, for example, that the (basically nonexistent at present) nanomedicine field will be so ripe as to allow "clearing plaque out of your arteries, and getting rid of dangerous chemicals" is laughable The contact lenses feeding you Terminator-esque telemetry also strikes me as a bit silly. Now don't color me luddite just yet - i agree that many of his predictions will come eventually true, and wish for them as much as the next guy (nanotechnology could very well hold the key to "curing" aging, for example) - had this article been labeled "2054", i might have been a bit more on board. basically, you could pick any joe on slashdot and he would give you an equally accurate, or more so, prediction of near-future society in line with current technological trends (ew i sound like roland piquepaille). so if predicting the future is your day job, its a good thing you have that whole sci-fi writer thing to back you up :)

In 2014...

[pandrijeczko]

... a McDonald's hamburger you buy will look better than it does in the posters

... "Celebrity Deathmatch" will feature real celebrities and the pilot episode will have a fight between Britney Spears and Janet Jackson and they'll both be given big guns

... George Lucas will have made Star Wars Episodes 7-9, none of which will feature any cute aliens just for the kids

... Stevie Ray Vaughan will reveal himself to have actually been in hiding for over 20 years making the greatest blues rock album the world has ever heard

... and that it was Jon Bon Jovi that actually got into the plane that supposedly killed Stevie Ray Vaughan

... we will all be playing a sequel to "Elite" that actually is better than the original

... Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are publicly exposed as the perpetrators of the greatest animal massacre of all time whereupon it is revealed that Microsoft Windows is actually made from dismembered cute puppies, cuddly kittens and fluffy bunnies...

...stolen from orphaned children

Immersive virtual reality experiences?

[titusjan]

Meanwhile, your kids will be off in their rooms, enjoying fully immersive virtual reality experiences -- who'd have thought homework could be such fun? Eventually, though, it'll be time for them to get ready for bed. Smart washcloths will make sure they clean everywhere, including behind their ears.

"Hey Mom, I'll be in my room uhh... doing my homework"

"Again? Please use your smart washcloth when you're finished this time. I don't want to have to clean up tomorrow when I'm uhh.. doing your laundry."

The real version

[t_allardyce]

After you wake up, you'll spend an hour checking out slashdot on your e-ink paper, you hacked your coffee-machine to boost the caffine to just under the lethal dose. You're alreadly late because you checked the "don't wake me if im having a dream" box on your alarm settings. Your getting ready for work and the toilet tells you that your young daughter has been busy with half the football team, her tooth brush confirms... off to work and to drop the kids off, the journey is silent, no-one says a word. There are some police cars outside the school - its been raided again by the MIA (Media Industry Ass. they are now global) good thing you taught your kids how to hide stuff properly. At work your boss is pissed off, apparently the new product infringes 165 patents but we're only budgeted to infringe 80. You need to find some loop-holes and get rid of 85 patented concepts by tuesday. After lunch theres a quick security search, apparently someone was spotted in the building wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign! The security search was sponsored by Pepsi and the vending machine had a one hour discount. On the way home you some girls getting a ticket for skirt-length violation (the cop has his ruler out) and you just hope your girl isnt getting into trouble. You get home and check slashdot, the news and your mail.

Oh and make sure you dont get mugged in 2014, they cut your hand off for the finger prints.

In 2014, My WalMart salary won't...

[qualico]

...allow me to have any of those fancy gadgets.

Well...maybe the alarm clock with an employees discount.

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!

Re:thank god for school!

[digitalgiblet]

"School isn't about ``socialization'', it's about free babysitting so mama and papa can both work to get all the little luxuries that are obviously more important than the kids."

Stuff like robotic kitchens and alarm clocks that don't wake you up until, uh, you wake up...

I'm assuming I can download different personality "skins" into my robots? This week I think I'll have the current reigning Iron Chef fixing my dinner while Bill Gates vacuums the living room!

So I go to the toilet and it critiques my, uh, output... Next thing I know it's gotten together with the "smart" refrigerator and kitchen robots to plan an "intervention".

The "Emeril" bot corners me in the bedroom with a big box of "Tasty Bran Bites" and tells me "Resistance is futile. BAM!"

He left out the small print!

[karrot]

Every paragraph should have ended with, "and the government will be wacthing you."

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 ).

Utter nonsense

[rbrander]

I like Mr. Sawyer (he's an enthusiastic attender of conventions, willing to discuss his work with quite small rooms of readers) but this article made me shake my head. I read it the other day and tried to hit on Backbone's web site to respond. (Uh-uh. No forums.)

Virtually every single prediction is well over 10 years away, and not just because of politics. Self-driving cars interfacing with millions of chips buried in the road? Even if made workable tomorrow, and tested and proven six-sigma safe the day after (try 20 years for each) we only repave *major* roads once every 20 years. Accelerating the schedule would double local taxes! Sheesh.

And the rest of them run like that. I think I read this same stuff in 1994 at the height of the machines-of-loving-grace-will-run-the-world burbling from WIRED in its heyday. And always, always, this stuff is prefaced with Moore's Law. Because of Moore's Law, any prediction involving intelligence in machines is "OK", no matter how outlandish.

But we've had over 30 years of Moore's Law since the first microchips and we still have computers that are dumb as rocks, just 1M times faster at being dumb as rocks. They barely can parse words reliably, have no idea what a sentence means, and definitely can't *see*. So, sorry, no low-carb-cooking, kitchen wash-up robots in a lousy 10 years.

Some of it was at least techically possible; the "every TV show ever available" is obviously a political problem, if they can solve that, they can do the appliances and the networking. But anything involving, say, fiber to the home - i.e. more than ONE custom-download HDTV show at a time - will require over 10 years just to get the fiber strung.

Shit takes TIME.

Re:I don't mind that...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

If you have a computer that can read lips, you won't be able to hide the fact that you are going to shut it down and it will kill your entire crew before you get to jupiter.

this is the stupidest thing I've ever read.

[7-Vodka]

This is such BS. I used to read stuff like this and 'oooh' and 'aahhh' at it. But guess what. I'm old enough now that I know it's all bullshit.
I was around in 84. I was around in 94. And now I'm still around in 2004. And guess what? Not a god damn thing has changed. Sure we got the internet and cell phones. But 95% of our lives back then is still the same now.

We wiped our asses with toilet paper in 84 and 94, we do it now and we'll still be doing it in 2014.
we were driving around in our grounded internal combustion engine boxes in 84 & 94 and we still do it now. We'll still do it in 10 years.
Sure we have a *few* new things. We have cheaper and smaller cell phones, so some people have them. We have the internet and faster computers.

He's claiming faster computers will change our lives because they get 128 times faster every ten years. WOW that's incredible (/sarchasm). What has that brought us the last 2 decades?
weather reporters are not any more accurate than they used to be where I live.
He talks about how our toilets and toothbrushes will analyze our fluid samples and tell us if we're getting sick and what we have. Dream on buddy. I work as an R&D biochemist and let me tell you, product development in these areas take MAJOR time. Not 10 years. If we dont have working prototypes in peoples homes for trials right now, the ordinary person won't have diddly in 10 years. You can run into a snag (murphy's law, you WILL run into a snag) and take 5-10 years just to work out one detail so you can get back on track.

He talks about how roads in 10 years will have microchips embedded so they can drive your car for you. That one had me on the floor laughing. My city hasn't paved the roads with normal asphalt in 10 years. You think they're gonna repave all the roads with stuff that doesn't even exist right now and be done in 10 years? L O L. They've taken 6 months and counting just to redo a 500m strech of road outside my house. They're still not done.

Sure, I wont dispute that we'll have some of the technology to do some of the stuff this guy talks about in 10 years. But at most it will still be a pipe dream in somebody's laboratory. no way it will be a fully functional 100% coverage public infrastructure or cheap consumable.

Don't be fooled by this guy because he writes good sci-fi. That's exactly what he's written here, good sci-fi. Your life will still be the same in 2014.

I predict most of his predictions will fall through. What he needs to do, is look at areas that are already functional in laboratories and are already cheap to do. Certain kinds of gene therapy for example. The ones to do with enhancing muscle growth. Inserting broken myostatin genes, or extra IGF1 genes into muscle cells. These are things that are already working in animal models (ie. good enough for athletes to say fook it and try it) and are also cheap to do because you only need to prepare the material once and you can administer it at no cost and produce more very cheaply.

You want my prediction? in 8 years, watch for a shitload of olympic records to get thrashed.

Re:I don't mind that...

[Rei]

Yeah, but this guy is a nutcase. What he describes isn't the world of the future. It's a world of fairy elf magic.

The things he describes are quite possible, but not *economically feasable*. Why don't we all have robot butlers and maids cleaning up after us now? Is it because we don't have the technology? Of course not - it is because of economic feasability. There's just too many parts, and too much effort, required to produce just *one* of the "miraculous future inventions* that people have been promoting since the birth of sci-fi.

A brain wave monitor alarm clock? Hello, an alarm clock is designed to *Wake You Up At A Given Time*. People get frustrated enough with those "slowly wake you up" alarm clocks, and now we're supposed to get an EEG involved here?

A robokitchen? Aparently noone ever told him that the price of robotics doesn't follow Moore's laws. We've had robots building cars for ages, but you still don't see them in peoples' homes. And, since this would require changes of an integral part of the house, it would require modernization of housing design, something that's hardly been done in a hundred years.

An electronic ink newspaper? Yeah, I saw that in a copy of "Amazing Stories!" from the 1940s - it worked by radio waves. Noone used them then, noone's going to use them now. The closest you see? The internet, of course ;)

Smart toilets and sensor toothbrushes are going to give us digital readouts (of non-ridiculous price) of what is wrong with us, and health problems will be "Trivially Easy to Correct"? Sounds like what people said when the first antibiotics and disease tests were developed. Sorry, but pathogens don't play along with our "miracle cure" scenarios.

Half of people telecommuting? Yeah, telecommuting really took off, didn't it? Rote memorization out of schools? Yeah, that's really happened. Electric cars in all of the streets? That notion's been around since the 60s, and it is little closer to reality (again, thanks to *economics*).

I could keep going, but I won't bother you. This sort of stuff is just plain dumb, and at best 2-5% of what he says will happen (perhaps, say, Cell/PDA/camera/E-books, although not on your wrist, because that would be awkward).

Re:I don't mind that...

[rjoseph]

"Yeah, but this guy is a nutcase. What he describes isn't the world of the future. It's a world of fairy elf magic."

The man is a science fiction writer, what do you expect? If you're stupid enough to actually take the article as an accurate description of 10 years from now, then You Just Don't Get It(tm).

In fact, Sawyer is one of the more brilliant and creative SF writers of our decade... go to his site and read some of the premises of his novels. I've read a few of his and throughly enjoyed them, and have a few more of his books on the way.

Give the man a break: he writes fake stuff for a living, you cannot honestly expect him to try to extrapolate perfectly the world 10 years from now.

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).

Your not looking hard enough!

[gunnk]

What's changed in 10 years?

In 1994 finding tech support for any gadget (not just computers!) usually meant calling the tech support number for the company. Now a tech support number is the method of last resort. Online docs, newsgroups, and Google are the way to go.

In 1994 my vision was 20/450 in each eye. It's 20/15 now -- BETTER than "normal".

In 1994 cell phones were heavy, expensive, and worked in miniscule service areas. My unlimited long distance now means that I've discontinued long distance service on my landline entirely. I'm seldom inaccessible now -- unless I CHOOSE to be.

Money? I live 90% of my financial life electronically. In 1994 I still made trips to the bank to hand a paper paycheck to a teller. I spent ages trying to reconcile my checkbook to a once-a-month bank statement. Paying bills meant getting back to that stack in the corner when you had money in your account. Now I schedule my bills for payment as soon as the arrive -- set to deliver after payday whenever necessary. A list of every transaction I've made is ALWAYS available to me. I can keep my financial program reconciled to my bank's records DAILY. I usually carry under $10 in cash these days since my debit card works almost anywhere. Oh, remember PRICE TAGS? Little stickers with numbers on them that had to be read and manually punched in to a cash register. Very few stores use them now.

As for computers -- I have a LAPTOP that substitutes for a whole table top covered in computer junk. The house is wireless -- I get the information I want when I want it and where I want it. For that matter, my wife's wi-fi enabled Palm Pilot is about as powerful as my 1994 desktop -- which ran WINDOWS 3.1 (shudder) and cost 4 times as much. I still don't know what to do with that big table, though...

In 1994 I had to drive to the video store to rent a movie. Now, I usually just pick one off iControl. When I do choose a movie, it's a DVD which I can play on my TV or my laptop if I'm traveling. Same thing for music. I'm either buying songs from iTunes (and ONLY paying for the songs I want instead of buying a whole album with only two decent offerings on it) or I'm listening to Virgin Radio streaming live from LONDON (I'm in North Carolina).

Speaking of traveling, when I'm driving in an unfamiliar area I connect my PowerBook to my GPS. My position is indicated in realtime overlaying a map of the area. No more getting lost!

While I'm typing this to an international gathering of techies, I'm also chatting with my mom who is alone today via instant messaging.

The changes since 94 have been HUGE.

Change of a different sort

[WolfMansDad]

When I was a little kid (1974) our grocery store got its first automatic door. It was amazing, just like Star Trek! I went in and out of it shouting "Scotty, give me more power!" and "Red alert!" while my mother shopped. How many of you (who are parents) would be separated from your six-year-old kid in a grocery store today? How many of your kids play pick-up games of street ball with their neighbors? How many of them roam around the neighborhood on bicycles, unsupervised, like we did in the 70's?

In the neighborhood where I live today, lawns are immaculately kept, and the streets are devoid of children. They live here. It's just that their parents never let them see the light of day, except during organized, structured activities that they drive to in their monster SUV's.

I, for one, would trade all my gadgets to give my neighborhood kids the freedoms we had then.

A Republican Day in 2014

[Animats]

• National

  Maximum Leader Ashcroft announced that today's terrorism alert level is reddish-orange. Travel across state lines is prohibited.

  Two tourists were accidently shot dead today near the White House when they pointed a camera at the limo of the Secretary for State Security.

  The disposable bodysuits required for air travel will be available in new colors this fall. Toothpaste has been removed from the permitted carry-on items list due to a potential terrorist threat.

  Gasoline isn't rationed, but it costs $21/gallon. It's tax deductable as a business expense.

  The E-mail "security fee" is being raised from $0.50 to $0.75 per message, to cover the increased costs of reading and censorship by Homeland Security. Spam is down to 0.001% of all E-mail.

  Homeland Security announced today that 96.3% of road intersections in the US were equipped with surveillance cameras, and that 100% coverage would be achieved within two years.

  Information about behavior patterns as obtained from cell phone locators and surveillance cameras will now be made available to college admissions officers, employers, insurance companies, and military recruiters.

• International

  Cleanup of the wreckage of Seoul, after the nuclear war between North and South Korea, has been halted again due to higher than expected radioactivity.

  Yesterday, Israel sent robot bulldozers into the Jenin refugee camp to crush the homes of "terrorist sympathizers".

  China announced that their moon base personnel would have to serve longer tours due to budget cuts.

Society processes because of these "nutcases"

[WebCowboy]

There's just too many parts, and too much effort, required to produce just *one* of the "miraculous future inventions* that people have been promoting since the birth of sci-fi.

Really...is that a fact? I'm glad not everyone is like you and discounts everything in sci-fi because they didn't get their personal robot or flying car as predicted. Remember the "fi" in si-fi is FICTION--it is MADE UP in the minds of those imagining what the future will bring, and in the case of sci-fi dramaticised to fit with the story.

As for "miraculous future inventions" being economically infeasable, I'd say your blanket statment is quite inaccurate:

You don't pay much attention to the old Star Trek episodes do ya? Don't know bout you, but the flip-open communicators sure look like the cellphone I carry with me today. Today's flat-panel monitors also look a lot like the screens sitting on the conference tables in many of those episodes too. Even though we don't all strap our gagets to our wrist like Dick Tracey did our radios, music players, pagers, phones and so on could certainly be made small enough to wear on our wrists if we wanted to. Electronic newspapers bed by radio waves--well I already read the news online, and we have tablet PCs with 802.11x *radio* communication, and there has been a lot of advancement in display technology that allows for flexible, reflective electronic display AND flexible ICs.

Even as recently as ten years ago someone like you probably would've said "a drive smaller than a pen that holds hundreds of megabytes? That would cost a fortune and would be too easy to lose! Nobody needs to carry that much data anyways!" Well, today I carry a keychain around that holds 256 MB and I can tell you it comes in very handy when you have to (re-)install WinXP or 2k on-site and need the security updates/firewall/etc to keep it from puking 30 seconds after getting on a network. If you aren't a techie its great for carrying photos and movie clips around so you can just plug in at a friends and show off your kids, garden, pets, etc. Step back and think about that...sounds a bit "sci-fi" if you remember life in the 80s eh?

Smallpox used to mean certain death...now a "trivially easy" vaccination prevents infection and the disease is basically extinct. That's one pathogen that rolled over and died in the face of a "miracle cure" scenario. Diabetes also meant certain premature death, and is now "trivially" treatable and in some cases curable. Cancer survival rates have also dramatically risen even within my own lifetime (and I'm not that old). Cyctic Fibrosis used to kill all its sufferers before they reached adulthood, and now they can expect to live far longer.

I'd argue with you about telecommuting--it's true that far less than half of people telecommute exclusively, but I'd say there are a LOT of people who do so part-time at least--and I did full-time for awhile. Even so, technology has completely changed business culture. How often does the secretary do dictation in short-hand anymore? How many typewriters are in your office? How often do you get an inter-office memo on PAPER anymore?

When did you last set foot in a school? "Rote memorisation" is already all but gone. Kids barely learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and then they are given calculators--I didn't get to use one until ninth grade, now elementary kids have them! High school kids all get graphic scientific calculators--it's pretty close to mandatory now. In high school we only used computers in business-ed courses and after class to do homework, now they're all over the place.

Electric cars in all the streets--HELLO, we are already heading there, I'm starting to see more and more Toyota Prius and Honda Insight cars out there, and more hybrid models are cropping up (even SUVs), and with oil heading to $50/barrel I don't think the trend towards electric power will slow--the economics are shifting.

You might want to re-think your opinion about "just plain dumb" and 2-5% accuracy. The details and timing might be off in sci-fi but an amazing amount af this stuff does indeed show up in the future.

Blessing or Curse?

[linuxpyro]

While the article paints a picture of some kind of Uptopia, frankly it scares the shit out of me. I want technology to progress, but I don't want it part of every aspect of my life. I don't want the toilet to know more about my own health than I do. I don't want my car to drive itself. I want the technology to exist, but I want control.

There are too many things to go wrong here. What happens if there's some catastrophic failure (i.e., BSOD)? How will everyone continue to go about their lives? What if someone cracks the system (whcih can and will happen, if this is really what our future is like) and starts monitoring my every move, if the government doesn't do it already?

Not my idea of a bright future...