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Technology Innovation Areas For 2025
Kyle Spector writes "A global futurist research firm convened an expert panel to forecast the major areas and potential advances in technology innovation through the year 2025. This blog entry contains the full list of 12 areas and some details about each, including personalized medicine, distributed energy, pervasive computing, and nanomaterials."
1. Penis enlargement
2. Hair regeneration
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
The site reads a bit like the site of a hot-air factury.
from their front-page 'Social Technologies is a global research and consulting firm specializing in the integration of foresight, strategy, and innovation.' djeezes.
On energy, they say nothing about renewable energy like solar or wind, while it's clear even to me that solar will take a very big part of the production in the next years.
transportation : 'personal transportation coordinated through wireless computer networks,' I think they're spot-on. In 2025, nobody will be allowed to steer vehicles anymore. (currently there are more deaths per year on the road than you wanna know)
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
What a conjob
"# With the initial mapping of the human genome, scientists are moving rapidly toward the following likely breakthroughs for gene-based products and services:
* creation of an individual's genome map for a retail price of less than $1,000
This was announced last week...no waiting. Come on down.
The list is so general that it is bound to be accurate to a certain degree. Also, I seriously doubt that even the brightest and knowledgeable people can predict the really revolutionary stuff that's going to happen. I mean, back in 1989, how many (few?) people could envision the Internet in its current form? Certain societal advances are so revolutionary and disruptive that we cannot even begin to imagine them.
/Modern society is evil!/We must go back to nature!/ thinking.
Not that any of this means that the predicted future isn't amazing and great for mankind, of course. What's really encouraging is the focus on health and the environment. Advances in (bio) medicine, improved water purification, carbon management and engineered agriculture will arguably save and improve the lives of millions of human beings lessen mankind's impact on the environment. And it's all thanks to technology, and not
They are not saying anything too futuristic about the Universal water. What they say is almost here (with a good margin for improvement). However, what they don't say is that all those expensive cool ways to get water only matter to the first world, and not third world countries. We'll be lucky if they have a couple of drops of bleach to put on their drinking water to prevent waterborne diseases for 2025. That would save 1.8 million lives a year. Without any cool ways to get the water, just some basic water treatment for everybody.
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
Every single one of the points mentioned in each of the 12 areas is something that's happening now. This is a 5 year outlook, not an 18 year one. I was hoping to read about the 'next big thing'. 18 years ago it was cell phones and the internet. 18 years before that it was space (satellite), computers and materials science. 18 years before that it was the transistor and rock and roll. Each one had radical, far flung implications that had revolutionary effects, not evolutionary ones.
creation of an individual's genome map for a retail price of less than $1,000 - try $985
advanced electric storage devices and batteries at all scales - lithium? Supercaps?
very simple and inexpensive computing devices with integrated wireless telephone and Internet capabilities - www.nokia.com?
the "semantic Web," - Google? Netflix?
multiple variable and inexpensive sensors linked with computers - your door is ajar?
ultra-fine filters (probably from nanotechnology) - semipermeable membranes? Reverse osmosis?
affordable and effective carbon capture and storage technologies and systems for coal-burning power plants - riiiight... why not just re-burn the carbon after you capture it? Oh that's right, perpetual motion and all that.
identification of specific genomes for desired growing and use qualities - you mean ones that Monsanto hasn't already patented?
radio frequency tags for people and valuables - been shopping lately folks?
onboard sensors and computers for smart vehicles - your door is... we know, we know
advanced high-speed rail - presumably the high speed (400 km/h) rail we have now isn't advanced.
This reads more like someone's current R&D budget.
We'll look back on how naively optimistic we were. I remember there was an article back in 2000 about what a group of so-called futurists in the '50's predicted the year 2000 to be like. The only one that was right was "Television in Every Classroom."
If you want major breakthroughs for the "other" 90% of the world they'll have to cost less than $10 to the end-user.
When all these pundits (and their audiences) start thinking in those terms, that'll be a real breakthrough
P.S. My suggestion for the list would be a viable neural interface.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Well it feels like it anyway, I am pretty sure I saw this list before. Oh yeah, every damn year. It is just a blessing the flying car ain't on it anymore, have you got yours yet? Mine must be stuck in the mail. I knew there would be problems going all email.
But hey, I got time, so lets go through the whole list shall we.
Personalized medicineWith the initial mapping of the human genome, scientists are moving rapidly toward the following likely breakthroughs for gene-based products and services:
Distributed energyThe evolution of distributed energy will reflect that of computing: just as computing has migrated from the 20th centurys centralized model (powerful mainframes delivering applications to remote workstations) to todays decentralized model (PCs and networks), so energy generation and delivery will move from central to distributed sources, increasingly featuring local generators that can be linked when needed for greater output. Specific innovations will include:
Pervasive computingAlmost every device or object in consumers lives will be both smart and networked, giving rise to an Internet of things. Pervasive computing will drive the convergence of computing, the Internet, voice communications, and televisionultimately blurring categories of infotech products and services. Specific breakthroughs will include:
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This list looks 18 years into the future, if we look back 18 years, it takes us to 1989. In 1989 practically nobody had predicted the web or its implications. A single development, and yet the implications of it are profound and are still in progress.
The thing about technology is that it develops at a different rate to the social changes it causes. For instance, the social impact of the web is still happening and is likely to continue for a couple of decades, even if web technology doesn't change much. Why? Because people that grow up with a technology behave differently that those that didn't, so the profound social changes sometimes only happen when children grow up and enter active society.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/media/pictures/ But for the moment we are quite far from letting the car drive itself, as it's really difficult to control all variables and preview all unexpected things that could go wrong. Which is why the other way to do it is to remove the variables. You then get the additional benefit of eliminating traffic congestion as well which actually makes it faster than a traditional car.
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Necessity is still the mother of invention. All you have to do is look at problems that will not be solved next year, and think a little bit about it, you too can be a futurist. I'm not saying you will be great at it, but you can be a futurist. Being able to predict likely future trends used to be something useful and difficult to do. With the advent of the Internet, you have a veritable research facility in your home. What? you need to know about materials engineering? Google it bro! Oh, need to know about animal husbandry? Google it bro! At no previous time in man's history has so much information been available to so many people. I really am saddened to see that such is left out of the loop on how the future is going to look.
We are currently at some point of compromise between where society was when the original Star Trek was written, and where it predicts we will eventually go. The world has become much more flat, as they say, with regard to commerce, news, politics, and many other things. None of this seems to be affecting technology predictions. Well, I'll make a prediction; the things I've just mentioned will have a far greater impact on future technology than people generally give credence to.
Look at the results of what some of the current technology will bring: Health insurance industry upheaval with bio-tech innovations; big pharma industry upset with open source style medicines; auto insurance upheaval with computer driven vehicles; in general, all of the current trend in innovation is about to upset the big business apple cart. Trouble with this is not that things will change, but that third and second world countries are better poised to take advantage of it as it happens. Big businesses will fight tooth and nail to keep their stranglehold on their markets with the same determination that we have seen the **AA use. There is no good that can come from this.
I also predict that business will change in general. There will be polarization of business practices. Simply opening a company with one cash cow will not be good enough. There will be more vertical integration of business as well as more single mom-n-pop salons. Walmart and their ilk will crumble under their own weight. That seems to contradict what I said of vertical integration, but it does not. There will be more self reliance in business as technology becomes more important, and wise CEO's will see that they need in-house expertise rather than simply paying someone else to do what they can no longer trust another company to do for them. As the world becomes more flat, and regulation of industries becomes more equalized, it will not be possible for some huge multinationals to remain that way. Yes, shrinking profits is what is ahead for the globe.
It will take only one invention to upset the entire global economy, say for instance, free fuel. Hydrogen power for free or very cheap and made open source would destabilize a huge section of the global economy. None of these 'futurists' seem to get any of that in their predictions.... ?
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Any thoughts how we could create a fixed unit of value that would be as valid today as it will be in 10,000 years?
Short answer. You can't. The usual approach is to take the value of a basket of goods (like an ounce of gold or the constantly shifting weighted pile of stuff used in the US Consumer Price Index or CPI). But even that will depend on where you are and what methods you use to adjust for what you think are changes in the value of the goods (say via hedonics). And there's no apparent consistency between valuation methods. Even if I know the price of everything (in US dollars) in 2100, I won't know what the CPI is, simply because I won't know how the basket of goods has been weighted by then.Art is the mathematics of emotion