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Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology (medium.com)
Chris Dixon, an American internet entrepreneur and investor in a range of tech and media companies including Kickstarter and Foursquare has written an essay on Medium highlighting some of the reasons why we should be excited about the future of technology. The reasons he has listed are as follows: 1. Self-Driving Cars: Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3-5 years they'll get even safer, and will begin to go mainstream.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
Aging will be solved.
All I'm seeing in this list is "more ads, more analytics, more rent extraction through middle men and IP monopolies."
And number 11? Let me be perfectly clear: THERE WILL NEVER BE A FIDUCIARY ARGUMENT TO PURSUE SPACE EXPLORATION WITHOUT GOVERNMENT FUNDING.
These things have been around for some time now, with near ZERO effect on the world. Now I'm supposed to be excited about the future because of them? Meh.
They can keep that shit
Not the future. Low end cell phones have better specs than the Cray Y-MP supercomputer at my university.
has written an essay on Medium
Can we please also specify when things are written on Wordpress or Blogger as well? It's extremely crucial that I'm aware of the blogging software that an article is written on.
1. Self-Driving Cars: Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3â"5 years they'll get even safer, and will begin to go mainstream.
Hackable cars, easier surveillance, depressing.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
Expensive energy, depressing.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
People avoiding the real world more, depressing.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
Flying bombs and deathtraps, depressing.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
It'll enslave us all, depressing.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
NSA can process the taps locally, depressing.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
Economics, depressing.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
More know-it-alls who can't think rationally on the market, depressing.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
Soon we can kill off all the animals and plants and replace them with factories, depressing.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
Combine this with AI and VR, what could possibly go wrong, depressing.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.
The rich will either force the poor up into space, or go themselves to escape the pollution, depressing.
Self driving cars being the main culprit for making things boring, but the rest of them don't fill me with excitement either. The future seems to be clean, sterilised, free from madness, politically correct and by-the-book. It also seems to be filled with capitalists who want to automate their entire business and live a life of hedonism on the bahamas while everyone else supposedly keeps working for their money.
Tl;dr? The future is a load of sh1t really
That list looks like everything that was promised at a 1950's World Fair Expo.
1. Self-Driving Cars: Someone Else's Car.
2. Clean Energy: Someone Else's Wealth.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Someone Else's data, displayed.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: Someone Else's "paperless office" or "alternatively fueled car".
5. Artificial Intelligence: Someone Else's algorithm on Someone Else's CPU.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: Someone Else's data collection.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Someone Else's wealth.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Someone Else's knowledge...that no employer will ever esteem as highly as a degree.
9. Better Food through Science: Someone Else's farm.
10. Computerized Medicine: Someone Else's algorithm.
11. A New Space Age: Someone Else's patent.
at the combination of #1 & #5
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
12. Golden age for direct marketing
1. Too expensive, and not even close to being able to operate in "most driving conditions"
2. NIMBYs
3. People with motion sickness and vision problems (ie glasses)
4. Dromes-too small(battery/carrying capacity); Flying cars- too expensive, airspace regulation and pilot licensing, gravity(what happens when they fail at altitude)
5. Still not close
6. So...faster youtube watching and instagramming (what about data plans to match?)
7. Lack of acceptance on cryptocurrencies and massive public failures and hacking of exchanges
8. Useless on a resume, no accredited degree=no job
9. What good are medical breakthroughs that no one can afford?
10. OK, this one actually is kind of exciting. Hopefully the commercial launch providers are able to drum up enough business before government funding gets cut even more.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I want the opposite. Eleven reasons NOT to be excited about technology. It's MUCH more fun delivering doom and gloom than happiness to my co workers.
>> High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
This has been true of libraries and the early days of the Internet as well: there's PLENTY of free material available to those who want to learn something. However, most people still spend most of their time consuming pop/political lit or playing games instead of learning or contributing anything worthwhile.
And...you'll still need a degree to get a job, and what you learn online isn't going to help there except to let you skate through a class or two at the university.
There is a significant danger threatening all of these advances. Yes, I'm talking about that old Libertarian canard of government regulation and, even more importantly, the temptation to have the government "pick the winner" in each area. This is dangerous not only because it violates basic freedoms, but also because the picking is done based on the current knowledge and "state of the art" — and I am assuming the sincerely best intentions of everyone involved — and suppresses "disruptive" innovation.
For example, when FDR granted AT&T its monopoly to advance the fine-sounding goal of connecting every American to the phone network, the company was happy to run wires to each house — billing the taxpayers for it. Facing no competition, they did not have to consider wireless telephony... No, I'm not talking about mobile phones of today — or even of the nineties. But the "last mile" problem in remote locales could have been solved by stationary cellular phones in houses with the 1940-ies levels of technology (fixed large antennas, no need for batteries).
Similarly, had we not been forced to dump quite so many billions every year into maintaining surface roads and highways, maybe, the personal flying vehicles would've been here already — while, in the mean time, the intercity traffic (of both people and goods) would've been handled by the rail-roads much more than it is today.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
1. Please someone else should be the guinea pig before I use it. Great technology but right now not ready yet. Maybe in 10 years if there is continued development. Either way, it means more tracking and tracing, that's bad.
2. We have to do it one way or another, so either we figure it out, or lots of people will face the consequences.
3. VR? yes, please. Augmented reality? No thanks, it just allows even more tracking and tracing.
4. Flying cars are an energy waste. Most of the energy is required to keep those things in the air. Drones are too, but if they are popular enough maybe we will get a pneumatic tube like system for the smaller and mid sized things, and drones for the larger things.
5. AI is going to be one of those things that will only work in the cloud. I for one welcome our new cortana overlord.
6. Its nice but these supercomputers are sold and marketed and used as consumption devices, not as devices you really are productive with.
7. The banking industry had a digital revolution long overdue.
8. It has already arrived. Just take a look at wikipedia.
9. Its a good concept but we should NOT do things like giving antibiotics to lifestock so that we can put them even closer together. That just creates germ immunities, and threatens human treatments.
10. But make them secure. Current medical devices have tons of security holes. Hackers shouldn't be able to hold humans ransom.
11. Space is nice, but mostly something for dreams, and not real life.
I'd like to add 12, as it wasn't mentioned. With the invention of CRISPR, we will see lots of genetical engineering appear, and many illnesses will be successfully fought with that technique.
The First World will certainly "benefit", the Third World doesn't really get much from this list.
We're so coddled that we still only think about ourselves and the world we imagine we'd like to live in (even though the one we're in is already extremely cushy for the most part).
Let's not forget that not everyone has it anywhere near as good as we do. They may not want to live like us, but they want to live without the constant threat of hunger, violence or even just a heavy rain.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
0. Upcoming global extinction event due to meteor impact combined with the automation of the workfource, outsourcing everyone, laying off 90% of employees in the next 10 years, and paying the rest minimum wage..... US degenerating to a communist state, Hillary seizing all the guns, ISIS bioterrorists deploying global anti-human microbes, launching dirty bombs and mass-executions, and North Korea nuking us all......
May happen before we get all those cool new technologies. Not to be pessimistic about it..... just be realistic. The world is going to hell amidst other good things being worked on.
.
Under the driving forces of businesses who want to profit from the near-continual violation of my privacy, technology has become more and more of an unwelcome intrusion into my life.
Some of us actually do enjoy driving, track/race and are quite good at it.
That's a far different thing from 99.9999% of the driving most of us do. I get to drive roughly 60 minutes per day for my commute round trip. There is nothing enjoyable about the drive and changing to an exciting car wouldn't make it more exciting. If my commute is something you would find fun then I would wonder what is wrong with you. The vast majority of my driving time is a waste of my life. It is unproductive, boring, occasionally dangerous, polluting and wasteful. Sure getting behind the wheel of a fast car on a track is a blast but very little driving even remotely fits that description.
I am unable to drive because of vision problems. Self-driving cars will be life-changing for me. The rest of it, meh...
1. Self-Driving Cars: My insurance premiums will go up, because I still like the thrill of driving.
2. Clean Energy: Access to energy will be limited because people are having too many children and my share of the human carbon footprint will be ever decreasing.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Get motion sickness on your couch. Plus, with your new found poverty, the only holiday you'll know will be virtual.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: Rich fat people will be stinking up mountain tops that were previously only accessible by the dedicated.
5. Artificial Intelligence: The government will be finding new tools to subjugate the population.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: You must be connected all the time! Work on the train! Work in the self drive car! Work!
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Higher taxes as the government has to spend even more surveillance money. Protect me from those terrorist children and wot not.
8. High-Quality Online Education: No excuse for not being in 'full time' education your whole life. Weekend? That's not for enjoying life! Learn new skills or be obsolete by Tuesday!
9. Better Food through Science: Tofu is not better food, all this means is that beef will be more expensive, and people will be eating gellatenous blobs.
10. Computerized Medicine: It's already too hard to argue with know it all doctors who don't listen, don't care, cover their arse and hold your hand while you die. Computer says no.
11. A New Space Age: What? Again? What for? Send a robot up there!
Is that counting the *ginormous* amount of water that corn consumes--which is *not* a cow's natural diet (nor ours for that matter)?
If you let cows range free they are both healthier, taste better, and you don't have to pump them full of drugs at all--yielding safer and healthier meat.
e aí? já arranjou um retardado como você pra te levar na feira dos transformistas? ou vai ficar stalkeando e esnobando teu comedor na frente da minha casa poque você só goza quando se exibe? estou perguntando pra saber qual lado eu posso sair pra ter certeza que não vou encontrar merda.
We need to overcome our greed and get to a Gini Coefficient near zero. There's enough wealth in the world because of increased technology and automation, but we need to spread it around. Having some super billionaires channel their wealth in the directions that they favor through their foundations is not the way the world should evolve.
They always throw in a mix of obvious things that are already happening and a few long shots. That way they can point to their awesome ability to get so many right, and occasionally they even guess correctly on something unexpected.
What, someone likes to drive?
I shouldn't jinx myself, but I've been driving since 1981, and haven't caused an accident.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Technology makes oppression easier, quicker, and more efficient.
1. Self-Driving Cars: another excuse to buy a new car....
2. Clean Energy: Good, but still the production of materials needed for Solar, etc, are environmentally expensive.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: another excuse to buy a new TV.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: more "stuff" to buy.
5. Artificial Intelligence: something else to annoy me. Regular people are enough.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: another excuse to buy a new phone.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: the economy must be based on resources, not money.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Good, knwoledge is never enough.
9. Better Food through Science: Keep off my beef!
10. Computerized Medicine: Educate people not to get sick first, THEN seek new meds.
11. A New Space Age: good, as long I can get a beef on Mars....
\m/
Slashdot will finally support unicode and have half decent editors.
Only maybe.
1. Self-Driving Cars: If the tech and legal issues ever get sorted, it can be great. But that's nowhere near happening, so the hype machine needs to continue to roll to continue bringing in new investors.
2. Clean Energy: Very expensive and requiring massive diversity of investment. Wind and solar (the big "new" players) are not for every environment. Moreover, there has only been minimal gains in the grid balancing act required to make use of these intermittent energy sources.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Porn and games. For all other applications, it would just be too much of a distraction.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: Drones come with MASSIVE safety and privacy risks. Flying cars are and always will be BS.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Always just around the corner.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: If we can designate smartphones supercomputers because they're as powerful as supercomputers once were, then I am the smartest man on Earth (by comparison to pre-Enlightenment Europe).
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Until there's a means of securing cryptocurrencies in peoples' hands, they will never gain sufficient faith for widespread usage. Until then, they're just volatile niche currencies.
8. High-Quality Online Education: Online Education will be crap until you can figure out a way to use it to consistently educate the lower socio-economic ranks. Until then, we're going to continue to NEED to require them to physically show up to a classroom with humans adjusting to the needs of the students.
9. Better Food through Science: This is the past. We've been doing this for hundreds of years.
10. Computerized Medicine: Which will be useless unless our social policies surrounding the relationships between medical costs and medical profits aren't addressed.
11. A New Space Age: This is where the drones comes in. Today's governments are spending more money on keeping their populations healthier and prolonging lives. As they invest more, there will be less money for exploration (and 99% of exploration is funded by governments). It is, and will continue to be for a long time, to just send drones to do our exploration for us.
... because of the potential for abuse, At least fix the editor so that when you submit something with any multi-byte utf8 characters, in it, it will go to a screen that previews it and says there was non-ascii utf8 in the post, and confirm the submission. This will satisfy the people who don't want utf8 in slashdot, and at least give the people who have copy-pasted some text with such characters in it an additional awareness of the issue.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
self driving cars -- now you can work on the way to work twice as far away. I hope you didn't have a fun car that you enjoyed driving.
clean energy -- round eight of the same problem
VR -- stop going outside or enjoying other people.
drones and flying cars -- louder bigger insects, and bullshit on the flying cars
AI -- we're nowhere near computers making decisions. we still don't have voice recognition (voice analysis we have, but it can't handle the standard cocktail party effect)
pocket supercomputers -- again, stop enjoying other people
cryptocurrencies -- I've never had a problem with the money in my pocket, my mattress, nor my bank. have you?
online education -- again again, stop enjoying other people. learn from machines instead.
science food -- yeah, 'cause the farm-fresh stuff that grows in the ground is jus awful.
computer medicine -- happy to hear it. along with hearing aids and glasses, everything affects someone sometime. Look forward to living longer with machines and work, and never enjoying other people.
space -- there's plenty of space here. loads of places I haven't been. billions of people I haven't met. I'm not yet done here. I don't need to leave.
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? I'd rather see a future where more people have leisure time and enough wealth to be able to enjoy themselves without interruptions.
This list doesn't say why any of these things would be beneficial. Take self-driving cars (just because it's at the top of the pile). The benefits are not having to own your own vehicle, being able to get pissed out of your skull and still get home, better access for disabled people, not having to take a test, less congestion, sleeping on the way to work, not having to pay for the vehicle when you're not using it, not having to worry about it being broken - just send for another one.
These are what people will buy into the technology for, not simply to say "Look at me! I've got a driverless car" which seems to be the geek's motivation.
But when it comes to other items, such as AI, the benefits of raw, naked, AI are never stated. Will it really benefit Joe Average to have a computer in his / her / its pocket that is smarter than they are?
And a final point worth considering: how many of these "exciting" technologies will be centrally controlled?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Public libraries are a vastly under-utilized resource. When I was a kid, I loved spending time there, looking for exciting books to read. One of my best finds was a book on nuclear fission and fusion by Glenn Seaborg. I pored over that book, checking it out time after time after time.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
This list would be much better if it were presented as a separate page for each item in the list and required clicking past a Viagra ad to get to the next entry.
Things like Virtual Reality and Flying Cars have been promised as 'just around the corner' for at least 25 years. I remember seeing a VR demonstration in the early 90' and being told it will be in every household within the next few years.
I'll add these things right next to the metric system, on the 'just a few years away' list.
Will these things make my life better, or are they completely irrelevant? I think the latter is more accurate. While I enjoy programming and hardware design, the end results of these activities have almost zero influence on my happiness. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the upper three levels (love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are completely unrelated to these technology goals. And safety (in terms of freedom from anxiety brought on by over-stimulation and distraction), these technological advances are counter productive, at least for a somewhat introvert).
We could have been building thorium reactors everywhere, including ones small enough to fit in your basement or in a pickup truck, that run on fuel easily available on most beaches all over the world and producing waste so harmless you could sprinkle it on your oatmeal.
Instead we have nuts telling us to build more expensive, useless wind and solar plants, driving the prices of electricity up all the time, transferring more wealth upwards from the unwashed masses to the corporate overlords, destroying any security in terms of energy our nations could have had, and creating more artificial scarcity.
I would equally ask what's wrong with you that you wouldn't enjoy being behind the wheel of an exciting car, even in traffic
Doesn't matter what kind of car it is if I'm stuck in traffic. I've owned a number of fast fun cars. Still boring as shit in traffic. They're only fun when you can actually use them to some significant percentage of their potential. What is the point in owning a fast Mercedes when you cannot drive it faster than the posted speed limit on a congested road? Drag race between stoplights? Maybe that's fun when you are a teenager. Cool looking car? That's the outside and I don't get to look at it. Great handling? Useless on my daily commute unless I'm avoiding an accident.
Would I buy a Model S or a Nissan GT-R if I had the funds? Sure. But for my daily commute there would be little entertainment value in them. They're only really fun when you can thrash them a bit and go around some bends at butt puckering speeds.
What about the resources needed to produce their food?
I hate to break it to folks, there is no such thing coming.
The industrial use and production of energy is a messy business, both environmentally and financially. This will not change.
Consider the recent advent of two major "clean" energy alternatives, solar and wind. They are FAR from "clean" environmentally no matter how you slice them. Photovoltaic solar is really a horrible thing for the environment. Manufacturing and scrapping of solar cells is a messy thing and creating and operating those "let's build a huge array of mirrors to focus the sunlight to make something really hot thing is even worse as it takes huge swaths of land, has a serious issue with local wildlife and is *really* expensive. Wind isn't all that much better. It takes large areas of land, puts substantial structures on it and has a detrimental affect on the local environment too (killing birds, bats, bugs and such).
About the only real hope here is fusion, but we are a LONG way from even being able to field an operating industrial level facility so there is no way we can judge the environmental impact of such a thing. I can tell you that right now, they are pretty messy, with superconducting magnets and emitting radiation.
"Clean" energy is like "Free" food. It doesn't really exist.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
All of these technologies are pretty exciting, but there are a lot of disruptive things in there, particularly as it relates to displacing workers' jobs. The first item on the list is going to cause a huge shift as truck, taxis and bus drivers all start losing jobs en masse. None of them are likely to be happy about having to retrain for new, more difficult work (any more than buggy whip manufacturers were) and most will likely just be added to the millions of people disenfranchised with the new economy. This is a dangerous situation. What good is a grand new economy if there's nothing in it that I can see myself getting paid to do?
For a while I was wondering if we'd see a resurgence of co-operatives, where a community gets together and builds their own little economy, with a small farm and some skilled trades people. You'd at least be able to live a reasonably happy life. Unfortunately I can't see that happening. How would that community pay the ever-increasing land use fees such as tax, etc.? That land becomes more and more valuable to the people who have money, and they can just force the have-nots off the land.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The mention of future clean energy does not mention any nuclear energy source, which mean we either won't have energy, won't have clean energy, or we won't have a future.
Wind and solar exist in the marketplace because of subsidies. Those subsidies are possible because of fossil fuels and nuclear, they fund the market so that they can produce taxes for the wind and solar companies to stay in business. To those that claim nuclear, coal, and oil are subsidized I will concede that is true. What I will point out is that even if the subsidies go away we'd still be using coal, oil, and nuclear fission. If the subsidies for wind and solar go away then so does the wind and solar manufacturing.
In fact I'd like to test my theory. Let's end all energy subsidies and let the market figure it out. Not only do I believe that wind and solar would nearly disappear but I believe that nuclear would gain. If I'm right or wrong then we all win with a freer market and cheaper energy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm terrified. Most of this tech is going to cost jobs. In most of the world your entire quality of life is based on your job. Our society simply isn't set up to desk with the sudden mass unemployment that's coming in the next decade or two. People really, really hate the idea of somebody getting paid to loaf around all day. But if there's no jobs the only alternative is mass starvation...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
USA Centric
Medicine is only expensive in the USA, the rest of the world does healthcare better and cheaper or worse and cheaper
NASA's budget is getting smaller .... but the rest of the world is spending as much or more on Space ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
That conflicts with how scaling for more people is now their biggest problem. They've had quite an effect on me; easier payments, better financial privacy (inb4 "doesn't know about CoinJoin" guy), not lending my labor to a completely privileged insider economy, better availability of drugs (black and gray market), and a huge increase to my net worth.
Markets need time to grow organically or else we'll just get more bubbles and crashes. If you screw up, you can't just reinstall it - you've lost money.
I don't see "sex robots" in his list of things to be excited about. I fail to understand why I should be excited about self driving cars, but a robot GF would actually change the world.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
1. Driverless cars do not solve the the problem of traffic. They just create more time to watch ads. In cities, maps need to be accurate to 10cms. Every time the software gets upgraded, the car should take a driving test. Really this can only work if ALL cars are driverless. Urban pursuit driving in cities is already bad enough with humans, imagine the mess of driverless and humans, My local supermarket can't even make the self-service till work well. What chance driverless?
2. Clean Energy: Do tesla's charging points only connect to clean solar, wind or other generators? How is this clean Energy? Sure the car doesn't emit, but the process of making the batteries, the car and the energy?
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality. More like Plausible Nonsense. I either have to buy a $500 helmet/Visor or equip my room with 9 gazillion cameras and sensors. Like GoogleglASS this is for specialised situations like Industrial design, medical treatment etc.
4. Drones and Flying Cars. Inspection perhaps.
5. AI. One of the reasons he lost the first GO game was he couldn't feel the opponent's breathing, behaviour or other nuance. Surely Most AI is brute force against Millions of examples captured via search or social?
And the jobs that are being created? They are lowered paid than previous jobs (fiverr.com) and have no protection or opportunity to grow. "Just do more gigs in less time". These aren't Jobs. A job means employment, rights, a way forward and pays enough taxes to pay for society. Uber and Deliveroo are technology companies who apparently don't employee the people who deliver their service. They are technology companies, not employers.
6. Pocket Supercomputers. Not at all. Supercomputer resources were never wasted, they were too valuable. SmartPhones are incredible. But not supercomputers.
7. CryptoCurrencies and Blockchains. I like the blockchain as a decentralised authority idea. Massive transaction processing though? I doubt it.
8. High Quality Online education - ONLY If you have good quality internet. So not everyone. Smartphone+1 year's Internet = ($600+12*$30) = $960 Not far off the $1,400 for Encylopedia. OR go to the library and use their facilities.
9. Better food through Science. Or stop food wastage and excessive portions in developed countries.
10. Computerized Medicine - Same as AI above - brute force processing of data.
11. A new Space age - A giant unregulated market for VCs. How does society benefit?
And clean up after the cows. Every barn everywhere uses a lot of water to wash out mud/waste/dirt/food/etc
Re: drones and flying cars - Will the skies become as congested as the highways and drive all of the birds out of existence?
Will we ever be able to witness a sunrise or sunset again unobscured by all this additional air traffic?
Ain't nobody wanting this garbage. Anyone even investing in this are either insane or already bought the hardware to mine that crap and are now stuck with it.
The full version is: "Eleven Reasons For The Wealthy* To Be Excited About The Future of Technology"
*does not include what used to be the first world middle class.
The problem I have with some of the estimates for water include rainfall in their calculations which I don't think should be. It's been worked out that a certain plant requires a specific amount of water in laboratory conditions. I believe that only water that is added by us should be included in those calculations.
True, laboratory estimates would strictly apply only under the assumption of irrigating a desert. But rainfall isn't free: you need to rent land that receives rain.
Come on unless you can make flying cars pretty damn quiet and I mean almost silent, we don't want them. Noise pollution is already a real problem without any more added. Can you just imagine a steady stream of these things flying over your house. No thanks.
I'm not interested in #1 or #3 at all. It amounts to less control of my life. I enjoy driving, and having people tune out from each other (even more than they do now) is not a social improvement. Technological marvel? Yes. Improvement in life? No.
'Self driving cars' are not 'here today', they're a JOKE, and they will not be 'mainstream in 3-5 years'. At best they'll be allowed to be sophisticated autopilots, so don't throw away your drivers license you'll need it.
Drones need to DIE. Flying cars aren't going to happen.
So-called 'artificial intelligence' is highly overrated and they're using the wrong term for what they have now. When you come to me with a so-called 'AI' that is indistinguishable from a human being in every way then I'll call it an 'AI', until then it's just another silly limited computer program.
'By 2020, 80% of all humans on Earth will carry around personal surveillance platforms that greedy corporations, governments, and criminal organizations use to collect personal data on them that they sell, use for advertising, use to build 'profiles' of people, and use to steal your identity". That's what that line should read. Smartphones are becoming a scourge, not a help.
'Crytocurrencies' need to die. All they're good for, really, is money-laundering by criminals and terrorists.
How about we get some 'high quality PUBLIC SCHOOL education' so kids don't end up dumb and useless?
How about we get doctors to not suck instead of 'computerized medicine'? I don't want an 'automated doctor', I want a HUMAN doctor that knows what the hell they're doing!
Our 'better food through science' may yet kill us all. I've stopped even bothering to talk about it because it's all already in the wind so there's nothing we can do to stop it now. Either our meddling is harmless, or it destroys us. Come back in 20 years and we'll see which it is.
'Clean energy' may or may not catch on. We'll see if India and China get on board for real or if their mad rush to be 1st World Countries means they just keep burning coal. Also, can we get some Thorium up in this mix, please? Seriously stop being paranoid about nuclear power, damnit.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This has been true of libraries and the early days of the Internet as well
Speak for yourself. My recollection of libraries was hours going to a library, sifting through a card catalogue, getting the book you wanted if you were lucky and not having to go on the waiting list and get it in 2 weeks time, finding the information slowly if you're lucky and actually found a good relevant book, and then having to return it shortly after creating even more hassle.
The early days of the internet were much the same. God it sucked going through web-rings trying to find relevant information, hoping someone had something of interest for you posted recently on alt.i.cant.even.remember, and then searching for something on altavista only to find that the article wasn't actually about what you're looking for and the only references to it are in white text on a white background at the bottom of the page to fool the search engine.
Comparing the internet now to the level of information back then is like comparing apples to apple seeds ... which you don't have because someone else currently has them and they won't be returned for another two weeks.
And...you'll still need a degree to get a job
Yes this is infact a downside.
Here's a picture of coal mine pollution. It doesn't show the mercury being released into the air when it burns. Do you have any pictures of solar cell pollution, or is that more a hypothetical thing?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Have all been "30 years away" and probably always will be.
About flying cars, people can barely navigate in 2 dimensions, what makes anyone think 3 will end well? Forget the flying sh*t, fix getting to work and the next city over with hyperloops.
And now slashdot has become buzzfeed. Sad.
Well, excitement does depend on how available these will be to me ( part of the 50 %, ie: the masses ).
And in other news - the technological nightmares waiting in the future:
Genetically-specific viruses ( target just Inuits? )...
Smaller robotic weapons ( mosquito drones with sharp paper to slice tender skin areas ).
Maybe a real mathematical psychology, with predictive capability.
Maybe Soylent Green, Soylent Purple, and Soylent Yellow...
A real dark ages with knowledge for just a few... the masses will be effectively illiterate.
Sudden outbreaks of a Godzilla virus from the dumping of waste, radioactive leakage, drug waste from the sewer systems...
and the beat goes on, and on, and on...
How about we call it Less Dirty Energy?
The pollution to the environment from making a solar cell one time is far less that the ongoing damage done by fossil fuels.
The wildlife endangered by solar and wind farms is localized and far less than the destruction of all wildlife's habitats by climate change.
But it's your birthday, Eeyore, cheer up, have some cake.
All of them. That's the point you see.
FWIW, the production of batteries, solar cells, tech generally involves the creation of waste which, if unmanaged, is _vastly_ more damaging in the long term to environment and animal health than coal sludge -- including germ-line damage that will affect generations of animals in the future.
I'm totally for any replacement of coal/shale/natural gas -- any sustainable renewable or nuclear technology is fine with me -- but we have to be honest about technology; its production is the opposite of non-polluting. Some truly horrific by-products need significant care.
1. Clean energy is great, but how about water? Energy is a luxury, water is not.
2. We do a great job at solving engineering problems. It is the social problems that have gotten significantly worse in the past century.
3. We already have a system to accept electronic payments from anywhere you can put a phone. There is no reason to expect that blockchains will be able to match that level of service without the same sorts of service fees that blockchains were allegedly created to eliminate. It will always cost you 2% to pay for things in the future.
4. To fulfill the dream of self driving cars will require a massing investment in infrastructure. Now you want to triple the maintenance and operational costs for having a self driving car? Not going to be worth it in the long run.
including germ-line damage that will affect generations of animals in the future.
And what exactly do you think will be the result of all the radiation from the coal?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone.
In the U.S.*, operating a smartphone for a year (to say nothing of purchasing one to begin with) costs well north of $50x12=$600.
The median per capita income worldwide is something like* $2,920.
Even if the 50% of world adults above the median all bought smartphone service, he'd need to get another 30% of adults from below the median to reach his 80%. Those people would be spending something like* 20% of their yearly income on this. No way.
*To be sure, this post uses several approximations (U.S. data plan costs, Gallup's income methodology, etc.), but 80% is a still a fantasy.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone
Dont' you mean "Locked and DRM encumbered Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone"
12. Better porn, higher resolution and more realistic vr.
We do not have the technology for flying cars. We do have the technology for those ridiculous airplanes with folding wings that then look vaguely like a car, we have propellers, as in drones, and we do have noisy, inefficient and expensive rocket technology. But we do not have the technology to develop what we all imagine when we talk about a flying car: a contraption that does look very much like a car, that hovers silently (or nearly so) in the air, and that zips back and forth over no matter what kind of terrain. Not only do we not have such a technology but, in addition, we have no clue how to develop it. There will be no such flying cars in this century.
You seriously miss my point... I'm not claiming coal is clean here.. I'm claiming that solar and wind are NOT without environmental impact when you consider the complete lifecycle of the equipment. Photovoltaic solar is incredibly messy.. Perhaps you don't care because that "mess" is located half a world away (in China) and not in your back yard? The production and maintenance of wind turbines is similar in it's environmental impact and being made from huge amounts of fiberglass will be a HUGE mess to get rid of.. Then there is all the hydraulic oil and lubricants that keep these things pointed in the right direction and the blades turning.... And that's just for starters. Surely you see that even these methods of energy production are not without their problems.
Now if you want to start making noise about what's "cleaner" then have at it with somebody else. Coal is pretty messy stuff, but it's cheap and plentiful. Natural Gas is much cleaner, just not as cheap. Solar is VERY expensive and a pretty big mess too. Wind is not without it's long and short term impacts. Just admit to yourself that "CLEAN ENERGY" doesn't really exist and never will if you are being honest about the total lifecycle of the equipment.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1. Self driving cars for public use don't exist and I don't see this changing within the next 20 years. Effort required to sufficiently address long tail of operating conditions is greatly underappreciated.
2. Every sentence uttered about "clean energy" reflect lack of understanding by the author.
Quoting IEA EEMR 2014 "In 2011, energy savings from continued improvement in the energy efficiency of 11 IEA member countries equalled 1 337 million tonnes of oil-equivalent (Mtoe). This level exceeded the total final consumption (TFC) from any single fuel source in these countries, and was larger than the total 2011 TFC for the European Union from all energy sources combined. Energy efficiency savings in 11 IEA member countries were effectively displacing a continentâ(TM)s energy demand"
On clean energy it isn't production stupid it is storage an issue completely ignored by the author.
3. VR is a toy for playing games with some niche industry uses (training, simulation, design). This quote about sums it up "People sometimes think VR and AR will be used only for gaming, but over time they will be used for all sorts of activities. For example, weâ(TM)ll use them to manipulate 3-D objects"
I personally think VR as a toy can be a lot of fun which is great. To the extent it "transforms the world" will have more to do with technology addiction. (Like Facebook and cell phones)
4. Flying cars and back to the future quotes.. I'll leave this speak for itself.
5. I wish the author would have provided useful information and context to support "rapid advances" headline. Instead we got van gogh cats and something about Google saving energy.
6. Our first world bullshit is amazing. Here are some other quotes. "More people have a mobile phone than a toilet"... "Every 90 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease".
7. Why should the reader care? What benefit does the user derive? .. Oh fuck it... "Protocols are the plumbing of the internet" and "Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols".
8. God I hope so if people can't even learn shit over the Internet that would be really embarrassing.
About the only real hope here is fusion, but we are a LONG way from even being able to field an operating industrial level facility so there is no way we can judge the environmental impact of such a thing. I can tell you that right now, they are pretty messy, with superconducting magnets and emitting radiation.
"Clean" energy is like "Free" food. It doesn't really exist.
I live near an old tokamak test site and knew guys who worked on it. Fusion is not any cleaner than fission.
You seriously miss my point... I'm not claiming coal is clean here.. I'm claiming that solar and wind are NOT without environmental impact when you consider the complete lifecycle of the equipment.
Walking out your front door is not clean, mate.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For somebody who's supposed to be at the forefront it is very odd to miss the revolution that quantum information processing will bring.
Retirement as we know it is a very modern phenomena. As recently as 1880 78% of men over the age of 65 were still working, compared to around 20% today. We are already starting to see a trend towards the end of retirement since this number was closer to 10% in 1980.
The initial driving force which created our retirement system was the idea old people are worthless and need to get out of the way. It wasn't some kind of reward for years of hard work, it was only marketed that way. Our economy is already finding uses for older workers and by the time all baby boomers are retired I would be surprised if usage of older workers doesn't ramp up. Advisory or mentoring roles working 500 hours per year would be a great fit, for instance, and could give some supplemental income for those who didn't save enough money. And then there is the likely possibility medical technology improves so that 80 year old's can still function as 50 year old's (or even younger) in the workplace.
There will probably always be a form of disability insurance for those who cannot work for physical or mental reasons above a certain age. But for the rest of the elderly they may take long sabbaticals from time to time but full retirement will probably be a rarity.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
GPS has been available to the general public since the day they turned it on. The designers knew how useful it would be back in the 70s. "Drones" A.K.A. model aircraft, have been around longer than the military have had airplanes.
No one wants to beat up their 6 or 7 figure airplane duking it out with rusty old Chevys. The invention of the rental car desk at the airport is the end of flying car dreams. Or...maybe you DO want to spend weeks or months and $50,000 getting a parking lot ding fixed by an FAA certified carbon fiber repair shop.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
The haven't worked enough perhaps, but they have absolutely been working. Energy intensity, the amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP has been falling everywhere, and the best economies far out perform the lagging ones (like the United States) so even just implementing proven existing techniques would have great impact. And energy efficiency technologies are making rapid progress - automated control, LEDs, etc. The bang-for-the-buck in energy efficiency is almost always larger than in energy production (i.e. the cheapest energy is the energy that you didn't use). Going forward, emphasis on energy efficiency will be fully as important as changing modes of energy production.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Before the FBI came here (and CIA killed EditorDavid) you would never see this shit on the front page.
That is not a summary. People neglect the summaries on behalf of the comments. So what do FBI super G's do? Blast the whole page with a fucking bullshit waste of a scroll wheel spin.
Why? You faggots got ate up in the comments didn't you.
Sincerely
X___________, the FBI faggot.
currency.
The exciting thing about tech to the US government is they don't have to chop trees to put the public's digits in their own accounts.
Just digital muh man.
usdebtclock.org
I share your point. But there is even worse, and I can't understand how nobody cares about it: even IF clean energy (look toward fusion reactors, more than air or water energy extracting devices, inefficient and costly) was to happen, it couldn't be a worse news regarding climate changes! Yes, green house effects are worrysome. But increasing the global energy (ie temperature!) of the planet would lead to boiling the oceans. Earth, as a system, shares intrants and emissions. One can suppose (hope?) that they are equal, and thus that the system equilibrium remains still. But cheap "clean energy" (ie not only re-introducing stock energy from the past, what we do nowadays burning oil and coal, but CREATING new sources) would put awry this equilibrium, and ... Venus is at hand! 400C, for those who don't know...
Can you remember the title? I'm really curious.
Right, but you still have to learn how to do research, and teaching that could be improved with AI.
>in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments.
No funding COMES FROM GOVERNMENTS EVER. Taxes come from the PUBLIC.
You snuck this in for anybody drowsy and hypnotized by the longest summary in the history of Slashdot.
Total 100x fuck the FBI now.
of reasons to dread the future of technology! Wait, what? Seriously, these are precisely the reasons many feel silicon valley is out of control and needs to be regulated, stat. Nothing on the list is proven tech, and we really gotta stop pushing out betas when it comes to issues that are greater than texting or getting song reccommendations. Everything on the list has the ptential to be a horrendous disaster, and should require many years of perfecting before we even THINK about implementing them.
And clean up after the cows. Every barn everywhere uses a lot of water to wash out mud/waste/dirt/food/etc
Have you ever been in a barn? There isn't a lot of washing going on. Generally, there is a bunch of manure and hay on the floor, once in a while it might get shoveled out but seldom, if ever, gets washed out.
Enigma
The radiation from coal is the least of its pollution hazards, and it decreases with time. The heavy metals and other toxins will be around forever. Burning billions of tons of coal every year produces (literal) mountains of toxic ash and enormous global air and water pollution.
It's clean, not immaculate. Which means it is relatively clean. That is something we have now and its deployment is increasing. Birds were coal co propaganda already shown to be garbage when comparisons of wind generation vs coal and even vs cats result in concluding that wind generation has significantly less impact on birds than either of these. Bugs? You just had to pile on whatever you thought of as long as you were repeating old disinformation. Bugs. Killed by an offshore wind farm. Wow.
We now have clean energy and it is growing rapidly.
But this list is lame. It's some futurist nonsense. Self driving cars are not really some great leap forward and they are not even close to ready. Most likely they will not be ready for a long time. Virtual reality? Not a life changer. Flying cars? Not happening and who cares. Electric cars will actually help make our lives better and they are happening. Drones? Toys and tech dreams that require our giving up privacy and comfort. Whoever thinks that drones flying over our homes so Bezos can be even richer is a good thing needs to reevaluate. No real benefit to people in general. In fact all detriment except for a few wealthy people. AI doesn't exist so it hasn't made rapid advances. It's like Fusion energy. Always 20 years away. The rest is just continued drivel. We really aren't progressing the way we should. There is too much entrenched money directing us away from things that could be a continuation of Western society's past drive toward improvement. Instead we get self stroking ego toys that don't actually work.
Clean energy especially personally owned generation is something to be optimistic about. Electric cars. Lassoing an asteroid and bringing it to the Earth-Moon system. Dumping traditional telecommunications corps and using encrypted internet telephony instead. These are things that can make a difference. Not toyish pipe dreams of the self-absorbed. Heck, even that a socialist presidential candidate was taken seriously in the US is more substantial than most things on the list.
Are you referring to his autobiography, Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington ? https://www.amazon.com/Adventu...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Even better... how about a super-intelligent robot GF who can help you debug your code?
The next step in evolution of the human race is uploading our minds and leaving these frail organic bodies behind.
Yes, there's always a bright side to promised new tech, but in the real world where greed, gluttony, avarice, coveting, lying, cheating and such exist and are displayed daily the real consequences, side-effects, and potential abuses must be considered by sane and responsible people. Miss America style magical thinking is really only appropriate for elementary school gatherings and beauty pagents.
1. Self-Driving Cars: They'll be over-regulated, their software will likely suck, and while they'll almost certainly be eventually safer than the average moron with a driver's license, they will also likely fail to function properly in outlier cases where a human operated car would work fine.
2. Clean Energy: There's no such thing. Even solar panels are made with toxic materials. Wind generators aremade with both toxic materials and using rare-Earth materials which are obtained and processed with often highly polluting schemes in the third world. Also, the dreamed-of and hyped "clean energy" schemes usually proposed (like wind and solar) are not reliable and constant and thus require nuclear or fossil fuel plants for all the standby and surge generation and if those plants are only used for standby and surge then they become VERY expensive thus helping to drive up the costs of all energy. As the grid becomes "greener" kilowatt-hours become more expensive.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Ah, so more detatched and delusional people is now a good thing? Living in single-person interface entertainment world is a very toxic thing. Why care about anybody else or the society if you are in your dreamworld bubble?
4. Drones and Flying Cars: Um, no. As drones get more ubiquitous and their activities involve more of the economy (MONEY!), government will regulate them more and their makers/operators will naturally get more entanlged with big government. Early wealthy entrants in the markets will buy lawmakers who will pass laws and rules "for our good" that will lock-out new upstart entrants from the market. Eventually, government will cite accidents as justification to convince "soccer moms" to support licensing requirements and eventually the airspace will be handed to commercial and government operators. Flying cars were demonstrated in the 1930s, so why doesn't everybody have one? The regulatory overhead for a new plane is years and millions of dollars. Divided over even several thousand flying cars it can nearly doublethe price tag. Add-in the regulatory costs for a car, and the costs for avaerage people are too high. Add-in the expense and time to get a license to operate a flying manned vehicle and the FAA ability to take away such a license for any of a myriad of health issues that can suddenly arise, and the average person is priced-out. This is unlike the 1920s before the FAA when a young guy like Wiley Post or Charles Lindburgh could trade a motorcyle for a used plane and teach himself to fly.
5. Artificial Intelligence: No such thing. There's SIMULATED intelligence which will eventually pass Turing tests and such, but not being actually alive no computer will ever actually KNOW anything. A file cabinet stores tons of information, but understands none of it. The English, the word "know" is too vague; the SciFi term "grok" or the German word "wissen" is needed. The problem is one of comprehension, and "gut-level" understanding. A computer will be able to perfectly describe a thing, how it's made, what to do with it, and anything else it can correlate with dictionary entries but it will never actually comprehend the thing. Sorry, but while there will eventually be a HAL-9000 that APPEARS intelligent, there will never be a C3PO that actually is.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: So what? For super-videogames? Computers are great, but the average person does not actually need one to live a good life. One reason PC sales are down is that Steve Jobs realized that most people only need enough tech for email and web browsing and he can do that with 2014 tech in a tablet or smart phone.
For cars, phones, my camera....
Where are my graphene nanotubes batteries?
Absolutely written by upper middle class or wealthy out-of-touch techno-fappers.
Not a single entry which addresses poverty, social inequality or ridiculously extreme wealth disparity which is only getting worse.
So, rich kids can get excited about "augmented reality" toys - - I hope those apps hide all of the starving homeless people in the world.
It will be a nice future... if you can pay for it.
Low maintenance compared to live flesh.
TPM does one thing and one thing only: it records the boot process. An operating system can just ignore the TPM entirely and still work.
You mentioned UEFI Secure Boot. Desktop and laptop PCs with an x86-64 CPU that come with Windows 8 or Windows 10 are required to support it. Those certified to run Windows 8 must give the user a way to turn off Secure Boot or change the keys it uses. Microsoft relaxed this in Windows 10, allowing manufacturers to ship PCs with Restricted Boot (FSF's term for Secure Boot that the user cannot alter). In practice, how common are PCs with Restricted Boot?
App Stores: Let me know when Microsoft eats its own dog food by putting Visual Studio in Windows Store as a UWP app.
Most of the items on that list represent solutions to problems which could be solved by abstinence.
So many people here posted negatively about online education (expect 1 post I think).
I think you are all wrong. Online information and education is way better than what you can find in books. It's nearly unlimited, more balanced (less biased due to more sources and counterpoints), recent (updated regularly), multi-media (text, video, audio), easily translated, less expensive, less time consuming, cross-referenced and searchable.
I use the library all the time. But I am finding more and more information online that is better, educates me on new ideas faster and without expense of time and money required for traditional methods.
If you don't see this value, then either you are not actively trying to educate yourself today, or you have already invested in an expensive traditional education and do not like the idea that your time and money has been wasted... or at least was not as efficient and thorough as it could have been today.
But more important than how this change will effect you personally... think of the developing countries. Those children do not have the same options as you and online eduction will make a huge difference in the number of children who have the ability to learn at their fingertips. Think of the children (ha ha).
I will grant that some employers still look for traditional certifications for some jobs or to limit the stack of resumes to sift through... but this will change.
There are a lot of brains in the world right now. Allowing them to think harder and work better will make a huge difference. You think India and China are stealing your jobs now? Just you wait until the poor all over the world have access to all the information and tools you get for free and take for granted.
8. High Quality Online education - ONLY If you have good quality internet. So not everyone. Smartphone+1 year's Internet = ($600+12*$30) = $960 Not far off the $1,400 for Encylopedia. OR go to the library and use their facilities.
Ha. I guess you are the type of person who claims that an encyclopedia set is better than wikipedia. It is quaint to see some people still believe that a limited set of proprietary ideas coming from the top down can compete with the whole world working together to collect and distribute information.
And if you actually go to the library, you will see that they are becoming the doorway to the Internet for the poor. Just go into a library, count the seats that are now assigned to shared desktops and designed for laptop usage.
Libraries of the future = online education.
We need to get rid of this thought. It's not going to happen. I'm a pilot and I can tell you the sky is already way over crowded. The last thing we need are a bunch of vehicles in the sky to further crowd it. It would also slow stuff down. Jets would take longer to get to where they are going, just like when you have too many cars on the road it slows down. Sometimes to a crawl.
Popular since the 1950s, it's just not going to happen.