What will be the next big new technology advances in 5 years? 20 years?

I remember in 1995 or so being at a speech by Bill Gates. He was talking about future technology and something that stood out was that it's a proven fact that most people overestimate where technology will be in 5 years and underestimate where it will be in 20 years. If you think back 5 years, not much was really majorly different. But if you think back 20 years to 1988, cell phones were non-existent (or were huge bricks or built into cars), there was no internet or email, 200hp engines were only used in fast cars, the IBM XT 8088 with a green screen was a good computer, a 27" TV was huge, and Ghostbusters had amazing special effects.

Much of what changes seems so obvious when you look back in hindsight. It's obvious that people would want a cell phone and they would get smaller and lighter and more ubiquitous. It's obvious that we would want bigger TV's for less money. It's obvious that fit and finish on manufacturing would get better and better. But I am not sure anyone could have really predicted the Internet in it's current form... even though "information - quickly" is a common theme for why technology advances take place at all.

On the other hand, some thing have changed very little. Homes are still built much the same way they were 50 years ago with minor upgrades coming in the way of things like sheetrock and romex wiring... but we ain't living in those "homes of tomorrow" they would show off in the 50's and 60's. Cars are largely the same with gasoline engines and generally traditional transmissions, brakes, engines, etc.

So what do you guys think will be different in 5, 20 and 50 years? What new technology or refinements to existing tech will there be?

Here's a few I thought of...

Within 20 years....

1) We will have access to the internet anywhere... very high speed access. Most likely it will be through a cell phone device. It will work in planes, and in any country.

2) Media will be delivered through our connection and through this device... there won't be satellite TV, cable TV, etc. There will just be a high speed digital connection and content providers will provide whatever we want to watch

...and I really can't think of anything else! And I think the above is just obvious. I can't think of a device that is large and costly and only a few can afford, that will be made available to the masses. Can you?

I also can't even fathom what sort of revolutionary thing may happen within 50 years. In the mid 1900's we had jet power for airplanes that made it possible to travel to anywhere in the world quickly. Television in the mid 1900's was revolutionary too. Then in the 70's we had the transistor and chip gaining ground and led to great strides in technology and industry. In the 90's we had the internet which really did change the world. We're kind of due for something, aren't we? But what?

We've been hearing about robotic helpers for years and I just don't think that will happen. We're a long way away from artificial intelligence in computers. We already have tiny computers you can put in your pocket and watch a movie on while you take the bus. But what else? What huge revolution(s) will we see over the coming 50 years?

Thoughts?

 

The thermos.

 

Holographic storage,
All in one electronic devices,

And the big one that I see in the next 20-30 years is a Thinking Machine. Machines with consciousness. Very exciting business for me. I would say its the next big leap for humanity. Any more info on this?

 

The new Nissan 370Z has downshifting computers so
no heel and toe is required.
Look for this next year.
The SCRAM jet should be able to lift people up to the Strastaphere
very soon.
Next 5-10 years.
Every home should have a network computer capable of reciving
over 100,000 website hits per day.
Next 5 Years.
Just a few ideas.
Paul

 

Robots to take care of the elderly/handicapped.
Robots that build...after the foundation is poured and materials are staged, it should take less than 2 days to have a complete dwelling.
"Brainwave-reading" implants plus always-on broadband connection to "cloud" will mean you can always save notes on anything or retrieve any information you want. Soldiers/police will be able to signal/communicate silently.
Entire buildings will become digital billboards.
Gene-based medicine will be common-place.
Space colonies.
Undersea colonies.
Floating colonies.
Vehicles will be powered by something other than gasoline. This new power source will lead to a new economic boom worldwide.
Virtual reality will become a lot more real--we will probably not be able to tell the difference.
Hollywood agents will fight over virtual actors, not real ones. The majority of movies will be created in computers, not by filming reality.
OLEDs and pico-projectors will make augmented reality normal. We will see the real world, with digital info superimposed all over it.
Terrorists will use biological weapons, not tactical.

Chinese will be mandatory in schools worldwide.
Africa will be fought over like the Middle East is currently.

Pretty much all cars will drive themselves.

 

Easy, the logical step forward is combination of human and machine. Instead of carrying a cell phone or laptop computer, it will be just part of us. We will be connected to the world 24/7.

 

I'm working on something now...that will revolutionize the way we travel and ship things. So far, all I've been able teleport is a stocking and a baboon.

Anyone have a baboon that they are willing to loan me?

 

Yeah, I've got one here that suddenly appeared on my couch the other day. Where's his other sock?

 

You've unwittingly revealed to me that I've got competition. The baboon that I teleported went in as a baboon and came out as...well, canned SPAM without the can, near as I can tell. If nothing comes of this technology, then I guess I can claim that I have reverse engineered Hormel's method of producing spiced ham. SPAM's ingredient list has long been a trade secret, but laboratory tests reveal it to be largely comprised of baboon lips, anuses and foreskins. And eyelids, earlobes, with gluteal lard filling in the last 15%, by weight.

 

I don't know about 5 or 15 years but....

Self designing, self improving computers will design their own hardware and software.

Retail stores will disappear and everyone will buy nearly everything online. Each customer will be able to modify to their tastes exactly what they want. In an effort to compete, brick and motar stores will be more like mini factories that modify goods and then send them directly to you with free home deliver using robotic electric vehicles.

The movie theater industry will disappear as individual movie "cubes" that will allow you to sit in your own booth for one or 2 people with a 3-d projector screen or helmet that you will stream whatever movie is just released 5 minutes ago. Blockbuster movie releases will only last one day then then go online so you can see it at home. Even more interesting, movies will be computer generated allowing viewers to change and alter the movie as they see it, something like a video game.

The internet as we know it will disappear. All connectivity will run at much higher speeds through existing electric wires and wirelessly. All electrical devices will have network capability.

The electrical grid will also disappear and go wireless. Electricity will be broadcast and amplifed in every electrical device. You will never need batteries again.

Co-op farmering will reappear as people fear the food they eat. Groups of people will "buy" their own farm online. The food generated from the farm will be sent to their homes each day or bartered with other farms for more variety.

The cell phone as we know it will disappear. A device will be planted in your head that allows you to speak, hear and even see what is now on your phone.

Artificial eyes and ears will be common place. Not only that, it may be possible to "upgrade" to these bionic systems as they are better than human eyes and ears.

DNA alteration will allow us to phyically change our bodies from birth. We may elect to have long fingers to be able to play new instruments, or larger hands to hold bigger tools for working. But, the first use will be the enlarge female breasts and the male sex organ. Face lifts will be done by removing cells and rebuilding muscle by chemical and biological means.

The police will have computers that can scan a crime scene, analyze DNA and trace materials, and then instantly create a computer generated movie of what occured for them. It will sort of be like looking back at time. A portable computer known as a "bloodhound" will constantly sniff the air looking for missing suspects. Every officer will carry one and when someone is "sniffed", the machine will alert them.

Terrorism will move to economic issues, not physical as it will become politically incorrect.

Fast food will be healthier than home cooking.

The refigerator will disappear. It will be replaced by a device that preserves food electronically. In addition, not only will it preserve food but it will prepare it automatically and serve it to your waiting family at dinner time.

Your home computer will have a 3-D replicating device that actually creates products out of plastic right in your home. You simply pay for the software of what you want, it's downloaded to your computer, and this "box" will make it for you.

Homes will not have simple painted walls. They will be color change "screens" that you can not only change the color but also the images on it. You will have virtual pictures that you can buy, create, change or even SELL to another home owner -- online.

Paper money will disappear. It will be replaced by a DNA match from your finger placed on a machine that connects directly to your bank account. Anything you want to buy will come directly from your bank. Your computer will have this finger port so you can buy anything you want online.

People will not "die". When their bodies become unrepairable, their brains will be uploaded into virtual computers where they can live "forever". And, the living will be able to visit with them using a headset.

Language differences will no longer be a world problem. A new univeral language will be created using mathematics as the basis. It will be taught in every school in the world and be more computer friendly. Until everyone learns the new language, people will wear translators much like today's blue tooth headsets that translate everything said in real time.

For the written language, you will use a camera to take a picture of any sign, book, poster, etc of any written language. The camera will recognise the writing and translate for you immediately.

Everyone in the future will be able to sing. A device like a microphone will take your voice and modify the pitch perfectly to the desired note in real time as it broadcasts it through speakers.

Adoption will become a status symbol of the wealthy. People will bid on children that are "better" than their own genes -- smarter, prettier, taller, etc. The government will have to mandate how many boys and girls a family must have to protect the gene pool as we will be able to choose the sex of the child we want before conception.

The family vacation will disappear. Instead, parents will elect to send their children to "Disney camp" while they go to the Bahamas for a sex swap party. The Disney parent surrogates will take the kids through the park while Mom and Dad have threesomes at sex camp.

Porn will be not only virtual, but physical. There will be shops that you can just pop into for a quickie. It will be socially acceptable and considered better than the old fashioned method. Of course, everything will be sterilized before entering. And, it will be for male and female customers. With this new system, present sexual taboos will be no longer considered "perverse" as no one is injured.

There will be no such thing as "the elderly". In fact, it will be politically incorrect to ask someone's age. Anti-aging pills and robotic surgery will allow your grandparents to still look 20 years old when they retire.

Operating rooms will be completely robotically controlled. Everything in the room will be so sterile, it would be toxic to live in. Doctors will simply monitor the machines doing their tasks on large 3-d screens half way around the world.

All viruses will be eliminated by injecting minature robots that circulate in your blood. These robots will self detect and eliminate infected cells. They will tranmit their data to a giant medical computer that will direct them on what is the best method of attack.

In an effort to make their economies more efficient and competitive, some countries will switch to the "night service" time zone. Instead of going to bed at dark, they will work all night and sleep all day. In this way, they can join the rest of woken world and work in real time despite being half a world away. This change will be government mandated.

Space travel to the outer planets and maybe even stars will be possible, but not in the old fashioned way. Instead, probes will be sent that will take years if not centuries to get there. Then, we will take virtual trips using the probes as broadcast devices back to earth. Because of the time shift, data will be sent in advance from where you want to go. When it finally is uploaded, the space traveler will be notified and a virtual trip will be arranged.

Because of over population of humans continuing to live longer lives, a new group of people called "ground dwellers" will construct and live their lives completely underground. A new country will be declared that is physically under another country. Power for everything they need will be from geo thermal. You will need a visa to visit the above ground country.

In addition, the Pacific ocean will declare itself a country as there will be many colonies -- both floating and submerged -- permanently living there. It will charge everyone a fee for crossing it to help pay for the colony's existence. The residents of huge floating cities will vote on where they want their city to travel to on the ocean. It may spend summers in Antartica and winters along the Mexican coast. If it is hurricane season, they can simply move to a better weather pattern area.

Electricity will not be generated from wind or solar but by sea waves. Countries with large year round sea waves will be the new Saudi Arabia.

Rocket ships will disappear. Space travel will be from a space elevator that moves cargo and people up and down a wire to space stationn in a geo synchronis orbit above the earth.

Clothing will become optional as we will all wear an electronic device that controls the temperature around you and repeals moisture from touching you. You can walk in a rainstorm and never get wet.

Corporate and governmental spying will reach a whole new level as invisibility will be created by making a mini worm hole appear around a human body. The worm hole will bend light around it making anything inside invisible.

Well, I don't want to give you any more of my secrets but this will make a pretty good start.

 

In all seriousness, my list:

Stem cell research and offshoots of such will lead to many major breakthroughs in medicine and the treatment of serious ailments.

A new software language or two will depart from ancient techniques that started in 1969 that still exists today (2008) and will create a different foundation more able to make use of new hardware and logic technologies spread across many specialized processing units and many generalized function cores. Cybernetic Intellect will then be born...which is NOT artificial intelligence which is nothing more than a LOT of base if/and/but/oy/maybe statements selected from pre-programmed paths. CI won't be self aware in any sense, but it will posses every precursor to such....able to make decisions not programmed to do so, but limited in the sense that its boundaries are set by our own limitations of what we know about sentience and self awareness.

Global warming will be a huge issue. Instead of the .8 C rise, humanity are looking at 1-1.4 rise every 3 years. China, India and every other cheap labor nation will be forced to reduce emissions or face severe sanctions that will halt and could destroy their economies.

Governments across the globe will divert money from military spending to funding alternate sources of energy. Large scale nuclear fusion reactors will receive the largest amount of funding, with the first experimental reactor going online in 2018. By 2026, 75% of the world's electrical demand will be met by fusion reactors. In 2032, Honda perfected a mobile fusion reactor that it included in all of its production vehicles.

 

GREAT post!

On a side note, all of our predictions are merely speculation, I on the other hand know one thing with certainty!

In 5-20 years this thread will be all a huge joke, it always is!

 

IMHO the things that will really change our world already exist, at least in theory, but no one really discovered their potential. If you told someone in the 50s that the semiconductor would completely change EVERYTHING technical in our life, you'd have gotten an answer like "semi...what?". Same thing, go to 1970 and tell him that ARPANET will once be a revolution to the ways we communicate.

And I think that what we see now as THE hot developments of the future will have much less effect than we might think now. Like robots etc. Especially interesting is that genetics are somewhat seen similar to everything nuclear in the 40s or 50s - you might think that it will be the end of the world or you might think that it will be the end of all our sorrows, but no one dreaming of fusion powered cars would have thought that there wouldn't be any effect on our everyday life at all. If power plants were not nuclear powered but by coal, you wouldn't notice. If tonight every nuclear weapon just disappeared, you'd still go to the supermarket tomorrow like you do everyday.
My guess is that the same will happen to genetics - yes, there will be some, maybe a lot of diseases that can be cured. There may be some or another bad thing about it that we can't think of today. But will the earth turn into a planet full of mutants, or will we all be incredibly intelligent by taking a pill every morning? I doubt it.

 

It's not genetics, but stem cells and associated research. Big Big Big Big bux for those that get it right. And those that get it right won't be US based.

 

The internal combustion engine will become the oddity rather than the norm. People will still have their classic cars and gasoline will not be horribly expensive to put in them, but the vast majority of cars will be ultracapacitor or lithium-ion battery powered.

The US will derive only a small fraction of their electricity needs from fossil fuels. Solar and wind many places, neighborhood nukes are heavily growing in use.

A Testarossa is worth more than a 360. Someone can actually work on the TR at home.

Wall sized, wafer-thin televisions will be very common and cheap. 50" plasmas from today will be like typewriters or black-and-white CRT TV's today.

 

I don't know about your parents, but my mom is getting scary. My mom drives all her friends all over town daily. This will end. Then what do I do to fill here calendar? Retired folks need freedom.

 

I'm figuring that we will have a massive biological war that will knock us to back to something like the industrial revolution of the late 1700's. There will be so many lost technologies it will take centuries to understand & reclaim it once again.

 

good family friend of mine is one of the leaders in stem cell research here in australia, he gets poached (or attempted to) by american medical companies just about every week... fly him over there, penthouse suites, million dollar offers, house/car etc... but he wont give in (lucky hes on a good wicket here)

 

Personally I think besides the obvious advances in computers/electronics the biggest advances will be in alternative energy and preventative medicine. I think we will find a way to cure viruses and probably not cure but at least find much more effective treatments for cancer.

 

3D printing is already here, imagine the possibilities with that 10 to 20 years from now!

This is so cool! Check out the demo video on their website...

http://www.dimensionprinting.com/
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

You'll see solar become a lot more affordable.

 

I can't imagine anything more depressing. If I were elderly or handicapped and had only a robot as a caretaker/companion, I would kill myself. Even in retirement homes, people send their kids to sing Christmas Carols. Therapy Dogs visit to cheer them up. I once worked an overnight job in a retirement home. It was depressing with today's technology. ****ty food prepared by people who don't give a damn. Roaches crawling around in the kitchen. Permanent assigned seats in the dining room. There was a lady who couldn't get to sleep, so she went to the dining room to have a cup of coffee. She was the only one there, but she sat in her assigned seat, halfway across the room from the coffee. I saw their monthly schedule posted on the wall. The same routine, every day. On Sundays they go to Church. One Saturday a month, they go shopping. At Wal-Mart. People who send their parents there should be ashamed of themselves.

 

1. Bio fuels from algea or sugar cane that are very cheap to produce.

2. All electric cars that go 400 miles on a charge.

3. Compressed air will run your chain saw or lawnmower with a quasi turbine motor.

4. Custom manufacturing will take hold so you order a frame/motor/batter module and a coach builder will build the body. Just like the 30's but cheap to make.

5. Large ships will have sails again.

6. Better modular building materials.

The big problems will be

1. The mineral rush in Africa.

2. The collapse of the petro economys in Russia, Africa and the Middle East.

 

100% real virtual reality games. Imagine World Of Warcraft with 100% real graphics where you see everything in first person perspective. Artificial smells and perhaps full feedback tactile suits so you can feel that sword hit you.

On one hand very cool...on the other it could be the straw that breaks the camels back and people completely lose touch with reality.

 

How do it know?