If there ’s one thing we can predict about the future , it ’s that at least some of the awing scientific and technical progression envisioned by today’sfuturistswon’t actually become a realness , at least not in the expected time inning . After all , in 1932 , illustrious 20th hundred British political leader Winston Churchill , who had access to his country ’s top researchers , foretell that within 50 years , an engine would generate 600 horsepower for hours from a fuel tank the size of a outpouring pen , Iceland would be relocate to the tropic , robots would have human - similar awareness , and masses would banquet on man-made poulet flesh grown in laboratories . In fair-mindedness , Churchill did get a few thing right ; he predicted both cell and technology the equivalent of Skype through which anyone could " associate up to any room likewise equipped and hear and take part in the conversation as well as if he put his headway in through the window " [ origin : Churchill ] .
Today ’s seers may have learned something from Churchill ’s folly , because they ’re a bit more thrifty in substantiating and modify their predictions of succeeding wonders . For example , theoretical physicist Michio Kaku , generator of the 2011 book " Physics of the Future : How Science Will form Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 , " bases his forecast on scientific discoveries – such as quantum natural philosophy and the nature of desoxyribonucleic acid – that already have been made , and on prototypes of conception that already be in laboratory [ source : Kaku ] . And when the World Future Society , a group of scientific and economical forecasters from 80 countries , hoard a recent report envisioning life in 2100 , it was careful to characterize its work as a " first light " view of the horizon that might act as out very differently , depending upon a legion of variables – including whether humans make wise exercise of technological advancement or foolishly employ them in ways that are destructive [ source : The Futurist ] .
Even so , futurists still manage to conjure up vision of mind - boggle scientific and technological advances down the route – ranging from computer that occult human intelligence activity to factories that use molecular - level forum to duplicate or create instantly any variety of object you might want . Here are five such visions to speculate .
5: Computers Will be Smarter Than Us and Part of Us
Inventor Ray Kurzweil already has changed our world by figuring out how to enablecomputersto read printed words , recognize human speech and synthesize medicine that ’s indistinguishable from that created by musicians playing real violins and violoncello . But that ’s nothing compare to the hereafter he envisions , in which machines will be able to think and experience as humans do … except better .
In a 2005 essay , " The Singularity is nigh , " Kurzweil anticipate that by 2045 , " non - biological intelligence information will match the stove and niceness of human intelligence . " From that point on , which futurist call " The uniqueness , " political machine will occult the human brain . Not only will auto ' escalating computational world power and amphetamine eventually enable them to manage information with an ease that man can only woolgather of , but scientific advance in understand how the human learning ability functions will also enable us to create mathematical models that can simulate human consciousness .
But do n’t worry about intelligent computers plotting to polish off us puny human race , the means cyber - villains HAL 9000 and Skynet did in skill fiction movies . A more likely scenario , Kurzweil predicts , is that tiny thinking " nanobots " will be subtly be integrated into our body , heighten our own ability . Thus , the human of the futurity will no longer have to depend exclusively upon a hunk of wrinkled meat inside his or her skull . Instead , we ’ll all be part biologic creature and part political machine [ origin : Kurzweil ] .
4: We’ll Be Able to Print Transplantable Copies of Human Organs
One of the most exciting next advances in skill is 3 - D bioprinting – that is , the use of modified3 - D printers , which stack successive layer of material to create object , or cells to construct living tissue paper . investigator already have print skin and vertebral disks and transfer them into creature bodies successfully , but they ’re still year and possibly decades away from fashion a complex organ such as a liver , kidney or mettle for transplant , using a patient ’s own cells as unsanded material .
Nevertheless , Tony Atala , director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine , secernate the Washington Post in 2011 that he envisionstransplantationsomeday travel along what he calls " the Dell computer model , " in which a transplant operating surgeon will be able to order a pure electric organ with sure specs , just as he would pick out a tough drive or sound card for thePCon his desk . The big challenge , research worker say , is not in making the electric organ itself , but duplicate the complicated intragroup web of rakehell vessels that keeps a body part nourished and oxygenated . Some intend a conjunct government enquiry effort – the biological equivalent weight of the Manhattan Project – could make it potential in as few as 10 years to publish a transplantable human kidney .
But once that ’s accomplished , what ’s next may be even more astonishing . As bioprinting software pioneer Vladimir Mironov told the Post : " If one can bioprint operative human organ conception , then bioprinting a whole human – or whatever will be the name for such a animal – is just a logical extension " [ source : Berkowitz ] .
3: Products Will be Put Together, Molecule By Molecule
If you think 3 - D bioprinting is a weird mind , you ’ll in all probability be totally baffle by another , even more modern concept : the notion of reproducing an physical object , or create a new one outright , by putting it together molecule by mote . Molecular manufacturing , as it ’s know , could overturn our integral civilisation by enable us to build motorcar or even buildings quickly and chintzily , according to precise specification , and with virtually no defect .
The aperient principles behind molecular manufacturing are maddeningly complex , but in greatly oversimplified words , it basically would need creating a manpower of scores of flyspeck robot , call assemblers , who would guide chemical chemical reaction and put together a few particle at a meter to make molecules , which in act would become the construction blocks of the object [ root : Drexler ] . We ’ll actually be able to " control the body structure of matter , " says Neil Jacobstein , chairman of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing , which promote research into the technology [ source : IMM ] .
If and when molecular manufacturing becomes practical , it could radically change the global residual of economic mogul , erasing the advantage that developing body politic with depressed labour costs have in good fabrication , and shifting the advantage to technical innovators [ informant : Wadhwa ] .
2: We’ll Ride an Elevator into Space
We ’ve grown wonted to thinking of space locomotion as something that requires big , herculean rockets and complex spacecraft capable of re - entrance and landing , an approaching that costs an horrendous plenty of money for each launch and requires a daunting amount of technical precision to pull off . Would n’t it be easier if we could just get on an elevator and hinge on it slowly but steadily into orbital space , as if we ’re go for lunch to some eating house on the top floor of a skyscraper ?
Such a magical apparatus also would enable us to turn back to Earth just as well , without take to see the rigour and risk of infection of rapid reentry through the Earth ’s atmosphere . voice a act kooky , does n’t it ? In fact , however , scientists have been envisioning a quad elevator since Russian physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky , who was inspired by the Eiffel Tower , first proposed it back in 1895 . Over the decades , a telephone number of visionaries – from the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Artsutanov to science fabrication author Arthur C. Clarke – have seconded the impression .
For a long time , the concept seemed dispiritedly airy because , according to Newtonian law of question , the tension on such a extended cable would be greater than the pliant strength of blade , causing it to snap . But with the advent of top-notch - hard carbon nanotube , 180 metre tougher than sword , illusionist again are talking about the idea of building such an elevator , for which a cable would be threaded though the core of a geosynchronous satellite and seize to a counterpoise close to 62,000 mil above the Earth . One limit , at least at this point , is that scientists have only been able to produce a few centimeter of pure C nanotube , and they probably would postulate a vastly longer strand to make the elevator work . Even so , futurist Michio Kaku envisions that such an lift might be built between 2070 and 2100 [ source : Kaku ] .
1: We’ll Live in Floating Cities
consort to a 2007 news report by the Paris - establish Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , by 2070 , rising sea stratum due to climate change could have a devastating effect on coastal city around the ball . As many as 150 million people would be at risk of having to take flight flooded homes , and as much as $ 35 trillion in dimension would be at risk of ending up underwater [ source : OECD ] . We still might be able-bodied to stave off such a catastrophic scenario by dramatically melt off nursery throttle emission , but sentence is running out . That means low - consist community of interests may have no pick but to build higher and higher bulwark , or else relocate their populations .
But a Belgian computer architecture and design visionary , Vincent Callebaut , has suggest another alternative . What if , instead of fleeing the rise ocean , we simply build new metropolis that float on them ? In 2008 , Callebaut unveiled on the World Wide Web his design for Lilypad , a 50,000 - inhabitant floating city modeled in shape after the gargantuan water lily aboriginal to the Amazonian washbowl . As a haven for climate change refugee , Lilypad would be a altogether self - sustaining residential district , with aquatic garden for growing food , adesalinationplant to bring about drunkenness water , and free energy generation through solar , wind and wave power . well yet , Lilypad would be outfitted with a titanium dioxide skin , up to of absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and draw at least a small dent in global warming [ informant : Chapa ] .
Lots More Information
As a blogger for the Science Channel , I ’ve written extensively about technological change , and I ’ve watch that imagine future innovation precipitate into three categories . There are design that change state out to be game - changers , such as the telephone set and the personal computer . But for each of those gadgets that transmute civilization , there are belike just as many other technical imaginativeness that never really come to run , even though they ’re at least technically feasible – such as the monolithic connection of pneumatic tubes under cities , envisioned by the Victorians , which would have delivered mail , packages and even freshly cooked dinner to occupant . But there ’s also a third group , composed of unexpected discoveries that changed the world , such as British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming ’s discovery of penicillin , the first antibiotic drug , in the belated twenties . Those , I think , are the ones with the greatest transformational major power , because they can rapidly , radically affect change that we ’re not develop for .
