Our future is changing very fast. A little over 100 years ago we barely had good vehicles, no internet, no TV, etc… things have changed quickly in that time. So what technology do you want to see come out for us in the next decade? And on that note, what technology do you NOT want to see (for any reason you think is valid)?

I'd like to see a working artificial kidney come out. Being diabetic myself, I can see a future where medicines won't help me anymore and I don't want to go out being paralized, blind, etc… scary stuff.

I don't want to see a flying car though. We're not ready for those yet (look at all the drunk driving and rage issues on the roads today). And we'd need flying cars that don't run on fossil fuels anyway.

I want to see the industries that deal with robotics make giant leaps forward. Don't get me wrong, Honda's Asimo is cool, but I want to see better AI developed and implemented on a more grand scale to help both the great and mundane aspects of life for humanity. I wouldn't mind seeing nanotechnology advance the medical field.

I don't want to see any technology that would have to do with personal flying cars either until there is some truly functional planin place that would prevent most of the stupidity that could result from something like this.

Although I say that and we as a society went from horses to cars and you couldn't get much farther removed in technical comparison than that.

I wanna see:
-A pill that lessens your need to sleep at night.
-Electric cars that don't suck-down with the douches who insist on having a ford f-150 when they've never driven on anything but paved roads.
-Electronic school books, no more spending a hundred dollars for this fat heavy book that'll be obsolete in 3 years.
-Something that sucks pollution out of the air and compresses in so we can shoot it into space.
-A touchscreen voice-recognition computer that spans around you 180 degrees.

What I don't want to see:
-Chobits sex doll shit. that ain't right son.

I want to see more energy efficient technology. We have a lot of interesting mechanical and electrical tech these days, most of it is actually fairly gimicky and we could easily live without it. Even some of the stuff that has it's own industries supporting it like TV etc.

We've gone “forward” in terms of mechanical sophistication, but Waaaaaaay backwards in terms of energy usage from the 17th, 18th, and early 19th C. In times past simple human and animal power was more than enough to power a lot of things, for bigger stuff they used wind power (in mills, pumps, and ships), water power for other mills, clock work in small things. Admittedly, the efficiency really wasn't that great, but it was all easily renewable energy without much environmental cost so the efficiency didn't matter so much.

We have so much today that we could power easily with renewable, not just solar, wind, water, and hydrothermal, but clockwork (still) and human power (winding, movement etc). There are already some devices that make use of those readily available energy sources, but there could easily be a lot more. You shouldn't NEED a battery on your mobile phone or your laptop for instance.

What don't I want to see? This might sound weird, especially here- But I don't want to see print media vanish. It's probably inevitable, and I know there are a multitude of very good reasons why it should be phased out. But I hope it doesn't happen while I'm alive; I'd never adjust. I love the printed word or image as an object- not just as a piece of information.

Hyena H_ll
What don't I want to see? This might sound weird, especially here- But I don't want to see print media vanish. It's probably inevitable, and I know there are a multitude of very good reasons why it should be phased out. But I hope it doesn't happen while I'm alive; I'd never adjust. I love the printed word or image as an object- not just as a piece of information.

i agree wholeheartedly.
i shudder to think about what would happen to our society in 5 years with no tangible media. with all the news of so many news papers going under across the USA, it is scary to think that print, and even CDs will be a thing of the past.

i had my entire “Powerjeff” comic (all 150 pages at the time) saved on my hard drive. after a bunch of life crap…when i finally got my computer's hard drive back……it had been raped by a virus. needless to say, all of my scans of Powerjeff were gone forever. if i didn't have actual and original hand drawn copies…..there wouldn't even be a Powerjeff anymore.

i know this guy that had over 300 cds. he bought an 80gig ipod and copied all of his cds to it. then he sold every one of his cds to a pawn shop. now what happens when his ipod inevitably dies on him and no longer holds a charge? his entire music collection ceases to exist.

or, how many people do you know that only own digital cameras? no one uses film anymore. what happens if their hard drive gets a worm? or if they lose their camera and their sim card? those pictures no longer exist. future generations will never even know they were here.

digital media is a curse and a plague. having a series of 1s and 0s determine what “exists” is fucking scary to me.

json
fears of loss

Backups, man. Backups!

Skullbie
-Electronic school books, no more spending a hundred dollars for this fat heavy book that'll be obsolete in 3 years.

They've had those for years. Most textbooks have got an e-book version. They still charge 100 bucks though (and sometimes the license expires so you don't even get to ‘keep’ them), and what's worse, you have to read them on the computer.

I don't want to see SEX ROBOTS in a world where people are still starving. (Or anytime, really. We don't fucking need sex robots.)

I also don't want to see print media go. Books excite me. I hate reading on computers. Newspapers can die, though.

Artificial intestines and villi (As I suffer from food allergies and an intestinal disorder). That would be something xD. Then I could eat good crap again, like a slice of pizza or an ice cream cone or some spaghetti and meatballs every once in a while again :p.

What I don't want to see is an advance in artificial people and animals xD. What if they all went bonkers one day and wiped out the human race o.o?

Panimmunity and immortality or at least the ability to renew and replace body parts, probably using stem cells or whatever and more knowledge about the human brain and how autism etc can be treated to unlock their talents and genius.

A shift away from fossil fuels to clean nuclear (and sending the waste to the sun, it can use some extra mass) and mass use of solar power. If T. Boone(doggle) Pickens had invested in orbiting solar panels instead of wind farms…

What I don't want to see?
.Human Cloning (except for replacement body parts),
.AI that is smarter than humans,
.the death of print media (I'm surprised how many people ask me for hard copies of Go a Viking)


And come on people, everyone knows that the internet is for porn (Avenue Q on Broadway) So AI will soon be for porn. Everything always comes back to sex. Pornography is among the oldest art forms and prostitution is the oldest full-time profession. :)

I'd just like to see improvements made in the technology we already have. I like the idea of personal police detectors, hand-held appliances like e-books being cheaper, or an electric car with the same sort of power as a current muscle car or truck, and not having to recycle the batteries ( Which as far as I know the damage from that negates the good the car does over it's lifetime. )

At the same time, I don't really want to see the tools of my local PD got too much more sophisticated. Maybe it makes me sound like Kyupol, but some of the things the cops around where I live get away with scare the crap out of me.

I don't really want to see the internet and things like text communications advance too much. I don't like the idea of a culture where everyone no longer has to really deal with reality.

json
digital media is a curse and a plague. having a series of 1s and 0s determine what “exists” is fucking scary to me.

Ha. I love the vehemence here; I was a bit more subdued, out of fear of being called a ludite and a tree-killer.

Hyena H_ll
What don't I want to see? This might sound weird, especially here- But I don't want to see print media vanish. It's probably inevitable, and I know there are a multitude of very good reasons why it should be phased out. But I hope it doesn't happen while I'm alive; I'd never adjust. I love the printed word or image as an object- not just as a piece of information.

Along those lines, I'd like to see electronic paper and e-book readers developed much further than they currently are. All the products we have out there (that I've seen/used, anyway) just don't have the interface or tangibility to compare to real print.

bravo1102, I want to know why human beings need to be immortal. Especially within the next ten years.

Living a nice, full, long life would be nice, but with the world the way it is now immortality isn't going to improve anything.

Anyway, I also want to see all obsolete technology replaced. Like, immediately. Too bad it's nigh on impossible to do, but cars and their method of energy consumption really don't sit well with me.

I actually think we'll develop automated cars long before flying cars (practical ones). So hopefully if they do make flying cars, they'll be automated enough to avoid the kinds of traffic problems we're expecting.

I'm hoping we develop to the point where we no longer use printed money. I'm tired of it. I also hope that eventually everyone has multipurpose PDAs to handle their various needs, like data storage, music, video, computing, identification, and transactions.

I don't want science to invent human clones, biologically enhanced superdrugs, or invisible pants.

Whatever new comes along during the remainder of my lifetime I want to be able to adapt to it, if not embrace it. It's so easy to become a technophobe as one ages. It's just that after a while you get tired of tackling yet one more intimidating or difficult learning curve and so you turn away. Once you turn away it's easy to let all these technological advances pass you by.

I know people, only twenty years older than myself, who consider a simple desk top PC or a laptop scary magical tools. Cell phones, text messaging, shudder! I sympathize with them. I really do. Already I have to force myself to become familiar with new technology as it surfaces and I don't want to let the process get too far ahead of me.

So what new advances do I look forward to? I want User Friendly to become the standard not the exception!

Is there a Sat nav that specialises in helping you find things you've misplaced? Because I would buy a million of those.

What I wouldn't buy, however, is any product with a name that begins with ‘i’.

Senshuu
I don't want to see SEX ROBOTS in a world where people are still starving. (Or anytime, really. We don't fucking need sex robots.)

Too late:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fun/gizmo/article2025316.ece

I would like to see agricultural technology advancements. I'd like to see genetic engineering of both healthy and pest resistant plants completely eliminate the need for chemical pesticides, ripening agents, etc.

I'd like to see these advancements leading to a reduced cost in the production of agriculture. If carrots were cheaper than potato chips and juice was cheaper than soda, that would be a fantastic thing. I hate having to decide between health and budget. I think that poor people should be able to afford to be healthy too.

Aside from that, I concur on the affordable and renewable power. Laziness seems to be the biggest setback to its development. That and the fact that initial costs for development are higher than simply maintaining status quo. If we (we meaning the people who actually get to make these decisions and effect change…) think about long term, it is far more beneficial. All we really need is a global intellectual revolution. – I think we are on the verge of that if not already in the midst of it.

Senshuu
bravo1102, I want to know why human beings need to be immortal. Especially within the next ten years.

Living a nice, full, long life would be nice, but with the world the way it is now immortality isn't going to improve anything.

Because ten years from now I'll be 54. ;) I'd like to be guranteed another century of so…I'm just getting started. ;) I'm not really serious. By the time I'm 70 or so they'll have the technology to keep me alive until 100 and it'll go on…

Could I also have eternal youth and rejuvenation while they're at it? :)

The completely automatic car with complete AI from the movie Frankenstein Unbound would be perfect. GPS navigation system, remote call and it'll drive over to you, AI that has internet access and large enough internal memory to store your library and read it to you while you drive… printer, voice activated word processor and email… you'd never have to leave your car, video entertainment while it drives to your chosen destination…

It can't get into an accident because of all the sensors… and you'd have a choice of voices. William Daniels (the original KITT and John Adams), John Cleese, Patrick Stewart (ENGAGE!) the girl next door…

bravo1102

Senshuu
bravo1102, I want to know why human beings need to be immortal. Especially within the next ten years.

Living a nice, full, long life would be nice, but with the world the way it is now immortality isn't going to improve anything.

Because ten years from now I'll be 54. ;) I'd like to be guranteed another century of so…I'm just getting started. ;) I'm not really serious. By the time I'm 70 or so they'll have the technology to keep me alive until 100 and it'll go on…

Could I also have eternal youth and rejuvenation while they're at it? :)

The completely automatic car with complete AI from the movie Frankenstein Unbound would be perfect. GPS navigation system, remote call and it'll drive over to you, AI that has internet access and large enough internal memory to store your library and read it to you while you drive… printer, voice activated word processor and email… you'd never have to leave your car, video entertainment while it drives to your chosen destination…

It can't get into an accident because of all the sensors… and you'd have a choice of voices. William Daniels (the original KITT and John Adams), John Cleese, Patrick Stewart (ENGAGE!) the girl next door…

I remember reading somewhere they now have a method of extending a person's life span, but it is very “inhumane”. A lot of starvation and sleep deprivation, in order to slow the rate that you age and your metabolism.
Other than that, in the next generations or so, they may find a way that isn't so cruel sounding.

Anywhoo, what I don't want to go away is the radio. I find it to be the only way for me to find new music, I don't randomly surf the web and wonder “Hey! I wonder if there is new music out there.”

I agree about radio. The experts said it was on its way out some years ago and then came the Talk Radio Renaissance. Sure it's all right-wing nut-jobs but it is entertaining and has a huge audience.

usedbooks
I would like to see agricultural technology advancements. I'd like to see genetic engineering of both healthy and pest resistant plants completely eliminate the need for chemical pesticides, ripening agents, etc.

I think GE is potentially more harmful than pesticides.

Not actually (in some cases actually), but potentially. I'd hope this field would continue at an extremely slow, gentle, careful pace. But I fear that it's primarily driven by very bullish big business; commerce and not science is in main control there, which means that the requirements of a lot of regulatory departments tend to be… not as fully and rigorously applied as they should be, and in some cases, just bullied aside. And much worse; The big company lobbyists manipulating U.S. senators to use the power of U.S. international influence to force other countries to streamline the introduction of GE food, bypassing their regulatory and scientific bodies entirely.
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We know what happens when things are done heedlessly, without well thought out checks and balances. In the future, that's a culture I'd like to see change.

ozoneocean

usedbooks
I would like to see agricultural technology advancements. I'd like to see genetic engineering of both healthy and pest resistant plants completely eliminate the need for chemical pesticides, ripening agents, etc.

I think GE is potentially more harmful than pesticides.

All of our agriculture is already genetically engineered. It has been happening since the dawn of farming.

Actually, I was talking about not the “introduction” or even an increase in genetic engineering – that is already going full tilt. I mean refocusing. Foods currently are bred/engineered to be big and beautiful, but the process has removed nutrition, fragrance, flavor, and resistance. I think that should be taken in another direction. We shouldn't have to add artificial flavor, nutrition, etc. to crops, imo.

(I was not meaning we should make our apples produce pesticide toxins or even “vitamins” or fluoride or anything foreign/unnatural. Those things are certainly real possibilities and harmful.)

usedbooks
All of our agriculture is already genetically engineered. It has been happening since the dawn of farming.

No, it was bread. ;)
Calling selective breading and grafting “genetic engineering” is like calling a sword fight “surgery”. A little euphemistic. :)

Right. There are different sorts of genetic engineering. There are a lot of different things involved. Some aspects are like a much more advanced version of selective breeding, as you say, but even that has its downsides… When you can be that precise in controlling a genome, what tends to happen is the production of vast amounts of certain crops with no diversity to speak off, - you sacrifice resilience against diversity. Bake in a weakness, so to speak.
If those crops become a primary food source, you risk situations like the Irish potato famine.

It's hard to guard against those contingencies with scientific forethought because you're not just battling natural environmental unknowns, but human social ones as well.
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Ok, other advances in tech I'd like to see… I want those flexi computer screens to come into production. I want a Wacom tablet version, MASSIVE size and solar powered. And the computer that powers it should also be embedded in the flexi screen.

ozoneocean

usedbooks
All of our agriculture is already genetically engineered. It has been happening since the dawn of farming.

No, it was bread. ;)
Calling selective breading and grafting “genetic engineering” is like calling a sword fight “surgery”. A little euphemistic. :)

That's the kind of words I'm used to using among my grad school peers and what I was referring to. We grew cuttings of African violets and called that “tissue culture.”

Sorry about that. I guess my education has induced a new language barrier. -_-

We all have specific ways of describing things :)

bravo1102
The completely automatic car with complete AI from the movie Frankenstein Unbound would be perfect. GPS navigation system, remote call and it'll drive over to you, AI that has internet access and large enough internal memory to store your library and read it to you while you drive… printer, voice activated word processor and email… you'd never have to leave your car, video entertainment while it drives to your chosen destination…

It can't get into an accident because of all the sensors… and you'd have a choice of voices. William Daniels (the original KITT and John Adams), John Cleese, Patrick Stewart (ENGAGE!) the girl next door…

Now there's an idea. Now, how about some automatic systems that will restrain you while you're “under the influence” and something to take care of whatever vomit comes of your mouth when you've REALLY had too much? :)

Since people are talking about immortality and nanotechnology over here then I'd like to point out some hypothetical scenario that might happen.

Normally when people think of nanotechnology they picture this:



What those people normally don't consider is that future nanotechnology might look like this:



Bottom line? Future nanotechnology might sport artificial cells that behaves and functions just like ordinary cells, possibly to the point of dividing and multiplying and showing all characteristics of a living cell. Only thing that would make it different would be that it's made out of inorganic materials. Some theorize that the invention of such cell would be the ultimate invention of the mankind and could ultimately transcend humanity to a new stage. The age of inorganic life.

Humans could have their bodies slowly replaced with a simple injection of inorganic stem cells that would replace the organic ones and take over the normal functions of his body. Afterward the cells could be reprogrammed to modify the body and enhance it in ways that the organic cells could not. Immortality and a brain with the calculative processing power of a supercomputer that far exceeds the computer of today and even those of the future. That brain would be capable of interfacing with other transhumans and the internet of the future and “download” updates to enhance it further. Trivial things like sleep and deceases would cease to exist and we as a race will take the final step in distancing us from mother nature by become something that doesn't belong to it. Evolution will no longer affect us. Instead we will control how the race develops.

Humanity would enter an age where space holds no boundaries. The time it would take to cross its wast distances would be trivial since time is no longer a factor for the undying man. In order to conserve energy the astronauts could be simply “turned off” and stay in hibernation until they reach their destination. Come to think of it, why bother sending a large spaceship with livesupport for hundreds or possibly thousands or even millions of humans when a much smaller ship could be launched with their consciousness instead. Once arrived the ship would unpack itself into a facility with cloning vats and simply construct their bodies and install the stored minds into them.

This is some of the radical things that I've read regarding Inorganic life. It's frightening yet appealing at the same time. The scary thing is that with current development in medicine the idea of an inorganic cell is closer to completion then ever before. We might see the first functioning artificial cells withing couple of decades although that doesn't mean we'll start seeing hybrid-human/computers walking around the day after.

Product Placement
Humans could have their bodies slowly replaced with a simple injection of inorganic stem cells that would replace the organic ones and take over the normal functions of his body. Afterward the cells could be reprogrammed to modify the body and enhance it in ways that the organic cells could not. Immortality and a brain with the calculative processing power of a supercomputer that far exceeds the computer of today and even those of the future. That brain would be capable of interfacing with other transhumans and the internet of the future and “download” updates to enhance it further. Trivial things like sleep and deceases would cease to exist and we as a race will take the final step in distancing us from mother nature by become something that doesn't belong to it. Evolution will no longer affect us. Instead we will control how the race develops.

This is a technology I wouldn't want to see developed without the proper safeguards. Think of how this could be abused if access to the programming technology got in the wrong hands…