1. Artificially Intelligent Personal Assistants
I’ve been impatiently waiting for this one for quite some time now. Microsoft got the ball rolling on this concept with Clippy,
the office assistant that proved to be more annoying than useful. More
recently, Apple developed SIRI for its iPhone, an intelligent assistant
that can respond to specific language cues and access the Internet. But
this is nothing compared to what’ll be available two decades from now.
Looking
ahead, we can expect our personal assistants to fully respond to natural
language, including colloquialisms and our personal idiosyncrasies. And
owing to ubiquitous computing (which we’ll look at next), our personal
assistants will be accessible to us 24/7.
What’s
more, these agents will exhibit an uncanny level of general
intelligence. We’ll even be able to have conversations with them. They
will know everything about us, including our behaviors, our tendencies,
our preferences, and our typical ways of responding to certain
situations. Accordingly, they’ll be our virtual clones. In essence,
they’ll be our proxy selves, representing us on the Internet and in the
real world by taking the form of telepresent holographic avatars.
They’ll write emails for us, book appointments, perform menial thought
tasks, and even anticipate our needs. Of course, we’ll still be
responsible for the decisions they make on our behalf — so we’ll need to
be careful about the degree of autonomy we give our mind clones.
2. Computers Are Everywhere — But Unseen
As noted,
ubiquitous computing — also known as “pervasive computing” and
“everyware” — is coming. Already today we have computers in our cars,
our phones, our toys, and even our fridges. But they’re still very
obvious. We often have to hold them. Or use keyboards to input
information into them.
These devices, however, are getting steadily smaller owing to the miniaturization revolution that’s in full swing (e.g. the shift towards microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS). In short order we’ll be living in a Rainbow’s End world, where information processing devices will be virtually everywhere, but completely invisible — absorbed into our surroundings. These computers will be in our clothes, our fashion accessories, and even in our contact lenses. And to use them we’ll use natural language and haptic technologies (i.e. tactile feedback). Or better yet, these devices will be endowed with a certain level of “ambient intelligence” to help them perform autonomously under specific conditions.
So by the 2030s we’ll be completely surrounded by computers, but utterly unaware of their presence.3. Virtual Animals with Digital Minds
Whole brain
emulations of human minds are quite a ways off, and likely won’t appear
until the second half of the 21st Century. But in the stage leading up
to this we’ll be able to emulate the brains of much simpler organisms.
Already today there’s the OpenWorm project, an effort to digitize the brain of a nematode worm.
Within the
next two decades, we will most certainly be able to emulate the brains
of other organisms, like ants and bees. And who knows, by this point we
might even be able to start emulating the brains of simple mammals, like
mice. But by virtue of doing so, we will have created virtual animals who essentially “live” inside a computer. And someday, perhaps even by the 2030s, these digital brains will be uploaded to robotic avatars.
4. The First Sanctioned Megascale Geoengineering Project
The effects of climate change are getting increasingly hard to ignore, whether they manifest as superstorms, historically low levels of sea ice, rampant wildfires, or record temperatures. Whether we like it or not, we will embark on geoengineering projects in the near future. And indeed, the conversations have already started.
Take, for example, the 25 scientists who recently declared that the time has come to start working on actual geoengineering solutions
to reverse the effects of rampant carbon emissions. Their particular
solution is cloud whitening — the seeding of marine stratocumulus clouds
with copious amounts of tiny sea water particles. They’re pretty much
ready to get started, but they’ll need international support to do it
legally. Others have even started to do it illegally.
5. An Interplanetary Internet
This one’s fairly straightforward, but no less profound. Someone from Earth will reach Mars by the early 2030s — whether it be private enterprise or
a government agency. At least we freakin’ hope so! But regardless of
who gets there first, one of the first things they’ll do is set up an Internet connection with Earth. And why not? The explorers — or settlers, if they’re part of the Mars One project — will both want and need to access and share information. Oh, and they’ll probably want to purchase something while they’re there when supplies run low.
6. The First True Anti-Aging Intervention
There are a
crap-ton of products on the market that claim to be “anti-aging,” but
each and every one of them is either cosmetic or a total scam. There is
nothing available right now that can either slow down or reverse the
effects of aging, not even resveratrol pills or rapamycin.
But this is
set to change by the 2030s. Futurists and gerontologists aren't
entirely sure what form this intervention could take. It could be a
genetic tweak, not unlike the one Cynthia Kenyon performed on roundworms to extend their lifespans by more than half. And indeed, there are efforts currently underway to map the genetic constitutions of supercentenarians to isolate the factors that make them so robust. It might involve therapies to restore the length of our telomeres, or replenish our mitochondria. Or it could draw from any number of experiments currently being conducted on mice.
7. Autonomous Robots with a License to Kill
The rise of autonomous killing machines is a grim and frightening prospect, but it’s virtually guaranteed to happen.
We already
have various levels of autonomy in a number of weapons systems,
including cruise and patriot missiles. The Aegis Combat System, which is
found aboard naval ships, has an autonomous mode in which it uses
powerful computers and radars to track and guide weapons to destroy
enemy targets. There’s also Samsung Techwin's remote-operated sentry bot — which is currently deployed in the Korean DMZ. And the U.S. packbot/REDOWL system could be easily modified to take out snipers on its own.
8. Our Very Own Lab-Grown Organs (and Meat)
We are in
the midst of the biotechnology revolution, the benefits of which are
finally starting to emerge. Personalized medicine will emerge in the
coming decades, where physicians will be able to prescribe medicines
tailored specifically to our genetic constitutions. Biologists are also
exceedingly close to being able to generate differentiated tissue from
our very own stem cells. This will eventually allow us to grow our very
own organs, including the heart — no donors needed, and with virtually
no chance of rejection.
9. Personal Fabricators in Every Home
Okay, maybe not every
home — but it’s certainly poised to be the kind of thing that may be as
ubiquitous as DVD players and traditional 2D printers are today. And
there’s very little doubt that 3D printers are poised to be as
disruptive as the techno-cognoscenti are predicting.
Indeed, the
ability to produce our own products in our very own homes will upset
traditional models of manufacturing. At first, we’ll have to pay for
these items to download the specs. But eventually, owing to the open
source movement, many of these items will be shared and available for
free.
And in addition to day-to-day items and electronics, these printers could generate handguns (which is not such a hot idea), vaccines (we won’t have to leave our homes to get inoculated during a pandemic), self-assembling robots, and androids. And eventually, these printers won’t need human guidance at all.
10. The Oceans Will Quench the World’s Thirst
Industrial-scale desalination is poised to make an appearance by the 2030s.
Owing to advancements in solar power, namely the development of
affordable and scalable photovoltaic cells, we will be able to build
massive concentrated solar power plants (CSPs) that utilize the residual heat to strip ocean water of its salt.
Experts predict that the growing freshwater deficits could be
increasingly covered starting in the 2020s, and possibly as late as the
2030s. The spread of CSP desalination plants will likely reduce
non-sustainable water supply and inspire the development of most of
potable water production by the year 2030 and afterwards.
Via: http://io9.com
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