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What are your technology predictions for the next decade?

Which of these tech predictions do you think will be true in 2020?


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Kandahar

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In honor of the new decade, it's time to bust out your crystal ball and make your technology predictions for this decade. Contrary to popular belief, predicting near-future technology is not particularly difficult if one examines current trends. Here are a few technology predictions from Ray Kurzweil, a renowned inventor and one of the more interesting futurists. He believes that all of the following will occur by the end of this decade. Do you agree/disagree with his predictions? What do YOU think technology will be like ten years from now?

• Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as inside furniture, jewelry, walls, and clothing.
• People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures instead of with keyboards.
• Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.
• Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants coupled with mechanical legs allow the paralyzed to walk.
• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere, forcing society to reconsider its definition of privacy.
• Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.
• Most learning is accomplished through adaptive courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.
• Language translating machines are of much higher quality, and are routinely used in conversations.
• Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience.
• Computers do most of the vehicle driving—humans are in fact prohibited from driving on highways unassisted. As a result, there are very few transportation accidents.
 
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Here are my thoughts on Kurzweil's predictions:

• Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as inside furniture, jewelry, walls, and clothing.

I agree. The whole concept of a "computer" as a rectangular box that attaches to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor is already becoming obsolete. Is my new Droid a computer or a phone? I think it's both. By the end of the decade, I think it's reasonable that computers would be embedded in places you wouldn't even think to look today.

• People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures instead of with keyboards.

I agree. Voice recognition technology has made amazing progress in the last few years, and is quite accurate now.

• Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.

Ehh...I'm not sure. I guess it depends what counts as a household robot. The Roomba is nice and all, and I'm sure that the technology will continue to improve...but I'm not sure that we'll get there by 2020 for tasks more complicated than vacuuming the floor or mowing the lawn. I really doubt we'll have robots cooking our meals, taking out our trash, and sorting our laundry by the end of the decade.

• Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants coupled with mechanical legs allow the paralyzed to walk.

I disagree. Unless there is some amazing breakthrough in our understanding of the human brain (which isn't out of the question), I think this will take a lot longer than ten years.

• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere, forcing society to reconsider its definition of privacy.

I agree. The CIA probably already has them.

• Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.

I don't know about this one. Things only become obsolete when something better comes along, not something newer. Most of the time I'd simply rather have a book than a Kindle document.

• Most learning is accomplished through adaptive courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.

I disagree. While the technology for this may exist by 2020, old habits die hard. I honestly can't foresee 150 years of our education system suddenly collapsing in the next decade just because software is able to do the same thing.

• Language translating machines are of much higher quality, and are routinely used in conversations.

I agree. As I said above, voice recognition technology is already pretty good. Babelfish technology...needs a bit of improvement. But I think we'll get there by the end of the decade.

• Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience.

I disagree. While that would be pretty cool, I doubt it'll happen in ten years. There's a pretty big technological leap between World of Warcraft and The Matrix.

• Computers do most of the vehicle driving—humans are in fact prohibited from driving on highways unassisted. As a result, there are very few transportation accidents.

While I think the technology for this will probably exist by the end of the decade (it's already here, to some extent) I don't think it will catch on that quickly...at least in the United States. Our legal system is particularly nasty to companies which make products that injure people. Even if "smart cars" reduced fatalities by 90%, the other 10% would sue the manufacturers.
 
Could be fun…

• Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as inside furniture, jewelry, walls, and clothing.

Definitely think this will happen. Chips are getting smaller by the day, power sources are shrinking as well. Hell, there’s a “tattoo” that’s been done that actually is LED’s under the skin powered by a battery that gets electricity from blood running over it. You have flexible OLED screens being created and other sorts of new screen technology that could legitimately be woven into fabric or even perhaps in time implanted under the skin. Bluetooth is becoming more and more spread through electronics now. I see no reason not to believe that things will continue to get smaller and more interconnected over the next decade.

• People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures instead of with keyboards.

To a point, yes. But I don’t know if it’ll completely truly replace a keyboard. Voice Recognition is good but still have issues that no matter how advanced it will get will be problematic. For example imagine an office of 10 people all needing to “type” an email. It’d get loud and frustrating. I do think touch, gestures…both physically touching something and in the air…and speech will play a large role in controlling things in the future though. I’d imagine what you’ll begin to see slowly is a shift to mice who are essentially movable LED’s, allowing not just button presses but all manner of gestures to be used as well.

• Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.

Closer to 20 than 10 I think. They’re just now really starting to become a reality. They still need to enter into the questionable realistic use but good enough for those with disposable cash phase. THEN they will get to the reliable and widely owned phase.

• Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants coupled with mechanical legs allow the paralyzed to walk.

Yes on the first, don’t know on the second. There’s already work being undergone to potentially use electronics and technology to return site to the blind.

• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere, forcing society to reconsider its definition of privacy.

Yes, with a caveat. I think it’ll be a shift akin to the shift created now with Camera Phones. We already have got a society with cameras almost everywhere, it’ll just become even harder to realize.

• Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.

Very doubtful. If for nothing else businesses that use classified information, paper is just in general a safer route. I do think however over the next 10 years newspapers and magazines are going to be hurting extremely badly with many going the way of the dodo.

• Most learning is accomplished through adaptive courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.

Nope. The human connection is still too important and key to this generation of parents for MOST learning to be accomplished this way. Workforce training though will continue down this path.

• Language translating machines are of much higher quality, and are routinely used in conversations.

I could see this one being possible.

• Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience.

No. I also don’t think we’ll get the three sea shells.

• Computers do most of the vehicle driving—humans are in fact prohibited from driving on highways unassisted. As a result, there are very few transportation accidents.

I don’t see this in 10 years. Maybe 20. It would take a major, major rework of the roads and cars and would need to filter out all the cars not able to be used in that way.
 
Maybe if I hope strong enough, the second to last one will be plausible
 
Active RFID placed in our identification and laws requiring we carry said identification at all times.
 
Active RFID placed in our identification and laws requiring we carry said identification at all times.
I believe US passports already have RFID embedded in them.
 
We are not in a new decade yet. There was no year 0. The new decade doesn't begin until January 1, 2011.


If you had a new decade party this year, no matter how much fun you had, you and all your guests were partying a lie, and are therefore quite lame. :lol:
 
I believe US passports already have RFID embedded in them.

Aye, they do. It's currently passive I believe. The goal is to make it active. And the Real ID act was meant to expand that technology to our driver's license.
 
Aye, they do. It's currently passive I believe. The goal is to make it active. And the Real ID act was meant to expand that technology to our driver's license.
Seems like I read that the passport ID cards had active RFID, but the designers left the information completely unencrypted.

I swear, it takes government to royally screw something up that badly.
 
Seems like I read that the passport ID cards had active RFID, but the designers left the information completely unencrypted.

I swear, it takes government to royally screw something up that badly.

I'm not sure it's active yet. I know the goal is to eventually have a system by which a device can actively read the passports of incoming people on a plane.
 
• Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as inside furniture, jewelry, walls, and clothing.
I own a shirt that has a video of Pong being played on it, an actually video, not just a picture. I don't doubt this at all.

• People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures instead of with keyboards.
Project Natal is already making this likely, but even with advancements in NUI, GUI will never be obsolete, just like CLI is still used.

• Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.
Doubt this one. Maybe basic ones like Roomba, but yeah, doubt it.

• Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants coupled with mechanical legs allow the paralyzed to walk.
I have no doubts about this one. Whether this is a generally available thing, or just something that is available to test subjects, is another matter.

• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere, forcing society to reconsider its definition of privacy.
When I voted on this, I was thinking you meant people would be using pin sized cameras as personal recording devices, not the government using it. I doubt the gov will actually install smaller and smaller cameras. But as for people themselves using them, well, I have a camera the size of a small pen on my desk.

• Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.
Nope. We have had E-Books for longer than you might think. Some things will never go away.

• Most learning is accomplished through adaptive courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.
Humans can't be easily replaced by computers when it comes to education.
• Language translating machines are of much higher quality, and are routinely used in conversations.
Probably they will be better, but being used a lot? Probably not.
• Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience.
We are a long way from having this technology.

• Computers do most of the vehicle driving—humans are in fact prohibited from driving on highways unassisted. As a result, there are very few transportation accidents.
Nope. Driving is much much harder than you might think. There a millions of observations and calculations that must be made each minute, and computers are a long way from doing that.
 
I believe this to be the century of biology where as the 1900's was the century of chemistry. So I predict medical breakthroughs of all types.
 
• Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as inside furniture, jewelry, walls, and clothing.

I would say computers are embedded (almost) anywhere in the environment. By the end of the decade computer dust will be available (though i do not know how expensive it will be.) It would be able to work together for specific tasks like motion detectors and determine whether particular cars on the road are speeding, be able to communicate with other types of computers such as Web Phones, Out Patient Medical Services monitors , etc.

• People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures instead of with keyboards.

will be primaraly used for adding emoticons to email if that is still around. ;)

• Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.

Maybe such things as a motorized guttering cleaners, automated lawn mowers, and a rudimentary guard Quadruped (TM) :lol: which monitors the house while house is vacant and then notifies the security company of intruders. It could even tell the burglars that the police is comming and to give up. :2rofll:

• Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants coupled with mechanical legs allow the paralyzed to walk.

I read recently that a breakthrough in retinal implants would allow people who had damage to the receptors in the eye to have the implant replace the receptors and then it would communicate through the rest of the system that is in the eye. I don't know about the spinal implant maybe regeneration of spinal nerves would be more practical.


• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere, forcing society to reconsider its definition of privacy.

Quite probably true but to what extent ( Remember to replace anywhere with everywhere.) I imagine would be used in area that are being renovated that border dangerous neighborhoods and places like malls, some community buildings, some factories, business offices, etc.


• Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.

More accurately computers have made causal documents (some informational pamphlets, any document that has no more use than a few hours or so, and adverts:censored ) and some books like basic textbooks , pulp romance novels, most magazines, nearly obsolete.

• Most learning is accomplished through adaptive courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.

Probably not though advanced courseware would supplement existing tools and would possibly reduce some of the time a teacher would need to instruct some of the students. Give it a little longer and maybe it will come true.

• Language translating machines are of much higher quality, and are routinely used in conversations.

Possibly, if one is still careful of idioms, dialect, and slang usage i.e. professionals may only apply. This means doctors, police officers, and any professionals which may have to communicate with other professionals in another language.


• Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience.

:lol: I predict that at the end of the decade Futurists will predict that at the end of the next decade "Virtual reality is the prefered sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience."



• Computers do most of the vehicle driving—humans are in fact prohibited from driving on highways unassisted. As a result, there are very few transportation accidents.

Maybe in 30 years. That idea goes back to the Domed Cities in the City of Tomorrow. And from an American Standpoint just as likely as the Domed Cities.

What do YOU think technology will be like ten years from now?

A large number of products will be designed better. Toothpaste that is much more effective ( imagine an ingredient that rids the coating of dental bacteria and another that coats the teeth to prevent bacteria of reapplying).

The use in "phobic" substances making life easier and less stressful (imagine packages in which you can get every drop of product out of it.)
 
I would like to see rocket packs for transportation purposes.....We have had the technology since 1961 but the automobile and oil companies hold the patents......Can you imagine getting up in the morning strapping on your rocket pack, elevating about 10 ft or so and going to work or really anywhere.........
 
I would like to see rocket packs for transportation purposes.....We have had the technology since 1961 but the automobile and oil companies hold the patents......Can you imagine getting up in the morning strapping on your rocket pack, elevating about 10 ft or so and going to work or really anywhere.........

Even if possible, that doesn't sound very safe. Aim the rocket pack in the wrong direction and you suddenly have third-degree burns all over yourself. ;)
 
Here is Microsoft's interpretation of the world in 2020. It's not quite as optimistic as Kurzweil's overall vision, although a lot of these predictions do overlap with his. What do you think? Personally I think this one is more likely (as a whole) than the predictions I cited in the OP...I think almost everything in this video will happen by 2020.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uug8m0BHzZo&feature=fvw"]YouTube- TECHNOLOGY IN THE YEAR 2020[/ame]
 
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When I voted on this, I was thinking you meant people would be using pin sized cameras as personal recording devices, not the government using it. I doubt the gov will actually install smaller and smaller cameras. But as for people themselves using them, well, I have a camera the size of a small pen on my desk.

Just to clarify...I didn't specify in my poll question, but if you think pinhead-sized cameras will be available to ANYONE, go ahead and vote yes for that one.

Personally I think pinhead-sized cameras will be widely available. I can definitely see governments using smaller and smaller cameras. They would be the ultimate spy weapon, as you could literally be a fly on the wall in the enemy's war room and/or follow a terrorist around every day to see what he's up to. And they'd be a way to watch criminals without being detected.

Obviously there would be some civil liberties and privacy-related issues here...especially once these cameras become publicly available. It probably wouldn't be long before pinhead-sized cameras started showing up in unsuspecting people's showers.
 
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Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as in clothing.

No I do not see that happening. UNless they figure a way to make such devices washable,reliable and cheap.

People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures, instead of with keyboards.
I see voice recognition being part of a computer but not replacing the keyboard.

Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.
If you mean things like robotic vacuum cleaners and mowers then yes.

Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants allow the paralyzed to walk.
Maybe a retinal implant but not a spinal implant. They have Cochlear implants for people who lost their hearing or people born deaf.So a similar device for seeing sounds possible in the near future.


Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere.

We already have those things now, so it is possible for them to be everywhere.

Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.

I doubt it. People like books, Books can become valuable. Books can not easily be erased as something on a disk can or memory chip. I can see more and more people downloading PDFs for the fraction of the price of a book just like they do now to a PDA type device.

Most learning is accomplished through courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.

I can see it being alternative to real eduction just like those online degrees that you can earn but not replacing actual teachers.


quLanguage translating machines are routinely used in conversations.
Businesses maybe, but not personal use.


Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium.

Never.Only for lonely people, people with fetishes that can not really ever happen in real life, people with non-legal sexual attractions and sex addicts.

Computers do most of the vehicle driving.

They may have that stuff for parallel parking but I think it will be a very long time before someone is willing to put their life in the hands of a machine running on its own. I think they already do some that stuff on passenger rail service,but driving on a track is nowhere near comparable to driving on the streets.
 
I believe this to be the century of biology where as the 1900's was the century of chemistry. So I predict medical breakthroughs of all types.

Want to pay for a subscription to the journal Cell for me? It's only $202 per year. I'll translate the articles for you.

This quote actually might not be too far off. One of the big discoveries in this decade was induced pluripotent stem cells in mice. You can induce regular cells in your body to become stem cells if treated with the right proteins. All of the research now is trying to fix the problem that we currently have that these stem cells, when implanted into an adult, create the tissues of desire, but also tumors. The answer to that problem may be solved this decade.
 
Just to clarify...I didn't specify in my poll question, but if you think pinhead-sized cameras will be available to ANYONE, go ahead and vote yes for that one.

Personally I think pinhead-sized cameras will be widely available. I can definitely see governments using smaller and smaller cameras. They would be the ultimate spy weapon, as you could literally be a fly on the wall in the enemy's war room and/or follow a terrorist around every day to see what he's up to. And they'd be a way to watch criminals without being detected.

Obviously there would be some civil liberties and privacy-related issues here...especially once these cameras become publicly available. It probably wouldn't be long before pinhead-sized cameras started showing up in unsuspecting people's showers.

One of the advantages of a security camera is the psychological aspect. A criminal is less likely to commit a crime when he sees a camera looking at him.

I bet the government already uses pin-sized cameras for covert purposes, but for day to day surveillance, I doubt that pin-sized cameras would serve better than the cameras in current use.

I do suspect though that the cameras will be of a higher quality so that they can make out faces more easily.
 
We are not in a new decade yet. There was no year 0. The new decade doesn't begin until January 1, 2011.


If you had a new decade party this year, no matter how much fun you had, you and all your guests were partying a lie, and are therefore quite lame. :lol:

That's how it works with centuries, not decades. Decades are referred to by their digit: the sixties, the seventies, etc. Nobody is calling this (coming) decade the "102nd decade".
 
• Computers are embedded everywhere in the environment, such as inside furniture, jewelry, walls, and clothing.

Probably, yes. Judging from current trends, there is no way to avoid that.

• People communicate with their computers via speech and gestures instead of with keyboards.

I kind of did already. Mouse gestures for example. I have added voice commands in my mobile phone. Several companies(sony,nintendo etc) have working gesture solutions for their gaming systems.
Controlling my computer with voicecommands and reading text instead of typing is going to be very inefficient and noise polluting.

I dont think it will become a norm in the way you are thinking about it.

• Household robots are ubiquitous and reliable.

Electrolux trilobite vacum cleaner is a household robot and reliable.

Irobot also have similar type of cleaning products, more technologies, although not as reliable.


But hey, this decade is not the decade of robot technology. Definetely not. Biotechnology and medical technology. Do you know why? Because its the most high value industry in the world, with the best paid jobs and the highest necessity. Personally I thought the 00-10 decade would be the bio-med decade, but it turned out to be a nothing decade with just imrovement of old technologies with no actual importance, as oppose to any huge breakthough. Our last decade was wasted on political extremism and government expansions.


• Retinal implants allow the blind to see, and spinal implants coupled with mechanical legs allow the paralyzed to walk.

Yes. Although not that way. There is already created a prototype artificial eye that has proven to make blind people be able to see.
I believe more in spinal surgery and use of advanced electrical works to repair spines and allowed paralyzed to walk, rather than use of rather primitive mechanical technology.

I in other words believe more in our electrical technology and find our mechanical technology rather primitive. Which is also the reason I dont believe this will be a robotic decade.

• Pinhead-sized cameras are everywhere, forcing society to reconsider its definition of privacy.

Yes. Not only that, but literally bugs with cameras and advanced surveilance teqnique that will render the state supreme and the people captives.

• Computers have made paper books and documents almost completely obsolete.

What kind of idiot would ruin his eyes reading a book in electronic format. No thanks. The technology will be big, but definetely not render paper books obsolte. Documents however. Hmm.

• Most learning is accomplished through adaptive courseware presented by computer-simulated teachers.

Considering the lack of integreation of already current technology into general education, I highly doubt that concept. Who would want that anyways? It will certainly supplement. But passive learning is not as good as active/communicative learning, and will not be for many decades when computer simulated teaching is made active.

I mean this the same way that you dont learn something nearly as good by watching it on TV as you do by actually doing the thing.

• Language translating machines are of much higher quality, and are routinely used in conversations.

Nah. Limited usability. I certainly hope this will be worked into mobile phones, but the technology at the moment is rather primitive.

• Virtual reality is the preferred sexual medium, since it is convincing, safe, and enhances the experience.

:rofl

Nah man.. You just need to get laid.

• Computers do most of the vehicle driving—humans are in fact prohibited from driving on highways unassisted. As a result, there are very few transportation accidents.

I think there will be more computer control, yet more accident because the technology is introduced in too primitive a stage, because of commercial considerations.
 
We are not in a new decade yet. There was no year 0. The new decade doesn't begin until January 1, 2011.


If you had a new decade party this year, no matter how much fun you had, you and all your guests were partying a lie, and are therefore quite lame. :lol:

There was a year 0.. You think everything came to be in year 1? :lol:
 
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