I spend a lot of my spare time getting a picture of what the world may look like tomorrow and how we are progressing as humanity. How can we solve the major problems we are facing and what next technology will change the face of the world?
Now I want to write down some thoughts and link some interesting videos or articles.
AI & Computer-Brain Interfaces
The Matrix was by far the most influential film I have ever seen. I was 11 or 12 by that time and in the following years I began to realize that we are in fact already living in a kind of matrix. But that refers more to the fact that most people around me seem to be unaware of how exactly money controls us and how media and politicians lie to us and so on. So to me the film was a good metaphor for the inequality in society and how some really rich people keep us stupid and silent.
But now it turns out that this film might also be a more and more realistic foreshadowing.
AI is progressing very fast and technology can be controlled purely with our minds now and I am sure that this will work the other way round too. Together with VR this could potentially make The Matrix a reality I believe. We will definitely have to keep an eye on technology to prevent it from outsmarting us and taking over the world… that sounds so crazy. :D
But I guess this is nothing I will experience in my lifetime. For now I find it way more questionable that Facebook seems to make some progress in reading minds.
But fortunately there is this Elon Musk trying to prevent us from that. :D
VR/AR
I have experienced VR only once, unfortunately. But it was amazing! I had a surgery done by a very creepy robot philosophizing about live. But I am still waiting for IKEA to let me design my living room in VR.
Well, I guess this whole VR/AR stuff is popular enough so I‘ll just put a funny fail video here.
(2:45 my favorite :D)
But wait… I just read that Googles Deepmind is now capable of creating images from your sentences. Maybe in the future it can create entire worlds for us just from our thoughts and bring us there in VR. Wow… mind blown by imagination...
And to also mention AR, I just stumbled upon this Video from BMW. It‘s their 9-year-old imagination of whats possible today. Cewl!
Bionics
I am so amazed by these modern mind-controlled prostheses, that can actually provide its owner a sense of touch! This is so cool! What a great engineering achievement!
There definitely will be a time when completely healthy people will have their biologic bodyparts replaced by artificial ones on purpose.
Robotics
Also impressing are the robots these days. Maybe we are not that far away from Star Wars like droids helping in the kitchen or, well... patrolling the streets. Both interesting and frightening.
Again, great engineering! But it comes with some bad side-flavor, knowing that Boston Dynamics is very close to the military. But this next one makes me smile again. :P
In-vitro Food
At first it appeared very concerning to me but this may actually be a big deal in the future because it solves some major problems and it will get cheaper, much cheaper than traditional food production.
„Large-scale monocultures, genetically modified breeds, and meat rolling off the assembly line are distinctive of today’s food production. At the same time, enormous amounts of resources are wasted, habitats are destroyed, metabolic cycles are disturbed, and dangerous dependencies are created, damaging both humans and their environment. Due to excessive fertilization and the use of pesticides in intensive industrial agricultural systems, the ecological balance of the surrounding land is disturbed. Factory farming creates numerous problems: feeding animals antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance in animals and humans, soil and groundwater become toxic due to the huge amounts of liquid manure, and rainforests are cut down in order to create more space to breed cattle, which releases carbon dioxide emissions. Cattle also contribute substantially to the greenhouse effect by producing methane gases. Genetically modified seeds reduce biodiversity and create social disparity.“
(http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/anthropocene/tomorrows-diet-food-laboratory)
Autonomous Transportation
I guess I don‘t have to go much into detail, as this is already a very popular topic. I just can‘t wait to sit in my Tesla driving me to work or to a friend, watching a fleet of autonomous trucks in front of me and some drones high in the sky delivering stuff.
For those who haven‘t seen it yet… And yes, I‘m kind of a tesla fanboy. :P
But it still has its flaws and some are not that enthusiastic. Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company, has it‘s own opinion of the topic. ;)
„Don‘t wait for the future, travel by rail!“
And here is an interesting TED talk about the technology. :)
Automated Shopping
I really hate shopping and I wish I'd have one of those smart fridges that keeps an I on my groceries, orders automatically and then I only have to open the door and take it. And thanks to the autonomous trucks or drones and the IoT and all that stuff nobody has to practically work to make this happen... hopefully we have some kind of basic income by then.
$6000 for a fridge... seems legit... if it has a butcher and some cattle inside. :D
And Amazon delivers what your fridge ordered.
The adventurous people obviously will still want to go shopping on their own but every time I stand in line in the grocery store, I wonder why human beings have to waste their precious time by moving things from left to right and letting a scanner make these annoying beeps. Hopefully this will be a thing of the past when I am old.
And there are many other and different projects in this area.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=automated+supermarket
The more I think the more topics come to my mind, very prominent at the moment is obviously decentralization and blockchain technology but also things like drones and flying cars, quantum computers, mars colonization, even urban gardening, community supported agriculture and basic income, clean energy, internet of things… this list goes on and on but I‘m a little bit tired now and maybe at some time I will write another article like this one.
But, you know… to be honest, sometimes I feel really sad, because I live in the here and now and not in some fantastic utopian future. It is hard for me to accept that there are so many cool things that are actually possible today and we could definitely live in a much better world but it always takes years or decades for society to really adapt to new things. But hey… at least it is interesting to watch.
If you have more interesting topics for me let me know!
Thanks for reading, hope you liked it!
I would really appreciate your upvote and/or resteem if you did. I wrote this while being on a very slow internet connection so it took way longer than it looks like. :P