Living on the Razor's Edge

History teaches us that people's expectations regarding technological progress have greatly exceeded results. When asked in the 70's what the year 2000 would look like, my father wrote about flying cars, overpopulation and food production taking place in the ocean. Yet we not only do not have flying cars, but one can easily go to the country to end up moving at 8 mph because the guy in front you is driving a huge farming machine that you can't pass because of all the traffic coming from the over direction. The temptation of making wild predictions on what will be invented in the next half century is great, especially that no one can really prove you wrong when speculating on such a long time frame. Still, when trying to predict the future of technology, I want foremost want to understand history and emerging trends.

The change in people's perception of technology over the next fifty years will be more important the the changes in the technology itself. In half a century, practically the entire workforce will be composed of people without any personal experiences of how the world operated before the invention of the Internet and personal computers. Just look at today's ten-year-olds, already accustomed to using Google, to whom a world without instant messaging or email would seem strange. I'm eighteen and I am unique in the way that I separate two worlds, the people older than me who are used to doing many things without computers, and those younger who have never sent non-electronic mail. The next fifty years will bring about omnipresent ultra-high bandwidth networks, more natural interfaces for controlling computers, and widely accepted virtual reality. But most importantly, the change will be in us and our eager acceptance of information technology.

The Internet we have today is just a beginning, a mere glimpse into the network of the future. It already revolutionized our social and consumption habits, affected practically all the sectors of the economy and sparked a stock market bubble. If you think that the Internet has made incredible changes in the ways we live, you've seen nothing. Ubiquitous networks (more widely available than the electrical grid due to wireless connectivity) coupled with nanotechnology, reduced power consumption, the widespread adaptation of IPv6, will make distinguishing a communicating with EVERYTHING possible. The implications of such a world are enormous with further automation and complex computer systems controlling our world just around the corner.

As cheap processing power gets more and more abundant our ability to create intuitive interfaces to control machines will increase. Devices controlled through voice and even thoughts will be perfected and widespread, while the current, unnatural interfaces like mice and keyboards will become a thing of the past. With the perfection of voice recognition and synthesis will come a new generation of computers that will help us manage our complicated lives. Despite of what sensation seekers predict, the control over technology will remain in our hands, but the human desire to constantly do more with less will change the ways we live forever. An increasingly connected world as our future is bound to be, with information flowing easier and faster, is an increasingly competitive world. A world so competitive that our economical survival in society will depend on the assistance that we get from semi-intelligent machines. This world is creeping up upon us and it's just around the corner. It's taking us in.

"Cheers to promiscuous sex, as it makes our life a whole lot more interesting! Lets just hope it doesn't make it shorter."