Two decades is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but owing to accelerating change we can expect to see the emergence of some fairly disruptive technological innovations in the coming years. Here are 10 mindblowingly futurist technologies that should appear by the 2030s.
As a futurist, it’s my job to make predictions. But I absolutely hate timelines, and you’ll rarely find me making claims about when some specific sort of technological wizardry will make an appearance. Feasibility interests me more than dates on a calendar.
But the fog is starting to clear on what we can expect to see within the next twenty years. All the technologies I’ve listed below have a better than 50/50 chance of being actualized.Some of you may complain that I’m being a bit conservative by not including AGI (artificial general intelligence), molecular assembling nanotechnology, hive minds, IA (intelligence augmentation), radical life extension, powerful spacecraft propulsion engines, useful quantum computers, mind uploads, or whole human brain emulations — but I just don’t see these things coming to fruition until much later.
Alright, here’s what we should expect by the year 2033:1. 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.
HT: The Big PictureLooking 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....MUCH MORE
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