Life In The Future
1960's Television Have you ever wondered what the future holds for us? If you haven't, there certainly are others who have. It is interesting to note that the world has changed tremendously in the last 50 years and those old enough to have been around 50 years ago can seen the obvious changes. We have become a culture that accepts technology that has only been around a few years and thinks of it as being old. An example of this is the Internet. While it has been around awhile, it has only existed in the form that we now know it now for about a decade, give or take a few years. Before that it was a slow ponderous thing that was basically there for information only. You wouldn't have wanted to download software, because it was a deal where it took all night to download a small program and you had to pray that the connection would last. Not only that, but the phone rates were so high that this type of download over the phone lines cost a fortune at the time. If you would have told anyone that in a few years we would be using fiber optics, light, they would have laughed at you.
Modern Television Advancement in technology happens to be a two edged sword. So many things that we are developing, or have even developed already, can be the basis not only for good, but also bad. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. As we know, certain types of fertilizer when mixed with oil become a powerful bomb. When these fertilizers were invented, no one ever thought that they would, or even that they could be used that way. Not only does this stuff explode, it is one of the most powerful bombs that can be created, if we are not talking nuclear. Look at the laser. It is found in so many of our devices and yet the defense department has been making a weapon out of it. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Just imagine how much worse this will get in the future. It is being said that if things keep going the way that they are, almost anyone might be able to destroy the entire human race using something that was invented for a completely different purpose. It is very important that any new technology is examined for potential harm, before being allowed to be put on the market.
Zerox Alto, First Modern PC - 1973 One of the most fascinating new technologies being talked about are medical devices that are tiny robots. Some are almost microscopic at this point and there might even be some smaller than that now. They are called nanobots. A medical nanobot is being conceived that could be injected by the millions into our bodies with the purpose of keeping us healthy. Supposedly it would do this by eating cancer cells, cleaning out clogging arteries and veins and anything else that we needed. One futurist pointed out a problem with these things that wasn't being thought about. He said, correctly, that there are thousands of hacking attacks on our computers today and he believes that someone, somewhere, will hack these nanobots if they are put into us. He went on to say that even some governments might find them too tempting to leave alone and under some circumstances these robots might be able to control us. We could become subservient to anything that our controllers wanted.
Modern Laptop Computer Our future is going to be nothing like our past. In the past nothing was connected. You couldn't take control of anything without physically doing it. Today some kid sitting in his bedroom might be able to get into the NASA website or even our power grid and do all sorts of mischief. This kid might even be on the other side of the world. He could even be in a country that has a very weak government that allows him to get away with anything. How do we guard against these things? Right now, about the only way is by not having any telephone connections leading into the computers. That means that something like the power grid would have to be a closed system that could only be accessed on site. This does make things a lot more complicated, and in some cases completely impractical. We have fielded a computer system that is being used by our military. It is a two way system where information is being sent to soldiers and soldiers are sending back information. It is supposed to be the best thing since mashed potatoes. While it seems to work fine now, I wonder how it would work against a sophisticated enemy, one who has the capability of hacking it and sending us false info? So far the enemy has been able to get into are data and see what we are seeing. There is going to be a time when we figure out how to either get around the light speed barrier, or how to break it. I know that Einstein said that it can not be broken, but so many things in science have been proven wrong and replaced with updated theories. Traveling faster than light might open up other technologies to us. If we use what are called wormholes as shortcuts to other places in space, we might find that there are things inside these worm holes that we didn't expect. Right now the argument is that the holes open and close so nothing can exist in them. When this is said we are thinking like 3 dimensional people, which we are by the way. What if the inside of a wormhole contained another dimension, one that had different rules? Who knows what we might find inside one, maybe even life? There are many things that seem totally impossible to us right now. There is an old saying that states, “you can't be in two places at the same time”. In the future this may not be true. You may be able to send a hologram of yourself to more than one destination. Well maybe this isn't really you being in two places, but it is darn close. If the human race doesn't destroy itself, it will be a completely different world in another 100 years. Scientists will be coming out with new inventions every day. This will be because technology will be moving so fast. The rate of today's inventions will seem like a snail's pace compared to that time. The really big question is will this period of invention ever end? Probably not, but it may not be humans inventing things in the distant future, but our machines. As machines become smarter and smarter, they have to surpass us. They will have a different kind of intelligence, one that is geared more to technology. Every time they create something that will immediately be looking to improve it. The way I see things is that if there is some sort of futuristic television invented, it will be improved upon in every copy, meaning that if you buy one today and your neighbor buys one tomorrow, his might be more advanced if it was made after yours. Life will be so different that anyone from this time might not be able to adopt. Having said all this, I hve to think that the future will be a very interesting place. |
