India Future Society

Predictions for “The Future and You” website

by Siddartha Verma

May 27, 13 • GeneralNo CommentsRead More »

The future, as it exists, is going to be very different from the past. Physicists can say that the one cannot differentiate between the past, and future arrow of time. But, in reality, when an observer makes observations about any stage of development at any instant of time in the history of evolution of this Universe (I should be more specific and say our world Earth here), one can clearly see the difference and changes happening.. Be it the evolution of stars, galaxies, supernovae, cluster of galaxies and so on. These phenomenons, to an extent can be explained, but has no well known theory to back it up.

Coming to our planet Earth itself, its evolution in last 4 billion years can be said to be irreversible, and the same can be said about the time in posterity to come.

Any advanced civilization of the future, has technologies, culture, values, ethics and rules, quite different from the one in past. Many factors can be said to be contributing to this factor, such as- change in their thinking, needs and necessities.
There can be parameters, which will exist, change, or will cease to exist in future.

Starting with the parameters, which will cease to exist in future- several species of plants and animals which are close to extinction (if proper measures are not taken to preserve them), proper balance in Earth’s atmosphere (if precautionary measures are not taken on time), this planet Earth itself (if it is unable to cross the existential risks which are upon it in close future like 30 – 40 years of time).

Parameters which will change are, are several objects, goods and things of daily needs which are being used in people’s life, rich and poor. These are, things like clothes, cars, medicine, food, house, agriculture, media (music and video), and many other technologies in aviation, defense, space exploration, longevity research, renewable and non-renewable sources of energy, handheld touch screens, wearable devices/ gadgets, energy storage mediums (new form of lithium ion batteries and solar cells), geo-informatics, computers, cloud computing, bioinformatics and bio-medical technologies, and others.

Elaborating few examples like, clothes, car, medicines and food; we can have different forms of clothing in future, which can have all sorts of electronic circuitry embedded to it, and which can be designed to suit several fashion trends, weather and season. There can be clothes like which can be repaired on its own, or which are more resistible to wear and tear.

Amongst cars, one will be able to witness several new and compatible designs of cars which are lighter, gives more mileage, uses different forms of ignition and fuel, can change its paint color, are scratch resistant (basically it will be based on new and innovative form of paint technologies), more compatible and user friendly (like having more inbuilt digital and electronic technologies), or driverless (as it is being developed presently by pioneer researchers like Sebabtian Thrun and companies like Google).

Coming on to medicines, one will be able to avail its better form based on growing nanotechnology field. It will give better cure to patients and can modify the cells and molecules in human body to perform specific tasks (by using nano robots in blood and cells). One can see increase in longevity research or life expectancy cycles of human beings (this field if already under close investigation by eminent researcher Aubrey de Grey, founder of SENS).

Food can change, in its form or nutritional values, to suit the lifestyle of future culture. One can already say there is a huge difference between the type of food intake between the people in east and the west. This change may widen between the present and people of the future, as nutrients may come in compact size capsule like tablets (which are already somewhat used by astronauts who go to space).

Technologies, objects and things which will exist in future, which one cannot find today are, technologies like brain simulation (which is a matter of investigation by companies like Carboncopies run by Dr. Randal Koene), space colonies on Mars or different planets or solar systems, strong Artificial Intelligence, geostationary/ geosynchronous space colonies and establishments, faster means of space travel, floating cities, more companies like Facebook and Google on different platform, robots to cater society for different purposes, nano technologies not currently present and lastly something to change human moral, ethics and values.

Other than these, there are several unknowns which are beyond the perception of human imagination, on how future will change based on the evolving and emerging interdisciplinary technologies..

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