Predictions: Technology

Prediction: In the next 25 years [timeline year 2035], synthetic biology — the creation of life from nonliving chemicals designed on a computer — could produce thousands of synthetic genomes and life-forms not yet imagined.

Who: Jerome C. Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, extrapolating from the work of the J. Craig Venter Institute

Why Great: Scientists are expanding the tools available to solve a myriad of problems, from enhancing health to improving energy supplies.

BUT… If no one yet knows what can be created, neither can we know what mischief such creations could create.

Bottom Line: Technological development has always been a double-edged sword. Researchers who ignore potential side effects or the ethical implications of their work, and who do not govern their own activities, risk having government regulators (and public disdain) thwart any hope of achieving positive breakthroughs.

Source: “Global Situation and Prospects for the Future” by Jerome C. Glenn, in Moving from Vision to Action edited by Cynthia G. Wagner (World Future Society, 2011), page 8.

Prediction: Robotic aerial drones will be the must-have weapon for air forces across the globe. A global rush to build drone arsenals is on and may push global spending on drones to $94 billion — double its current level — by 2020.

Who: Teal Group, an aerospace research firm, in a 2011 market study.

Background: More than 50 countries have bought drone technology recently. Many may be attempting to catch up to the United States, whose Air Force now extensively uses drone aircraft for both reconnaissance and combat missions. China has been particularly diligent: Chinese analysts say that every major manufacturer for the Chinese military now has a center dedicated solely to drone development.

Why Great: Clearly, there is a huge new market opportunity for aerial engineering firms; expect many more collaborations between them and the world’s armed forces. Also expect a few more degrees of separation to rise up between human soldiers and the battlefields, with robots taking on more of the most dangerous missions that in years past would have claimed pilots’ lives. The prospect of wreaking more damage on enemy infrastructure while sustaining fewer casualties is real and obviously attractive to military planners the world over.

BUT… As the article points out, some academicians worry that drones will make warfare more common. They argue that since governments will perceive the drones as minimizing human casualties, they will have fewer reservations about launching military strikes on other nations. This fear sounds valid. The more that the sights and sounds of warfare become relegated to video screens, the less impact they will have on us — even if they remain as palpable as ever to the soldiers and unarmed civilians on the receiving ends of the drone attacks.

Bottom Line: Every century, a few huge technological innovations come along and change how wars are fought. The repeating rifle, the railroad, and nuclear weapons are a few examples. Aerial drones just may be the next big thing, militarily speaking. As with previous technological innovations, though, human planners will have to use moral restraint to make sure that it changes war for the better and not for the worse.

Source: Reported in the Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/global-race-on-to-match-us-drone-capabilities/2011/06/30/gHQACWdmxH_story.html?hpid=z1

Prediction: Alcohol-detection devices (to prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver’s breath indicates he or she has had one too many) could become a standard option for every U.S. automobile by 2020 and a mandatory feature sometime thereafter.

Who: Jayne O’Donnell, USA Today, reporter. She cites a Congressional proposal to develop prototype devices; a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) spokesperson who wants to see the devices installed in every car; and an American Beverage Institute spokesperson who says that she fears this MADD aspiration will actually come to pass.

Background: Alcohol-detection devices — a.k.a, “ignition interlocks” — already exist, and courts sometimes sentence persons convicted of drunk driving to install them into their cars. These machines are flawed, however: They sometimes mistake mouthwash or caffeine in someone’s breath for booze. They are also hard to use: Drivers must blow into them several times for their cars to start. Further, they are too clunky, cumbersome, and ugly for any average driver to want to install them voluntarily. A bill proposed by two U.S. congressmen — Sens. Tom Udall, D–N.M., and Bob Corker, R–Tenn. — would direct $60 million for five-year development of new, compact, user-friendly, more effective devices suitable for automobile drivers everywhere.

Why Great: Alcohol-related driving accidents kill horrendous numbers of U.S. drivers every year. And stopping the offenders eats up massive amounts of law-enforcement budgets and manpower. Ideally, these devices could go into widespread use and prevent many drunk-driving tragedies from ever happening.

BUT… If it is only a standard feature, then will enough drivers actually buy it for it to make a tangible dent in drunk-driving accidents? Chances are most hard-core alcoholics who are responsible for most of the accidents will not. In that case, mandatory device installation would be the only solution — and it’s no sure bet that Congress will ever enact that. Industry interests are already gearing up to fight it; the American Beverage Institute spokeswoman is proof of this. Privacy hawks and libertarian groups would surely come out against it, too: “Big Brother is trying to control our automobiles!”

Bottom Line: Good intentions are behind this, but they may run aground against political realities.

Source: reported on USAToday.com, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-03-27-alcohol-detection-in-new-cars.htm

Prediction: Hotels will offer customers a selection of dreams as well as the opportunity to study and learn while they sleep by 2030.

Who: Futurist Ian Pearson, in a report for budget hotel chain Travelodge entitled “The Future of Sleep.”

Why Great: According to the report, “We will be able to replay our favorite dream from a menu just like choosing a movie. Also, we will be able to link into dreams with our partner or family and friends and enjoy a shared dream experience.” Furthermore technology could also monitor a hotel guest’s health and mood and adapt in such a way to ensure them a perfect night’s sleep: “Video, audio, smells, and tactile experiences produced using our bed or bed linen will play a key role in helping to make our dreams feel real.”

BUT… Such technological breakthroughs hinge on a vastly greater understanding of the human mind than currently exists. Also, do you really want a budget hotel chain — or anyone, for that matter — controlling what goes on inside your head?

Bottom Line: These types of predictions typically garner a lot of media attention (it’s almost as if they were calculated attempts to do just that), but the report also mentions more likely ways that augmented reality will be incorporated into hotel rooms over the next two decades (guests could have the option to digitally “decorate” their rooms themselves, for example). And remember — if the spinning top keeps spinning, then you’re still in the dream.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/weird-wide-world/8563487/Hotels-in-2030-will-feature-virtual-love-making.html

Prediction: By 2015, people will have a direct say in 25% of the display ads they see when they go to the computers and use services like Google.

Who: Neal Mohan, Vice President of Display Advertising at Innovation Days Internet Week, June 1st.

Why Great: According to Mohan, we are on the verge of a “ user-focused revolution, where people connect and respond to display ads in ways we’ve never seen before.” He sees display ads becoming a $200 billion per year industry and predicts that by 2015:

• The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. (People will see fewer and better ads)
• Engagement rates across all display ads will increase by 50 percent.
• 35 percent of campaigns will primarily use metrics beyond clicks and conversions.
• Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format.

BUT… The big loser in this vision is traditional media. Also, the personalized a display ad, the more personal information it’s using about you to sell you things.

Bottom Line: Web advertising is going to get more user-specific, eerily so, in the next three years.

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/theres-perfect-ad-for-everyone.html

Prediction: Global Internet traffic will quadruple by 2015, thanks in large part to over 3 billion Internet users and15 billion networked devices.

Who: The Cisco Visual Networking Index.

Why Great: New business opportunities are arising for tech entrepreneurs. Also, increased Internet traffic will lead to increased economic growth in developing countries, particularly Africa and the Middle East.

BUT… In just 3 years or so? That’s really soon. On the one hand, Cisco’s previous industry predictions on Internet growth seem conservative in hindsight. On the other, the technology and telecommunications giant only stands to gain from exploding online traffic, so it’s unlikely they’d be anything other than optimistic in a public report.

Bottom Line: The world will likely enter the “Zettabyte era,” as the report refers to it, sooner or later, if not necessarily by 2015.

Source: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html

Prediction: The majority (61%) of Internet traffic will be via video by 2015, with annual global traffic reaching the zettabyte threshold — that’s the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs, according to Cisco blogger Thomas Barnett (June 23, 2011):

Source: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-dawn-of-the-zettabyte-era-infographic/

Prediction: “Computers” will cease to exist. We’ll access the Web through our contact lenses, going online in the blink of an eye — literally.

Who: Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

Background: Miniaturization of all things electronic will allow more technology to be embedded on the convenient contact lens.

Why Great: Imagine never having to say you’re sorry when you don’t remember your telecommuting colleague’s name or what project you’re supposed to be working on with her. The information you need will arrive discreetly and instantly on your contact lens in a 3-D display visible only to you. You’ll even get subtitles if your partner is speaking a different language.

BUT… Augmented reality has a way of taking over your life. If people can’t even text and walk at the same time. look out for those whose visual displays are distracting them.

Bottom Line: The long-term trend in communications technology has been toward integration and convenience. As cool as things like the iPad and other tablets are, they are still stuff and have to be handled and carried and cleaned and protected. Computer contacts will be seen as a great boon to many people, and not just the usual early-adopter gearheads.

Source: various individuals cited by Australian blogger James Adonis “Internet via contact lenses, as computers die out” (May 27, 2011), Work in Progress, Sydney Morning Herald

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/blogs/work-in-progress/internet-via-contact-lenses-as-computers-die-out-20110527-1f6t0.html#ixzz1Na4KelUf

http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/blogs/work-in-progress/internet-via-contact-lenses-as-computers-die-out-20110527-1f6t0.html

Prediction: The International Space Station won’t continue past 2020. Sometime around then, its human conductors will de-orbit it and dump it into the ocean. A replacement space station might be built thereafter.

Who: Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of the Russian Space Agency

Background: Since its first modules commenced operations in the 1990s, the International Space Station has been a focal point for human operations in space. Crews from the United States, Europe, Russia, China, and other countries have shared its facilities and jointly conducted hundreds of on-board space research initiatives. Its developers had expected to keep it up and running until at least 2020, but its future beyond 2020 had always been uncertain. Davydov apparently sees no post-2020 future for the space station at all.

Why Great: If he’s right, it would be an anticlimactic end to an endeavor on which the world’s space agencies have jointly invested several decades, hundreds of billions of dollars, and myriad space-flight missions. It would also be a major setback for the near-term future of human space exploration. That space station is the only earth-orbiting docking point that space vessels with human crews currently have. Exploring space will be considerably harder once it is gone.

BUT… Will there be a successor station? Who will take the lead on it? Russia and China seem like the most probable candidates now, all things considered.

Bottom Line: Should the space station sink into the ocean, the onus will be on the world’s government’s to not let human space aspirations sink into the ocean along with it.

Source: http://en.rian.ru/science/20110727/165412055.html

Prediction: In another 10 years, home entertainment centers could be playing movies and television shows as 3-D holographs, no television screen involved.

Who: Pierre-Alexandre Blanche, University of Arizona physicist

Background: Still-life holographic images are with us today in visual displays across the globe. They function via lasers that project off a tiny film screen on which the laser’s light shines in some spots and cancels out in others to produce a complete image. Blanche and colleagues have been working on a projector that displays moving holographic images. Their prototype uses a screen that can create one image, automatically erase it, and then create another, thus generating an ongoing image sequence like the slides that make a cartoon. Their current model is currently too slow — only two frames per second — but could eventually become a working model with more fine-tuning.

Why Great: Who wouldn’t want to experience 3-D entertainment without the klunky 3-D glasses? Or view movie scenes in all their fully dimensional glory in ther living room, free of the confines of a TV screen?

BUT… Researchers need to come up with lasers that are more refined and film that is many times more sensitive in order for commercially usable products to emerge from this technology.

Bottom Line: High-def TV is about to get much, much higher-def.

Source: Discover, http://discovermagazine.com/2011/mar/10-future-tech-looking-forward-post-screen-era/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=

Background: Traffic on wireless services is already dominated by data, having surpassed voice traffic in 2010. Machines will increasingly communicate with each other automatically, without human intervention.

Why Great: Good news for efficient remote monitoring, such as in telemedicine and insurance companies that can monitor your driving habits and adjust your premiums accordingly.

BUT… Bad news for meter readers and anyone concerned about their machines tattling on them.

Bottom Line: M2M promises potential savings of billions of dollars in health care and other industries, and may be a boon for individuals with disabilities and other chronic conditions.

Source: Sprint M2M: http://m2m.sprint.com/news--resources/news-events/news/m2mnow.aspx Better 3

Prediction: “Voice interface systems will permit automation of about one-third of the current service sector jobs” [in the next 25-50 years]. “By 2040, robotlike machinery will inhabit the world alongside people, doing much of the work.”

Who: James H. Irvine and Sandra Schwarzbach of the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, California

Background: Also, “robots could replace as much as 25% to 50% of the current, low-end labor force in the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors of the U.S. economy.”

Why Great: “This could mean vastly higher productivity for the remaining labor force.”

BUT… obviously this will disrupt the lives of many workers unprepared to move to higher-order occupations, with societal repercussions.

Bottom Line: The increased “infiltration” of robots in the workforce is not unlike immigrants taking over more and more service jobs in advanced economies. Conflicts will likely arise, but many of these jobs were not that desirable in the first place. Human–robot cultural understanding might be included in workplace diversity training to help ease some of the pain in the transition.

Source: the authors’ paper, “New Technologies and the World Ahead: The Top 20 Plus 5,” in Moving from Vision to Action (WFS, 2011)

Prediction: 50 billion machine-to-machine (M2M) devices — such as high-definition cameras, e-readers, remote sensors, and appliances — will be communicating with each other wirelessly by 2020.

Who: Sprint

Background: Traffic on wireless services is already dominated by data, having surpassed voice traffic in 2010. Machines will increasingly communicate with each other automatically, without human intervention.

Why Great: Good news for efficient remote monitoring, such as in telemedicine and insurance companies that can monitor your driving habits and adjust your premiums accordingly.

BUT… Bad news for meter readers and anyone concerned about their machines tattling on them.

Bottom Line: M2M promises potential savings of billions of dollars in health care and other industries, and may be a boon for individuals with disabilities and other chronic conditions.

Source: Sprint M2M: http://m2m.sprint.com/news--resources/news-events/news/m2mnow.aspx

Prediction: Soldiers will communicate telepathically. No longer relying on radio transmissions, microphones, or hand signals, they will relay their thoughts to each other through “thought helmets.”

Who: Gerwin Schalk, an Albany Medical College biomedical scientist, who is working with the U.S. army to develop the first functional thought helmets.

When: Soldiers outfitted with thought helmets could be deploying as soon as 2020.

Why It’s a Great Prediction: A combat area is by nature chaotic and unnerving. Soldiers operating in it could probably be a lot less overwhelmed and make far fewer mistakes if they are able to stay in touch telepathically and thereby understand each other perfectly no matter how much background noise they might be enduring. Also consider how it might cross-apply to gaining enemy intelligence. Torture will no longer have any excuse whatsoever (not that it is already hard to defend) — why go through the trouble of waterboarding or isolating a prisoner when all you have to do is strap a thought helmet onto his head and read any secret of his that you want?

BUT… How secure will it be? Enemy operatives could sow a lot of chaos if they learn how to infiltrate thought helmets and implant their own false thoughts.

Bottom Line: Technology that can read thoughts is bold, edgy, and to some a little frightening. We don’t know yet if it is feasible, much less what harms might result from its misuse. But it is an exciting — and to military personnel, potentially lifesaving — all the same.

Source: http://discovermagazine.com/2011/apr/15-armys-bold-plan-turn-soldiers-into-telepaths

Prediction: By 2030, doctors will be fitting amputees and persons who are missing limbs with “neuroprosthetics” that link to the body’s neurons and receive signals from the brain so as to move, feel, and operate just like real limbs.

Who: Will Rosellini, CEO and president of MicroTransponder (a medical device company)

Background: Machines that interface with the human nervous system are already here: Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), an electrode therapy that uses electric impulses to reorder a patient’s neural circuits, has been successfully treating epilepsy and severe depression since the 1970s. Rosellini’s own company has been testing use of VNS to treat many other neurological disorders, such as tinnitus and phantom limb pain. Extrapolating from the current trajectory of development, Rossellini sees whole limbs that interface with neurons exiting labs in another two decades.

Why Great: Millions of people across the globe live without one or more limbs, either because of an amputation or because they were born that way. Any one of them would rejoice to have the kind of fully functional prosthetic that Rosellini describes. Its development would go far to expanding each person’s options in life and quality of living.

BUT… As the article points out, no electronic system today can interact seamlessly with nerves. So it’s unknown how we might make a neuroprosthetic that has all the mobility of a natural limb. And in any case, such limbs are bound to be expensive. Even if they are available by 2030, how many patients will be able to afford them? And will insurance policies cover them?

Bottom Line: We must all hope that the future prosthetic arm or leg will not only work as well as the real thing, but that it won’t cost a patient an arm and a leg to buy it.

Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/08/16/is-the-era-of-neuroprosthetic-augmentation-really-just-20-years-away/

Prediction: By 2020, the world could have a space ship capable of carrying human crews to other planets, says a NASA team. To build this ship, which the team dubs Nautilus-x, engineers would take the International Space Station and outfit it with artificial-gravity mechanisms, modules for supply storage, and hangars for landing vehicles. The whole project could be completed for a mere $4 billion.

Who: NASA’s Technology Applications Assessment Team

Why Great: Anything that could ferry human to other planets for less than $4 billion would be a momentous development for humankind. This is the kind of cost-effective infrastructure that we would need if we are to ever break free of Earth. As an added plus, it would ensure a future for the International Space Station, which the U.S. government does not plan to fund beyond 2015.

BUT… Nautilus-X’s short timetable and scant budget both sound incredibly optimistic. They may be correct, but we will never find out unless the proponents can win over a lot of skeptics within NASA’s leadership circles. The timing is anything but auspicious. Not only is there an ongoing budget crunch that would discourage bold ideas such as this, but NASA is also already planning for Orion 6, a more compact (and more expensive) vehicle for human flight into deep space.

Bottom Line: Nautilus-x represents several great ideas: recycling old space modules for new, more challenging missions; harnessing the resources of many partner nations, not just one; and cutting spacecraft construction costs by building and testing them in space. These ideas have staying power and will probably be guiding principles in many future space missions, whether Nautilus-x is constructed or not.

Source: Future in Space Operations Group, http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=26786

Prediction: Appliances will no longer need power cords, according to two Duke University researchers who say that laboratory-engineered “metamaterials” could be used to build outlets that would transmit energy to a device remotely, in the form of radio waves.

Who: Yaroslavl Urzhomov and David Smith, Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering

Why Great: This metamaterial method would be much more energy-efficient than wire transmission, which loses large quantities of energy as waste heat and friction. Besides, eliminating wires and cords from many household products would be a quick way to cut society’s consumption of plastics and metals. As an added plus, through further adapting this technology to broadcast media, engineers could achieve far more powerful and clearer communications transmissions, as well.

BUT… Metamaterials’ potential is so far only a theory. Urzhomov and Smith still need to build large-scale metamaterial applications and prove that it will work in real life.

Bottom Line: Cost savings, lower energy use, and getting to do away with pesky, tangle-prone extension cords are all great things to look forward to, but only time will tell if they come to pass.

Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/05/25/metamaterials-could-help-wirelessly-charge-electronics-by-making-space-disappear/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+80beats+%2880beats%29

Prediction: Online gambling is the future of the casino industry. Gambling venues will reap much bigger dividends if they expand into cyberspace than if they simply build more old-fashioned live casino halls.

Who: Two casino executives presenting at the 2011 East Coast Gaming Congress.

Why Great: This could spell a reshaping of many local economies throughout the world: Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, and other historic gambling meccas that have always staked their livelihoods on casino-going tourists would probably quiet down considerably, as more and more would-be tourists opt to save the airfare and travel time by squelching their gambling fixes at home on their laptops.

On a more ominous note, it might also imply a rising toll of victims: Online gambling breeds many gambling addicts, and also exposes users to malware, viruses, and identity theft. Depending on how many new online ventures emerge and how aggressively their founders market them, rates of gambling addictions and cybercrime may rise considerably.

BUT… The casinos will have to win a few rounds against lawmakers first. The U.S. federal government and many other national governments restrict online gambling activity, though some regional and local governments are more allowing. Enough casino lobbying could dilute the national laws, but even that is less than likely: Casino officials don’t rank highly in the court of public opinion.

Bottom Line: Humans have gambled for millennia and will continue to do so. The Internet just creates more opportunities for engaging in it, which also means it magnifies the societal harms. Lawmakers will need to anticipate increased pressure from gambling interests, as well as develop proactive policies for keeping online gambling in check. Individual consumers, on their end, will have to exercise their judgment as diligently as ever.

Source: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpps/business/online-gambling-is-the-future-of-the-industry-dpgapx-20110524-ch_13358918

Prediction: In ten years, tablet PCs, netbooks, and laptops will be extinct, replaced by a a new device as-yet-to-be-conceived.

Who: Rama Skukia, vice president of Intel’s architecture group speaking at SEMICON (semiconductor conference) in San Francisco in July.

Why Great: The rapid evolution in the consumer technology space will affect chip makers like Intel profoundly. Skukia stood up in front of a room of Intel’s customers and said, in effect, “We’re going to have to innovate faster. You’re going to have to innovate faster, too.” (Bonus, he also forecast that graphics performance on chips for mobile devices will rise by a factor of 12 by 2015.)

BUT… Skukia would have been more convincing if he had offered a guess on the sort of device that will replace these other gizmos.

Bottom Line: Don’t fret about getting the latest consumer gadget. The platform will be passé before you download the first app.

Source: V3.Ko.UK http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2093423/intel-predicts-tablets-laptops-netbooks-history-decade

Prediction: In the future, people won’t care that sites like Facebook sell their personal data, because Facebook will pay them for the data they share.

Who: Jess Kimball, former speech writer for Faith Popcorn, on Twitter, May 13, 2011.

Why It’s Great: In May, Facebook was sued by two individuals in a California court for violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s Computer Crime Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act. What happened? A group of advertisers accessed the users’ personal information from Facebook. The lawsuit came on top of numerous public assurances by company founder Mark Zuckerberg that “We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.” Oops. Kimball’s remedy means fewer lawsuits.

BUT… For this to work, the company would have to make its privacy settings easier to use and become much more transparent.

Bottom Line: People should be able to sell their information to third-party advertisers if they want to; Facebook is in a great position to serve as a broker for that sort of exchange. If you understood your private data was worth money, you would probably keep better track of it. Kimball’s idea is a win-win-win.

Sources: TechCrunch, Guardian.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/facebook-faces-lawsuit-over-unauthorized-sharing-of-user-data-with-advertisers/

Also http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/24/facebook-revise-privacy-zuckerberg

Prediction: By 2015, there will be no more textbooks in South Korea’s schools. All learning material will be digitized.

Who: South Korean Ministry of Education

Background: Many South Korean schools have been phasing out their printed textbooks and replacing them with netbook computers — after all, anything you can publish in a book, you can run on a computer monitor. The South Korean Ministry of Education expects this to become the standard model for curricula in all of its schools. By 2015, it projects, all of the country’s students will glean their class notes and homework not from textbooks but from smartphones, netbooks, and tablets. The ministry recently announced that it is investing $2.4 billion specifically to make this happen.

Why Great: It is impressive that any country could digitize all learning content in every one of its schools, no matter how rich or poor the school’s community might be. Consider how widely textbook quality can vary from one school district to another: Wealthy districts outfit all their students with brand-new editions while poorer districts’ students make do with either outdated, worn-out textbook copies or no copies at all. Digitized learning could be a great equalizer if a country goes about it properly.

BUT… What if a country goes about it improperly? Poorer school districts that cannot afford new laptops or phones for every student risk falling even further behind. Besides, the jury is still out on whether kids learn better from computer screens or from printed material. All the more so when the screens happen to be on small mobile devices — since those screens are much more compact than typical textbook pages, they are not as easy to read. And then there’s the matter of eyestrain — what long-term wear and tear could kids’ eyes suffer from being transfixed to computer screens every moment of the school day? We’ve never encountered this before in human history, so we’ll have to wait and find out.

Bottom Line: Ditching the textbooks and bringing in the digital notebooks sounds like a nice idea, but there may yet be some bugs to work out.

Source: Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26960/

Prediction: Offices will be ubiquitous computing environments by 2025.

Who: 360KID CEO Scott Traylor in a video interview with game designer Jesse Schell. The short video is part of Schell’s YouTube series called “The Crystal Ball Society,” which is described as “a place where people make concrete predictions about the future.”

Why Noteworthy: “Computers would exist in the walls and the floor — in the elements of architecture instead of in a big machine on your desktop,” says Traylor. They would form a context-aware system that could sense where a person is and automatically access (and capture) any relevant data. “We won’t necessarily be tethered to the larger hardware devices for computing. … It will just be in the cloud, it will be in the architecture, it will be in the spaces around us,” he explains, adding that a natural user interface could boast visual components as well as verbal. Traylor believes that businesses will be the early adapters, since ubiquitous computing offers the greatest advantages there, and that it will eventually extend to public spaces and homes as well as offices.

BUT… Hardware devices will not be obsolete. In fact, they will still be needed for more complex operations. However, for more basic computing and communications activities, people could just “speak it into the walls.” Also, Traylor wonders how great demand would be outside of businesses for such a system.

Bottom Line: This concept, which has been kicking around since at least the 1980s (and begins appearing in science fiction much earlier), seems to be moving increasingly closer to becoming a reality. Traylor sees ubiquitous computing as “another step in that evolutionary chain” that has taken us from home computers to laptops to smart phones and tablets.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ER_bmBjvOE

Prediction: Auto safety will improve in a myriad of ways by 2020.

Who: Kiplinger.com.

Why Great: Vehicle-to-vehicle locating, pedestrian detection, night vision, collision-mitigation systems, and blind spot monitoring systems that utilize cameras and radar could become commonplace. According to the article, “rearview cameras are likely to become standard equipment, thanks to a proposal by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that would require all light passenger vehicles to have the technology by 2014.”

BUT… Cars won’t be driving themselves. Hopefully all these built-in features (not to mention the distraction that is in-car Wi-Fi) won’t cause drivers to pay less attention to the road.

Bottom Line: All of these technologies currently exist — but they are expensive and vehicles don’t come standard with them. However, this situation seems highly likely to change over the next decade.

Source: http://kiplinger.com/slideshow/car-features-in-2020/1.html

Prediction: If we don’t clear out the buildup of space junk now orbiting Earth, within a few decades, spacecraft won’t be able to leave Earth’s airspace — there will be too much floating debris crashing into them and wrecking their circuitry.

Who: National Research Council (NRC)

Background: With almost every mission that launches into space, some amount of scrap or garbage escapes and winds up drifting permanently in orbit around earth. Some space shuttles and space satellites have already suffered structural damage due to collisions with this space junk. Sometimes, the damage is severe enough to thwart the whole mission. Such accidents are about to become very common, according to a recent report by the NRC’s Committee for the Assessment of NASA’s Orbital Debris Programs. The report states that the debris already up there continually collides with each other and shatters into ever more floating pieces. The space surrounding earth will become increasingly inhospitable to space missions until we finally remove some of the junk.

Why Great: Needless to say, this space-junk dilemma makes future Moon and Mars missions just a little more impossible. But also consider everyday life on earth: GPS systems, weather forecasts, and telephone, television, and Internet connections on every continent rely on satellites in space relaying signals. They will all go out of service if we get to a point where we can no longer safely fly a satellite. The space-junk problem poses a major challenge for human life on earth and in space both.

BUT… NASA is exploring possible methods for capturing and removing the space junk. The report discusses some of them. They are expensive and not yet ready to deploy, but they do offer some hope.

Bottom Line: Littering is a bad habit anywhere — even in outer space.

Source: Discovery News, http://news.discovery.com/space/could-space-junk-leave-us-stranded-on-earth-110902.html

Prediction: There will be over 1000 embedded processors in your home by 2020.

Who: Rich LeGrand, president of robotics technology company Charmed Labs, speaking at SXSW Interactive in March (“Congratulations, Your Robot Just Accepted Your Friend Request”).

Why Great: Many smart devices in our homes will perform useful tasks, saving us time and making our lives more comfortable in the process.

BUT… Then there are those pesky privacy issues. Your home devices may know more about you than you’re comfortable with.

What to do about it: According to LeGrand, the key to making the technology feasible is ensuring that you can drive your devices (and that they can communicate with each other) on any network.

Source: www.charmedlabs.com, http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8101