future...

[miriam_e]

I am, apart from rare bouts of gloom, an optimist. I think we have a wonderful future in store for us all. We only have to look to the past to see that. Humans are gradually becoming more respectful of each other, children are no longer routinely exploited, women are not owned, racism is not the norm, a scratch or bad cut doesn't condemn you to death or amputation, most childhood diseases are rare, good clothing is common and cheap, travel and long-distance communication are affordable, knowledge is considered a right not a privelege. Yes there is still much to be done, but it is gratifying to see how far we have come.

Technology is advancing at an accelerating rate. Many people are discomforted by this. It seems fairly normal for people to live in the past and hanker for what they knew, but I wish technology was advancing even faster -- I want it to get to the spike before I die. As I said technology is accelerating... has been since the dawn of human culture. Take that curve and continue to draw it past the present. At some point (currently projected to be between 30 and 60 years from now) that curve will approach vertical... that is the spike. Almost anything will be possible.

Yeah, right! You say... voice dripping with sarcasm.

Let's look at a just few technologies that are set to mature shortly:

• Nanotechnology -- gotta be one of the most hyped technologies ever, but even if it achieves a tiny fraction of what it promises it could revolutionise our world. Microscopic machines can repair our bodies from inside; they can manufacture anything we wish from the air and soil around us. Yes it poses dangers too, but the first human who harnessed fire had to deal with that.
• Matter holography -- oddly, few people are working on this. It poses the possibility of creating real objects out of matter waves similar to how conventional holograms make 3d images out of light waves. This would be the end of manufacturing as we know it. Anybody could have anything if they had the "recipe" for it. We have a foretaste of this in how we are able to share files. You want to see the final episode of Roswell? (The damn TV networks didn't bother to screen it over here in Oz.) OK, no problem, I can send the 100Mb file. It costs me almost nothing to duplicate it and send it. This is how it will be with material objects one day soon.
• Virtual Reality -- my specialty. I can already make worlds that are infinite in size -- a bit of a paradox when you consider that they reside in a computer which is strictly limited in size. Contrast this with the real world which is very limited. We inhabit a small planet, with little chance to explore space -- even if the cost was much lower, space is so hostile to our fragile bodies and the distances so unimaginably vast, that we are stuck here for some time yet. In VR we can have an unlimited number of infinite worlds, and the complexity and detail of those worlds is improving. You can't be hurt in VR. Disregard all those silly movies where if you die or are hurt in VR it also happens to you in real life -- of course it doesn't.

  Couple VR with another rapidly improving technology, biological scanning, and you come up with the most amazing development of all: immortality.

  We are all familiar with CAT scans and any of the many scanning technologies used to see inside us. The ability of these machines to see smaller and smaller details is improving. Certain machines can now even see individual nerve cells, though only in small animals so far. I'm hoping we soon get to the point where we can resolve details to the level of synaptic receptors on the nerve cells of a living human brain.

  At current rates it is expected that in just 20 years a computer with about the complexity of a human brain will be cheap enough so that most people will be able to buy one.

  Adapted from the article The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine by Ray Kurzweil in the Fall 1999 special issue of Scientific American

  If you can scan a model of your brain into one of those computers then that copy of your mind lives and thinks in there. Give your mind a virtual body and a virtual world to live in and so long as the computer works, you live. And with developments in energy efficient computing the computer may be powered from just ambient energy -- the light, heat, and sound around it. It need never power down. Already my little PalmVx runs for weeks on a trickle of electricity from a rechargeable battery, and has computational abilities far in excess of computers from when I was younger, that filled entire floors of universities and consumed vast wattages of power.

  Immortality

  [sigh...]