Future vision - Do you agree?

[aigel]

Did some 13 year old write that?

[Crowbob]

Originally Posted by uncle_scott

Working in transportation planning, I can tell you that DOTs and Transit Authorities across the nation are planning and funding future investments in smart car technologies. Everything from automated vehicle technology to sensors at stop lights that talk to the cars and regulate traffic flow based on volumes. We also discuss the reality that large scale retail at a big box store could be a thing of the past in the near future. Online ordering with very fast and nearly free shipping already is making a huge dent in local retail sales. I can see a future with fewer person to person retail transactions and automated cars.

Some of the things on the list seem far fetched, but I imagine that many of the things we take for granted today would have seemed far fetched to a group of people 15-20 years ago...Technology marches on. Best you can do is try to keep up and not get lost in the pack.

Far-fetched is now ten or less years away and decreasing, though. Also, I actually think individual survival will lie in purposely getting lost in the pack.

The classic movie from 1927 'Metropolis' does actually have a few scenes using computers with video screens. Sci-fi is actually a predictor of the future in many cases.

John Kerry, dumb as he is, gave a commencement speech Saturday trying to prepare the grads for a future without borders.

Unfortunately, he may be correct. What the future global economy will look like is anyone's guess but I think something will have to come along to give the billions on earth something to do.

Soylent green comes to mind also.

[74-911]

I guess I am a bit pessimistic. Many of the "advances" in the article will come to pass. Eventually the privileged few will live in a utopian society, everyone else in variations of a dystopian society. Billions of people educated via smart phones to what ? develop apps? Who will support and take care of all those elders living past 100? Ageing populations are already a problem in much of the industrialized world and it is only going to get worse.

[strupgolf]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

It reads like a bad Google translation.

I also don't see electricity getting cheaper anytime soon. Solar cannot survive without massive subsidies. That will change, but I don't know when. But as long as it needs subsidies to survive or compete, traditional electricity only has to keep pace with the post-subsidy price of solar. Take away those subsidies and solar becomes unaffordable, which certainly won't make electricity any cheaper.

Yes sir, that's very true.

[Brian in VA]

I always wonder - when the earth is covered in panels sucking up the sunlight / energy, what terrible thing will that lead to that we can't foresee?

[jyl]

It is an interesting question.

Let's say, hypothetically, that technology advances to the point that only 10 MM people are needed to feed, house, clothe, entertain, educate, heal 300MM people.

What will the other 290MM people do? If they learn to do the jobs of the 10MM, then demand/supply will drive down wages for the 10MM jobs. If they don't, they won't have any way to earn a living.

Options will include 1) let 290MM starve and when they start rioting, shoot them; 2) provide the 290MM with a subsistence income; 3) create more jobs by converting full time to part time or reversing automation.

Centuries ago, people left England to settle in America for analogous reasons. We can't send 100MM people to Mars.

Plenty of sci fi explores options 1) and 2) in dystopian futures. I don't know of any sci fi that explores option 3). But it could be done. For example, suppose we outlawed factory farming, so that food is again grown by small farmers (organic, no doubt). Agriculture would become a significant source of jobs again.

It's not, I think, an issue we'll face in the next couple of decades. But it might well be an issue in our children's lifetimes.

One possible result is that society will have to deemphasize efficiency and thus corporate profit. Left to its own devices, profit maximizing companies will always try to employ as few people and as many machines as possible. Letting 290MM starve will be profit maximizing in the short run, so that will be the result in a purely capitalism, private industry, free market economy.

[island911]

Originally Posted by mreid

. . .It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. WELCOME TO THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION....

Ai, sure, the rest clearly do NOT follow Moore's law. Education, for example, gets worse as more money is spent. So much so that people learn ridiculous crap like "electric car performance will increase exponentially! ...hope ... change... physics don't matter.

[jyl]

Also, note that the unthinkable does happen. Florentines during the Renaissance never thought that a year after the Black Death came, 4/5 of them would be dead. English towns in 1914 never thought that in four years, almost all their young men would be buried in France.

In the 1950s, a common vision of the future was that labor saving technology would result in everyone having so much free time that leisure would become the country's primary occupation. It didn't happen, but maybe that future will just take longer to arrive than expected, and maybe it won't be handled as munificently as once thought.

[ckelly78z]

It kinda reminds me of the 1950's world's fair future exibits of what the year 2000 would like.....not so much on target.

There are things that will obviously happen in the article, but don't try to take my car away from me....aint gonna happen.

[Baz]

Our society is in decay, despite all the technical advances.

This social and societal decay will doom mankind, regardless of any other factors.

[GH85Carrera]

Solar power will get cheaper and better BUT. It only works where there is a lot a of sun. How much solar will go up in Buffalo, NY with only 54 days per yer of sunny weather? I suspect some of those sunny days are right after a 4 foot snowfall. Solar panels are useless when covered in snow.

Arizona has lots of sun but it also has big sandstorms that leave a nice coating of dust on the panels.

Wind power is hot right now but how will everyone charge their car and run the AC on a calm day. Even windy Oklahoma has some days with no wind.

We are still waiting for the magic power plant that has yet to be even designed much less built. Something that can use ground Unicorns and wishing really hard to make reliable pollution free electricity.

Energy distribution is not easy or inexpensive.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Solar power will get cheaper and better BUT. It only works where there is a lot a of sun. How much solar will go up in Buffalo, NY with only 54 days per yer of sunny weather? I suspect some of those sunny days are right after a 4 foot snowfall. Solar panels are useless when covered in snow.

Arizona has lots of sun but it also has big sandstorms that leave a nice coating of dust on the panels.

Wind power is hot right now but how will everyone charge their car and run the AC on a calm day. Even windy Oklahoma has some days with no wind.

We are still waiting for the magic power plant that has yet to be even designed much less built. Something that can use ground Unicorns and wishing really hard to make reliable pollution free electricity.

Energy distribution is not easy or inexpensive.

Energy storage is the missing piece. If (when) solar and wind energy can be stored for use on cloudy and calm days, it will further displace conventional energy sources.

Wave and tidal are interesting sources as well.

[ckelly78z]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

How much solar will go up in Buffalo, NY with only 54 days per yer of sunny weather? I suspect some of those sunny days are right after a 4 foot snowfall. Solar panels are useless when covered in snow.

.

Some of our nicest, brightest days are after a heavy snow. We have alot of wind powered generators going up around here, which makes alot more sense for flat, cloudy, NW Ohio than the huge solar fields also going up.

[cashflyer]

Future Vision:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil

According to Ray Kurzweil, 89 out of 108 predictions he made were entirely correct by the end of 2009. An additional 13 were what he calls “essentially correct" (meaning that they were likely to be realized within a few years of 2009), for a total of 102 out of 108. Another 3 are partially correct, 2 look like they are about 10 years off, and 1, which was tongue in cheek anyway, was just wrong. Kurzweil later released a more detailed analysis of the accuracy of his predictions up to 2009, arguing that most were correct.

https://youtu.be/04McTH4CT4A?t=1m49s

[island911]

Originally Posted by jyl

Also, note that the unthinkable does happen. Florentines during the Renaissance never thought that a year after the Black Death came, 4/5 of them would be dead. English towns in 1914 never thought that in four years, almost all their young men would be buried in France.

In the 1950s, a common vision of the future was that labor saving technology would result in everyone having so much free time that leisure would become the country's primary occupation. It didn't happen, but maybe that future will just take longer to arrive than expected, and maybe it won't be handled as munificently as once thought.

A very good point.

Any who doubt this should study population growth curves. The first order approximation is to trot out that same word as the OP article - "Exponential."

....and yet, the future seems to have other plans.

[island911]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Solar power will get cheaper and better....

Cheaper is better.

Of course it's cheaper because the energy needed to build them is cheaper. --all those Hydrocarbon finds.

But not better beyond infinitesimal incremental performance of the cells.

[rick-l]

The whole basis for the article is Kodak which if I understand correctly even though they owned all the patents for sensors used in digital photography they tried to manipulate the market to suppress it, a huge (singular) mistake. Not a very good example.

[Adrian Thompson]

I remember attending a lecture in high school in the 80’s and being told with confidence that due to the amazing advances in technology the biggest challenge my generation would have would be working out what to do with all our space time. Productivity would be so high the average person would only need to work 20 hours a week. Yeah, that came true all right, oh no, actually we all work harder and longer than before.

I’ve no doubt that we are on the leading edge of the biggest shift in technology, socioeconomic status, job description, job location etc. since the start of the industrial revolution (remember England considered steel production formula’s a secrete of National importance) but I don’t think anyone alive knows what our, let alone the world, economy will really look like in another 50 years.

We’ve seen massive shifts from agricultural, to industrial to service to…who knows what, but while it causes great upheaval, at the end of the day more people are employed than not and things, people, location of power bases change. I now live on a different continent from where I was born and grew up (Ex-pat Brit living in Michigan) working in a massively unpopular industry that only 100 years ago was credited with creating the middle class and helping put America on the map. Ten years ago no one really believed autonomous driving was actually on the horizon, now the whole industry can’t hire people fast enough. I’m confident that the industry will revise and adapt and I’ll get to retirement without having to re-train as an algae grower for energy production or something.

One thing I am sure of, is as the world gets smaller and it’s easy to outsource jobs and technology, the wages will start to equalize among skill sets around the world. I’m not saying we will have a world wage, but I’ll bet in 20 years technical jobs like engineers, software developers etc. will be closer to 2:1 than the current 10:1 between the US and places like India/China. The upshot of that is the standard of living will rise in those places, the cost of living will rise and it will pull the wages up for other positions lower down the food chain. At some point it’ll no longer be worth making cheap **** for sale in the US on the other side of the planet and more stuff will be made here again to help the job base, we’re already seeing the start of this.

Also, while we complain about the education here, the US and Europe still actually lead the world in education and technology advances. There have been lots of studies looking at scientific papers written in China and India, they are prolific, but the true standard and rate of piracy of material is way higher over there. I have confidence that the West will continue to lead true innovation for the time being.

Just as a smart phone wasn’t really conceivable by most people 30 years ago and is now a $400 Billion industry, I bet we have no idea what will be the next new $1 Trillion industry tomorrow. Hell, Uber didn’t exist 7 years ago, now it’s valued at over $60billion.

Nope, I don’t’ know what tomorrow brings, but I also know the glass isn’t half empty. In fact it’s not half full either, it’s being constantly topped up.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Kindof a threadjack-but kindof not.
In the future, porsche will be the biggest car producer in the world. It will dwarf GM, Ford, Honda, etc. It will produce everything. Cars, trucks, vans, hybrids, economy cars, luxury cars. It will produce everything except sports cars.
And people will love it. Just remember you heard it here first.

[Por_sha911]

The bold and beautiful future presented has some roadblocks.
-Cheap energy: costs will go up as people with an environmental agenda push tighter restrictions.
-Politics: politicians are going to pork barrel the industries that support their state.
-Less cars = little or no gas tax, highway tolls... Oh, you jump in and say we'll tax electricity generated for EV's. Fine go back to point #1 and tell me about cheap energy. With gas tax reduced or gone, electricity (for everything and not just your EV) will skyrocket. The utilities will have to double the current cost of power because the current grid cannot handle more demand as envisioned in our bold new future. You will pay for the upgrades with higher power costs. Ask anyone living on L.I. NY back when LILCO and Con Ed decided to go with Nuke plants. They jacked up rates to pay for the new plants and said when they were producing our rates would go lower than ever before due to the cheap electricity they could produce. That never happened.
-Greed: someone will want you to pay for the cool new and better stuff. Costs go up, not down. Modern medicine is the finest in all of history. The cost is the highest in all of history. Obamacare didn't make it any better so don't bank on socialism helping you out.

Bottom line: I want my flying car that was promised at the 1962 Worlds Fair.