Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Sunday, November 14, 2010

EXCESSIVE? Go Wild? Or Go Mad/ Crazy

Read an essay from a magazine when I was in the airplane, and remembered HDA who had ever said, just go wild… 

A future of Mad Genius?

In the Middle Ages, Leonardo Da Vinci designed a helicopter and a submarine. His contemporaries thought his ideas utopian and totally unfeasible. Five hundred years later, these medieval innovations are in common use.

We tend to overestimate short term trends and underestimate long ones. The future will reveal which of the following are strokes of genius-and which are pure madness.

Nanotechnology will change lives. Nan-sized organic robots will travel in human veins and organs, repairing damage. Nanotechnology will also enable nonverbal communication between individuals directly from brain to brain.

Leaps in biotechnology will make it possible to replace damaged human organs with new, clone ones. Technology will be integrated into the human body, creating cyborgs who can view their contemporaries through computerized eyes.

Terrorists will be broken of their ways through therapy and chemicals.

Vehicle combustion engines will gradually be replaced by a range of alternative power sources, from solar energy to hydrogen. Super-fast, energy-efficient trains will travel without friction, over magnetic fields.

The thinking capacity of computers will exceed that of the human brain. 3D printers will be able to reproduce various household products. So when the kitchen sink breaks the manufacturer will  transmit a design that a molecular-level printer can use to recreate an exact replacement for the original sink.

Phones will feature simultaneous interpretation as standard. So an Indian will be able to communicate with someone in Russia with no language barrier, for example. Mobile devices will also have sensors to measure their use’s emotional state. Spectacles will include 3D displays that will render computer screens and other displays useless.

Because of its low price and high nutrition content, cultured meat produced in biomass plants will become a major foodstuff, though its taste, appearance and production ethics are likely to raise suspicion at first. Mass-produced protein will become one solution to world famine.

...