Courtesy of Popular Science
Get ready for the first complete synthetic human brain, moon mining, and much more. Maybe robotic moon bases, chips implanted in our brains, self-driving cars and high-speed rail Linking London to Beijing. According to a dazzling number of technology Predictions That singles out the year 2020, it's going to be to be one heck of a year. Here, we take a look at read of the wonders it has in store.
2020, of course, is just a target date for Convenient roughly-10-years-off Predictions. "It's not any more particularly interesting, in my opinion, than in 2019 or 2021," says Mike Liebhold, a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future, and an all-around technology expert with a resume That Includes stints with Intel, Apple, and even, Netscape.
Liebhold now helps Clients take a long view of their Plot Businesses so THEY can make better Decisions in the short term. He and his colleagues at the Institute for the Future do not help Clients read tea leaves BUT THEY do help them read what he calls the signals - Those Things you can see in the world today That Allow you to make Reasonable Forecasts about what the future holds.
In other words, the year 2020 (and 2019, and 2021) is Liebhold's business. And he Forecasts a pretty interesting world a decade from now. So what will the world look like in 2020? With Liebhold riding shotgun, we Took a quick spin Through 2020 to see what the future might hold.
Japan will build a robotic moon base
JAXA
There's no technological reason why Japan shouldn't not be ABLE to move forward with its ambitious plan to
build a robotic lunar outpost by 2020 - built by robots, for robots. In fact, there's really no better nation for the job in terms of technological Prowess.
The Institute for the Future's Mike Liebhold says, "There are private launch vehicles That are probably Capable of doing that, and I think the Robotics by That point are going to be quite robust."
PopSci Predicts: Technologically possible, BUT economics will be the deciding factor.
China will connect Beijing to London via high-speed rail
Courtesy of Popular Science
How to deal with the inevitable headaches of a 17-country train? Offer to pick up the tab. China would pay for and build the Infrastructure in exchange for the rights to natural resources such as Minerals, timber and oil from the Nations That would benefit from being Linked in to the trans-Asian / European corridor.
PopSci Predicts: Possible But Unlikely.
Cars will drive themselves
Courtesy of Popular Science
It's long been a dream of, well, just about everyone, from Google and DARPA to automakers themselves: utter safety and ease of transport thanks
to self-driving cars . There's movement being made, BUT the first hurdle to clear is a big one: Getting All These heterogenous cars to speak to one another. We do not yet have the wireless Infrastructure, globally speaking, to link cars with ALL OUR ALL OUR tech traffic.
PopSci Predicts: Certainly doable, BUT not by 2020.
Biofuels will be cost-competitive with FOSSIL fuels
US Navy
The US military has pledged to get
half its energy from renewable resources by 2020, and the Navy whole-heartedly believes it can turn to 50 percent bio-fuels by then. Political It makes sense not to rely on volatile Regions for energy, and this could mean both push cleaner vehicle fleets and a major bump in the competitiveness of bio-fuels in the market.
PopSci Predicts: feasible.
The 'flying car' will be Airborne
Courtesy of Popular Science
The
Rebirth of the flying car ? Liebhold, of the Institute for the Future, shoots this one down. "No. The air traffic control for something like that is incredible." It's a problem in Every way - logistically we can not do it, cost-wise we can not do it, and it's extremely technologically Unlikely. Oh well.
PopSci Predicts: The military might have its prototype "flying humvee" by 2020 (DARPA Wants it by 2015), BUT the tech will not trickle down to the rest of us for quite a while.
We'll Control Devices via microchips implanted in our brains
Courtesy of Popular Science
The human brain remains biology's great, unconquered Wilderness, and while the idea of meshing the raw power of the human mind with electronic stimulus and responsiveness has
long never existed in both science fiction and - to read Degree - in reality, we likely will not be OUR controlling Devices with a thought in 2020 as
Intel has predicted . While it's Currently possible to implant a chip in the brain and even, get one to Respond to or stimulate gross neural activity, we simply do not understand the brain's nuance well Enough to create the kind of interface That would let you channel surf by simply thinking about it.
"Neural communications are both Chemical and electrical," Liebhold says. "And we have no idea about how That works, particularly in the semantics of neural communication. So yeah, somebody might be ABLE to put electronics inside somebody's cranium, BUT Personally I believe it's only going to be nominally useful for very, very narrow THERAPEUTIC applications. "
PopSci Predicts: We might have chips in the brain by 2020, BUT THEY will not be doing much.
All new screens will be ultra-thin OLEDs
Courtesy of Popular Science
Display tech moves incredibly fast. There will certainly still be read "antique" LCD monitor screens around the singing in 2020, BUT as far as new stock is Concerned, it's easy to see the ENTIRE industry shifting to
paper-thin OLED surfaces, MANY touch with Capability.
"So will Become computational surfaces," Liebhold says. "Walls, mirrors, windows. I think that's legitimate. "
PopSci Predicts: "That Give one a high probability," Liebhold says. Done.
Commercial space will take us to the moon and asteroids (and we'll be mining them)
SpaceX
A two-parter: commercial trips to the moon (which is Becoming a
bustling space industry as you read this) and mining extraterrestrial bodies. That last part seems less likely - we have not yet figured out what long-term space travel would do to the human body, and even, robotic missions are likely SEVERAL Decades off.
PopSci Predicts: Commercial space travel is the real deal, BUT Beyond Become Things orbital flights exponentially more difficult. The moon, asteroids and mining missions are Unlikely targets within the 2020 time frame.
A $ 1,000 computer will have the processing power of the human brain
Zephyris via Wikimedia
Cisco's chief futurist made
this Prediction a couple of years ago, and it seems Reasonable in read ways. Not intelligence, really, BUT Purely the "Ability, the number of cycles," as Liebhold Puts it, is on track given Moore's Law.
PopSci Predicts: Likely.
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