Re: What will it be like... 50 years from now?


"Hardy Hestert" wrote:

<snip>

You've read your share of utopias and dystopias, spent a lot of time
thinking about the future, you have imagined all kinds of futures.
But
the question isn't what you can imagine, but do you expect to really
happen? So here we go:

Describe the world of the year 2056 and how it will become like that.

I just finished Vernor Vinge's _Rainbows End_. I think the "wearable"
technology is a fairly sound extrapolation of current technology. If you
haven't read the book, a wearable is a computer that you, well, wear.
Instead of using a computer monitor, you wear eye contacts that create a
computer image you can interact with in many of the same ways we
interact with a computer today. Also, these types of computers provide
access to the Internet.

One application I thought was interesting is that a wearable can create
visual overlays of your current environment. Say you go to a theme park
that in reality is mostly a small forest. Your wearable can interact
with the theme park's server to transform what you're seeing from a few
trees and some squirrels into dragons and wizards, or whatever.

This type of technology seems more reasonable in 50 years, I think, than
imagining an eventual technology where we'll all have our brains
literally "plugged in" to our computers.

As far as what things will be like politically/socially in 50 years, I
haven't a clue.


.

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