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ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company PREDICTIONS _____________________________________________________________ Here are some predictions of future technology, based on current research or prototypes under development: _____________________________________________________________ Computers will be installed into houses that will constantly listen to commands such as "dim the lights" and will automatically fill the tub with warm water when you want it. They will unlock the front door of your house for you if you simply say "Open" but will not let the mailman in no matter what he says. _____________________________________________________________ Your VCR will learn what shows you watch regularly and if you forget to watch one of your favorites, it will automatically record it. _____________________________________________________________ All household appliances will be computerized, Mr. Coffee machines already are, they have an Intel 8088 chip, the same computer CPU used by CP/M computers and Tandy 100 series laptops. There's no way the toaster of the future could burn the toast. _____________________________________________________________ Complete baby-sensing equipment that will know from a change in local humidity that the baby needs changing, can diagnose the sound structure of the baby's crying and tell you specifically what's wrong will be common within the next 10 years. _____________________________________________________________ Education will be revolutionized. Children will study independently at their computerized desks and challenge tests because showing off what you have learned is fun. Each child in a classroom will be studying something different than the others. The teacher will be there strictly for social, emotional, physical education and support. I think we can safely predict a major revolution in education, especially for young children. People are starting to get upset about how kids are being handled, and soon, when we see the results with this present generation of children, we're going to get mad enough to make drastic changes. _____________________________________________________________ Radio-accessible Databases will replace encyclopedia. _____________________________________________________________ In the very near future, all new televisions will show pictures in 3-D and all television stations will broadcast the new 3-D signals. It will come about just as color television developed, those who have the new televisions will be able to use the 3-D signals broadcast by the stations, but those with plain old color televisions will only see the standard picture. The equipment, which requires no special viewing glasses or special high technology, has already been invented. All that remains to be done is perfection and marketing. _____________________________________________________________ The family television, VCR, stereo equipment, computer, telephone and answering machine will all be considered one item. The 'thing' will of course have a higher definition color picture than current TV sets. It will have a flat screen, not a picture tube, but something that uses lower-power energy, emitting virtually no radiation and is therefore safer, probably high-contrast, color liquid-crystal. These things will be available as portables too. While the family model may appear in every room, just like TV, there is likely to be a huge version in the living room, but the same capabilities will also be available in a wristwatch sized model. _____________________________________________________________ Later on, after speech recognition is common, and all the old timers who like to type retire, keyboards will be eliminated. _____________________________________________________________ Some futurists predict that as the march of technology continues, people will have less and less contact with others, even friends and family. More and more time will be spend interfacing ourselves with electronic media devices. Conversations between friends will continue, but most often they will be by picture phone, modem or other electronic means, and less often in person. _____________________________________________________________ Presently, information processing accounts for 55% of the American workforce. It is predicted that it will be 80% eight years from now - by the year 2000. Farming will still employ only 2% of the total workforce. _____________________________________________________________ When you visit a home in the not too distant future, you might notice that the carpets are particularly clean, especially in corners and under the sofa. Then you will see a large bug scurrying across the living room floor. The bug, spanning no more than 5" across its six metal legs, will quietly pick up a fuzzbunny and put it in a hopper on the bug's back. Then the bug will crawl over to a low trash container and empty itself there. Of course you won't be amazed, because in the near future, you will have seen commercials for the new robot vacuum cleaners on TV. They can be built now. The mechanical part is practacal with today's technology.. Legs will be needed because small wheels cannot negotiate thick carpeting, stairs, or even slick linoleum. Currently the legs could use electric motors and cables and gears, but future robots might use solenoids or electric muscles actually made from some sort of fibers. The thinking part is easy. Currently, we may have a PC running the thinks by radio control, but soon the bugs can carry their entire intelligence within themselves. Some of the most recent designs in artificial life call for independent brains for each function. One circuit would control an evasion reflex. This would cause the bug to change course when headed for a collision. Another circuit would cause the bug to wander in a pattern across your floor. Yet another would try to recognize dirt, and another circuit would know how to pick up the dirt. For additional sophistication, the bug could come out only in the dark. As soon as the lights are switched on, the thing would run and hide in a closet. The occupants of a house would never have to see their vacuum robot at work. The little vacuum robots - there could be one for each room - would call a big pick-up robot when they spot an empty soda can. Rumpled up newspapers might be a problem. They would need some way to know whether you are done reading them. _____________________________________________________________ There has been a serious suggestion to hold the 2008 olympics in outer space. The games would occur in a ring-shaped space station with a circumference of 2 km. At the rim of the spinning station, gravity would be earth-normal, so the competitors would be performing in a customary environment. At the hub of the station, there would be almost no gravity, leading to a whole new series of games. Athletes, who you would think would be quite conservative about the idea of new games, rather liked the idea when interviewed about it. Shooting 10,000 spectators into low orbit would cost very little more than trans-oceanic cruise ship fare. Even though the cost of building the station would be high, it is not much higher than building current land-based "olympic cities" and the station could be used over and over again. Furthermore, all nations would be likely to participate equally in its costs and advantages. Even the president of the US Olympic Committee finds the idea acceptable. _____________________________________________________________ Picture this: In a courtroom of the future, a witness has to recall an event that took place many months ago. Before testimony begins, the bailiff uncorks a bottle and asks the witness to smell it. Only then is the witness allowed to speak. The reason for this bizarre scenario is that scientists have discovered memory is considerably improved when an odor similar to one which occurred at the time will enhance memories of that event. _____________________________________________________________ In traffic court of the future, the judge will wave a bar-code reading pen over your drivers' license. Then he will wave the pen over a chart which will contain several bar codes. At least two of them will have very specific meanings: Innocent and guilty. This information will go in your record. Next case. _____________________________________________________________ Adjustment of electrical and mechanical contraptions of the future might be done like mixing paint. Many devices will be composed of nanotechnological components, things which are very small. Already, microscopic motors, gears, levers, cutters, nozzles and other devices have been made in laboratories. A car engine might consist of a tank of these devices. Each micro-engine will digest a raw material, probably not gasoline, but perhaps liquified compost, and produce a magnetic field. The tank full of engines will have a hose at the bottom that circulates these engines through motors at the wheels (four-wheel drive, of course), driven by their magnetism. If your car acts up, because your particular brand of compost is too tomato-rich, for instance, just pour a few ounces of modified engines into the tank. If you want more power, at the cost of more compost, just pour more engines in the tank. If your dog gets bad breath, mix some bad-breath bacteria eating nanomachines into its food. If you can't afford to take the time to make a milkshake, get a tube of milkshake synthesizing nanomachines, pour in some synthetic milk (made from rice) and some other stuff, and as long as you add materials, you'll always have a full hopper of milkshake in your fridge. Want synthetic beef? No problem. Just pour in a packet of materials and a tube of the right engines. Add the right amount of water, and presto. Wish your computer had more memory? No problem. Pour in another tube of memory machines. How about a sewing machine that makes thread as it goes? Sensing devices will have much greater accuracy. A modern thermometer has a single pool of mercury which grows when heated and rises within a small-diameter glass tube. But in the future, the pool of mercury might be replaced with a pool of nanomachines. The pool might be a mixture, some of which suddenly expand when at a certain temperature, and others which will expand at other temperatures. In total, there will be millions of machines in the little pool. They will indicate the temperature by vote. Each nanomachine will vote by being expanded or not. You will see the total size of the pool. If one or two nanomachines is inaccurate, their effect will be very small, but the overall effect will be of considerable accuracy and reliability. The same technology of democracy may be the way computer memory will work. In current computers, each item of thought, or byte, is stored in a specific memory cell. In future machines, the nanomachines, which may number in the billions, may handle memory essentially randomly. When a thought is introduced, some of the nano-memory machines will take it on as their own. When asked later for their thoughts, most of these memory machines will respond with the same thought. Some will not, or will respond late, or with other thoughts. The computer will act on the majority's thought, but may be able to accept the deviations and process these too, resulting in originality, creativity and truly thinking machines. Using this democratic technology, computers and their peripherals may be capable of quite amazing feats. In an airplane, nanomachines may be mixed into the material that makes up the wings, frame, even engine parts. These will be in communication with the central control computer of the airplane, which in addition to handling navigation, autopilot, collision avoidance, food processing, air conditioning, and in-flight entertainment chores, will be able to warn the pilots if they are performing a maneuver which is stressing, or threatening the structural integrity of any of the plane's parts. Imagine toothpaste that seeks out and eats tooth-decay bacteria. It will floss for you, on a microscopic scale so that you'll never feel it at work. In fact, you won't even know it exists. It will be mixed into your milkshake. _____________________________________________________________ Ronald Reagan summed up the future well when he stated that soon Americans will be "computing to work instead of commuting to work." This seems to be a definite trend for our future. With the rise of fax machines, modems, more sophisticated telephone systems, better and better graphics handling by computers and more and more memory, why go to a special place to work? You can work anywhere there's a phone line. And, with more and more strain on the overworked air transportation industry, with air fare costing more, and with longer waits at airports, why should your boss pay for your time to personally attend conferences when he can have you put your thoughts on a disk and mail it to the 'conference' or put it on the wires and modem it in? This won't happen at some unspecified time in the future. It is happening now, as is evidenced by the tremendous decline in air travel. Rest assured that business is still being conducted. The only reason that personally showing up a conferences hasn't been discontinued entirely already is tradition. We still feel most comfortable meeting with associates in person, because that is what we are used to. Many bosses allow their managers, programmers and inventors to gather in the hallways and around the coffee machines because this leads to free-for-all discussions and creative thinking that can benefit each worker's own output and benefit the company. But in the future much of this can be done by electronic conversations such as on electronic bulletin board round table discussions and conference telephone calls. In one revolutionary step in this direction, many executive-class job candidates mail their resumes on videotape, rather than fly to another city for a job interview. Changing your job in the present often means buying a new house in a different city, enrolling the kids in a new school, getting a new doctor, dentist, bank, and all kinds of work. But in the near future, changing jobs may be a matter of dialing a different phone number in the morning. The catchphrase of the near-future may be 'disk-based conferencing.' At ANOTHER COMPANY, we are ready! This ALMANAC 1992 is being presented by a tool of disk-based conferencing introduced in 1991 called WRITER'S DREAM. See the WRITER'S DREAM chapter for more info. _____________________________________________________________ Another improvement in our lives that will slide in without any real fanfare is country-wide, possibly even world-wide hook up of public libraries. Already, many county-wide library systems have computerized card catalogs, where you can order any book at any branch while you are standing in another branch. Going a step further and interconnecting the county systems in each state together will be easy. Then the system may as well go national. Perhaps soon you will be able to order any book in the world, and have it delivered to your local library within a week. But, let's not assume that it will be a paper-based book. Perhaps all such matter will merely be modemed to your home computer, and not in a week, either, but in 10 seconds. With rather minor improvements (relative to the advances made in the last 20 years), all information material, whether it be text, extensive charts, color pictures and video, stereo sounds and music, possibly even smells, will be able to be sent to your PC, and then you can process them anyway you want. If you are interested in Africa, you can look-up, blend, discard, edit, print, view, hear and generally study any aspect as if you were there. You can even add your own artwork, cartoons, comments, and research to the pile and send it back. And since it appears that most of the material now in print will end up in electronic format, the original language it was written in will matter little. Software to translate on line will be automatic. Of course, other studies in futurology indicate that English will eventually become the standard language. (Personally, I'm hoping the standard language will be Pascal.) _____________________________________________________________ The biggest improvement in computers in the near future is likely to be large-scale parallel processing. Most present-day computers process every thought through a single chip, called the CPU or Central Processing Unit. Every byte of information waits in line to be handled by the CPU. Computers seem fast, but they're not - compared to the human brain. In the brain, thoughts, bits of information, are processed in thousands, in fact millions, of locations simultaneously. Furthermore, the logic is not digital, it is sort of random-digital. It is the imperfections of information handling in the brain that give rise to creativity. When man-made computers can think fast, holding not megabytes but millions of megabytes of information, and do it purposely imperfectly, life as we know it is going to get real interesting! ____________________________________________________________ chapter end. ALMANAC 1992 is freeware. Please feel free to copy and distribute as long as all files remain intact & unchanged.