Edited by Andy Ross
Technological development is accelerating exponentially. By 2030
it will appear as if a mass of dizzying scientific breakthroughs have suddenly
been made simultaneously.
Most futurists, futurologists and computer scientists agree that at some point
between 2030 and 2040 a milestone in technological development will be reached
that will cause a Singularity: we will build the first computer that is the
intellectual equal of a human.
A number of societal, physical, technological and scientific changes are going to appear between today and the point that the Singularity occurs:
 |
An explosion in world population growth. Today there are just under seven billion people on the planet. By 2030 there will be over eight billion and by 2050 the figure will be between nine and twelve billion. |
|
Changing societal demographics. In 2006, nearly 500 million people worldwide were 65 or older. By 2030 the total is projected to double to one billion – one in every eight people on the planet. |
|
Climate change is going to wreak havoc all over the world as the weather becomes more extreme. Urgent and decisive action must be taken if humankind is to escape weather so bad that civilisation itself is threatened. |
|
At some point between today and 2030 oil extraction will have peaked and oil fuel for transportation will have become increasingly uneconomic. The world’s energy needs are going to double over the next twenty-five years. |
|
Globalisation has doubled world income since 1980, and almost half-a-billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1990. If pursued ethically and sustainably, globalisation offers the world the greatest opportunity for peace. |
|
There will be a revolution in healthcare which will dramatically extend human life spans. A combination of gene-based therapies, stem cell medicine and molecular-nanotechnology will introduce a new model of medical science which will prevent disease and will offer significant life extension and even rejuvenation. |
|
Computer ‘personalities’ will become our companions. At first these software personalities will inhabit the devices that descend from today’s mobile phones but, as they become increasingly clever, and as the platforms and networks on which they run become ever more powerful and capable, they will migrate onto and into our bodies. |
|
By 2030 all cars travelling on major roads will be under the control of satellite and roadside control systems and many cars will be driving themselves. All road vehicles will produce very low or zero carbon emissions. Most large cities will operate congestion charging systems. |
|
Robots in all shapes, sizes and forms will be ubiquitous by 2030. In our homes, schools, factories, shops and leisure facilities, robots with varying degrees of intelligence will be our contented slaves, manufacturing wealth, easing our lives, caring for our needs and overseeing our security. |
|
By 2030 we will be connected constantly to what, today, we can only think of as a ‘super-web’ and that connection will for many be a bio-digital interface. Perhaps some of us will have direct neural connections between our own brains and the global networks. |
|
Our communications and entertainment will be wholly immersory, multimedia, multisensory, 3D, holographic and fully tactile, telekinetic and olfactory. Our leisure activities in 2030 will be similar to today’s but our time spent in virtual leisure will be a lot more intense. |
|
Life will be pursued within surveillance societies. By 2030, we too will be part of Big Brother’s surveillance team. We ourselves will be videoing our surroundings every moment that we are outside of our homes. This will be for the purposes of personal and family security. |
|
Utility shopping will mostly be done on the networks and will, in some instances, become automated as your smart home environment senses the need for everyday items. Discretionary shopping will have become ‘retail experiences’ in themed shops. |
|
Within our societies inequality will continue to increase, as it is increasing today. Even though the poorest groups in developed societies have become much better off over the last twenty-five years, the wealth of the richest in our society has grown far faster. This trend will continue. |
|
A global brain of immense intelligence and with instant access to the whole store of human knowledge will emerge from Google or from similar search engines. By 2030 this global brain will be available to almost every human on the planet and will be accessed by computer, by mobile device, from public spaces and, seemingly, by our thoughts. |
The decade 2030–2040 will be the beginning of the end of human evolution as it
has progressed over the last two million years. As machines surpass the
intellectual capacity of humans, they will develop the potential to become
humanity’s successors. Humans will also have the ability to interface at a
neural level with machines. How these developments will affect future humans
cannot yet be discerned.
Google in the Cloud
By
Kate Greene
MIT Technology Review, December 3, 2007
Edited by Andy Ross
To know how you'll be using computers and the Internet in the
coming years, consider the Google employee: most of his software and data reside
on the Web. This makes the digital stuff that's valuable to him equally
accessible from anywhere.
Google already lets people port some of their personal data to the Internet and
use its Web-based software. Google Calendar organizes events, Picasa stores
pictures, YouTube holds videos, Gmail stores e-mails, and Google Docs houses
documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Next year, Google will launch a
service that will let people store the contents of entire hard drives online.
Google isn't the only company invested in online storage and cloud computing.
But Google is better positioned than most to push cloud computing into the
mainstream. First, millions of people already use Google's online services and
store data on its servers. Second, the culture at Google enables them to more
easily tie together the pieces of cloud computing.
One place where Google could have a large impact is integrating cloud computing
into mobile devices. The company recently announced Android, a platform that
allows people to build software for a variety of mobile phones.
There are a number of social and legal issues that need to be dealt with. User
privacy will become especially important if Google serves ads that correspond to
all personal information, as it does in Gmail. Depending on the information used
to target the ads, it can make some people uncomfortable.
Moreover, there are copyright ramifications to cloud computing. One advantage of
storing data in the cloud is that it can be easily shared with other people, but
sharing files such as copyrighted music and movies is generally illegal. And in
some cases, simply storing information on the cloud may violate copyright.
There's also the issue of connectivity: a repository of online data is no use if
there's no Internet connection or if the signal is spotty. Google offers
downloadable software called Gears that acts as a cache for data when a person
is using a Web application offline. When the person regains Internet access,
Gears automatically syncs with the online app and saves the work on a server.
Google's version of cloud computing has the appeal of simplicity, in spite of
the current challenges. By moving applications and data to the Internet, Google
is helping make the computer disappear.
|
The Ross verdict: Wonderful! The future is looking interesting!
Roll over, Lifeball! |
