Let's look at technology: Advances in technology will continue to be the driving force behind changes into the 21st century just as it has in the past. It will impact on everything that touches our lives from medicine, war, transportation, manufacturing, farming, entertainment, law enforcement, and a whole host of other activities and products. It is impossible to accurately predict where it will take us. The best minds never really contemplated the amazing advances that have already taking place in just a few years. Think about it: a little over 300 years ago our mode of power was muscles. Horses, oxen, or human with a few water powered mills thrown in were the way we traveled, tilled the soil, ground grain, dug ditches, built buildings and anything else we wanted to do. Since then we have seen the steam engine, the telephone, radio, the airplane and a whole host of new innovations come to be. Messages took days, weeks or even months to travel between destinations. What a difference a few centuries make. One thing is clear, the rate of technological advancement is growing exponentially. More has been accomplished in the last century than over the 130,000 years (give of take) of homo sapians existence on this earth. There is no reason to believe that the rate of development will slow down. In fact it will likely speed up.
The earth and it's population will face many challenges in the future. Technological development will be there to meet a lot of those challenges, but certainly not all. Technology can only do so much. On the other hand advances in technology is like a two edged sword, it will cause major disruptions in the lives of a huge percentage of the population. I have already addressed some advancements in earlier blogs as they pertained to specific subjects I was discussing at the time. There are some other subjects I thought might be interesting. At least they are to me. They certainly are not all encompassing; just a short list of things that occurred to me.
We talk a lot about unmanned aircraft. Think of the big advantages that such a weapon would have. The designers would no longer be constrained in aircraft design by the frailties of the human body. A lot of the cost and complexity in a modern armored vehicle or fighter aircraft design is there specifically to support the human pilot and/or crew. One of the biggest restrictions on the design of fighter aircraft would no longer apply, the amount of G forces that the human can withstand. Without that restriction aircraft could be designed to turn and accelerate with almost unlimited G forces. Space and environmental controls would not be required in tanks and other armored vehicles. The only limitation would be hardware design. The designers would no longer have to worry about air, heat, cosmic radiation or other environment issues in crafts designed to fly within the atmosphere or near space. Design measures to save the human pilot in an emergency would not longer be needed. There would be a psychological shift also, as the life of a pilot or crew in a combat situation would no longer be a factor.
There a two limitations that need to be addressed and overcome before really effective unmanned warplanes or ground attack vehicles can be deployed as the main line of warfare in the future.
First, and probably easiest to overcome is the problem of field of vision. All unmanned vehicles to date have a very narrow window for the operator, usually defined by a video screen for viewing whichever way the camera is pointing. Not good enough for extensive aerial or ground based combat. Humans have a broad field of view, with the ability to quickly swivel the head to pick up objects over a 360 degree arc around them and keep everything in perspectivie. An effective armored vehicle or plane will have to give the remote "pilot" the same ability at a minimum. Perhaps the drone operator will don a helmet or sit in a virtual cockpit which gives a complete view of the area around the drone. Likely a better view than the human pilot or vehicle operator would have. Much better in fact. And he can look in all directions just be turning his head. This helmet would have all the advantages of a heads up display with the "look and shoot" capability now employed on attack helicopters and the latest fighters. The tank, or whatever, would not have to rotate a turret to fire a round at the enemy. The gunner would only have to "see" the enemy and trigger the weapon to fire. No more enemy. Of course, "seeing" could be by infrared, night vision, telephoto, or any number of new ways . It is also likely that combat in the future will be carried out over distances far out of the range of human eyesight.
The biggest problem, as I see it, is the avoidance of the enemy jamming, or otherwise disrupting, the signal connecting the drone to the control station, which may be another country. My background is not in communications so maybe these problems are easier to overcome that I think. We certainly have to consider interference today in the design of battlefield communications gear. But, consider; to communicate with a drone over long distances would likely require the use of a satellite to relay the commands and feedback between the control station and the drone. Not likely to be there in a high tech war. An alternative would be for signal relay aircraft flying at high latitude, maybe several if the signal must be relayed over long distances. Not very survivable with the advances in SAM's that is likely to take place in the coming years.
That means the control station would need to be "Line of Sight" near to to the drone for active real time control of the vehicle. Not an attractive alternative.
The answer to the puzzle might be to design machines that can carry out missions without continuous control from a real time operator. The drone will not be able to depend on GPS for guidance, that system would have been eliminated in the beginning of the conflict. Control will have to be by Inertial Navigation supplemented by terrain mapping, and other non-jammable methods. Close in combat will have to depend on infrared, radar and visual signals feeding a very sophisticated computer for combat control. Such a sophisticated vehicle is almost a reality now. Just look at some of the air combat video games and it is clear that a computer can provide almost human responses in a combat situation. It isn't a stretch of the imagination to presume that this type of software will be further developed to the extent that it will be superior to humans in the fast paced combat of the future.
Of course the war planes and such is not the only application of unmanned vehicles. There are many dangerous jobs that will be performed by remotely controlled vehicles where communication interruption is not an issue.
The way we receive TV will change. Now you look at a schedule to determine the times of programs you would like to watch. You can watch them as they are broadcast, or you can use the DVR and record them for later viewing. I think that will change in the future. All programming will be received in your home on demand. Your TV guide will not have times associated with programs, but rather just a list of new programs that you can stream at your leisure. You will be able to stream any of the past programs as you wish, so if you missed a show on the day it became available you can watch it a week or month later. I'm not at all sure how the programming will be paid for. Advertisers will not care for this new format at all, unless you don't have the capability to fast forward through the commercials. But, I don't think that commercial TV will disappear. Although I do think that online streaming services ala Netflix will become more prevalent. Studies have shown that even when people record a show, the vast majority still sit through the commercials. Advertisers will still get their message across. Even though sporting events can be accessed after the fact, it is likely that most people will want watch their favorite game or event real time, with all the commercial breaks.
The dominate type of program will have an option to be interactive with the viewer. One can either watch the show as a spectator or enter the action as a participant.
All movies you see at the local cinema will be streamed, that is if the local cinema still exists and it likely will. That's already happening in a limited way and will become the only method in the future.
I think that traditional movies and TV shows will survive, although it isn't clear that live actors playing in those movies will. By traditional movies, I mean plays presented to a largely passive audience. The viewer is not a participant in the action, but is an observer. What is clear is that the use of live actors to play the roles in the movies will no longer be required. Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is already reached a very high realism factor and will only get better. Whether the public will demand living actors in their movies and TV plays will be the determining factor.
I have addressed in earlier blogs how I think these programs, both at the cinema and at home will be viewed.
Automation will become the principle method of manufacturing everything. We already are rather deep into the manufacture of products using robots instead of manpower. But, there is still a large number of goods that are labor intensive and employ huge numbers of people to produce them. This results in the transfer of manufacturing to countries with low labor costs and lax work rules. China, India and a host of third world countries have prospered over the last few years because of this. But, I think the pendulum will swing back in the not to distant future. As automation gets more sophisticated more and more of the tasks that are now performed by humans will be transferred to robotic machines. This move will cause a significant disruption in unskilled labor throughout the world. The demand of STEM skills will increase, but the need for low and unskilled labor will be severely impacted.
The nations that embrace automation in the production of more and more products will prosper, while others will be left behind. To accomplish this evolution will require a highly trained and educated work force. And, I'm afraid this where we, the USA, are being overshadowed by other advancing countries. China, Japan, Germany and some other countries are educating engineers at a rate much higher than America and they will likely embrace automation with a fervor, that is if labor unions and other such organizations don't get in the way. But, what will she do with all those masses of people that now produce the clothing, and other labor intensive products when the factories turn more and more to complete automation.
That is the great social question that will have to be addressed in the future. Technology, including advances in medicine, will produce two conflicting outcomes. Medicine will give us much longer life, resulting in an greater explosion in world population, but automation and other technologies will make the requirement for low skilled labor less and less.
I'm afraid that we are going to parallel the Roman Empire. With slaves doing almost all the labor required for the empire, the state was left with the problem of placating the vast population. The well documented Roman games to entertain the masses resulted. The state had to give the masses entertainment in order to keep them placated. The rich spiraled into decadence and debauchery, while the great unwashed masses lived off what was essentially welfare. Instead of slaves doing the work in future times, it will be machines. But, I fear that the result might well be the same. We already have ever expanding welfare rolls, a growing government employing more and more of the work force, with a political party offering even more handouts. And, if the government isn't directly providing the perks, then they are passing laws forcing private industry to supply them.
The socialist governments handing out perks like they are candy is already evident in most of the European countries,especially Greece, Italy and Spain. The trend is well entrenched in the good ole USA as well. More and more, the people want their government to provide them with a high standard of living, with long vacations, short work weeks, free medical care and a lucrative retirement at an early age. Of course, paid for by somebody else. "The Rich", are the favorite targets, but it doesn't matter as long as it isn't me. Automation on a grand scale is just going to make the matter worse.
Will retail stay essentially the same? Not likely. The purchase of goods will be done more and more over the internet or whatever supersedes it. The big retail stores will likely not survive, at least in their present form. The business model may be one where manufacturers, such as HP or Apple, provide a site where people can touch, feel and sample a product, but the product will be purchased on the internet. These sites may turn out to be virtual. With advances in technology a virtual reality (VR) site will be made to seem very real. Because it's so easy to price shop on the internet, retail will have to meet the price challenge to stay in business. This could become the business model for almost all retail where it isn't essential to the customer to sample the actual product, such as produce in the market, before they buy.
The way you shop at the market will likely change also. You will select what you want from a menu, it will be conveyed to you directly, priced, and bagged. You will be able to select the actual produce, meat and other products before you decide to purchase. You will likely not wander the isles as you do now in the large shopping center. For those that can afford a VR site this operation can be done a home. For others the store will provide kiosks. You will have the option of picking up the purchases or having them delivered, likely at an additional fee of course. This will likely also cause the resurrection of the specialty meat markets and produce markets because a number of shoppers will want to physically sample the items before buying.
Clothes shopping will be different. The customer will have an image of themselves taken. This will be at home for those that can afford the VR equipment or at a stores kiosk for others. The customer can then select different apparel to "try" on. What the customer will see is what that particular dress, suit, or whatever looks like on them. It will be perfectly sized to the consumer. The image will move at the customers direction and show the apparel from all angles. When the customer looks in the "Mirror" they will see themselves with the apparel they're considering being worn. To fit a particular customers preference modifications to the apparel can be made. The sleeves lengthened, etc. to fit an individual sense of style. In a sense all clothing will be custom made. The choice of apparel using this method will be much larger and easier to find than the mess that one finds in the department stores now.
Genetically modified foods will become the norm. The growing population and the need to feed those people will require greater yield from the available farmland than is possible with unmodified foods. The need will be intense to grow food in places and in soil not currently friendly to crops. The modifications will make the plants highly resistant to insects and disease. Fruits and vegetables will be adapted to those growing conditions by genetic manipulation. The organic farm will likely still exist, but only for the elite who have a hangup over genetically modified food and can afford the price that will be demanded.
Law enforcement will make huge strides forward in the use of forensic evidence. Think of CSI on steroids. The real stars of the future in the field of law enforcement will be the forensic people who examine a crime scene with equipment we haven't even thought of yet, except SciFi writers of course. Let your imagination run wild and it's likely to happen in the future. Perhaps an imaging system that lets law enforcement view the crime as it happened due to some lingering essence that we aren't even aware of today (there goes the SciFi guys again). In any event, forensics will be able to find and analyse the tiniest scraps of evidence at a crime scene. Software will allow searches of vast data bases to match and coordinate data from all over the world in a very fast and efficient manner. DNA matches, face recognition, and other forensic tools will be improved by leaps and bounds, both in speed (almost instantaneous) and in accuracy. To be a police officer in the future might require an engineering degree specializing in forensic science.
What will soldiers of the future wear? The answer is simple, but will be difficult to achieve. The answer is, light weight armor for most infantry and full powered body armor for an elite group. I think that science will take a page right out of science fiction and equip the warriors of the future with full body armored suits. It is likely that there will two types of armor; light armor for what will be termed (perhaps) light infantry, and heavy, for heavy infantry. Light infantry will be highly mobile and will wear a light weight body armor that can deflect most small arms fire, shrapnel and such. It will not be powered as will the heavy infantry. It will provide a moderate degree of environmental protection from heat, cold nuclear radiation and other bad things that might be encountered on the battlefield of the future.
The heavily armored infantry will don suits that will give them the ultimate protection from all types of things trying to kill them. They will be like a walking tank. The suits will provide augmentation to the limbs giving the wearer superhuman strength and speed. They will be able to carry and fire heavy weapons that would be impossible without the power assistance. The suits will protect the soldier from extreme heat or cold as well as other hostile environments.
Either suit will provide heads up displays in an environmental helmet that alloys the soldier to see the battlefield with friend or foe definition clearly shown. The helmet will be equipped with many advanced features to aid the soldier in performance of their duties.
The rifle, if you want to call it that, will host smart bullets that will find any foe that is designated by the shooter. The rifle itself will likely not be chemically fired but rather something like a rail gun. The projectiles themselves will be very small needle like and fired at incredible speeds, far faster than anything today. The kinetic energy will be sufficient to penetrate and destroy today's heavy tanks, but not the armored vehicle of tomorrow. The heavy infantry will have more destructive weapons at their disposal, a supercharged RPG perhaps, bigger and much more powerful than any thing in today's arsenal.
Can technology produce immortality? Perhaps. The capacity and speed of computers is growing rapidly. Image a time in the future where we can rival the human brain in terms of storage capacity, speed and size. Next imagine that we can tap into the brain and transfer every particle of information stored there into this computer. That information is what you are. It's all your memories, dreams and personality quirks that make you. So now a complete copy of you is now stored in that computer. Next, let's build a cyborg to house that computer and build sensors to provide sight, sound, touch, etc. stimulus from the cyborg to the computer. Presto, that cyborg has become you. And as the cyborg wears out or is damaged, you can transfer yourself to another cyborg and keep on going. You can live forever. This scenario is not that far fetched actually. It is well within the various possibilities of technological advancement in the future.
