Fifty Years From Now

The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today: 60 Of The World’s Greatest Minds Share Their Visions of the Next Half-Century: Mike Wallace: Books ISBN: 084990370X ISBN-13: 9780849903700

There’s a new book out called “The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today” edited by Mike Wallace. It has essays by sixty of the world’s top minds (why was I not invited?) on what they think the world will be like in the year 2058.

I have a problem with books like these because they don’t seem to be right. We should all remember how predictions from the past

ended up by the year 2000. No flying cars, no moon bases, no “kitchen of the future” with dinner tables that washed dishes for you. The only predictions that seem correct are the ones that are vague, like “computers will be really powerful” and “we’ll have a presence in space.”

In most cases, these predictions seem more like what the author would like to see happen rather than what will probably happen.

I can come up with hundreds of predictions for fifty years from now.

Most of them are mutually-exclusive. I’ve already written about a few of them, but you’d probably have to search around a bit to find them.

Let’s have some fun.

1) New World Order

By the year 2058 the global economy collapsed. The world became re-united under a central leader, a global president. Each country, in turn, is ruled by a local “governor.” Problems arise when these governors can’t get along any better than they did when they were absolute rulers of their country. The global president is completely ineffective at keeping peace. For the world’s citizens, nothing much has changed other than having a central head figure for aliens from outer space to contact.

2) Citizen Tracking

In the coming years, the citizens of the United States will complete their castration of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. They will give up their rights of privacy in the interest of convenience. The government will sell them on various programs, such as a National ID card, because it will make their lives easier by having a card that carries their bank information, medical history, voter status, drivers license, and other such things that can be used anywhere. The fact that it tracks everything they do is a minor side-effect. People will gobble it up. RFID implants will be used to keep children safe from kidnappers, hikers safe from getting lost, and your senile grandma from ending up in the wrong house. All tasty foods will be outlawed, due to being unhealthy, and replaced by a nutritious paste sanctioned by the government. Paper and coin money will be phased out so all transactions can be monitored to prevent terrorism. Don’t even think of smoking a cigarette. Alcohol will be permitted so everyone will be happy.

3) Civil War

The events in #2 transpire which creates a rebellious faction. Civil war erupts. While the government won’t use nuclear weapons within the country, it will use other forms of bombardment and land engagements. Chaos ensues, turning the U.S.A into a veritable wasteland. The coastal areas will remain within control of the

government in case other countries decide to use the opportunity to stage an attack on the weakened country, but the interior will be a lot more chaotic and dangerous.

4) The Star Trek Holodeck will be created

Creating a real-world Holodeck will be one of the major changes in human kind history. If you don’t know what a Holodeck is, you’ll have to read about it because it’s too much for me to cover right now. But if everyone had a large closet space that could be turned (for all intents and purposes) into an unlimited amount of space with anything a person desired within then it would be pretty damn neat. Since the US only has information type jobs, all work can be done in a networked holodeck environment. You could phase out janitors and stuff. You could do just about anything you wanted to do without leaving your home. I wrote a whole big thing about it, but you’ll have to search for it. It was last year, sometime.

5) The Creation Of Nanobots

The Feynman/Drexler vision of nano technology will change the entire world in so many ways it would be hard to count. People could live forever, cars and other items could be self-repairing, food would be plentiful and made from garbage, similar to the way the food replicator works in Star Trek. Artists would become the highest caste in our society because the only thing separating what you could have versus what your neighbor could have would be the styling.

Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology: Eric Drexler: Books ISBN: 0385199732 ISBN-13: 9780385199735

Okay, that’s five. I’m sure I could think of more, but I’m still tired and I’m still not feeling well. If I had some nano bots running through my system wiping out cold virus’ I’d be gold.

Frozen in Paris

When I read that Paris Hilton may have herself frozen when she dies, I immediatly thought of two things:

1) Why wait?

and

2) Idiocracy

I wonder what it would be like for scientists in the far flung future to thaw out Ms. Hilton.

Just a Couple of Things

The Department of Defense would like to beam electricity down from space. To me, this is good.

The sun has been pumping out energy since forever, and it will go on shooting energy out into space for a few million years more. Nearly all of that energy is wasted. So why not create some big solar collectors in space and beam all that sun-goodness down to Earth where we can convert it electricity? No more using fossil fuels to make the power plants work. And no more nuclear waste to worry about.

As usual, I don’t think they’re thinking big enough. I think we need a lot of them out there and beaming energy down so that everyone can use it. I, for one, would like to see my electric bill go down. If we’re using a nearly inexhaustible resource then all we have to pay for is the technology that keeps it working, and the initial launch and building.

George Lucas in creating a Star Wars based television show. I hope it’s better than the last three movies.

I noticed that if you search for “Jaime Paglia” on Google, I come up as the third or fourth item. Maybe it’s just because I’m doing the searches on laptops that I use all day (although I used one that I’m sure I haven’t touched yet). Either way, how useless. There are tons of other sites out there with better stuff than what I wrote (which was really nothing).

Television of Tomorrow

The music industry is finally beginning to realize that they need to re-think the way they do business.  The popularity of the internet, combined with people’s unwillingness to pay money, has changed the way people want to listen to their music.

Perhaps it’s time the television industry began to re-think the way they do business.  The change in the way people watch television began before the internet, when the video cassette recorder became cheap enough for most families to own one.  They could record a show and watch it when it was convenient for them.

The digital video recorder brought this a step forward with the ability to record more than one show at a time, and to allow people to rewind, pause, and (to a certain extent) fast forward in a show that was currently playing.  Being able to rent a movie on demand, without having to wait for a scheduled playing, is also changing us.

The television of tomorrow would not receive broadcasts from the air, or satellite, or cable.  Not the way it does now.  It would be connected to the internet.  There would be no channels to surf, only programs to select.  You would be able to watch any show, at any time, regardless of what region of the country it originated from, or even from different countries.

The studios would be able to track the popularity of their shows better just by watching how many times the show was accessed.  They could also tell when people lost interest.  They would be able to structure their advertisements  better. They could even, with a bit of programming finesse, make it so that the commercials could not be skipped over. The downside would be, of course, bandwidth.  If a really popular show, like the Super Bowl, were shown then how many people, realistically, would be able to watch it before the whole thing bogged down?

Consumers would get just about everything they could want.  The ability to watch a show whenever they wanted, or re-watch it at a later date, or watch shows that were discontinued, from a different country, in different languages.  There could even be perks, like opting in to watch live shows without being censored or cut.  If Bono went on a cursing spree, you could hear it.  If Janet Jackson wanted to flash a boob, you could see it.  All this and the studios wouldn’t need to worry about the FCC bearing down on them.  On the flip side, there could be broadcasts of the same live event that could be censored and edited on the fly so it would be guaranteed to be family safe.

Maybe there could even be a time when the old shows could be stored digitally and be able to be watched again.

Let your mind go free.  What would you like to see in the future of television if such a device were brought out?