What will the next 'big thing' be?

Leprachaun

Heya,

We've had worlds wars,the industrial revolution,mobile phones,the internet etc...
What do you think the next worldchanging event or technology will be? Another world war? Virtual reality? Upgrading people through gene manipulation or cyborg-usque suits? And how long do you think it'll be before the next truely revolutionary 'big thing'?

DonkeyStyle \o/

There are some interesting things happening with stem cells, I saw this on sky news a while back. I'm excited to see where this ends up.

jumpguy

Ahh where to start? The world is changing so quickly. Look at the past 10 years. Mobile phones, internet, the boom, the devastating recession, space exploration and technology. Technology is evolving at groundbreaking pace. You're watching change all around you, big things happening all the time. The world today will be completely different in 5 years time. Only 5 years.

The biggest revolutionary thing though...within the next 100 years?
Nuclear war. This could go 2 ways. Either the world decommisions it's nuclear weapons over years and years and years of negotiation or we have a nuclear bomb going off somewhere, either by accident or intention. Whats more likely? Depends on how the superpowers think about it.

Setting foot back on the moon, and then on Mars. Self explanatory.

Technology one would imagine in a movie now. Nanotechnology, stem cell research, biochemical engineering, etc. This means basically alot of miniturization.

A renewable energy source.


Okay, enough of the listing, if I had to chose, I'd say oil production peaking and then falling. The world has a finite amount of oil, and in our lifetime (unless your above 50, perhaps) we'll probably see that oil go and the world plunge into chaos, unless something drastic is done. That's the next huge, revolutionary event imo.

mike65

Jet packs and flying cars, what else? :pac:

vangoz

Yeah i'd have to say peak oil.

iddy

United States of Europe

Futurism

I think that technology being integrated into humans will be something big, but it's still a long way off. That could be anything, from medical improvements to enhancing our senses. It could possibly be the next step in our evolution.

DigiGal

I reckon Virtual reality where you can act out your fantasies ala Minority report...

DigiGal

Futurism wrote: »

I think that technology being integrated into humans will be something big, but it's still a long way off. That could be anything, from medical improvements to enhancing our senses. It could possibly be the next step in our evolution.

C'mn extra fingers and webbed toes *crosses fingers*

wudangclan

DigiGal wrote: »

I reckon Virtual reality where you can act out your fantasies ala Minority report...

that reality is closer

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/14/oblongs-g-speak-the-minority-report-os-brought-to-life/

DigiGal

wudangclan wrote: »

that reality is closer

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/14/oblongs-g-speak-the-minority-report-os-brought-to-life/

wow cool

Sea Sharp

I'm hoping a combination of nanotechnology & stem-cell research will act to double the average life expectancy in the next 30 years, and then double again when I start running out of time again

DonalN

Next big thing will be the solar flare that will kill everything electronic on the planet, bringing us back to the 'dark ages' when we will have to start all over again.

Aard

In the same vein as peak oil, I'd say that energy will be the next "big thing". Namely fusion.

Overheal

Battery power. Its going to undergo a big leap at some point and when it does, its going to blow the lid off of what we think about mobile devices, and other mobile equipment and vehicles. That will of course in turn change the modern battlefield and give dawn to more UAVs and Mechanically Augmented soldiers.

Real product, available for Rent in japan for medical use:



Other than that, Fusion is closer than you think. Weve already created the reactions. The only problem is getting the system to fire continuously, and hundreds of times per second. We also need to engineer the focusing lenses of the firing lasers that will be able to withstand the prolonged and intense heat generated by said reactions.

It'll require several of these peas a few times per second, from what I understand. Self-propelling fusion, is a long way off, if not inherently impossible due to the danger/laws of physics - wouldnt you need something the size of a star to do that? Gravity-wise.

DigiGal

GaNjaHaN wrote: »

I'm hoping a combination of nanotechnology & stem-cell research will act to double the average life expectancy in the next 30 years, and then double again when I start running out of time again

ah grey goo *hides*

CerebralCortex

GaNjaHaN wrote: »

I'm hoping a combination of nanotechnology & stem-cell research will act to double the average life expectancy in the next 30 years, and then double again when I start running out of time again

LEV: Longevity Escape Velocity

http://sens.org/

Kama

3d printing/Fabbing taking off, open-source moving into physical product design.

Engineering natural systems and large-scale geoengineering.

Haptic interfaces and AR.

Rats finally beat Koreans at Quake 2.

Misty Chaos

What do I see for this world?

Peak Oil, definitely. Things are going to get messy if that isn't sorted out.

World War 3? While I wouldn't want to think about it, you have to consider the possibility. If so, what would cause WW3? Religious Extremist shifting things up a gear? China? A new extreme party taking over an important country, much like Nazism.

In fact, considering everything, Muslims could be the Jews of the 21st century, all you need is one nut job with a grudge against Muslims and then concentration camps will be back on the map again.

America loses its super power status, welcome our new overloads, China. :cool: :eek:

On a more optimistic note, I see 3D printers becoming the norm ( I'll be honest, that stuff even blows my mind! ) though that potentially can open up a whole can of worms like HARDWARE piracy! :rolleyes:

Leprachaun

Misty Choas wrote: »

What do I see for this world?

Peak Oil, definitely. Things are going to get messy if that isn't sorted out.

World War 3? While I wouldn't want to think about it, you have to consider the possibility. If so, what would cause WW3? Religious Extremist shifting things up a gear? China? A new extreme party taking over an important country, much like Nazism.

In fact, considering everything, Muslims could be the Jews of the 21st century, all you need is one nut job with a grudge against Muslims and then concentration camps will be back on the map again.

America loses its super power status, welcome our new overloads, China. :cool: :eek:

On a more optimistic note, I see 3D printers becoming the norm ( I'll be honest, that stuff even blows my mind! ) though that potentially can open up a whole can of worms like HARDWARE piracy! :rolleyes:

Any idea when this 3D printing malarchy is going to start kicking off? I hadn't even heard of it until recently, must have slipped under my radar.

Fad

Dubstep.......

Kama

Dubstep? You're living in the past...




On fabbing, its already here as an application. It came out of rapid prototyping, but the tipping point comes when the cost drops enough that distributed manufacturing becomes the norm, rather than being more of a Doctorow-Sterling geek-fantasy. This jump is about costs coming down as the tech matures to a eccentric adolescence from its current infancy.

So, we have the RepRap team, with their somewhat agalmic-communist take on their Von Neumann Machine:

So the replicating rapid prototyping machine will allow the revolutionary ownership, by the proletariat, of the means of production. But it will do so without all that messy and dangerous revolution stuff, and even without all that messy and dangerous industrial stuff. Therefore I have decided to call this process Darwinian Marxism...

All a bit dot-communist, but its clear they've been thinking (quite utopianly) of the implications of this disruptive technology for our socioeconomic systems.

Doing the Open Source hardware approach with cars: Local Motors.

JohnRobb wrote:

It's a decentralized car manufactory that invites the prospective owners to help build the cars, from the selection and customization of the design to actually joining the team that builds it (or doing it yourself if you have the inclination). That creates a connection between customer and product that you don't see often, and is very much in line with the "maker" spirit we see growing out there: you actively build what you want rather than take what is sold to you.The other reasons that open source automobiles are interesting is that it overcomes the slowness of innovation we see in traditional traditional car manufacturing. The designs are open sourced.

One obvious problem for the end-of-scarcity brigade is what the input is; 3d printing materials have been less than ideal in terms of price. Here's some guys making the move to ceramics

"Normally these supplies cost $30 to $50 a pound. Our materials cost less than a dollar a pound," said Ganter. He said he wants to distribute the free recipes in order to democratize 3-D printing and expand the range of printable objects..."When powders are $30 a pound, I can't let students try something new or experimental," Ganter said. "But when it's $1 a pound, I don't care. I encourage them to try new things."

And just for the lulz, here's a pasta-based 3d printer, and s lightly more serious food printer, a la replicator technology


On the Pirating angle, note how 3d scanners are now a desktop-level utility, webcam+code. Disclosure: I am a Pirate Party member, so the thought of a hardware-side breakout a la Napster-Pirate Bay sends me into giggles. The idea used be that you'd print your iPod case, but have to go to the equivalent of Radio Shack for the electronics. Now we're getting to the point where printing the whole thing makes sense.

Initially, I'd expect this to be disruptive as hell, with 'would you print an iPod?' MPAA-stylee propaganda, but the aggregate utility of it would be overwhelming in the medium-term.

ToniTuddle

Misty Choas wrote: »

America loses its super power status, welcome our new overloads, China. :cool: :eek:

I keep hearing this!!
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

I'm sorry to close this, but it's not an EYH topic (I'm starting to clamp down on what is and isn't allowed in this forum).

PM me if you'd like it moved to Popular Science/AH/somewhere else.