FARK.com: (6656635) 23 incredible new technologies you'll see by 2021

(Some Guy)		23 incredible new technologies you'll see by 2021 (matadornetwork.com)		82
		More: Spiffy, Mars Science Laboratory, renewable resources, technologies, developmental biology, portability, memory cards, wireless devices, Ray Kurzweil

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mamoru

2011-10-19 12:12:37 AM

That photo in the article... captioned: Down the cybernetic rabbit hole we go. Photo by Harold Hoyer.

When did escalators turn into cybernetic rabbit holes?

ArkAngel

2011-10-19 12:21:15 AM

Where's my flying car?

ecmoRandomNumbers

2011-10-19 12:52:12 AM

ArkAngel: Where's my flying car?

Not a goddamned one on that list.

The_Sponge

2011-10-19 01:25:22 AM

ArkAngel: Where's my flying car?

Where's my ray gun?

/An old Bugs Bunny cartoon has Elmer Fudd pulling a Rip Van Winkle, and waking up in 1997.
//And instead of his shotgun, he's armed with a ray gun.
///So where the hell is my ray gun?

Phoenix_M

2011-10-19 02:02:36 AM

Someday people will laugh at these new technologies you'll see by 2021 like we laugh at these predictions

Miracles You'll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950 (new window)

Archie Goodwin

2011-10-19 04:02:48 AM

2012 - Ultrabooks

You can get one now in 2011. It's called a MacBook Air

2020 Crash-proof cars

Yeah, right.

2022 - Futurism finally gets it right.

Here's a list of 37 future technologies that we can now predict will come true with 100% accuracy.

yadumey

2011-10-19 04:33:05 AM

FTA: So, what should we expect in 2021? Well, 10 years ago, what did you expect to see now? ... Did you expect 140-character messaging systems enabling widespread revolutions against decades-old dictatorial regimes?

Dunno why that one stood out to me, but god damn, ten years ago this was unthinkable. Technology is awesome, no matter how off base the predictions end up being.

100 Watt Walrus

2011-10-19 04:48:42 AM

mamoru: That photo in the article... captioned: Down the cybernetic rabbit hole we go. Photo by Harold Hoyer.

When did escalators turn into cybernetic rabbit holes?

Let me introduce to you a concept with which you seem unfamiliar:

met·a·phor [met-uh-fawr, -fer]
noun
1.
a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in "A mighty fortress is our God." Compare mixed metaphor, simile (def. 1).
2.
something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

NobleHam

2011-10-19 05:06:24 AM

Most of these won't happen, at least not in the next 10 years. Those which do will be very cool. But the coolest things will be the ones we can't imagine now.

Nebulious

2011-10-19 05:07:32 AM

thisispete

2011-10-19 05:08:46 AM

Archie Goodwin: 2012 - Ultrabooks

You can get one now in 2011. It's called a MacBook Air

Ah, but This post is brought to you in partnership between Matador and our friends at Intel - and the first thing on the list uses Intel chips. I think we've just read an ad with a handful of speculative advances thrown in.

Uncle Wiggly

2011-10-19 05:33:52 AM

And they'll all be cheap and easily affordable and will in no way be held up by patent disputes, regulatory issues or competing technologies which will come out of nowhere and crush it like a dinosaur under a meteor.

In the meantime ...

- Hong Kong and Macau will be crushed by a China on the edge of economic collapse,
- here will be a 'limited' nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, soaking a billion people in radiation and wiping out the slow steady gains of the Gates foundation, and leading to mass immolations of imperfect newborns,
- the Russians will murder dissidents in the hidden wastes of Siberia as the gulags are moved below ground.
- the Arab Spring will collapse into Mugabe-like madness, as Europe agrees to anything in return for Libyan oil
- the Saudis will push dissidents into assassinating their King,
- the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Rio Olympics will be marred by thick white smoke when tire fires get out of control and sweep the slums, official estimates are 93 killed, and only 30 years later is the number fixed at 1,300
- Mexico will degenerate into an armed camp as civilian rule is replaced by martial law,
- New drugs will be invented that will supplant meth and lead to the collapse of the pot and coke drug economy in the Americas,
- the assassination of the American President will fail, but the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the two remaining 'liberal' court members will die under the leadership of a madman who styled himself after John Wilkes Booth, his last words being, 'United We Stand',
- North Korea will collapse on itself as bodies pile up on the borders when the well-fed Army cuts down bone-thin civilians like wheat in the field,
- Tel Aviv will boil under a dirty bomb, leading to the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities by a submarine-launched Israeli nuke,
- Iraq will unify under the Second Iraq-Iran War, using a military tempered under decades of American rule,
- Afghanistan's borders will be sealed and the tribes allowed to consume themselves as they have since the days of Alexander,
- the Italian Prime Minister will be found with a 11-year old girl and be re-elected twice,
- the new pope, Leo XIV, will call Vatican III, embrace liberation theology, the teachings of the 'Parable Christ', marriage within the clergy and die in his sleep a year into his reign,
- and on March 14, 2020, a KH-3 satellite will collide with Telstar-2 and create a Kessler Shell, destroying all orbiting craft, including the Ares Mars Mission construction platform, killing 14. Helium for high altitude satellites will become more precious than gold. The United States will nationalize all helium supplies, equating it with plutonium and leading to the Amarillo Rebellion in which 32 protesters are shot by the Texas National Guard and the Pantex plant is turned into a US Military Reservation.

So yes, it's going to be a great 10 years.

WhyteRaven74

2011-10-19 05:50:37 AM

Phoenix_M: Miracles You'll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950 (new window)

Not to burst your bubble, but a good number of those predictions came to pass. They may not be ubiquitous like the predictions say they would be, but they aren't hard to find. Microwave ovens did become ubiquitous. Photovoltaic cells are everywhere, not just in larger scale applications. Houses made of poured concrete exist and in areas were quite the thing for a while and new ones are built regularly. You can buy shaving cream that gets rid of facial hair without the need for a razor.

Slaxl

2011-10-19 05:53:06 AM

Uncle Wiggly: So yes, it's going to be a great 10 years.

Debbie Downer.jpg

Nebulious

2011-10-19 06:01:43 AM

Uncle Wiggly: In the meantime ...

So yes, it's going to be a great 10 years.

I see you're hard at work on that next novel, Mr. Clancy.

crab66

2011-10-19 06:02:01 AM

In A.D. 2021 war was beginning.

galactus5000

2011-10-19 06:08:24 AM

Practical_Draconian

2011-10-19 06:36:29 AM

Uncle Wiggly: And they'll all be cheap and easily affordable and will in no way be held up by patent disputes, regulatory issues or competing technologies which will come out of nowhere and crush it like a dinosaur under a meteor.

In the meantime ...

- Hong Kong and Macau will be crushed by a China on the edge of economic collapse,
- here will be a 'limited' nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, soaking a billion people in radiation and wiping out the slow steady gains of the Gates foundation, and leading to mass immolations of imperfect newborns,
- the Russians will murder dissidents in the hidden wastes of Siberia as the gulags are moved below ground.
- the Arab Spring will collapse into Mugabe-like madness, as Europe agrees to anything in return for Libyan oil
- the Saudis will push dissidents into assassinating their King,
- the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Rio Olympics will be marred by thick white smoke when tire fires get out of control and sweep the slums, official estimates are 93 killed, and only 30 years later is the number fixed at 1,300
- Mexico will degenerate into an armed camp as civilian rule is replaced by martial law,
- New drugs will be invented that will supplant meth and lead to the collapse of the pot and coke drug economy in the Americas,
- the assassination of the American President will fail, but the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the two remaining 'liberal' court members will die under the leadership of a madman who styled himself after John Wilkes Booth, his last words being, 'United We Stand',
- North Korea will collapse on itself as bodies pile up on the borders when the well-fed Army cuts down bone-thin civilians like wheat in the field,
- Tel Aviv will boil under a dirty bomb, leading to the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities by a submarine-launched Israeli nuke,
- Iraq will unify under the Second Iraq-Iran War, using a military tempered under decades of American rule,
- Afghanistan's borders will be sealed and the tribes allowed to consume themselves as they have since the days of Alexander,
- the Italian Prime Minister will be found with a 11-year old girl and be re-elected twice,
- the new pope, Leo XIV, will call Vatican III, embrace liberation theology, the teachings of the 'Parable Christ', marriage within the clergy and die in his sleep a year into his reign,
- and on March 14, 2020, a KH-3 satellite will collide with Telstar-2 and create a Kessler Shell, destroying all orbiting craft, including the Ares Mars Mission construction platform, killing 14. Helium for high altitude satellites will become more precious than gold. The United States will nationalize all helium supplies, equating it with plutonium and leading to the Amarillo Rebellion in which 32 protesters are shot by the Texas National Guard and the Pantex plant is turned into a US Military Reservation.

So yes, it's going to be a great 10 years.

Swear most of that was from Deus Ex.

2chris2

2011-10-19 06:43:57 AM

2015
The world's first zero-carbon, sustainable city in the form of Masdar City will be initially completed just outside of Abu Dhabi.

I always thought there were cities which got their electricity from hydroelectric dams. Clearly I was mistaken.

JRoo

2011-10-19 06:47:08 AM

Sex robots.

Now.

Fark e-paper.

Fark cancer.

minoridiot

2011-10-19 07:07:18 AM

I was hoping to replacy my wife with a Cherry 2000 by 2017. Why isn't someone working on this?

Happy Hours

2011-10-19 07:07:24 AM

So does this mean we've all given up on that E-Cat thing from yesterday?

Link (new window)

tomWright

2011-10-19 07:11:52 AM

Those 'e-ink' displays were not e-ink. They were lcd mimiking e-ink, or a hybrid of the two.

E-ink mfrs are demonstrating color e-ink now. I do not know about a refresh rate fast enough for video though.

pkellmey

2011-10-19 07:31:46 AM

It appears most of that list and their target dates aren't aware of the current worldwide economy. Push the date out a few years and it makes it much more believable.

NobleHam

2011-10-19 08:12:00 AM

tomWright: Those 'e-ink' displays were not e-ink. They were lcd mimiking e-ink, or a hybrid of the two.

E-ink mfrs are demonstrating color e-ink now. I do not know about a refresh rate fast enough for video though.

There's always IMOD/Mirasol.

Tom_Slick

2011-10-19 08:18:39 AM

No Cubs win the World Series?

rev. dave

2011-10-19 08:24:03 AM

No holodeck?

t3knomanser

2011-10-19 08:26:05 AM

yadumey: Dunno why that one stood out to me, but god damn, ten years ago this was unthinkable

Was it? It seems like all anybody was thinking about was how the Internet was going to reshape political discourse and aid dissidents.

pkellmey: It appears most of that list and their target dates aren't aware of the current worldwide economy.

The current worldwide economy isn't in bad shape. It's not great, but it's not on the verge of collapse, either. Besides, one of the most optimistic eras for futurism was the 1930s, so a little optimism here isn't unwarranted.

Green Scorpio

2011-10-19 08:36:27 AM

DONT BELIEVE IT.
I'm still waiting for my personal jet-pack and flying car.

OtherBrotherDarryl

2011-10-19 08:37:39 AM

inkblot

2011-10-19 08:41:01 AM

This article is a bit too silly.

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy

2011-10-19 08:41:06 AM

Kurzweil's "Law of Accelerating Returns" is horseshiat.

Technology doesn't advance exponentially forever. New things are invented, they advance rapidly, and then they reach their mature form and level off. We're currently living in a period where a lot of important new technologies were discovered back-to-back so it skews our historical perspective.

RatOmeter

2011-10-19 08:41:33 AM

The good news: less deforestation

[*alert*] Common fallacy invoked. [*alert*]

Wood pulp for paper products comes primarily from fast growing softwoods which are planted (and replanted) expressly for the purpose of fulfilling demand for paper products.

Tentacle

2011-10-19 08:53:12 AM

2020 Crash-proof cars

Maybe, if they are self-driving cars.

Invincible

2011-10-19 08:56:21 AM

Archie Goodwin: 2020 Crash-proof cars

Yeah, right.

If anything, this is the most likely. Autonomous cars are being tested everywhere and Acura is already touting this capability in their latest ads. The trick is simultaneously killing all the lawyers in early beta testing and making it look like it was the intern's fault.

Beowoolfie

2011-10-19 09:00:44 AM

Phoenix_M: Someday people will laugh at these new technologies you'll see by 2021 like we laugh at these predictions

Miracles You'll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950 (new window)

I hadn't read that one in a long time, and this time through was shocked at how good the predictions actually were. Sure, they missed on several of the big ones, like I never have commuted in my own helicopter.

But, solar power, modern limited-access highways, Nair(tm), advances in alloys and synthetic materials, cooking dying off among the younger folk, microwave ovens, industrial junk-food, telecommuting, online shopping, lights-out factories, weather forecasting (not perfect but far better than in 1950), suburban growth at the cost of the cities, commuting by airliner, fax machines, synthetic antibiotics, the explosion of medical imaging machines, increased lifespan, and we're on the cusp of several more.

Thanks, that was fun.

stuhayes2010

2011-10-19 09:07:34 AM

Nebulious: [dvdmedia.ign.com image 640x480]

Came for chainsaw hands, leaving.

LDM90

2011-10-19 09:25:55 AM

t3knomanser

2011-10-19 09:40:49 AM

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: New things are invented, they advance rapidly, and then they reach their mature form and level off.

And in the mean time, a new thing is invented. You're right- the idea of accelerating returns is horseshiat, but not for the reasons you say. It's horseshiat because you can't reasonably quantify what technological progress actually means. Even so, the idea that the rate of change in technology increases is not invalid. And we can see that without looking at the 20th century. Look at the gap from basic metal working to bronze to steel. Or from hunting-gathering to agriculture to urbanization to industrialization. Pick a technological phenomenon, and pick an arbitrary window of history that's sufficiently large, and you're going to see the same sorts of trends.

wildcardjack

2011-10-19 10:00:14 AM

2015 The world's first zero-carbon, sustainable city in the form of Masdar City will be initially completed just outside of Abu Dhabi. The city will derive power solely from solar and other renewable resources, offer homes to more than 50,000 people.

How much zero-carbon energy are they going to export in order to make up for the food input costs of 50,000 people living in the middle of a desert?

2016 The sunscreen pill will hit the market, protecting the skin as well as the eyes from UV rays. By reverse-engineering the way coral reefs shield themselves from the sun, scientists are very optimistic about the possibility, much to the dismay of sunscreen producers everywhere.

So who has this in testing right now? It'll take at least 5 years to bring to market under FDA rules.

I can't argue with Moore's law, but I wanna remind you that it often hasn't gone the way experts expected it to go. High powered multi-layered dies are probably going to continue to melt despite efforts and wishes.

Uncle Wiggly

2011-10-19 10:08:20 AM

OtherBrotherDarryl: Uncle Wiggly:

So yes, it's going to be a great 10 years.

(inhales helium) jees teel mee hoo weens da neects teeen sooper boools

2011: Green Bay
2012: New England
2013: Pittsburgh
2014: New Orleans
2015: Green Bay. This was technically a forfeit by Pittsburgh after Green Bay's aircraft crashed on take-off, killing all aboard and incinerating 8 vehicles on the Tri-State Tollway. The death toll was 215. The cause was attributed to the de-icing fluid, which had been colored green and yellow in support of the Packers. The coloring masked the build-up of ice on the over-loaded aircraft.
2016: New York
2017: Dallas
2018: Dallas
2019: New England
2020: San Diego

Carth

2011-10-19 10:08:38 AM

wildcardjack:
2016 The sunscreen pill will hit the market, protecting the skin as well as the eyes from UV rays. By reverse-engineering the way coral reefs shield themselves from the sun, scientists are very optimistic about the possibility, much to the dismay of sunscreen producers everywhere.

So who has this in testing right now? It'll take at least 5 years to bring to market under FDA rules.

I remember reading about this back in August. The research is being done in the UK and they don't even plan to start testing for 2 years. They approval processes is shorter than the US but a 3 year trial seems short.

Uncle Wiggly

2011-10-19 10:09:52 AM

LDM90: Uncle Wiggly:

Someone finally broke your damn bold key?

In the future, bold is not necessary.

Meat's dream

2011-10-19 10:12:24 AM

But will there finally be a gag strong enough to finally shut Kurzweil up?

Desquamation

2011-10-19 10:14:54 AM

Uncle Wiggly: and on March 14, 2020, a KH-3 satellite will collide with Telstar-2 and create a Kessler Shell,

Awesome! That sounds like it'll be the most exciting birthday I'll ever have.

Bronzed War God

2011-10-19 10:17:09 AM

Was anyone predicting the success of Twitter in 2001? Probably not. Therefore, many of these will not be what we're talking about in 2021.

The PC meets tablet computing with flash memory does seem likely.

annitabonghit

2011-10-19 10:18:41 AM

A 1 Terabyte SD Memory Card probably seems like an impossibly unnecessary technological investment. Many computers still don't come with that much memory, much less SD memory cards that fit in your digital camera. Yet thanks to ~~Moore's Law~~ Kryder's Law we can expect that the 1TB SD card will become commonplace in 2014, and increasingly necessary given the much larger swaths of data and information that we're constantly exchanging every day (thanks to technologies like memristors and our increasing ever-connectedness). The only disruptive factor here could be the rise of cloud-computing, but as data and transfer speeds continue to rise, it's inevitable that we'll need a physical place to store our digital stuff.

Fixed that for 'em.

Stone Meadow

2011-10-19 10:25:23 AM

t3knomanser: Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: New things are invented, they advance rapidly, and then they reach their mature form and level off.

And in the mean time, a new thing is invented. You're right- the idea of accelerating returns is horseshiat, but not for the reasons you say. It's horseshiat because you can't reasonably quantify what technological progress actually means. Even so, the idea that the rate of change in technology increases is not invalid. And we can see that without looking at the 20th century. Look at the gap from basic metal working to bronze to steel. Or from hunting-gathering to agriculture to urbanization to industrialization. Pick a technological phenomenon, and pick an arbitrary window of history that's sufficiently large, and you're going to see the same sorts of trends.

Neither of you appear to have actually, you know...like, READ Kurzweil. He doesn't predict accelerating returns on all fronts, just information processing and the technologies that directly impacts. No matter the density of memristers or the speed of processors, you aren't going to get a flying car.

What you WILL get, though, is ever improving cell phones and their merger with personal computing, medical technologies and personal genomics. The latter is why I've gone hard-core vegan and am getting down to the weight I was in college...I want to live long enough to benefit from those advances.

Oh, and I want to join the diaspora to the stars when that kicks off, too.

Wilgar

2011-10-19 10:33:45 AM

Meh. All these predictions will go out the window when the elves and dwarves start being born next year.

//Not going to be anywhere near Mt. Rainier come the Great Ghost Dance...

t3knomanser

2011-10-19 10:41:07 AM

Stone Meadow: He doesn't predict accelerating returns on all fronts, just information processing and the technologies that directly impacts

Which is still built on a terrible misinterpretation of Moore's Law. Increasing transistor density is something you can easily quantify. Increasing CPU speeds is not. And so on. Yes, technology is going to continuously improve. There is likely going to be the appearance of an accelerating trend. But this isn't a law- it's a trend that we can observe. A trend.

Stone Meadow: Oh, and I want to join the diaspora to the stars when that kicks off, too

You aren't going to get to go. I'm sorry, but you'll be too much of a baseline human to survive in that environment. We aren't going to be sending any fleshbags out there- you're too expensive to keep alive. And you aren't going to get brain uploads, either. But don't worry, a machine intelligence very similar to what resides in your brain gets to go. It's a stretch to call that "you", even if we go with a very generous interpretation of the Ship of Theseus paradox. If we upload human brains in such a fashion that they resemble the human brains they were based upon, I will be sorely disappointed in human ingenuity.

Human brain uploads are the equivalent of trying to design a 747 that flies like a pigeon.

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