Many people try to imagine our possible future. It is interesting to observe the ideas and images that people in the fields of science, technology and culture throw at us, especially when the predictions begin to come true.
Many of the predictions in one way or another relate to new technologies that should significantly change our lives. And if unmanned and even flying cars, although they already exist, have not yet become a daily attribute of every person, many other predictions have indeed become our reality.
The Vision of the Visionary Trendwatchers of the Present
1. Internet of Things and smart homes
Forecast:
The emergence of the Internet of things and related technologies was predicted by some well-known techno-gurus, visionaries and futurologists at the end of the last century. So, in 1999, businessman Jeff Bezos, now the richest man in the world, stated the following: “I believe that […] there will be many small devices that will be connected to the Internet.”
Around the same time, in his book, Microsoft creator Bill Gates described a permanent home tracking system that showed who came in while you were away. And if then it seemed something fantastic, now there are special devices that help not only to monitor the house from a distance, but also change the temperature, check smoke detectors and even use the intercom remotely.
Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil also spoke out on this subject: he believed that by 2019 microcomputers would be embedded everywhere – in clothes, jewelry, furniture, and even walls. It is worth noting, however, that development in this direction is going on, but not at such a high speed as he expected.
Reality:
By 2020, according to experts, more than 21 billion devices should have been connected to the Internet of things.
2. Voice assistants
Forecast:
Back in 1984, in an interview with Newsweek Access magazine, American entrepreneur Steve Jobs said that computers will study our interests, store data, communicate with us, learn by process and anticipate our needs. They will be able to tell about themselves, and they will store all this information, offering help in various matters.
In the late 1990s, Kurzweil also suggested that people would give voice commands to computers (however, in his opinion, we should have started doing this much earlier, by 2009).
“Smart stations” in the same years were also predicted by Bill Gates: “Personal companions will be developed. They will connect and sync all your devices at home or in the office, allowing them to share data. The device will check your email and present the information you need. When you go to the store, you can tell it what dishes you want to cook and it will create a list of the ingredients you need to buy. It will tell you about all the devices you use for shopping and scheduling, allowing them to automatically adjust to what you are doing,” he wrote in Business at the Speed of Thought.
Reality:
Now we have Alice, Alexa and Siri, which, although not in such volumes, are already becoming useful digital assistants for many people today.
3. Online shopping
Forecast:
Twenty years ago, it was hard to imagine that most purchases would be more convenient to make via the Internet than in a regular store. But Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos already predicted this.
In 1999, the head of Amazon predicted that a significant amount of everyday goods, whether groceries or cleaning products, would be ordered online.
The founder of Apple made a similar statement three years earlier: “People will stop going to a bunch of stores. They will start buying things directly on the Internet. Huge companies that do not pay attention to these changes will be seriously affected, ”he told The Wired at the time.
Reality:
According to a recent study by Yandex and GfK, the share of online shoppers (those who bought something online over the past six months) in our country in 2019 was 42%. In four years, the indicator has doubled – from 21% in 2015.
4. Wearable personal “smart computers”
Forecast:
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, in his 1998 book Visions: How Science Will Turn the 21st Century, predicted that we would all be “wearing computers” by 2020. In his prediction about microcomputers embedded in clothes, Ray Kurzweil also caught a glimpse of the future trend.
Reality:
Many people are already purchasing all kinds of fitness trackers that track steps, heart rate and the amount of water consumed, smart watches that can be used to pay in stores and respond to messages, smart wireless headphones and glasses. Companies are also actively developing “smart clothes” with touch screens, Bluetooth and other useful technologies. However, there is certainly still room for improvement in this direction.
5. Chips implanted in the brain
Forecast:
Back in 2009, Intel engineers predicted the widespread implantation of chips in the human brain by 2020, with the help of which users will be able to move from one web page to another or switch TV channels with the power of thought.
Reality:
While the idea of combining the power of our minds with an electronic device has long been around both in science fiction and – to some extent – in reality, the scope of brain chips in 2020 will still be limited. “Yes, it is possible to put an electronic device in someone’s skull, but I personally think that this will be useful only for very, very narrow therapeutic purposes,” said Mike Liebhold of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.
At the moment, one of the most ambitious developments belongs to Elon Musk’s Neuralink company: it is a brain chip that should help people with physical and mental disabilities. The technology has already been studied in animals, and human trials are expected to begin before the end of 2020.
Also noteworthy is the BrainGate system, a brain implant designed by Cyberkinetics to help people who have lost the ability to control limbs or control other functions.
The vision of science fiction writers and futurists of the past
1. Hyperloop, skyscrapers and complex computers
Peru Jules Verne owns a little-known dystopia “Paris in the 20th century” (c. 1863-1864), where the writer describes the society of the future for the first time. Jules Verne predicts an extensive system of electromagnetic underground (which he “powered” from compressed air – almost everything works on it in “Paris of the 20th century”, and the compressed air itself is stored in huge tanks and pumped there by thousands of windmills through pumps). Another of the predictions – skyscrapers, a city-wide street lighting system, unmanned “gas-cabs” on hydrogen engines, complex computers, an extensive electro-phototelegraph network – the prototype of all future communication systems right up to the Internet – in general, with a fairly high degree of accuracy reproduces not only 20th, but also partly 21st century.
Of course, no one stocks compressed air these days, but hydrogen cars are very real and may soon begin to replace gasoline-powered cars.
The idea of moving objects through tunnels using compressed air was realized 50 years before the novel in the form of pneumatic mail, and 50 years later, in 1909, Scientific American published an article about a vacuum train based on just an electromagnetic field. It was this idea that originally formed the basis of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop.
2. High-speed trains, air-conditioning system, electric kitchen appliances and wireless worldwide telephony
John Watkins in 1900, in his article “What May Happen in the Next Century”, described the air conditioning system and wireless worldwide telephone communication, the transmission of color photographs by telegraph, and images by wire to screens.
In addition, the engineer predicted the transition from coal in households to electricity, the cultivation of fruits and vegetables in large greenhouses, again heated by electricity, high-speed electric trains, electric musical instruments, electric kitchen appliances, and so on.
The possibilities of electricity seemed limitless – Watkins believed that even drugs in the future would not be swallowed, but injected through the skin by means of an electric current.
However, many of these ideas, especially video communications and automatic transport, were then in the air and were not found only in Watkins. The person visualized dreams of flying, transmitting information over a distance, working less and eating better. Science was supposed to help in all this. Fantasists intensively “extracted” new sources of energy – Hugo Gernsbeck imagined solar batteries, Herbert Wells – nuclear energy. Gernsbeck, the founder of the world’s first science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, in the novel with the strange name “Ralph 124 C 41+” can be found with radar, the same electromagnetic trains, and video conferences through “telephones”.
Rarely are more original reflections. So, in 1924, John Haldane suggested artificial insemination, and Edward Bellamy – in 1888! Described credit cards.
3. Helicopter, submarine, parachute, diving suit and tank
In the era of long-distance travel, giant buildings, the development of tools, people needed new technologies to implement their plans. Many engineers and mechanics were involved in their development, but Leonardo da Vinci went the farthest. Studying the world around him, he suggests that a person can fly, swim under water, look beyond the horizon, formulates the principles of aeronautics, sketches and works out the ideas of a helicopter, submarine, parachute, diving suit, tank and other things reinvented almost 500 years later .
Observations of natural processes led Leonardo to invent many devices of the future, such as ball bearings, and the need to find technical ways to implement ideas led to the ideas of a rolling mill, a metallurgical furnace, an excavator, an elevator, and much more.