What's the future of technology?

Hello Calvin,

As the other mentors have suggested it's difficult to predict the future but there are some indications of where technology is headed:

1. Atomically Precise Manufacturing: Look at Eric Drexler's book: Radical Abundance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Eric_Drexler

A somewhat droll and misleading title for a cutting edge book on Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM) whereby we apply digital product definitions to 3D printers which build our creations one atom at a time. There is a great chapter on the competing values of science and engineering.

1. Exponential Technical Advances: See Ray Kurzwiel's book The Singularity is Near & How to Create a Mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near

Kurzweil describes technology as an evolution accelerator through which human biological intelligence combined with our evolving tool creation is leading and will continue to lead to exponential growth in human technical intelligence by uniting our minds and computers (by 2045). Duh, right? ;-)

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ How to Create a Mind

Kurzweil did a lot of work on speech recognition in the 80s and 90s which now represents key dimensions of applications such as Siri and Nuance today. His thesis is human intelligence is based on hierarchical pattern matching which maps to 300 million neurons in the neocortex and utilizes a hidden Markov learning model. I hope that doesn’t spoil the plot for you ;-). There’s a good synopsis in Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Create_a_Mind

1. The secrets of cognition: Look at Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence.

Hawkins describes how our minds build a consistent and stable representation of our world and then look for stimulus which fails to conform to that model. Everyone I talk to in advanced analytics has read On Intelligence and have experimented with this approach to deep learning.

That should keep you busy for a few months ;-) Hope that helpful.

Hagen

The future of technology has always been bright and it is getting brighter. I have been in technology for 40+ years and I have not seen any slow down in technology and do not expect so in the foreseeable future. Please keep in mind US is in a lead economic and military position it is in because of lead in technology against every other country in the world.

The irony of your question is that you can't predict the future of technology.

Think of the "Internet of Things (IOT)". Who would have thought that you can program a lightbulb to work with a router for scheduling, etc ....

Be open to change because technology has LOADS of it.

Futurists can dish out some exciting and downright scary visions for the future of machines and science that either enhance or replace activities and products near and dear to us.

Being beamed from one location to another by teleportation was supposed to be right around the corner/in our lifetime/just decades away, but it hasn't become possible yet. Inventions like the VCR that were once high tech -- and now aren't -- proved challenging for some: The VCR became obsolete before many of us learned how to program one. And who knew that working with atoms and molecules would become the future of technology? The futurists, of course.

Forecasting the future of technology is for dreamers who hope to innovate better tools -- and for the mainstream people who hope to benefit from the new and improved. Many inventions are born in the lab and never make it into the consumer market, while others evolve beyond the pace of putting good regulations on their use.

Next, we'll take a look at some sound-loving atoms, tiny tools for molecules, huge bunches of data and some disgruntled bands of people who may want to set all of this innovation back with the stroke of a keyboard.