Sunday, 12 October 2014

Week 1 (13-19 October 2014)



Look at the diagram Tomorrow’s world: A guide to the next 150 years presented at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130102-tomorrows-world and comment on/discuss it.

11 comments:

  1. I’m not very keen on that kind of prediction, because for me it’s pure guesswork. Even looking at those from 2013 and 2014 we can tell that’s worthless. Pinterest wasn’t bought by Google, you won’t be able to get you entire genome sequence for less than $100, medical apps are still unreliable, so if they can’t predict nearest future, for sure their further estimations are not more likely to happen. I must say some of them for sure will happen – Facebook won’t be the most popular social network, high resolution bionic eyes, which one can buy, sounds possible, cars may be driver-free and automated or we will find another way of transportation. On the other hand I don’t think so that we will ever create immortal creature, which would be made of flesh and bones only, the same goes with “world government” – unless we have nuclear World War III, in which most of the Earth’s populations would be killed, I don’t think that any country would let any organisation rule them. This government would have too much power. I can go and go with each and every bubble and describe whether it’s possible for me or not, but I think that there is no point in doing so. Everyone have his vision of the future, so let’s hope that this will be a “better future” for all of us (Let’s only hope that we won’t be forced to go back in time to get jobs like in this episode of South Park - http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s08e06-goobacks).

    I found some sites, which shows how future was presented in different movies. Some of the ideas came true, some are not likely to happen:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYUMKyyk29o

    http://gizmodo.com/16-classic-films-that-got-future-tech-right-1184346443

    http://wallstcheatsheet.com/entertainment/8-science-fiction-movies-that-accurately-predicted-future-technologies.html/?a=viewall

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    1. I agree with you.
      We can't even predict weather for next week... so talking about prediction of next 10, 50 or 100 years is for me meaningless.

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    2. I totally agree with you both. We have to many variable factors which we can’t predict so we can only guess … Of course if there will be many theoretical predictions some will come true in the future. ;)

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    3. Guys you're taking this a bit too much serious. It's not a prediction for your bookie, you won't win with them a lot ;)
      I would concider it a bit more like a road map for the future, and as for me many of this points will happen. Of course it is hard to tell is it be 2020. Why not 2021 ? Why not 2019 ? No body has crystal ball, but we can predict - predict is the key word here !! - what will happen, we can analyze how the technology evolved in the past, we can see how it is evolving now, we can PREDICT what will happen. Everything can happen much faster if there will be one bright mind that will invent something new, we can do this much slower if no body find a solution for today problems. But this are prediction, so don't take it too serious and lets wait for our first base on Mars in 2061 ;) I would love to go there !

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    4. I think you took my comment a little bit too serious. My point was that if you are going to create a big, nice infographic, with long timeline and you're going to put exact years there, just try to come up with something possible to happen or create it in other way like: 30 most possible things to happen (with odds) or something like that.

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  2. It`s so theoretical article/infographic and it’s hard to say something more about it. In my opinion we have trouble to predict tomorrow weather so prediction for 100 years for really important inventions for human is crazy.

    When I was reading this article I was still thinking about resources of those predictions. A huge ideas like biotonic eyes or live older than 150 years must adduce to hard evidence but looking for those informations on infographic or below was vain. I`ve tried to reconstruct way of thinking to predict those things and I think it’s based on some running projects that we don’t really know when it will be done or some forecasts based on past facts.

    Honestly I confess carpe diem rule so looking further in the future doesn't make a sense. Referring to colleagues I agree a thesis that these kinds of predictions are worthless and I think we (people) should spend time for doing something more meaningful. It so easy… look how many time some people predicted end of the world, and what happened? For the end please look at this movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW3Z0zOezxA for confirming all negative attitudes in my comment for long time predictions… (for ex. “The IPhone won’t get any significant market share” and more..)

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  3. In my opinion such predictions are more of a fantasy than an actual source of reliable data and should be treated with a grain of salt. The ideas shown in the infographic are interesting and presented in a pleasant way, but chances that some of them will take place are too dependant on what might happen even tomorrow. What also caught my attention is the way the infographic presents us the sources. Giving only the name of a magazine or tv station is very imprecise and makes the whole thing look hardly convincing.

    As it was mentioned here already, we can't even forecast weather accurately, so trying to predict our future in 50 (and more) years is pointless. Unless we're making it purely for fun or as an exercise for our imagination of course (which for me seems to be the point of this infographic).

    There are many articles and films about what people from the past thought about the future. Some great examples have been already presented in earlier comments. I'll put my two cents in with this hilarious set of postcards:
    http://mentalfloss.com/article/57103/what-french-people-1900-thought-life-would-be-2000

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  5. This diagram is far from being right. For example : You can get your entire genome sequenced for under $100. It’s not possible. Take a look at this chart : http://www.genome.gov/images/content/cost_per_genome2.jpg

    Another one, “The first immortal mouse has been created”. In my opinion author of this diagram has some sort of mental issues.

    Last but not least, “High resolution bionic eyes are on sale”. Actually we already have high resolution camera implants for blind people. Tiny telescopes being implanted into the eyes of humans to restore sight are already here. Of course we can go wrong way and end like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akaos1U8Rto

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  6. While this infographic is surely entertaining to read I think most of those predictions are not likely to happen. Still, some are quite possible even not so far from today.

    For example the one about humans permanently wearing recording devices..? Our mobile phones of course! We have them on us all the time and proper services are able to access them at any time so why not monitor them ALL THE TIME.
    Choosing genetic traits for our baby? Take a look at this article from 2006: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Technology/story?id=2626668 It was already possible to choose the baby's sex back then, so imagine what could we possibly do now!

    Driverless car? Already here! http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Google_driverless_car

    We can clearly see that the author strongly believe in China's power but I hope he's wrong. I'm not a big fan of their cuisine ;)

    All and all, with the technology evolving so fast and the world changing rapidly soon the only thing holding us back will be our imagination.

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  7. We have 2014 years, the graph is an average of interesting, but I would really like to see it in 2025! I wonder how from the perspective of 2025, we will be able to evaluate this diagram. I hope that parents will finally be able to design your own children, and that this technology reaches Korea, because then everyone will look like another Kim Jong Another: P Anyway, it's funny that this graph is wrong already in 2014. Digital currency has failed and the genes it is true we can read, and not all of course, but definitely we cannot reproduce them. Anyway, I am curious what it will look like in 2025 :P ... I guess I have to wait a while.

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