I LIKE the sound of the future.
Being focused on the present is currently the trendy way to happiness, but anticipation is the berries for me. Better to travel than to etc.
I arrived at this conclusion after a new report considered the impact the next generation of internet connections might have on our lives by 2025. Well, who could ignore a report called Killer Apps in the Gigabit Age?
Produced by the US-based Pew Research Center, it asked 1,464 "experts and internet builders" what will happen when broadband is 50 to 100 times faster than current connections.
Here are some predictions: we could send holograms rather than our physical selves to meetings; wearable health tools will monitor us from birth and predict sickness (yay!); school learning could take place at home or in the neighbourhood; you'll be able to travel virtually from the comfort of your armchair; you'll have physical items 3D-printed on demand and delivered by drone to your door.
Some of this will sound familiar, particularly virtual reality headsets, which have been talked about for years and amounted to nothing, and 3D printing, which you'd need a virtual reality headset to get your head around. There's even talk of online telepathy. But you knew I was going to say that.
All this is predicated on our still being on Earth, the controversial planet, which we will be, since 2025 is just 11 years away. Pity really. I can't wait to get off this dump.
And, according to George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, things are hotting up. He told The Guardian: "We are living through one of the greatest periods of innovation in aerospace since the dawn of the space age. The amount of new ideas that are coming up and the amount of new capital that is being infused is really exciting."
Lucky Galactic passengers are supposedly heading to ooter space early next year, though they'll just be poking their heids in briefly and coming straight back doon. Magic all the same.
But the future is as much about machines as magic. The future will be operated by machines, not just in the spacecraft sense, but basically as butlers, medics, carers and advisers.
We'll talk to them, with implications for manners, authority and, the art of conversation.
Meantime, I say this unto you: we don't live in interesting times yet. But we will.
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