The Future Is Now
Actually, that thing we refer to as “the future” has become our present. All those gadgets and technological concepts that we thought wouldn’t happen for years to come, are banging at our doorstep and we are breathing it all in in stride. In the video “How Technology’s Accelerating Power Will Transform Us”, Ray Kurzweil talks about how the speed at which we are evolving technologies is increasing. Before it used to take us half a century to develop the standard telephone, but it only took eight years for the development of the cell phone as we know it today. It is also a great accomplishment that we can understand these technologies not just have the means to produce it.
Soon we won’t know where the machine ends and human begins. Kurzweil predicts that in 2010 computers, in the form they are in now, will disappear and become so small they will be embedded in our clothing and environment practically acting as a part of our bodies. And he says by 2029 humans and machines will merge. I’m not a psychic, which would mean I can’t predict the future, but I choose to air on the side that humans and computers will stay separate entities. I am all for new technology, and yes I believe that computers will continue to get smaller and smaller, but I would like to think that the human body will stay in the form it was made.
Does anyone remember that quirky robot Johnny 5 from the “Short Circuit” films? Well if not, here’s a refresher.
The scientist who created the original “Number 5″ reassures others that “It’s a machine, Schroeder. It doesn’t get pissed off, it doesn’t get happy, it doesn’t get sad, it doesn’t laugh at your jokes…IT JUST RUNS PROGRAMS!”. Although this may have started out as the truth, overtime Number 5 became Johnny 5 and began to develop a personality. This may have been what Kurzweil was getting at for the year 2029, but 1986 began the trend. It is the same with the “Back to the Future” films. The Sci-Fi films of the 80’s were all about the future and what the world would be, but twenty or so years later flying cars don’t exist, only hybrids.
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