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It’s Only Common Sense: The Future Is Here—Now!

I like to read anything I can get my hands on, especially when it comes to predicting technology of the future. I have been doing this since discovering Alvin Toffler’s ground-breaking book, Future Shock, decades ago. Since then, I have read several books predicting the future and so many of the things they talked about in those books have come true—things like a book in the ‘90s that said that one day we would be able to watch TV shows whenever we wanted! Can you imagine? Or that someday there would be rockets that went into space and then come back to earth with a safe landing. Wow! Or cars that would drive themselves? Who could believe that?

I was reading an article about the future recently and realized that the future is here right now. We are living in an age where the things we once only dreamt about are now here. We have devices that literally run our houses and allow us to check on them from thousands of miles away, such as turning off the lights in our living room in Montana while enjoying a fine meal in a restaurant in New York City.

We have come to expect change for the better because it has been happening so quickly, particularly in the past twenty years, that we are at point of taking things for granted. A well-known comedian once joked about the fact that all we do is complain about air travel and what a pain it has become when what we should really do is stop for a minute and realize that in just five hours we are flying coast to coast in a long metal tube—something that would have astounded our grandparents a few generations ago—but we take it for granted instead and complain about the size of the bag of peanuts.

I remember inviting friends over to watch the 1975 world series on my brand-new Magnavox 25" color television and being impressed at the size of the screen. One friend even commented that it was like being in a movie theater! Who wants a puny 25" television set now? Remember when TVs were furniture?

Now we would not be surprised if there were—wait a minute—there are televisions larger than 100 feet.

Here is a list of what we can expect for future technology, according to a highly scientific journal, The AARP Bulletin, that we are not that excited about:

• Going into space: Yes, all of us expect to be able to take a ride into space at one point in our lifetime and are not that impressed anymore.
• Robots are going to take over manufacturing, and, yes, brain surgery. Sure. Tell me something I don’t know. Yawn.
• Special printers will be able to make anything: Oh wait. We have that already, don’t we?
• Our house will automatically adjust to our preferences and needs: Bill Gates already has that and we are on our way to having it as we speak.
• Cars are going to be able to drive themselves: Yeah, yeah, we know that. What else do you have?

Sorry, I am probably boring you. Maybe I can come up with a couple you have not heard about:

• Your shirt will do CPR: MIT is working on this right now. The shirt will detect if you are having a heart attack, send emergency alerts, and yes, administer CPR.
• Your shoes will diagnose your overall health: Using the nerve endings in your feet, shoes will have sensors to track body weight, heart rate, blood pressure, and activity and send data and alerts to your caregivers.
• Stem cell patches will replace damaged heart tissue: The heart cannot regenerate itself after a heart attack, but animal studies with tissue patches have shown that cells delivered in a premade tissue patch can help grow new cells. Patch therapy using contracting cardiac muscle cells could be available in trials in 12 years.
• Your voice will diagnose your health: New technology will sense changes in your voice, from tone to speech patterns, and create a number of brain, muscle, and respiratory health measurements to help identify depression, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and more.
• You will be able to put yourself and your friends into the movies: It’s called hyper-individualizing a movie. You will be able to put your face and body in the place of the actor on screen so that you can be the hero of the movie.

Pretty cool stuff, right? Amazing, but I wonder how long it will take us to absorb these new innovations and start taking them for granted. I predict that it will happen by the time you’re done reading this column.

It’s only common sense.