User:Robbiemuffin/2100,Technologies

3D printing
The end of stupid patents and the first Jetson house-keeping robots all spawn from this. We have self-replicating printers at just a couple thousand dollars, but right now a lot of polish needs to go into the pattern-sharing and pattern libraries, particularly in circuit design ... and we need cheap chips and more feasible circuit printing, oh and the actual legal challenges with patents, for this to really take off.

Forecast

Technologically everything is in place, this is just a matter of doing it: it is so mature a technology, expect to see these printers in the next decade. Some of the people involved in this see this as the next big internet boom, but for that to happen patent law will have to dramatically change. The real challenge to this technology is legal: it is defeating some monsterous equivalent of the RIAA, but for the other 90% of quick-turnover wealth in the world. Good luck.

Water Rights
1. massively scaled water irrigation, water control - a green northern africa could dramatically change the green house problems. And as populations climb, mastery of irrigation on the continental level is going to be a requirement for non-violent progress. This is something that the ancient egyptians could do almost more easily than we can: the technology involved in this can be done with work animals (on small scales), but the massive pumping energy for pumping, coordination, will power... and generally in today's world the cost makes this look terribly difficult.

2. massively scaled water purification - just like you need to grow more vegetables, you need more drinking water. The ocean looks like a nice reserve for drinking water, except the salts will kill you. We have been siting on the technology to do this forever... this is already ready to go. Now.

Forecast

This gets ugly. The reality of it is that our economic mechanics are based around the notion that 'free-market capitalism is the best path toward prosperity' which dictates that people won't do anything about it unless it is cost-beneficial. The likelihood is there will be mostly failed projects built around the idea that people can be leveraged into mortgaging the resources they need, but without giving enough structure to force monetary exchange in order to protect the right of autonomy. So far the track record for the IMF, the UN, and the Washington consensus in general is great at the small scale and terrible at the large scale, so the projects should fail. Billions will die, that's the truth unless people make this happen in a totally benevolent manner.

Wireless energy transfer
Solar farming in space would be one way to fuel home power consumption. This is very long term, because you need square kilometers of solar panels and absolute fail-safe measures on transmission. Right now research is being done on how to automate the construction of solar panels in space. This is going to happen whether or not it is the best solution, because the military is curiously interested in massive power beams from space. Gee, I wonder why?

Forecast

This has no right becoming the wave of the future on merits of the technology. It is just not cost nor maintenance efficient. But when the military gets involved the impossible becomes possible (see internet). Look as this as a late-century reality.

Verticalization
see vertical farming, but this idea applies to power and water generation in general.

With upwards of 90% of populations living in cities, even in such large scales as continents (europe, south america), it is increasingly important to develop scalable food sources. There is a project I think of as the "hanging gardens of New York" that would build 20 very modest skyscrapers that are giant gardens. They run completely green, have a net output of energy and water, and could feed the whole of New York City, no small feat.

Forecast

This is one of those things that shouldn't happen but will, on basis of the fact that we want to live an urban lifestyle, and the net water gain to some design projects puts this on the definite win-list later in the century.

The internet
One day people will be able to communicate across vast distances, not only sharing voice and fax data, but sharing spam and viruses as well! all of this will be possible through a series of tubes. (Yeah ok so its done and now we just need to let it do its thing, but it is still one of the inventions of the 21st century.)

Forecast

It's here, you're using it to read this. But what happens to it is largely a question of what we want from it. Right now there is a terribly broken seeding of personal content motivation, through the likes of youtube and podcast. There is a collision here between the desire to get people to do real, local content, and the free as in freedom software and content movements that spawned the internet. Which do you prefer?

Rapid learning
through Cognotechnology

The 20-minute tapes to learn things in the matrix might seem impossible, but it is mostly just a desire to protect people from snake oil claims that puts a negative image on this sort of idea. We already know that the brain changes associations (neural connections) as it learns: that is, not only is memory tied to these networks, but thinking itself is. We know how to measure and localize the types of connections involved in those thoughts, we can even predict decisions in people before they decide. And we know how to trigger connections in neurons. What we can't do is *remotely* trigger neuronal connections, and we can't predict the mental and personality changes involved in these processes. It might be that figuring this out is tantamount to understanding the framework of cognition in its entirety. But it will happen.

Forecast

There is huge prejudice against using our understanding of cognition horizontally to behavioral development and medical treatment. People want this to be a non-goal. If it comes as an after-thought in a vertical development of cognition, it will be after a general comprehension of cognition. To me, that means late-century. But it certainly could come earlier.

Designer Children
Genetic engineering is here to stay (and see Human Genetic Engineering), and while the concern from early on has been strongly entrenched in the morality of it: the reality of the field of medicine is "first we do it, then we jail people for it."

Forecast

A lot of people think it shouldn't happen. And maybe that's right for people, but humans are still a long way from perfect. Look for perfection maybe in a future century, not this one. In the mean time, expect designer children to be completely possible, down to the exact mechanisms used towards commercial end goals like blue eyes and blond hair, maybe even in the next 2 decades.

Life Extension
This is down the far end of the rabbit hole but eventually we will be able to let the rich live for a long, long time, if not forever. I'm not knowledgeable about this but I thought I'd have to add it.

Magic Pill
that 2% diet control thing

Dieticians say that the reason they think it isn't possible to provide a general prescriptive fix for maintaining ideal weight is that mostly weight is very stable over long periods, and we just pack on a few pounds year to year. Controlling a very small long-term fluctuation when the short-term fluctuation is much higher seems impossible. But we know how to lower metabolism, and there are certain to be ways to increase and fine tune our control of metabolism. Yes exercise works, but one look at the thing they are beginning to call the "obesity epidemic" reveals that we need to get off our lazy butts and research how to make this 2% control more practical than simple exercise.

Forecast

A "magic pill" hat keeps you thin would sell like hot cakes. There's big money in it, but this isn't magic-pill-ready technology. I don't know how you pull it off. There's high goals from the FDA: they want a short on-ramp and at most a very rare check-up or reapplication, and permanent benefits.