7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions About What The Next Decade Will Bring

[hunter]

21. I was a kid in the 'sixties and and a teen in the 'seventies.

The Good Technology:

Asthma meds. The meds I used to take were quite horrid and dangerous. What I call my "crazy" meds are also much improved.

Computers. Oh my, I'm writing this on a computer that would have been called a "super computer" in my youth. It's about the size of a credit card, and cost $35, with a 16 gigabyte SD card "hard drive" that cost even less. My first home-built computer in the 'seventies had 1024 bytes of memory and used a cassette recorder to store programs.

Television, flat screens and inexpensive video! My first two years in college, before I changed my major to biology, I wanted to be a television engineer. The hottest pieces of technology we got to play with as students was a full frame digital time base corrector and a digital control board that could do all sorts of fades and wipes and (will wonders never cease!) chroma key. It was all big expensive rack mounted hardware. Any halfway decent "studio" quality RGB color monitor cost a fortune then, weighed a hundred pounds or more, and sucked up half a kilowatt.

Tires. Car tires used to really suck. Anyone my age or older of the "car culture" has experienced many exciting tire failures. My grandma would talk about past times even worse, when there was no reasonable expectation of driving between San Diego, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, or San Francisco without a tire failing. My own kids are entirely clueless about tires. As children they saw me change only two tires on road trips. I thought the second time great fun, back when the border between Mexico and the U.S.A. was still somewhat permeable and I got a functional used and well worn replacement tire for $5, which was money we really didn't have at the time, but we survived. Years later, one of my kids got a flat tire away at college and called the Auto Club. Had no interest in learning how to use the spare. Some new cars don't even have spares.

Things that have devolved:

Airline travel. My first airline flight was on a 737. Spacious, comfortable, good food, friendly staff. My last airline flight was on a 737 crammed full of grumpy people, my knees crushed up against the seat in front of me, offered a free little plastic cup of soda, the air was stale, not to mention the TSA people who made me take off my shoes and belt and empty my pockets and suspected the beat up old laptop I was using at the time might be some sort of bomb.

Cars. We still have cars. Cars suck, everyone on the roads these days seems to be meaner, most especially the cops. I hate cars. I always have. I resent that I have to drive a car to be accepted as a somewhat functional human being in this world. So I drive I mid 'eighties piece of shit car with a salvage title that I never wash except for the windows as my way of saying "FUCK YOU!" to this modern world.

As computer and information technology literate as I am, I'm still some kind of Luddite. This world would be a much better place if everyone practiced lots of safe sex, used effective birth control, did lots of reading and writing, practiced arts scientific, medical, and every other kind, and experienced many fine days in the garden or walking about.