I often look around and try to imagine what practices, skills, devices, or technology that we take for granted, will soon or one day disappear. We all know that printed books, magazines, and newspapers, are going away. This is especially notable considering that the Gutenberg's printing press was voted by scholars as the most influential device in the last 1000 years. For the first time in history, the printing press made information available to the average person - news, education, technical knowledge, and the spread of knowledge that made possible the Renaissance. The end of the age of print is historic. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/press.html Typing is soon to be a lost art. Voice-to-text technology will make that moot. Driving: It struck me that the skill and art of driving will soon be lost. Before long, the idea of a human actually driving a car, instead of having a computer drive as God intended, will seem crazy, dangerous, and a relic from the past. Driving will be left to thrill-seekers who don't have any good sense. [We might still direct the car by only indirectly. The car will decide how to get there]
Department stores and malls. Or maybe malls will evolve to be places mainly for restaurants and various recreational activities. But with department stores dying, malls as know them will certainly change. My cousin and I were talking about this. She has worked at a major dept store for two decades and thinks stores will evolve. Some places are already focusing on online sales and pushing towards warehouses, like Amazon does, but with limited numbers of brick and mortar stores. Apparently Macy's is going the other route and eliminating warehouses while focusing on heavily on stocked stores [sounds like a losing idea to me!] Seamstresses: This gets back to department stores. Now there is an app for your phone that allows you to take a few shots of yourself and email those to a company, where the photos are computer analysed. From the photos, clothes are custom cut using LASERS. Your finished clothes are then shipped. So it would seem that eventually we will all be buying custom-tailored clothing online.
Humans will eventually merge with technology with implants, replacement parts, etc. OR....Human beings and parts will be artificially grown. Or both.
Voice to text is not going to replace typing. People like being able to communicate silently. Watch millenials. They don't use voice to text, they text people in the same room they are in. "Print is dead." Human driving will be dead, probably in the next 20 years. I think over the air TV has a 20-30 year shelf life as well. - - - Updated - - - I see showcase stores for online delivery beginning. My son recently needed to get lacrosse cleats. They didn't have the color and size he wanted (they had the size, but not in the color he wanted). He tried out the cleat, and then we ordered them online from the same store at the store.
Well, I'm not saying that voice to text isn't going to be used, just that there will be a need for typing (or handwriting), at least until we get the brain implants to let us record what we are thinking.
Yes, thought to text would be a huge breakthrough. I don't know of any research suggesting that is close. http://neurosciencenews.com/text-thought-bci-5345/
Oh good lord--they last thing I would want is for people to be able to document my thoughts. I would be institutionalized in a hot minute.
LOL for real! Okay, but it would sure make political debates interesting. No one talks; we just read their thoughts, literally. However, we don't know if such a device would read our thoughts or just words we imagine vocalizing. The work described in the link dealt with imagined speech.
Well, my theoretical thought to text would be that you would consciously think, let me write this on the computer, similar to the way your brain processes, "hey, lets write this with a pen." It wouldn't be a stream of consciousness recording necessarily (unless that's what you wanted.).
Okay, but just be forewarned, the way some people hum when they go about their business, I say the F word like a Tourette syndrome kid on meth....
An android female indistinguishable from the real thing for sexual purposes will be available by 2050. This will revolutionize human society much for the better as men and women will finally be able to relate to each other as human beings rather than as tools and vehicles for sexual exploitation http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/707769/Sex-robots-ADDICTIVE-2050-prostitution
My theory is that teenage boys will never come out of their rooms. From your link Experts at what? I see it coming [pun intended] but 2050 sounds a little soon. I guess the question is, at what point does a robot begin to seem human and not just a glorified masturbation toy. The mechanical technology is far ahead of the equivalent intellectual and emotional simulations. I keep thinking that in order to satisfy the human component, sophisticated sex robots will be operated remotely by real women [and probably men!]. One can even imagine operators getting a reputation and being in big demand. Robot Love: Baby you turn me on!
ok moving on from sexbots.... I think as RP1 said (god help me I'm agreeing with him) we will become more wired, implants especially as we develop superior eyes, hearing, limbs and organs people will replace healthy organs, also be connected all the time. as far as space travel go, humans will not concur space, apparently we go blind in zero gravity, has to do with cerebral spinal fluid pooling around the optic nerves in the part of the skull that holds the eye. let me just find the article ...http://www.sciencealert.com/we-finally-know-why-astronauts-lose-their-vision-in-space-and-it-s-bad-news-for-mars-missions I would guess we are designed for gravity and unless we find out how to create and maintain gravity in spacecraft... it will be up to robotics, to concur space ... and probably return centuries later to in return concur earth... (there's a nice storyline for someone writing sci fi )
Virtual reality has gotten my interest even though I have never tried it. Just the idea of being in the movie with the action around me. 3D but better.
