8 Reasons Why We Don't Trust Science

A recent study showed that only 30% of American respondents expressed an overall trust in science.  While this study is contradicted by more detailed surveys that break science down by issue and discipline, the unmistakable fact is emerging that we are, as a nation, losing out faith in science.

People are, in my estimation, insufficiently alarmed by this.  Webster’s New World Dictionary defines science as “Systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of what is being studied”.  So when one says they don’t trust science, they’re really saying that they don’t trust observation, study and experimentation.  Science is the very means by which we acquire knowledge and as a method, it is infallible because it is self correcting.  Despite that, we are increasingly favoring non-scientific “feel-good” explanations over rational observation.

When something is established by science, it means that the subject has been exhaustively studied by accredited experts, confirmed by other scientists, peer reviewed by academics and vetted by the scientific community as a whole.  Even given all of this, the door is always left open for other scientists who (eagerly) try to disprove the conclusions of their predecessors.  To say that we doubt the conclusions of science is to say that we doubt the human capacity for garnering and interpreting information.

So how could this happen?  How could something as simple as “If we can prove it, it’s true” be called into question?  Would it surprise you to find out that I’ve conveniently divided the issue into 8 points?

 #1) Bad science education:

Coming face to face with our scientific ignorance has become an annual embarrassment in the US.  This year’s humiliation comes in the form of a survey that shows that 53% of Americans did not know how long it took the earth to revolve around the sun.  Keep in mind that they weren’t looking for 365 ¼ days or anything.   They didn’t bury the correct answer in a multiple choice that included 8,766 hours.  The answer they were looking for was “one year”… and 53% of us got it wrong.

Think about what a profound lack of knowledge this represents.  This means that more than half of our nation lacks even the most fundamental understanding of how the solar system works.  This would be an embarrassment if it was a study of 8^th graders, but this was a random sampling of American adults.

The failings of our educational system are nothing new and there is little mystery behind it.  As budgets tighten, many schools are replacing the specialized science teachers they can no longer afford with more generally educated teachers that may or may not have any real knowledge (or interest) in science.  I know that my high school biology class was taught by the tennis coach and it often fell to me to explain elements of the curriculum to him.  I can’t say for certain, but I would not be surprised to find that Coach Strickland didn’t know how long it took the earth to revolve around the sun.

 #2) Bad science reporting:

All types of reporting have been hard hit by the prolonged death throes of print media, but science reporting might be the most brutal casualty.  Like science teachers, science reporters are fast being replaced by people with no specialized knowledge or experience.  These reporters are given jargon-heavy surveys and analyses to comb through without context and try to translate for the scientifically-impaired populace.  This often leads to the most outlandish misinterpretations of data and claims that are laughably incorrect.

Compounding this problem is the fact that editor’s don’t believe in incremental advances so every science headline must contain the words “revolution” and/or “breakthrough”.  The actual “Eureka” moments of science usually seem pretty inconsequential to anyone not steeped in the discipline at hand.  But headlines like “Scientists isolate a protein that might have significance in the reduction of certain cancerous cells in lab rats, though human application is still uncertain” doesn’t sell papers like “Miracle breakthrough promises cure for cancer”.

Sometimes the errors in reporting are merely humorous, such as when an Albuquerque paper reported that scientists had invented a machine that allows radio waves to travel at the speed of light (radio waves are light).   But it can also be downright dangerous, such as the frenzy that was touched off in 2006 when newspapers and outlets all over the world erroneously reported that a Korean scientist had cloned human beings, touching off an ethical scare that still plagues Asian geneticists.

As a consequence, one can hardly blame the public for their skepticism toward the claims of science.  Most people don’t separate the reporter presenting the information from the scientist studying it and after decades of seeing headlines about miracle cancer drugs, is it not reasonable to expect one of them would be out there curing cancer by now?

 #3) Nonexistent Controversies

Bad science reporting is not always the fault of the reporters or even the editors.  Very often it is the conscious decision of legal departments, ownership and other boycott-phobic powers that are afraid of seeming biased if they present only the “scientific” point of view.  For this reason, science articles are often weighted down by nonsensical claims made by fringe groups that deny the “official” explanation.

Countless examples of this exist.  The Anti-vaccination movement gets a few sentences in nearly every article written about vaccinations despite the fact that all of their scientific claims have been falsified.  While many of these articles will go ahead and say that their claims are baseless, they leave them in anyway.  It’s much like a news article on the President’s economic plan that includes the line “my cousin Harry thinks Obama’s going to make mushrooms into our new currency, though the overwhelming majority of economists disagree”.  It does not add to the discussion, but it does create the shadow of uncertainty where none should exist.

There are countless non-scientific claims that continue to dominate the media landscape despite having been thoroughly debunked by science.  These manufactured controversies cloud otherwise useful discussions.  More importantly, they also reroute valuable scientific funding and resources to prove that something already known to not exist still doesn't exist.

 #4) Pseudo-Science

Given our sporadic understanding of science, it comes as no surprise that most people are unable to distinguish the claims of genuine science from those made by hacks that merely infuse their work with a bunch of sciency sounding words.  The principles of cutting edge science are so baffling that logic is a poor yardstick of credibility.  After all, which is more logically befuddling: The notion that the entire universe once fit into a space smaller than an atom or the notion that the position of the stars at your birth determine your future?  Is the claim that there is a nearly unobservable substance in the universe called “dark matter” really any more sensational than the notion that the vibrations of certain chemicals can imbue plain water with healing properties?

Holistic medicine, homeopathy, anthroposophy, hand writing analysts and many others disguise their superstition in the trappings of science.  They use laughable experimental methods, but the average person does not know how to sort through the data contained in a study and even if they did, most would be unable to spot the errors in the experimental model or determine a significant outcome from a random one.

Unscrupulous purveyors of quackery take full advantage of this and hitch their unstable wagons to the train of clinical science.  Genuine scientists are often handicapped in fighting these claims because the very nature of the “alternative” science is designed to create the illusion of a conflict of interest.  If the pseudo scientists are pushing a natural herb as a cure for multiple sclerosis and the scientific community says “No, this cure is ineffective, we need more money to research the disease further”, it is understandable for the public to look skeptically at the objection.

But even if skepticism is natural, an educated person should be able to see past that.  The grandiose conspiracy theories that pseudo-science propagates are far too eclectic to be credible.  The very idea that tens or even hundreds of thousands of research scientists are all in on this global conspiracy to hide the truth about Echinacea is a lot harder to believe than the alternative hypothesis that a much smaller group is out there selling snake-oil. 

 #5) Politics  

Humans have a curious ability called “confirmation bias” that allows us to filter out information that challenges what we think we know.  We tend to recall things that support our points of view far quicker than those things that challenge them.  We tend to lend more credence to studies that confirm our beliefs while finding holes in the ones that cast doubt over them.  We tend to fit the facts to our preconceived notions and nowhere is this more true than it is in the intersection between science and politics.

The obvious example of this is global warming.  An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that the world is getting warmer and that it is the result of human action.  Most surveys put this number over eighty percent.  When this number is checked against political affiliation, you find that it is an insignificant correlation.  In other words, 80%+ of democratic scientists agree and 80%+ of republican scientists agree.  Yet when that same survey asks the general populace about their beliefs, a clear correlation between belief in global warming and political affiliation appears.

Now, this number is alarming whether or not you believe that global warming is a manmade phenomenon.  Whether it is true or not (and it is), we should all be equally concerned that we are allowing political rhetoric to interfere with our ability to assess a set of facts.  Facts are unambiguous and when we allow politicians to rewrite them it is a problem regardless of whether or not you like the new facts better than the old ones. 

 #6) Scientists are bad communicators

One can hardly blame a theoretical physicist for being unable to explain the cutting edge discoveries in his or her field to the average person.  There are some things too complex for analogy and even the brightest of minds can be left struggling to keep up unless they have years of experience and education within the discipline.  Hours upon hours might be needed just to lay the groundwork explaining the problem that is being addressed by the theory and even then it might take a few mental breakthroughs to get there.

This is to be expected, of course.  Science builds upon science so to get where the most forward thinking minds are today one must mire through the incremental advancements of some of the brightest minds the world has ever known.  Centuries of brilliant deductions and complex theories were needed just to build the foundation so it’s unlikely that the average person is ever going to understand the capstone.  Even the simplest explanation of special relativity tests the mental boundaries of the most functional minds on the planet.

But science exacerbates this problem by largely ignoring it.  Attempts at direct communication from the scientific community usually come off as pedantic and condescending and even then they aren’t very elucidating.  Add to this the frustrating specificity in science-speak (such as referring to arms as “upper extremities”) and you have a fantastic recipe for temple rubbing and blank stares.

 #7) Corporate Funded “Science”

Not all corporate funded science is bad, of course.  Many if not most of the medical and technological breakthroughs of the past fifty years have come from privately funded experiments.  Chemical companies, pharmaceutical companies, bio-tech companies and engineers are constantly pushing the boundaries of human ingenuity.  Sometimes they come up with life saving drugs and sometimes they come up with color-catching fabric sheets, but regardless of the application, none of this should be considered “bad” science.

The bad science comes in when the corporation funding the research has a vested interest in the outcome.  We obviously can’t trust Quaker Oats to do fair and unbiased research on oats, can we?  Even if their experimental methods were impeccable and the scientist conducting the studies were given full autonomy, the group funding the research will ultimately control the dissemination of that information.  If the outcome is positive, they will publish and promote the study.  If it is negative, the data may never see the light of day.

This is exactly what happened back in the 80s when we trusted Quaker Oats to fund studies on the efficacy of oatmeal in reducing cholesterol.  Data was cherry picked to make the results look a lot more convincing than they really were and studies that might have lowered the perceived value of oat bran were discarded.  It would take legitimate science more than a decade to hash out the real effects (oat bran does seem to have a very moderate effect on lowering bad cholesterol), but you never would have suspected the data was ambiguous at the time.  By 1989 even beers were advertising their oat-bran content.

 #8) Lack of “good” funding

The main vehicle to counteract the bias of privately funded science is, of course, publicly funded science.  Tax dollars are advocated to science based (theoretically) on the general applicability of the information which means that scientists have no vested interest in producing a particular outcome.  Professional integrity acts as a stop gap to ambitious scientists who might be tempted to cut corners to sensationalize their studies and peer-reviewed journals ensure that such self-promoters can be sniffed out quickly.

But the dollars for this truly objective science are dwindling.  The US, once the world’s leader in scientific research, now lags behind more research friendly nations like China, Korea, India and Japan.  As our priorities shifted so did the location of the cutting edge research facilities and the cutting edge minds in the scientific community.  Fear of deficit spending causes us to largely ignore the massive incentive that investing in science offers.

In addition, silly news stories that sum up scientific research with no attempt at context make even the most promising research seem frivolous.  After all, if someone told you that millions were being spent to figure out how geckos stick to the wall that might have seemed like a waste of money.  The fact that this research all but created the modern field of nanotech might get lost in the belly laugh that followed.

The greatest achievements of our country are offered by science.  The two most significant economic booms of my lifetime were created by the space race and the internet, both products of massive government expenditures and both projects that saw few commercial applications until decades after the initial investments.

There are good signs that things are heading in the right direction but we have some serious catching up to do if we want our country to retake its place as the world’s technological pioneer.  We don’t lack the knowledge, the drive or the resources; we’ve simply lost our faith.

Aaron Davies
http://www.blognoscor.blogspot.com/

Who Cashes a Robot's Check?

"Small bills, please."

The term ‘robot’ has been with us since 1920.  Rooted in the Latin word roboti which means work but denotes drudgery, they first appeared in a play penned by Czech playwright Karel Capek.   The concept of robots, however, dates back as far as the concept of mechanics.  It shouldn't surprise you to find that Davinci had relatively workable plans of how a robot could be manufactured way back in 1495.  It would seem that the desire to fashion artificial slaves has been a driving force of human ingenuity for centuries. 

For most of that time the robot or android was reserved as a far flung fancy of futurists, but in the modern day robots are becoming more and more ubiquitous.   As we inch further into the robotic world we are slowly being forced to rethink some of the most basic underpinnings of our economy.

The formula for the economic modality throughout the developed world is a simple one.  I have money, you have labor.  I don’t want to do the dishes and you don’t want to be broke so a symbiotic relationship ensues.  But the machination of the world is starting to erode the foundation of this formula.  Your labor is more expensive than a dishwasher, after all.

There was a time when this seemed like the pinnacle of ingenuity.  In the 40s and 50s we dreamed of a utopia where humans could relax and let C3P0 take care of all the laborious crap we don’t care to do.  By the 60s this was becoming a reality.

Somehow this guy failed to notice.

While some of us see the notion of robotic overlords as an excuse to turn zombie movies into sci-fi flicks, there is a far more real danger that robots pose and it is one that is measurable even now.  Robots are stealing our jobs.  And they’re way better at them than we are.  As a nation, America is up in arms about the off-shoring of jobs as well they should be, but robotics pose a far greater threat to the present notion of economy.  We might be seeing a lot of our jobs move overseas, but even in cheap labor markets like China they are seeing an overall loss of manufacturing jobs.

"Did you hear about model T6-8181's promotion? 
She only got it because she kisses so much Chassis..."

The manufacturing industry has already been transformed by robotics and now they’re moving into other elements of our life.  The service industry is already seeing this.   For decades, the feel-good claim was that people would forever prefer a human to interacting with a machine.  This was offered to placate the fears of service jobs being decimated by technological advances, but it is patently false.  Already the vast majority of people get their gas without any human interaction and we tend to prefer it that way.  More and more Americans are opting for self-service checkout lines at the grocery store and even fast food Mecca McDonalds is testing out computer interfaces that might soon replace the smiling high-school dropouts that used to greet us at the Golden Arches.

This is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg.  As computers get faster, smarter and smaller, jobs once considered impossible for robots are coming tantalizingly close.  Honda’s Asimo demonstrates the ability to essentially step in tomorrow as a robotic butler leaving everyone on earth names Jeeves  scrambling for a new profession.  Google is hard at work testing autonomous cars that will allow drivers to relax in traffic and read the paper on their commute.  (pic of guy reading paper in car, caption: Just kidding, newspapers will be gone long before that)  Korean engineers have developed a robotic maid that can retrieve toast in mere hours.  A hospital in Scotland is testing out robotic orderlies.

On the bright side, robotic orderlies can eat this without puking.

But we are only scratching the surface here.  Consider that it took humanity all of 46 years to go from a few yards of barely powered flight in Kitty Hawk to Yeager breaking the sound barrier.  The first commercial computer appeared in 1977 and 33 years later your present day laptop would laugh at it.  Once we have proof of concept and proof of market, it doesn’t take long for humans to take it to the extreme.  If Honda’s slow-motion runt is the robotic equivalent of a Commodore Pet, Asimov’s automata are certainly on the horizon.

But that begs the obvious question.  What the heck are all the fast food cashiers, chauffeurs, butlers, orderlies and maids going to do?  We’re often told that when technology eliminates the need for one segment of the economy it opens up another.  But that is patently absurd and if it was true, what would be the point of making robots in the first place?  The whole concept is to save labor so if we’re doing it correctly we should be steadily decreasing the need for service jobs.

This issue is not specific to a particular industry.  Once McDonalds perfects its automated order system, how long before robots take over the back of the house as well?  It might not be commercially feasible to create a “burger-flipping-bot”, but there is every reason to think that manufacturers will have humanoid robots with millions of potential functions.  At this point robotic workers, which will have all the mobility and none of the attitude of human workers, can easily be programmed to take care of virtually any task that used to require manual labor.

Some of us might feel insulated, convinced that our particular profession will be immune, but that is almost certainly false.  When asked when a computer’s processor will surpass the mental capacity of the human brain, most engineers and futurists give us at most another quarter of a century.  Once computers are better than us at overall logic will we really want to entrust the running of our businesses to fallible humans?  Relying on unimaginable stores of information, would a robot not be better suited to represent us in court?  Would a totally impartial robot serve as a better judge?

Not even professional Ping-Pong players are safe.

Most of us will automatically exclude robots as potential replacements for artists.  (pic of artist, caption: Okay, so being an artist is pretty much like being unemployed anyway, but still!)  But is it unreasonable to think that computers could be programmed to figure out exactly what makes a hit song good or a beautiful painting beautiful?  I mean, let’s face it, it’s hard to argue that a super computer would be incapable of doing something that Justin Bieber managed.

Not that there's a big difference between being
employed or unemployed when you're an artist...

Even without artificial intelligence, there are only a select few jobs for which robots would be ineffective.  The result could very well be that 50 years from now, our need for human labor could drop by as much as 90% leaving hundreds of millions unemployed in this nation alone.

But wasn’t that the point?  Didn’t we start this whole quest looking for a way to eliminate the need for humans to do jobs that they don’t want to do?  Wasn’t that the dream that spurred the whole endeavor?  Then why should the realization of that dream come with so much stress and uncertainty?  This is supposed to be the part where we kick up our feet, relax in our hammocks and tell Spacely Sprockets to go to hell.

...go to hell.

The question is who benefits?  Under our current economic system whoever bought the robot gets all the reward for its labor and anything else would seem ridiculous.  If a factory automates, it pays off the robots as it lays off the workers and eventually the factory’s owner will enjoy 100% of the profits of his endeavor.  Great if you own a factory, not so much if you work in one.

This is not a question for the distant future.  Heck, it’s not even a question for the near future.  As we speak thousands upon thousands of factory workers are retiring and no replacements are being hired.  What once took a hundred to do now takes only a dozen.  On some levels this saving is being passed on to consumers but this will become irrelevant if more and more consumers are separated from their incomes.  To survive, factories will have to find ways of ensuring that the goods they produce are purchasable and it isn’t likely that the robots are going to start buying.

But then again, what the hell do I know?

Today this question is generally cloaked in political partisanship.  The unemployed are looked down upon from the working class and labels like lazy and inept shield us from our coming fate.  Liberals scream for more aid to the poor while conservatives scream for more incentives for businesses to hire, but neither suggestion will solve this growing problem.

What is needed is a standard candle, a numeric base of labor from which future extrapolations can be made.  As of 2010 there are about 210 million working age people in this country.  By averaging out the past 10 years we find that generally 85% of these people are working and that they are working an average of about 38.5 hours per week.  This means that nationwide we work a collective 357.33 billion hours or so.  This labor force produces a GDP of (again, averaging the past 10 years) 12.2 Trillion dollars which means that right now we produce about $34.14 in GDP for every labor hour invested.

"Uh... they said there'd be no math."

This is an imperfect calculation, obviously, but for the sake of this blog we won’t delve into all the variables that make this number patently absurd.  In fact, it doesn’t matter how incorrect the number is as long as we continue to calculate an equally imperfect number in the future.  What matters is that we have a singular measure that will tell us the productivity of an American hour.

The goal, then, should be to maintain this number.  To ensure the continued success of our economy, the labor requirements should reflect a standard of production such as this.  If, by 2020, 10% of the existing jobs were overtaken by robots, we could simply adjust the standard work week from 40 hours to 36 and adjust wages accordingly.  If robots take 40% of the jobs, the standard work week can be reduced down to 24 hours.

On the surface many people would balk at such a notion.  The republicans among us would see the specter of socialism and ask where this money is coming from.  Surely it wouldn’t be taxed from the factory owners?

But why should it not be?  The accepted wisdom on economy and labor can’t be applied to the robotic economy.  Despite our increasing reliance on robotics, actual labor has not decreased in the past decade (except through the relatively recent rampant unemployment) which means that by now we’re just making things up to keep ourselves busy.  Not having enough jobs to go around should be a victory in the history of science, not a cause for concern.  We should be chilling, not stressing.

Now if they develop a robot that can chill for us, it's time to stress.

At present, we are not asking these questions which means that we aren’t solving our problems.  Disguised under the cloak of partisan politics, the income gap between the highest and lowest echelons of our economy continues to widen at break neck speeds.  You hear a lot of well reasoned arguments for this trend, but in truth it is a simple byproduct of automation and the decreasing need for human labor.  This trend can only be allowed to continue so far before the factories run out of customers.  It is in all of our best interest to tackle this problem before it becomes crippling.

My guess is that it will occur as soon as the college educated start losing their jobs to robots.  Until then, let’s hope the Japanese are working on a robot that can work at soup kitchens.

Aaron M. Davies
http://www.blognoscor.blogspot.com/

8 Reasons to Not Die

If you’ve been considering dying recently, I strongly urge against it.  First of all, it’s far more expensive than you think.  But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it turns out that you’ve selected an unbelievably cool time to be alive.

This exists.  The future will look even cooler.

Science is moving so fast now that we’ve almost become numb to the pace of innovation.  Every few months a new revolution in consumer technology appears.  It seems in the past ten years we’ve experienced more breakthroughs than we saw in the previous fifty.  Of course, that half-century had already seen more breakthroughs than the human race managed in a quarter of a millennia so it seems fair to say that there is something of an exponential increase going on here.

So what wonders lurk beyond the thin veil of the future?  It’s impossible to say, of course, but there are technologies in existence today that inch closer and closer to the mass market with each passing minute.  Here are a few examples of the futurey awesomeness that might await:

If you survive until 2011, you might see…

 #1:  The Kinect 

Alright, so this is sort of the low hanging fruit of futurism.  After all, the Kinect is already being manufactured en masse with an eye toward a consumer launch in early October.  You might not have to make it until 2011 to see them, but considering the tortuous lack of availability that seems to accompany major revolutions in home video game technology, most of us will be waiting a few extra months.

So what is the Kinect?  This is the X-Box component that will allow players to stand in front of their televisions while a camera captures their movements and uses them to direct the character within the game.  In other words, if you’re playing a fighting game, you will actually have to punch and kick to defeat your opponent.

How the heck do you suppose they keep
that white room so spotless?

We’ve been moving in this direction for quite some time, but this might offer the first real opportunity to play a hands free video game.  It will also allow guys all over America to finally answer that nagging question about how they would fair if suddenly attacked by a random group of ninjas.

If you can survive until 2012, you might see…

 #2:  The Application Phase of the Human Genome Project 

The Human Genome Project is likely the single most mind-boggling undertaking in the history of human thought.  Identifying the 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA and determining the sequence of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make it up was only the beginning.

Many have been led to believe that this event was oversold since the actual mapping of the genome was completed almost ten years ago.  Those who expected immediate breakthroughs were disappointed to learn that going through the data might take as long as gathering it.

This actually has nothing to do with the Human Genome Project,
but it looked sufficiently complicated to make the point.

But now even that phase in nearing completion and already practical applications for the information unearthed are being tested.  While nobody can say for certain what specific benefits will arise from these continued research, scientists speculate that we will discover new and more effective ways of diagnosing, treating and outright preventing thousands of the diseases and genetic disorders that afflict us, but that is only the beginning.  In addition to health-care, this research will almost certainly lead to revolutions in agriculture, energy production, anthropology and forensics.  No word yet on whether or not it will help us understand German humor.

If you can survive until 2015, you might see…

 #3:  Genuine Jetpacks 

Yes, I’m talking about the ones they promised us back in the eighties.  And we’re also not talking about those underwhelming stunt packs that can carry you some eighty feet in the air and stay afloat for twenty five seconds either.  We’re talking about functional, commercially available jetpacks.

I know this is a tough one to believe because it has been a favorite of futurists for so long.  I would not have included it all except for the fact that they already exist.  The Martin Aircraft company has a working model (not a prototype) that will take you 8000 feet in the air and hold enough fuel to fly for thirty minutes at upwards of sixty miles per hour.  They run on regular unleaded and they are available to buy right now for the surprisingly reasonable price of $86,000.

Buy one quick before the FAA
starts regulating them!!

So why do you have to wait until 2015?  Well, you actually don’t.  Not only could you go out and buy one of these bad boys right now and you don’t even need a pilots license to fly it.  Of course, most of us are not going to spend eighty-six grand on a jetpack, but it seems a safe bet that sometime very soon you will start seeing recreational jet-pack parks popping up.  It might cost you a few hundred bucks or even a few thousand, but in the next five years you could be renting a jetpack on vacation instead of a jetski.

If you can survive until 2020, you might see…

 #4:  Quantum Computers 

Again, this is a technology that already exists on the small scale.  While it is not commercially feasible just yet, the concept has been proven to work and functional prototypes already exist.  I cannot begin to understand how and why such surreal concepts can work in the real world, so short of copying and pasting a technical explanation, I can’t offer you much insight on how this revolution is taking place.

But I can give you an idea what the consequences will be.  Traditional computers are getting about as small as they can get.  The microchip can’t get much more micro without being too small to get single electrons through its wiring without hopping over and shorting the whole thing out.  Quantum computers promise to solve this problem by using ‘quibits’, which, by my reading seem to be magical particles that consist of fairy dust and unicorn tears.

They look like this, I think.

The point is speed.  These suckers are so fast that they will be measured in something called (I swear I didn’t make this up) ‘teraflops’ (as opposed to the mere ‘gigaflops’ that you’re computer is measured in now).  We’re talking about the ability to increase the processing speed by four or five orders of magnitude.  One summary suggested that the data that could be calculated by a quantum computer in a few minutes would take a digital computer as much time as it took the universe to get from the big bang to the Sham-Wow.

...at least I didn't make another Snuggie joke.

If you can survive until 2025, you might see…

 #5: Domestic Robots 

Again, we’re talking about a technology that already exists on some levels.  It is estimated that by the end of 2009 there were nearly 4 million domestic robots already in use.  Of course, these numbers are for things like the Roomba.  I’m talking about things like Rosie from the Jetsons.

So what can we realistically expect robots to do for us in 2025?  They can already sweep and vacuum and robots that gather and load laundry are already in limited use (nothing to get too excited about, they don’t work very well).  But given the advancements in robotic locomotion demonstrated by Honda’s Asimo and DARPA’s Big Dog, it’s pretty easy to imagine a robot that can move through your home with the same ease that you do (when you’re on the wagon, that is).

The locomotion was the big issue.  Voice recognition technology is advancing in leaps and bounds, facial recognition software is nearly perfected and computers already have plenty of processing power to store all the functions you would want from your maid-bot from loading your dishwasher to cleaning your windows to changing your baby’s diaper… or your diaper depending on your age.

This robot is free to change my diaper any time.

If you can survive until 2030, you might see…

 #6: Capes come back into style 

Clearly, this one has nothing to do with technology.  But who doesn’t want to wear a cape?  Why else would we have Halloween?  At some point in the future somebody cool enough to be the trendsetter is going to go cape and the world will never go back.

Capes have been a part of the human wardrobe on and off for at least eight centuries and are long overdue for a comeback.  We should try to keep perspective on this.  It has only been over the last sixty or seventy years that capes have become the sole domain of superheroes, nerds and other people who wear their underwear on the outside of their pants.  Until then they were symbolic of royalty, high birth or being a vampire.

But somebody has to be the brave pioneer and it can’t be a skinny 35-year old white dude (otherwise I’d be so on this).  Someone who has already achieved some sort of style credibility will have to risk it on the cape for this dream to be realized.  I suspect this will probably take at least twenty years.

This guy certainly isn't helping.

If you survive until 2040, you might see…

#7: Lunar Tourism

The absolute pinnacle of awesome-ocity, the ability to vacation on the moon is surprisingly possible.  The technology to establish a permanent and eventually self sustaining colony on the moon already exists and while the US has largely ceded space exploration, there are plenty of Asian nations happy to pick up where we left off.

In order for a lunar colony to work, it would have to be profitable.  Solar energy production, scientific research and mining are all promising exports for the moon, but these all pale in comparison for the potential profitability of tourists on the moon.

Why would you be reading this caption?
Look back at the picture.  It's awesome!

Sure, moon people would then have to put up with folks stopping at the top of escalators to take pictures, but think of the potential.  On the moon you would experience one seventh of the earth’s gravity.  You could hop off of the equivalent of a four-story building and land comfortably on the ground.  A trampoline would bounce you sixty feet in the air and not turn you into a gruesome pancake if you missed the landing.  And that’s after the weightless ride to and from!

If you survive until 2050, you might see…

 #8: Invisible Airplanes 

Okay, okay, so you wouldn’t see the invisible airplanes, but you may well ride in one.  If you can believe this, Airbus is touting this as an honest-to-Google possibility as early as 2050.  And we’re talking about full-blown Wonder Woman style invisible jets here.

Artist's rendering.

Your first thought might be “what the hell is the point?” but consider how incredibly cool it would be to get on a regular airplane, board, take off and then, at 30,000 feet, the pilot hits a button and suddenly you’re staring out the side of the plane with an unobstructed view of the ocean (providing they’ve also found a way to make the fat, smelly, talkative guy next to you transparent as well).  If that does not impress you consider the same scene at night.

Now, like all of these things, I don’t know if I completely accept the whole invisible airplane notion.  If these predictions are anything to go on, futurists have been getting it wrong for a long time.  But there is one thing I can say for certain.  If you see the next forty years of human history you will see technology that not even the most creative of minds can yet conceive.

It is truly an incredible time to be alive.  If you look hard enough for it, each day you can find a new boundary of knowledge giving way, a new technology emerging, a convenience undreamt of a few decades before.  We have scarcely scratched the surface of the advancements that nanotechnology, microbiology, robotics, genetic research and medical science have to offer us in the coming years.

Awesome new stuff you can't afford.

And if that’s not enough to convince you, consider that all the awesome new stuff that you can’t afford will soon be awesome old stuff that you can afford.

Aaron Davies

www.blognoscor.blogspot.com

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