Space For All Our Stuff
In 1987, before I was a professional futurist — or professional anything — I jotted down a list of what I wanted the world of the future to deliver. I happened to look at that list yesterday, and the future isn’t doing too badly:
- “cheap ties to library-size databases” — which we would now call the Internet
- “cheap xeroxes” and “cheap color xeroxing and computer printing” — done and done
- space exploration — well, kind of, except that back then I thought there would be humans on the Moon and Mars
The Internet and printing technology were driven by Moore’s Law, and I noted that only one bit of information technology on my list is not available: “voice-operated micros [by which I meant PCs] able to draw drawings.” We are getting closer to that, I figured, and then saw this in yesterday’s news: “WordsEye is a new Web app that, using artificial intelligence, translates a few lines of user text about a scene into an artistic image.” Given that one could provide those lines of text by voice interface, we are on the verge of my wish (and on the verge of automating away more artists and designers, given that I generated a green mammoth on an island within two minutes of opening the site, but that is another story).
One lesson of this is clear: asking people what they want is a valid futures technique. If people want something that society permits, it will arrive if technological innovation can deliver it. That has long been true in infotech; it may increasingly be a factor in biotech.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting on “cloning of extinct animals.” Where’s my mammoth?
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Image courtesy WordsEye
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