FUTUROLOGY

 

Futurology is a systematic forecasting of the future based on present trends. It involves gaining a long-term business advantage, flexibility in thinking about how to make the most of opportunities, and awareness of how current technologies might become obsolete. One way to predict the future is to look at trends and extrapolate to the future. It is also possible to look at emerging technologies and see how they might impact on other areas.

 


Moore's Law made by Gordon Moore of Intel was a general observation on the density of transistors in a silicon chip. This seemed to double every eighteen months to 2 years. It is often now used as a guide to the improvements in processing power. Kurzweil extends Moore’s Law with the Law of Accelerating Returns. This has become a goal for development teams as a doubling of processing power every two years provides the stimulus for upgrades and sales.

 

Massive changes in technologies and their costs can be very difficult to predict. Areas such as Quantum Computing, Light-Based Processors, Nanotechnology, and DNA-based Computing may become commonplace in the home. Forty years ago, very few people would have wanted a computer at home. Fifteen years ago, a 10Gb hard disk for a home computer would have been seen in terms of “you would never want to store that much data”.

 

Ensuring that we waste as few resources as possible is a key concept, and "sustainability" is important. Wind-up laptops are already available, and equipment needs to be more recyclable. Priorities change, and netbooks are becoming popular because you don’t need processing power for most people's computing needs.

 

The future will be shaped by social, economic, and political issues, as well as technological advancements. It is unlikely to be a logical progression, and it does not guarantee survivors. Better interaction, new and efficient ways of working with others, and developments like the Wii have shown a way forward.

 

Display technologies, location-sensitive technologies, intelligent agent support, gesture recognition, the use of virtual environments, smart socket technology, and gaming technology are all areas of development for the future. However, prediction is a dangerous game, and Bluetooth is an example of a technology that was designed for business purposes but ended up being used for blind dating and free photo sharing by teenagers.


Futurology plays a significant role in the development of smart systems and artificial intelligence in various industries, such as transportation and manufacturing. For instance, self-driving cars and drones use machine learning algorithms to make independent decisions based on data from various sensors and cameras.

 

 References

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