The Future:

[wolven7]

Found via jerem_morrow: MIT, 'Hope Is On The Horizon'.

'Embedded electronics

'One transformation on the near term horizon is the embedding of low-cost electronics into almost every object that we encounter on a day-to-day basis. A pair of sunglasses may have the ability to project a visual display accessing the Internet, have an embedded cell phone and actuate other devices as one glances at them. The technology for this already exists. Flexible electronic paper and electronic clothing will change the way information is projected and harnessed at a personal level. Everyday objects may sense, detect and constantly adjust to our environment, controlling temperature, lighting, noise level, etc.


'Digital fabrication

'The most significant coming technology is the digitization of fabrication, the impact of which will be analogous to the digitization of communication and computation. Like those earlier revolutions, the consequence will be personalization, in this case, allowing anyone to make almost anything, anywhere.'

Be thinking about this, tomorrow, please. I want potential unintended consequences, and contingencies.

Comments

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Plastic is the biggest problem, and as such my prognostications are surrounding such.

Plastics were originally developed from plant-based oils. I predict, as petroleum continues to rise, that farming (actually farming, not subsidized empty farmland... bastards) will start to become the most profitable business, and everything will revolve around the green. (I was slightly tempted to capitalize Green, but that has too many other many other meanings to stand on its own yet. It will mean its own when said ideology develops.)

Computing will hit a speed bump before said event, but will again run haywire (chuckle) when oil and, by extension, plastics, again become cheap. Alternative viewpoint of computing to integrate crows (see Ted video), bacterium, and other 'natural' processes, exploiting things about which we didn't regularly think. This form of computing is recognized as art because it takes dissimilar elements and combines them in astounding ways. I will kick ass at such processes if I focus rather than trying to do fifty at once.

Also, wide-scale distribution of plastic fermenters as outlined by that kid in Vancouver. Slowdown of energy cost again as the aforementioned fermenters produce natural gas as a by-product.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I think we're going to be moving into carbon-fibre polymers, before then, things we can deactivate, of which we can unzip the specific molecules. We've already got a kid working on a plastic-phage bacterium.