Here, not sorted outside of my own stream of consciousness, are some things I believe to belong to the realm of The Future. Obviously, I can't make real good predictions about *when* this stuff will happen, and I'm sure most of it will come around when I'm loooooong past the ability to say "I told you so!" That doesn't mean it won't happen. I probably got on this train of thought because of this BBC article about a new scanner that gets killer images inside the human body without nearly as much radiation.Flying cars.
Teleportation.
Intergalactic travel.
The cure for death.
Assisted suicide.
Media inputs direct to the human brain.
Living in space.
Submersion of most current coastal areas, and all of Florida.
The extinction of Sol.
The eventual extinction of the human race.
My own death.
Androids.
Fully integrated cybernetic prosthesis.
Synthetic organs.
Ex utero gestation.
Metabolic calibration.
Abandonment of paper and books printed on paper.
Network systems that connect the thoughts of one person directly to the thoughts of another person.
Eye-cameras.
Mandatory identification implants.
The cooling of the Earth's core.
Synthetic blood replacement.
Nano-bot medical procedures.
Nano-bot environmental clean up.
A la carte offspring trait selection.
A new model for government.
A true global economy.
At least two global pandemics.
Prenatal cancer.
Out of brain memory transfer & storage, and perhaps dream recording & playback.
Persuasive evidence that there is sentient life off this planet.
Discovery of the previously unknown disadvantages of genetic modification.
Medical cures for: obesity, addiction, diabetes, HIV, cancer, Alzheimer's
NO medical cure for: the common cold (this is a cheat, I don't think the common cold is *a* disease any more than AIDs is *a* disease).
Cloned dinosaurs.
An enormous asteroid striking the Earth and killing most of what's here now.
All the current major religions lapse into obscurity.
A means of genetically provoking humans to grow hair in vibrant colors, usually associated with birds and insects (blue, orange, true yellow and red, green...).
2 comments:
I have a feeling that this is going to be the century for biology and medicine. In fact, didn't they recently breed a mouse that they think can't get cancer? I'd say HIV will be soon turned into a chronic illness, akin to diabetes, and cease being a fatal illness. Then cancer might well go next.
They did breed a mouse that doesn't get cancer. I'm actually going to guess that both cancer and HIV will become manageable, livable conditions. Not that everyone will manage, and live through them, but that they'll be less devastating, by far.
Last night, I was surprised to discover my own equanimity about the fact that both of my parents have had encounters with cancer (in my dad's case, two kinds cancer). It's certainly not the case I don't care that my parents have these health issues, but my emotional response was along the lines of, "Yeah, well, cancer happens as we get older." It seems more like hearing loss, vision deterioration, bladder control... just another aspect of senescence that we can all look forward to.
In my case, of course, I'm literally "looking forward to" these cancers, because all the cancers in my family are highly hereditary, and the fact that my parents have both had the same kind of skin cancer tells me I'll be lucky if I get to 40 without it...
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