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all 146 comments

[–]orangeviking65 31 points32 points ago

How is there "interplanetary internet" being predicted in 2020s without colonies on other planets being predicted before or near then. The "lunar outpost" isn't even predicted until after.

[–]musitard 14 points15 points ago

Perhaps the rovers, probes, and satellites will be connected to the internet.

[–]whistlingwilly 4 points5 points ago

I somewhat doubt anyone would connect a multi-million pound investment to the general purpose internet. It is hardly likely they will need to Google anything.

[–]yogthos 1 point2 points ago

I think the assumption is that the cost of manufacturing these things will be reduced over time. With companies like Planetary Resources, we're entering the age of commercial space endeavors, and you can expect the economy of scale to kick in.

[–]whistlingwilly 0 points1 point ago

Indeed, but place a device on Mars and let it "face the internet" and every hacker in the world will have a go. Why bother since there is no direct need to, NASA only need to communicate with it.

[–]yogthos 0 points1 point ago

Right, but if those things were dirt cheap, there could be a whole bunch of new uses for them that are hard to imagine today. Could range from educational to exploratory, who can tell.

[–]WannabeAndroid 3 points4 points ago

I imagine its for us to see whats up there, to peak interest in the people to pressure for more funding perhaps?

[–]OK_Eric 1 point2 points ago

Even then, that wouldn't require a direct link to the web. NASA could just setup a feed like they do with the space station.

[–]linkslinkergutmensch 1 point2 points ago

A direct link to the internet would still be too much of a security risk.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

[Author here]

Yes, that's exactly it. Thanks for pointing it out.

[–]TheUltimatePoet 6 points7 points ago

Maybe it's just the technological capacity to construct one.

[–]Pha3drus 0 points1 point ago

It would be internet based communications with satellites and rovers and stuff. We are not very far at all right now from having a working internet-based communication with satellites.

Source: I am working in a research lab on a satellite with just such features (possibly). For everyone saying that it is too dangerous, shut up. Not it's not.

[–]Libertarian_Atheist -1 points0 points ago

Alien contact in 2063, time machine in 2064, new timeline to 2020----->

Alien contact in 2020, all humans killed when Vulcans accidentally the whole population, 2023 interplanetary internet.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points ago

I can't get anti-aging drugs until I'm 47? Will they reverse aging or merely halt it? I don't want to be a middle-aged man for eternity.

[–]samtart 6 points7 points ago

reverse aging drugs will come out a few decades after.
We may live long enough to get never die pills.

[–][deleted] ago

[deleted]

[–]samtart 29 points30 points ago

I'm pulling these out of my ass.

Subscribe for more.

[–]Libertarian_Atheist 3 points4 points ago

Is there a fee?

[–]admiralteal 1 point2 points ago

For what it's worth, there are very real people working on this who are saying that, optimistically, this may be the case. And it is certainly their goal.

http://www.mprize.org/

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points ago

Wouldnt this cause insane over population?

[–]Libertarian_Atheist 2 points3 points ago

Space exploration, homesteading, etc.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point ago

Would people really be so stupid that they keep having kids forever? Uh oh

[–]sgtpeppers93 0 points1 point ago

Based on what Aubrey De Grey says, you will be able to look like you are in your 20s again.

[–]Tennisinnet 0 points1 point ago

Well, I'd imagine there'd be two types of drugs. There would be the drugs that merely slow the accumulation of aging related damage, so those would make you stay 47 but age very slowly from then on.

Then, there would be the drugs that actually clean up the accumulated damage, which would make you go back to being biologically in your prime.

[–]Zephyr256k 4 points5 points ago

A lot of these technologies seem bizarrely timed (Sub orbital spaceflight has been around since the fifties, 'programmable chips' such as FPGAs have been commercial since the eighties. desalination has been around practically forever and has become increasingly widespread over the last decade or two already), out of order (NLI before machine translation, but after software agents? What?), or just downright vague (Boards?, Nano-generators?)

The Biotech column is particularly messy, considering that medical technology, techniques and drugs can take decades after discovery to go through testing, refinement and bureaucratic approval. Which means a lot of the stuff in that column which hasn't been done in a lab yet probably won't be approved for widespread use within the timeline presented.

[–]ziqgystardust 0 points1 point ago

Some of those things don't mean what you think. Check out the website that explains what they all are, among some other things like methodology. Also, I would argue that some of the biotech is not only already happening in a lab, but has been used. The first 'printed' kidney and retina, synthetic blood, and smart drugs all seem like pretty reasonable predictions, IMO.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Thanks for pointing out the site (as the visualization doesn't stand 100% on its own without the methodology page and annotations).

I agree that I need to move "up" a few biotech nodes. Thanks for the links -- will revise the visualization later in the year.

[–]UberMudkipz 12 points13 points ago

There are a few problems here, but I like the graph.

Th most obvious one is flexible screens. Predicted: 2015 Reality: 2011 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJEHp15Hoo0

Also, 4k resolution interfaces by 2017? Hell, I'd be surprised if they are NOT around by next year. 2K projectors have existed for a bit, and cameras have already been shooting in 4K for a while - http://www.red.com/products/scarlet

[–]omnilynx 13 points14 points ago

I think maybe he's talking about them getting into general circulation. Sure, they're being produced, but have you ever seen one in person? I mean, outside of a convention?

[–]UberMudkipz 1 point2 points ago

Well, they are already going into smartphones. Granted, a smartphone isn't flexible, they can be acquired through standard purchase.

But still, look at that estimation. Would it really take 3 years to get those on the market individually? Probably not. They might be sold as an external (and optional) component to a device much like the iPod Shuffle so it can play video with a large, but compact and really study screen.

So, maybe not now, but soon, I believe we'll see these. If it was 2006, I would have believed it being around 2016, but we've progressed so fast, and I don't see it slowing soon.

[–]Zephyr256k 0 points1 point ago*

But, why are volumetric screens which don't yet exist supposed to reach wide circulation before flexible screens which do exist?

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Thanks for pointing it out -- mainstream adoption is exactly what the nodes indicate.

[–]armannd 3 points4 points ago

4k is a long way from becoming a standard, though.

[–]riplin 1 point2 points ago

And an even longer way of being adopted by the general public. You're simply not going to see the difference between 1080p and 4k unless you've got a huge screen.

[–]armannd 0 points1 point ago

If you're looking at the screen from a distance of 10 feet, you need a screen somewhere well above 77 inches to notice any difference at all. Either that, or you could sit at >4 feet from a 50-incher...

And the problem isn't necessarily the price of the big screens, it's the space they require. You literally need an empty wall in a "deep" room.

[–]All-American-Bot 1 point2 points ago

(For our friends outside the USA... 10 feet -> 3.0 m) - Yeehaw!

[–]armannd 0 points1 point ago

The funny thing is I'm not from the US either. I just used google to convert meters into feet.

[–]bigandrewgold -4 points-3 points ago

50-70 in screens are becoming standard

[–]armannd 1 point2 points ago

Not sure if troll or simply unaware of what "standard" means.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points ago

Or "huge"

[–]wilsnat 0 points1 point ago

Same thing with picoprojectors. They have been at trade shows for sometime. It is only a matter of a few years before they enter the consumer market.

[–]writesomethingwitty 0 points1 point ago

We have most of these technologies! What this picture is showing us is when those technologies will become feasible and most important to human society. We have commercial space flight. We have a lot of cool shit, but it's restricted to a few very rich people.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points ago

One of the things I consider most depressing about life is that I won't live long enough to see how far we make it technologically. I can't even imagine how incredible things are going to be in 100 years.

[–]Chispy 21 points22 points ago

This and the Sagan Series got me thinking where human innovation could take us. 10,000 years would be so much different. But so would 100,000 years, and one million. I've seen people say "wow I wished I lived in the future, think of everything we'd see and the places we could go." But what if you asked the same question to someone living far off in the future? I bet they would've loved living during an age of true discovery. Over the last 200,000 years humans have lived, we've accomplished only so much in the last 50. The green revolution, the first man on the moon, worldwide communication... I could go on forever. And we still have the rest of our lives to live. Within the next 50 years, we could discover life outside of our own planet, cure all diseases, and extend our life spans over the 100 year mark. We are living in an age of wonder. Sure I'd love to travel between planets, have alien sex and whatnot... but I'd also love to believe, to wonder, to discover. And out of what could be millions of years, the 100 or so years that I'm living is during this age... I feel lucky.

[–]Legendman3 13 points14 points ago

I am afraid of death only because of what i will not get to experience.

[–]Deksloc 8 points9 points ago

But I really want a jetpack before I die.

[–]Firetaffer -1 points0 points ago

I wonder what people with jetpacks in the future will think about their future, and how much they'd like to live in it.

[–]Man_with_the_Fedora 0 points1 point ago

"But I really want an anti-gravity belt before I die."

[–]Man_with_the_Fedora -1 points0 points ago

I just want my ray-gun, sci-fi from the last 70+ years has promised me a ray-gun by now.

[–]maxerickson 0 points1 point ago

Dangerous lasers are pretty well available.

[–]Superguy2876 -3 points-2 points ago

if your younger than about 50, I would think that's quite possible, perhaps even likely.

[–]Libertarian_Atheist 2 points3 points ago

I happen to think that this is the best work Isaac Asimov ever did and it's one of his shortest pieces too:

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Goes right along with your question about what things will be like in a million years. Seriously, if you have not yet, read it!

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

[I designed & published the visualization]

The Last Question (and to an extent The Last Answer) were massively inspirations for me to get into the mindset of thinking about the future. Nice that you mentioned it :-)

[–]Libertarian_Atheist 1 point2 points ago

It made me tear up when I was a young man, it was one of two small pieces of literature that changed the way I looked at life in a profound way, this was the other:

"The Lie" by Sir Walter Raleigh:

(NOTE: to "give the lie" is an old expression meaning to "show something to be a lie or someone is a liar")

O, Soul, the body's guest,

Upon a thankless arrant!

Fear not to touch the best;

The truth shall be thy warrant:

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.


Say to the court it glows

And shines like rotten wood;

Say to the church it shows

What's good, and doth no good:

If court and church reply,

Then give them both the lie.


Tell potentates they live

Acting by others' action,

Not loved unless they give,

Not strong but by a faction.

If potentates reply,

Give potentates the lie.


Tell men of high condition

That manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition,

Their practice only hate:

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.


Tell them that brave it most,

They beg for more by spending,

Who, in their greatest cost,

Seek nothing but commending:

And if they make reply,

Then give them all the lie.


Tell zeal it wants devotion;

Tell love it is but lust;

Tell time it is but motion;

Tell flesh it is but dust:

And wish them not reply,

For thou must give the lie.


Tell age it daily wasteth;

Tell honor how it alters;

Tell beauty how she blasteth;

Tell favor how she falters:

And as they shall reply,

Give every one the lie.


Tell wit how much it wrangles

In tickle points of niceness;

Tell wisdom she entangles

Herself in over-wiseness:

And when they do reply,

Straight give them both the lie.


Tell physic of her boldness;

Tell skill it is pretension;

Tell charity of coldness;

Tell law it is contention:

And as they do reply,

So give them still the lie.


Tell fortune of her blindness;

Tell nature of decay;

Tell friendship of unkindness;

Tell justice of delay:

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.


Tell arts they have no soundness,

But vary by esteeming;

Tell schools they want profoundness,

And stand too much on seeming:

If arts and school reply,

Give arts and school the lie.


Tell faith it fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;

Tell manhood shakes off pity;

Tell virtue least preferreth:

And if they do reply,

Spare not to give the lie.


So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing,--

Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing,--

Stab at thee, he that will,

No stab the soul can kill.


[–][deleted] 3 points4 points ago

beautiful point.

[–]ikonoclasm 0 points1 point ago

You make a great point. Unfortunately, this is an age of discovery and not exploration, which is what I'd love. I'm one of those people that wouldn't hesitate to agree to a one-way trip to Mars for the first human colony.

[–]aschla 0 points1 point ago

I sometimes wish I could have lived when large parts of the earth were still undiscovered. The amount of possibility of things for people to discover would have been fascinating.

We're kind of at a stagnant point in discovery, at least in the sense of place.

[–]freedomgeek 0 points1 point ago

The best time to be born is just around the time aging gets cured. Then you can have the best of both worlds.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points ago

If the predictions are right, you'll be living much longer than a hundred years with anti-aging medicine. So maybe you will.

[–]ikktomi 0 points1 point ago

Better study up quick and help biomedical engineers with regenerative medicine.

[–]IceOnFire97 0 points1 point ago

And that's why they have the anti-aging drugs.

[–]panaz 3 points4 points ago

4g in 2015? Is verizon, att, sprint all lying to me?

[–]RaithMoracus 9 points10 points ago

Technically, yes. But in an acceptable way. 4G is supposed to be equivalent to fiber.

"setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s) for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 gigabit per second (Gbit/s) for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users).[1] Since the above mentioned first-release versions of Mobile WiMAX and LTE support much less than 1 Gbit/s peak bit rate, they are not fully IMT-Advanced compliant, but are often branded 4G by service providers. On December 6, 2010, ITU-R recognized that these two technologies, as well as other beyond-3G technologies that do not fulfill the IMT-Advanced requirements, could nevertheless be considered "4G", provided they represent forerunners to IMT-Advanced compliant versions and "a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed".[2]"

[–]RaithMoracus 9 points10 points ago

A lot of these things seem off. How old is this graphic?

The interfaces category is well behind where we're currently at, especially.

[–]Chimerathon 6 points7 points ago

This is for when the technology becomes mainstream. Gesture recognition and voice recognition exist, but aren't mainstream or particularly advanced. Maybe in a few years, like the graphic suggests.

[–]RaithMoracus 5 points6 points ago

Honest rebuttal: I would say gesture recognition and voice recognition are both widespread and in mainstream use at this point.

The Kinect and Siri have both advanced those technologies, and I would say gesture recognition has increased significantly due to touch screens and accelerometers, even if they are not pure examples of the concept.

At the very least, any child born after 2003 would have seemingly innate abilities to use both.

[–]Chimerathon 2 points3 points ago

I don't think that one instance of each technology would be considered "widespread", honestly. When there are at least a couple competitors, maybe. I'll grant that what is available is decently good, but really, I think we're looking for a bit more accuracy. Siri makes hilarious mistakes fairly often, and Kinect is a tad sluggish. The chart seems correct by my standards; it was updated in 2011, so there must be some rationale behind putting those technologies far ahead, when Kinect and Siri both existed.

[–]michellzappa 1 point2 points ago

I agree that the last year or so has seen a massive uptake of both gesture and voice recognition.

As I mentioned further up the thread, the visualization was published in October 2011, meaning I spent the preceding months working on it. A full revision is due later this year, and many, many techs will have moved up the timeline!

[–]RaithMoracus 0 points1 point ago

Awesome, I look forward to seeing it. My only gripe was what I pointed out, and I think it's interesting to see what new technologies we have coming up.

[–]michellzappa 2 points3 points ago

I published it in October of last year, but keep in mind that the timeline is of speculated mainstream adoption rather than when the technologies are actually developed. The latter would evidently not be very interesting.

[–]Innominate8 0 points1 point ago

Widespread speech recognition has been three years away for decades. Many of the things on the graphic are in a similar state of being perpetually almost ready for consumers.

[–]metaphysicx92 4 points5 points ago

I really want to see a space elevator in my lifetime.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Not looking very likely due to the massive difficulties in actually developing stable graphene at those scales, but one can hope.

[–]writesomethingwitty -1 points0 points ago

I really want to see a cheap space elevator in my lifetime. FTFMe

[–]havestronaut 2 points3 points ago

I can't wait for sub orbital space flight in 2018.

Oh wait.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Availability ≠ Mainstream

[–]ProstheticPenis 5 points6 points ago*

The main thing that's bothering me is "2019: $150 hard drive +-200tb, Standard RAM +-750gb" I just don't see that happening for a while.

EDIT: I just noticed the source for that was "Alan Conroy"... Who the fuck is Alan Conroy?

[–]imightbearobot 4 points5 points ago

2019: $150 hard drive +-200tb, Standard RAM +-750gb

It is the minus that throws me, I am going to be pissed when they come to take away my 200tb hard drive and 750gb of ram.

[–]FuliginCloak 0 points1 point ago

What does that even mean? Is this some kind of newfangled, mysteriously less efficient way of saying ~200? Isn't plus/minus reserved for the expected deviation in a target prediction? Are we too lazy to do that now?

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

My bad. Will revise.

[–]1LinkKarma 1 point2 points ago

Throw memory resistors into the mix will alter the impact of data storage in less than a decade.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

I used Conroy's extrapolations as a shortcut for imagining where Moore's law might land us in terms of readily available, cheap hardware in the near future.

Sources are linked, fwiw.

[–]thisguyinc 3 points4 points ago

Utility fog?

[–]aridsnowball 3 points4 points ago

A dense swarm of nano robots.

[–]futurefix5 2 points3 points ago

This is what popped in my head when I read that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw7tDZsRcK8

[–]Superguy2876 1 point2 points ago

Basically the technology that i am most excited for.

[–]michellzappa 1 point2 points ago

Straight out of Transmetropolitan.

[–]wtfisdisreal 1 point2 points ago

[–]classicredditaccount 3 points4 points ago

Baseless speculation. If you take this as more than just some dude guessing at what the future might hold then you need a reality check. No one can accurately predict what technologies will be around 20 years from, much less predict their importance in our daily lives. Who from the 80's would have been able to predict the impact of the internet? Conversely how many people though we'd have flying cars and hover-boards by now?

Amara's law – "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

[–]hostergaard 2 points3 points ago

Hmm, you can actually estimate technology relatively accurate. The hard part is those things that have yet to be thought that change everything and sometimes that technology ends up interacting with society in unexpected ways.

The internet was for example predicted to a certain extend and its information delivery abilities too. What no one predicted was the way it connected individuals and that it could develop its own culture and function as short of its own world.

[–]Dhuske 0 points1 point ago

You are right that some people made good predictions (Daniel Bell comes to mind), however it is not really the norm.

[–]classicredditaccount 0 points1 point ago

Hmm, you can actually estimate technology relatively accurate

Any evidence to back this claim up? I would say generally technology is unpredictable, as are the effects that it will have. Occasionally someone gets lucky and guesses right, but really they just got lucky. For every one correct guess there are about a thousand that are wrong.

If future technology actually could be predicted accurately and reliably, then people would predict what would be big in the next ten years and then invest heavily in it since there would be very little risk. Obviously while there are investors out there who try and pick up on those technologies that will be most successful there is a lot of risk involved so returns from these investments aren't unusually high.

[–]hostergaard 0 points1 point ago

I think we need to differentiate between wild guesses and credible estimates found by researching and extrapolation.

Sure, if you take all predictions made by dudes down in the bar then numerically speaking most will be wrong. But if only take serious attempt at prediction its a whole another thing.

Of course, we also need the define what can be understood as accurately and reliably. Of course, predicting it perfectly would be nearly impossible, and how can one predict things that have yet to be imagined? But if we allow a certain amount of leeway for things things that have yet to thought up and the way the technology ends up interacting with society and focus on the general core concepts we can relatively accurately predict the future. We have sufficient understanding of the laws of physics and the limitations and possibilities it allows to accurately estimate our progression.

Take Moore's law, that predict that the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. It was coined in 1965 and have stayed incredibly accurate for decades, up until this very moment, despite him not being able to perfectly predict every invention in computer technology.

Or this prediction about the internet that are uncannily accurate. Aside from some design elements and miniaturization aspect they very accurately predicted how ambiguous the internet would be and how it would be used everywhere to collect information. What they could not predict and their largest mistake was how people would interact with it the internet. They imagined a more centralized approach with companies creating and delivering information, they lacked the idea of user generated contend, what they missed was Wikipedia. But no one did or could foresee that people and their interaction with the internet would be the most important part of it. As such they accurately predicted the technology itself but not social and cultural aspect.

So its a yes and no. We can to a certain extend accurately predict the future, especially regarding known technologies, what is difficult to predict is paradigm shifts and how they end up playing out.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

I actually designed & published the visualization! The idea is exactly for it to be speculative and subjective. There's evidently no scientific method behind technological forecasting, meaning I resorted to extrapolation and a ton of guesswork.

My intent isn't to be right, but rather to provoke a degree of debate regarding potential futures.

[–]NeonDiscoWalrus 6 points7 points ago

space tourism by 2020 seems ridiculously ambitious, but here's to hoping. cheers!

[–]ikktomi 6 points7 points ago

Virgin Galactic. Watch them.

[–]rockerode 3 points4 points ago

I'm sure that means simply having the ability for consumers to venture up and down, not staying in space. Think the "zero gravity" flight that is done but anyone can pay for it, rather than it being thousands upon thousands of dollars.

[–]bigandrewgold 1 point2 points ago

they will be available, but will cost 6 figures

[–]omfgforealz 1 point2 points ago

Cool graph, the only thing about it that will probably end up being true is the exponential "slowing" of time, where more things happen way more quickly.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Thanks. Let's hope so.

[–]philafornia 1 point2 points ago

Even though other things on the list are far more impressive, "Immersive Virtual Reality" has me the most excited.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points ago

A lot of these things we allready have. Bullcrappicture.

[–]globus243 1 point2 points ago

Wait, so a TWR basically converts spent fuel rods into new uran while making energy and then we can burn them again in a normal nuclear power station, convert them back to spent fuel rods, which allows us to renew them again in a TWR?! Isn't that an endless circle of energy?

[–]neanderthalman 5 points6 points ago

No. Nuclear engineer here - why'd you have to ask about this on my Saturday morning?

Not all uranium is created equal. Lets simplify things and say that there's two main "types", Uranium-238 and Uranium-235. They're both uranium, but the only difference is one is slightly heavier. If you mine uranium, what you get is a mix, and it'll be about 99.3% U-238, and 0.7% U-235.

Here's the thing - U-238 is pretty much useless as a nuclear fuel, at least directly. U-235 is what we want. In most nuclear reactor designs, "enriched uranium" is used, which is uranium where the amount of U-235 is increased to about 3% or so.

But here's where things get really cool. In a nuclear reactor, the whole point of the operation is that you've got a metric shit-ton of neutrons flying around. If U-235 absorbs a neutron, it busts apart and releases energy and more neutrons - this is how it generates heat and keeps the "chain reaction" going. But if U-238 absorbs a neutron, it doesn't "fission" like U-235. Instead, it becomes U-239 which decays quite quickly into Plutonium 239. Plutonium 239 is a useful nuclear fuel. In fact, even in many current reactor designs, a large fraction of the overall energy is produced from this plutonium - fuel that was produced within the reactor itself.

But when there's no more U238 left, then there's no way to make more plutonium. In a modern reactor, this isn't a problem - a very small fraction of the actual uranium (maybe 2% at most) is used up before we can't use the fuel anymore. The reason we can't use it anymore is because the wastes produced absorb too many neutrons to sustain the chain reaction - but there's still lots of fuel!

In the past, "reprocessing" has been attempted, which chemically separates most of these wastes, leaving behind the useful plutonium and uranium to be reused. In theory, we can do this about 50 times. The problem with reprocessing is that it makes it really easy to spill the nasty bits that we don't want to spill. The uranium and plutonium themselves are practically harmless - it's the wastes that are dangerous. When they're separated and concentrated, it's worse than spent nuclear fuel.

A TWR is designed to convert more U-238 to Pu-239, without reprocessing. The conversion happens entirely within the reactor core. So, if a fuel bundle in a current reactor lasts one year, then the same fuel bundle could last 50 years in a TWR if it could convert all of the U-238.

TL;DR - U-238 is useless as fuel, but a TWR makes it into fuel. Once the U-238 is gone, you can't make any more fuel.

[–]globus243 1 point2 points ago

thank you for clarifying this :)

[–]freedomgeek 1 point2 points ago

I hope this is true (especially the anti-aging drugs) but this sort of thing is hard to predict.

[–]TheBiggerBooger 2 points3 points ago

We should all be funding Aubrey De Grey

[–]when_did_i_grow_up 0 points1 point ago

No eyewear embedded screens until 2019? Let's hope Google Glass doesn't take that long.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

I published this late last year, before there were even rumors of Google X and Glass. I'll definitely revise that node (and the related ones) for my next revision.

[–][deleted] -3 points-2 points ago

In my opinion, let's hope it never happens.

[–]Legendman3 1 point2 points ago

Why not?

[–]twomashi -2 points-1 points ago

Because it's invasive.

[–]Tristanna 7 points8 points ago

Don't buy it then.

[–]Legendman3 0 points1 point ago

Well if you disable the internet part and use in only offline then its not invasive.

This is assuming that you update it by plugging it into a computer and it is atleast semi-easy to dismantle.

[–]twomashi -1 points0 points ago

Perhaps you have a particular use case, but I think in general the smart eyewear made for mass consumption is not going to do all that much without internet connectivity. And not because it couldn't, more because it's much more interesting developing online applications than offline ones these days.

[–]Legendman3 2 points3 points ago

Call me old fashioned but i don't care about web stuff like most people.

[–]twomashi 1 point2 points ago

Perhaps you could start some kind of offline community :p

[–]Legendman3 1 point2 points ago

Haha, real world stuff. That's funny.

[–]A_User 2 points3 points ago

space tourism 2020

Not a fucking chance, unless you mean for billionaires, in which case, we already have that.

[–]gryts 4 points5 points ago

Space tourism is already measures in millions instead of billions. The cost will just keep going down.

[–]samtart 0 points1 point ago

technically it already exists.

Several rich guys have already paid russians to go into space.

[–]DrakenKor 0 points1 point ago

Reminds me of SM's Alpha Centauri.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Civ & AC are very real sources of inspiration behind this :-)

[–]Quipster99 0 points1 point ago

Additive Manufacturing should be a much bigger circle.

[–]ziqgystardust 0 points1 point ago

[–]Mindrust 0 points1 point ago

What's an exocortex?

[–]hostergaard 1 point2 points ago

I believe its having your consciousness and memories outside your body.

Exo means outside or external

Cortex I believe refer to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_cortex

[–]jayd16 0 points1 point ago

Re-programmable chips are marked at 2025 but we already have those.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Still far from being a mainstream technology though. 90% of the techs mentioned already exist, but the visualization aims to point out when they might become readily available.

[–]jayd16 0 points1 point ago

They are readily available. I used one as a college freshmen in the EE lab. The cheaper ones are only a few hundred dollars.

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

Point taken! Will revise and make the wording more explicit. Thanks!

[–]hyperion2011 0 points1 point ago

Pretend those years are actually a log scale and maybe we might be getting there.

[–]dont_get_it -5 points-4 points ago

I read this and thought, I must go back to the Reddit link and downvote it like a furious old testament god.

They are predicting 4G in a few years. The phones are already on the market and networks have been rolled out in many countries. Then several years later, there will be 5G. Sounds like a good name for whatever comes after the relatively vague 4G, which succeeded the broadly defined and interpreted 3G.

Everything else is a mix of existing technology or vague bullshit. This is a vacuous and useless fluff, and as such is representative of futurologist profession.

[–]dont_get_it -2 points-1 points ago

So you are really fans of that infographic, or what?

[–]teeks -2 points-1 points ago

Space elevator? Really? This wont be feasible in the next 100 years.

[–]neanderthalman -2 points-1 points ago

The energy column is laughable.

Multi-Segmented Smart Grids by 2019.

I think he transposed the 9 and the 1. We don't have enough money to maintain the existing grid, let alone make major modifications to it.

[–]maajussi 0 points1 point ago

And why it could not mean that the smart grid is created somewhere else in the world than just your broke ass united states of a. People are not total baboons in another countries, it's possible that.. okay.. EU doesn't have any money either, so let's hope China will make this. I'm also hoping that the Thorium reactor would materialize much faster than predicted in the image. But nobody has $$$...

[–]michellzappa 0 points1 point ago

I actually designed this! Honest question: what other revisions would you suggest? I'm open to ideas and divergent opinions.