If you would like to predict the future, one thing is certain – technology will continue to advance and surprise us. Here are some of the amazing future tech trends –
Music
We are all fond of music. Music is an art form for expressing a variety of emotions, situations and thoughts. It has different meanings for different people. Music is deeply gratifying whether a person creates or listens to it.
Music would undergo a transformation with emerging technologies. Future music apps would incorporate Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Listening to music will be a more immersive experience. Smart glasses or smart contact lenses would have visual overlays of singers and the video. You would be able to interact with your favourite singers and even have a Karaoke with them. Teenagers idolize pop singers, and they could have a pop singer as their friend, something they play, talk and socialize with.
Once brain is decoded and has a smart chip, music would be enjoyed at a deeper level. You will be able to see layers of structure in music as the music plays, just the way musicians enjoy music. VR would offer a whole immersive experience, with stimulating different senses such as smell, taste, touch, etc. Have you ever wanted to see music in colours or taste music? Future VR, would will help you with adding new perceptions to music, just like a person having synesthesia. How cool is that!
Future concerts will be more alive and animated than the current ones. With smart glasses or contacts, the visual effects would make a concert an enriching experience. Musicians would be flying around, and animated creations dancing, performing feats all over the place. Enchanting!
Smart Makeup
When we are surrounded by smart gadgets in future, why should make up be left behind. Smart makeup would be achieved with tiny electronic components printed on a person’s skin. The components would be on a microscopic scale and thus not visible by the human eye. This electronic skin would be controlled with an app, and change colors based on the makeup selection. A person could try different makeup looks during the day with a quick tap on the app. This would save time and be a boon for lazy folks.
If you want some specific looks for Halloween or a theme party, and don’t know how to do it, rather than going to a makeup artist, you could get printed makeup. Simply visit a clinic and get an electronic skin. Then, try amazing looks with a tap.
Smart makeup could be used for tattoos, videos and image displays. You could have an interesting conversation with displaying some meme related to the topic in discussion. Also, electronic skin could be used as pattern for security to enter home or office.
Space Tourism
Space travel is possible today. However, we cannot travel very far as of now. Virgin Galactic flew to the edge of space, 80 km up from earth, while Blue Origin flew up to Karman Line (100 km up from Earth) in 2021. There is a space hotel being built that is scheduled to open sometime within this decade.
We are currently developing technological means to fly to Mars. However, it is exorbitantly expensive to go there. It could cost upwards of $100 billion. Also, Mars has a harsh environment with lack of breathable air, temperatures averaging around -80 degrees F, no ozone layer and hardly any magnetic field. The planet requires terraforming for humans to settle there.
Distant space travel has similar challenges. Space is an inhospitable terrain for humans. Our bodies are not suited for space travel. The effects of microgravity can cause heart atrophy, muscle and bone loss. Also, the radiation exposure in space can increase risks for developing diseases such as cancer, heart disease and cataracts.
In future, with synthetic biological bodies or android ones we could travel light years away. Also, the time required for space travel to far off places can be significantly reduced with breakthroughs in aircraft propulsion systems and discovering wormholes.
You could see quasars, asteroids, nebula, planets and galaxies. It would be quite an adventure to explore our gigantic cosmos and search for alien life. Additionally, it would be good to look for more inhabitable planets as Earth won’t last forever.
Increased Gender Fluidity
Gender is a fascinating topic, and gender identity where each person’s internal and individual experience of gender could be different than their biological sex assigned at birth makes it all the more interesting.
The DSM-5 estimates that about 0.005% to 0.014% of people assigned male at birth (one in 10,000) and 0.002% to 0.003% of people assigned female at birth (two or three in every 100,000) are diagnosable with gender dysphoria.
Current treatments include hormone therapy and surgeries. However, these come with a number of side effects and risks. In future, advances in medicine and gene therapy will make sex change easily doable and with negligible risk. In short, there will be a complete cure for gender dysphoria.
Moreover, people will willingly chose a different gender for playing games or social sites. This does happen today as well. Online avatars in future, will be linked to one’s identity. People spending time in virtual worlds, would have avatars that doesn’t match with a gender they identify with.
Similarly, humans downloading themselves into synthetic biological bodies or androids, would choose any gender of their liking. Some will do it just to try what it feels like to be in a body of another gender or some will do it as there would be a gradual shift in attitudes towards gender identity.
Consequently, there would be a trend emerging where future societies would be increasingly gender fluid. The upside of this would be that it will reduce gender inequality and transgender folks won’t face any discrimination or violence.
The benefit of a gender fluid society as a women would be less sexual assaults, no catcalling for wearing a revealing dress, or any judgements passed at your competence for wearing a feminine floral skirt to an official meeting. Wonderful, isn’t it?
Cyber Pets & Robotic Pets
Pets make life so fluffy and warm. They are packages of joy that fill your surroundings with glee and mirth.
There would be robotic pets in future. They could come in any shape – a doll, dog, cat, hamster, cartoon character, etc and have more sophisticated personalities. They could have the same intelligence as your animal pet or more.
Robotic pets would be fitted with camera, sensors and microphones. They could play a song, video, search something on google or order anything online. They could also converse with you and be your friend. The pets would behave arbitrarily as compared to bland machines, and also respond to facial expressions. If your facial expression tells the pet you are sad, it could do things to cheer you up.
Along with robotic pets, there would be cyber-pets. These would play around your house or go on a walk with you outside. In the house, there could be a machine setup that projects the pets. While outside, the smart glasses or contacts could overlay your interactive pet on the sidewalk as you stroll in the evening.
Robotic and cyber-pets would have an additional advantage. There would be no need to clean their poop or litter. Robotic pets could also be programmed to not scratch your furniture either.
Time Travel
Aren’t we all fascinated with the possibilities of time travel? Some physicist believe that time travel is possible in theory. We may probably some day build a machine to go back in time or to go into the future.
However, what if you could go back in time, without any exotic machine? A dedicated cyberspace where archived digital minds of people in the past are stored and can be retrieved would make time travel to the past possible.
Black Mirror’s episode Entire History of You, has a memory implant that records everything they do, see and hear. Brain implants in future would be more than just recording memory. They would record thoughts, emotions, sensations and back it up to the cloud. The data would be fed to an AI that understands brain algorithms behind emotional processing and higher cognitive functions. On the other hand, the mind can be uploaded using just the raw human brain. However such an upload would need to be updated with life experiences in case the person continues to live.
The AI using the data would be able to create a digital twin, which will long live after your biological body has perished. These digital twins will interact and behave similar to their biological counterparts. You could visit them in a cyber space to chat or have fun in a virtual world. Also, you could meet yourself when you were a kid and have some playtime with your younger self.
How back could you go in time would be limited to the time when digital immortality has been achieved and a number of people have been backed up. When would this happen? Most likely sometime in this century.
Cure for Most Mental Illness
Mental illness is highly prevalent and affects millions of people worldwide. As per WHO, in 2019, 1 in every 8 people, or 970 million people around the world were living with a mental disorder, among which anxiety and depressive disorders were the most common. Depending on the severity of mental illness, it can result in a reduced quality of life or disability.
Most common causes for mental illness are genetics, chemical imbalances, environmental factors such as trauma, life stressors, etc. Treatments currently available are suboptimal, and is the reason why so many people don’t find a successful remedy for their illness. The pharmaceutical drugs for mental illness are usually more effective in controlling a disease than curing it. Further, the drugs come with a variety of unpleasant side effects.
The problem with curing mental illness is that we don’t fully understand the brain. Advances in neuroscience and neurotech will bring about better treatments for psychiatric diseases. One way neurotech will work would be by regulating specific circuits in the brain for adequate neurotransmitter release. Such an implant will provide relief from mental illness without any troublesome side effects. Also, gene therapies will be able to edit identified genes that cause a particular mental illness.
Further, once the entire brain has been mapped and decoded, neurotech will be able to stimulate the brain to regulate mood or induce any emotion. If you are having a bad day, just tap on your phone or pass a voice command to your smart glasses or contacts to make you happy. The implant will then stimulate specific circuits to increase serotonin, dopamine and endorphins.
Additionally, future therapy will have AI Therapist that are specifically built to help people with different issues and illness. It will also incorporate VR and AR, to help them resolve their trauma, face their phobias, deal with anger issues, etc. AI would be more effective at therapy, due to its remarkable competence, brain data and in-depth understanding of humans.
Claytronics
Claytronics is a future concept where self-assembling robots at a nano scale could take any desired shape. These extremely minute robots called claytronics or catoms, would communicate with each other to form 3D objects. In a broader sense, this idea is referred to as programmable matter.
Each catom contains a CPU, antenna, sensors, video display and means of movement. For adhesions, magnetism or electrostatic forces could be employed. Thus, every catom can receive instructions, process information, and communicate with other catoms. A sizeable number of such nanobots can be used in range of applications.
If you are short on utensils, just push a button and the claytronics machine would make you one. In case you are a nomad or frequently travel, all you need to do is carry enough catoms and those can assemble into furniture for any new place you move into.
Video calls can feature catoms assembling into a shape of you and interacting with the person on the other side of the call. Presents could be sent to people, by just purchasing a digital blueprint, and ordering a claytronics company to ship it to the address. Maybe, you could just gift a digital blueprint as well.
Video game characters could assemble in front of you while you play a game. Also, movie characters could enact their scene in a 3D claytronics version. Probably, you can also interact with the characters, and play a small role in the movie. Bewitching!
References:
Pearson, Ian. (2013).You Tomorrow: The future of humanity, gender, your everyday life, your career, your belongings and your surroundings
https://www.easytechjunkie.com/what-is-claytronics.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytronics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN7BUKb0OIA
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-disorders
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827860-100-why-space-is-the-impossible-frontier/