2012
Flying cars – Yes, as in cars…that can fly. Okay, while you might not be the one piloting (or even passengering) the flying car, the engineers at Terrafugia have long been busy perfecting their Lightweight Sport Aircraft (LSA) concept and are currently accepting buyers to the tune of $270,000.
“The whole idea is to address the gap in travel between 100 and 400 miles,” said Cliff Allen, Terrafugia’s vice president of sales. “You could leave your home or office, drive to the nearest GA [General Aviation] airport, convert over to the aviation mode, fly to the airport nearest your destination and drive the last 10 or 15 miles.
2013
Speech-to-speech translation – Imagine you’re in India (or, if you are in India, continue being in India). This is a place where foreign languages and dialects are constantly coming together and increasingly demand a translation service. Now imagine that when someone speaks to you in a foreign language, an audio receiver automatically picks up their speech, translates it into your language, and plays it back for you. This is already a reality.
2014
Solar flight – Less than 100 years ago, Charles Lindbergh captured the entire world’s imagination like never before when he completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. In two years, we’ll see the completion of the world’s first circumglobal flight powered by nothing more than energy harnessed from the sun. Will anyone notice?
2015
Self-charging holographic mobile phones – That’s a mouthful. Let’s simplify: first of all, we have had, for a long time, wristwatches that power themselves by the regular motion of the wearer. Today, cell phone companies are already unveiling kinetic motion-powered cell phones…meaning the scourge of battery life may plague you no more.
As for holographic phone calls, this is something just about every major cell phone player is putting R&D money into — I guess people just love that Star Wars scene with Obi-Wan coming out of R2-D2 too much not to make it happen.
2016
Augmented reality everything – By the end of this year, Google will begin sellingaugmented reality glasses that stream information in real time onto a user’s eyeball. Which means that finally, you’ll never have to remove your eyes from your Twitter/reddit/Facebook news feed.
2017
The locationless classroom – Some of the younger readers might not fully agree with me here, but it’s true: school is awesome. However, the current model of getting dropped off at a turning circle to “learn” between the hours of 8am and 2pm is probably not the end-all-be-all of scholastic efficiency — especially when you consider that nearly 10% of all highschoolers drop out.
2018
Biometric and electronically enhanced passports – Perhaps the biggest factor keeping people where they come from is not geography, not nostalgia, nor family, but passports. Human will can overcome nearly any physical obstacle — but no amount of wanting can overcome a denied passport at a political border.
So, what will the passport of the future look like? We’ve already begun incorporating RFID chips and other technology into passports — is biometric data the next logical carrier of our identification? And as human screening becomes replaced by technology, we can expect waiting times at passport controls to become incredibly diminished.
2019
Self-driving cars – Every time I mention this to someone, they don’t believe me. And then I show them the video of Google’s self-driving car. And mention the fact that the UK has already begun building private roads and corridors for self-driving cars.
2020….and beyond
London to Beijing by rail – About two years ago, China announced plans to develop a rail system to link Beijing with London — thousands and thousands of miles covered in just two days.
The elevator into space – The Japanese engineering and construction firm Obayashi announced this year that they have the ability and intention to set in motion a 36,000km elevator into space, to be completed within forty years
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