Predicting the Future

How far into the future can anyone actually see?

Most of us reject things like the prophecies of Nostradamus, or the psychic predictions of Jean Dixon. However, you're probably not reading this blog unless you're interested in understanding the future, like we are.

So, which predictions can we trust? (Our friend David Brin has recommended the establishment of a predictions registry. We like that idea.)

One good rule of thumb is that the further out the future is predicted, the less you should trust the prediction -- which becomes more true each year in this age of accelerating change.

The Long Now Foundation was established in "01996" to "creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years." Sounds good, if awfully ambitious.

Similarly, the Foundation for the Future has good intentions for helping humanity make our way successfully through the next millennium.

Considering how much more change is expected in the next one thousand years than in the previous thousand, can we really expect to be better at forecasting the year 3000 than someone in 1006 would have been at seeing our time?

But never mind a thousand years. How about just predicting the biggest breakthroughs of the next 50 years? As part of their 50th anniversary celebration, NewScientist asked 70 of the "world's most brilliant scientists" for their ideas.

In coming decades will we: Discover that we are not alone in the universe? Unravel the physiological basis for consciousness? Routinely have false memories implanted in our minds? Begin to evolve in new directions? And will physicists finally hit upon a universal theory of everything? In fact, if the revelations of the last 50 years are anything to go on -- the Internet and the human genome for example -- we probably have not even thought up the exciting advances that lay ahead of us.

That last sentence is the most important point. Even trying to look just 50 years ahead, it is very likely that the most significant change is something no one has even conceived of yet.

Where does this put CRN, and our projections for the development of molecular manufacturing as "likely by 2015, and almost certainly by 2020"?

We think we have solid grounds for making that estimate, although some people will disagree with us. We also note that mainstream rejections of rapid development toward productive nanosystems are gradually falling away and being replaced by cautious if still extraordinary claims for fourth generation nanotechnology.

CRN doesn't claim to predict the future, of course. In fact, we'll readily say that by the time personal nanofactories are actually produced, they may be quite different in appearance and function from today's expectations. Rather than trying to get all the specifics exactly right, our focus is on raising awareness of the probability that general-purpose precise exponential manufacturing will have astounding and potentially disruptive impacts on society and the environment, and on trying to stimulate effective and responsible preparation.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Nato Welch]

The more I get used to the idea of MM, the less I think it matters, disappointingly. The more miraculous things technology can do, the more access to the technology matters, but such access is, by definition, not a problem technology can solve (or else it already would have).

For example, It would certainly be great to have a personal nanofactory to churn out all the material things I use in my daily life. but when I look at what I actually spend my money on, I find a very small percentage of budget is actually spent on material goods. Any hopes a working class joe might have for nanofactories hinge upon secondary effects of MM, that would lower the costs of big-budget items like rent, energy, credit, health and auto insurance, etc. These are services and permissions/licenses more than goods.

Dale Carrico has a good point in saying "The Politicis precede the toyPile" (paraphrased). I sincerely hope that the real surprise innovations that will really catch us by surprise are innovations in the ways we sapients organize ourselves and our affairs, more than in how we shuffle around bits, atoms, and energy.

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

Nato, you spend a lot of money on rent or mortgage, and probably a lot more to maintain a car. Now, that sounds like I'm disagreeing with you, but I'm not... because the cost of those things is largely a matter of licensing as well. Companies have managed to create extremely high barriers of entry to innovation.

I'm starting to think that a major question of molecular manufacturing is which human institutions it will drive past their tipping points. For example, if it can be used to make tents more comfortable than houses, some people may simply not bother to buy houses. Of course the house-builders will fight back: buying legislation that prohibits mail delivery to tents, pushing for "safety standards" on tents, promoting anti-tent zoning regulations, etc. It remains to be seen which institutions, in which countries, will fall, and which will continue, and what the effects and interactions will be.

Things will nevertheless evolve in a new direction, driven by the new economic factor. Just as text copying too cheap to meter drove the Free Software and then the Open Source movements, manufacturing with non-scarce labor-free equipment will drive new kinds of abundance in directions that at least make existing institutions sweat, and sometimes will make them irrelevant.

These changes may be harder to see, because they'll be slower. We may only know in retrospect what has happened, just as we couldn't predict that the automobile would kill the front porch. If the time comes when getting medical assistance is more like going to a tattoo parlor or getting an oil change than like visiting a doctor... when people have mailing address portability the same way they have phone number portability today... when cars are sold at Wal-Mart... then we'll know what happened.

Chris

[Michael Deering]

"we couldn't predict that the automobile would kill the front porch"

I'm sorry. This statement just set of my WTF alarm.

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

Less foot traffic and wider streets and parking in the front yard.

OK, air conditioning probably helped kill it too. Maybe even did more than the auto. But I think the auto helped significantly.

Chris

[Brian Wang]

Article discussing the decline of the front porch

Another one

The retro-design of functional front porches

Reasons
- shift to backyard BBQs
- cars and the need for garage where porch was
- mass produced box homes ala Levitt town. Cheaper without porch
- air conditioning