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You Decide: How will technology shape our future?
Story Date: 6/7/2013
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Source: Dr. Mike Walden, NCSU COLLEGE OF AG & LIFE SCIENCES, 6/7/13
My late mother-in-law loved gadgets. As soon as she could afford it,
she had to buy the latest kitchen appliance, hi-fi (remember those?)
and TV. Indeed, her family was one of the first to have a color TV. My
wife, who was a small girl then, watched an entire baseball game just
to see the green grass. She hasn’t sat through nine-innings of
baseball since.
Of course, today, we are spoiled by gadgets, especially computers,
tablets and cell phones. Most of my college students can’t imagine
living without them, and they wonder how their professor (me) survived
the pre-tech era.
But the impact of gadgets -- or technology, to use a more formal term
-- goes well beyond entertaining us with music and games and keeping
us connected to friends and family. Economists believe that technology
along with the skills and knowledge workers acquire really drive the
economy and determine our standard of living. Indeed, historians have
shown that it wasn’t until the technological developments of the
Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries that living
standards and human well-being began to dramatically improve.
And so too will new technology help shape our future. The gadgets --
to use my late mother-in-law’s term -- that are invented and used will
have a lot to do with how -- and how well -- we live.
So what can we expect out of the next inventor’s garage or lab? That’s
a good question to which there are no sure answers. But there can be
some fairly good educated guesses. Fortunately, the smart people at
the McKinsey Global Institute, one of the leading consulting and
business management firms in the world, recently released a detailed
report giving their forecasts for the next wave of gadgets.
The report is comprehensive and detailed, so I can only hit the
highlights here. McKinsey sees tech advances in five broad areas:
information management and utilization, robotics, genomics,
manufacturing and materials, and energy.
In information management and utilization, smartphones will get
smarter, data storage will become bigger and cheaper and monitoring of
machines, processes and people will be easier and more widespread.
These improvements will help farmers monitor the weather, doctors
track our vital signs, engineers keep track of road and bridge safety
and businesses better predict both what and how much to produce.
Robotics might be the biggest visible change in our future world.
Robots have been around for a while, but the next generation will be
more agile, flexible, adaptable and probably able to learn and
interact with humans. These characteristics will significantly expand
their use in the workplace and everyday life. We will see increased
use of these modern robots in factories, hospitals, stores and the
home.
One big spin-off of the robotic technology would be “autonomous”
vehicles -- that is, cars and trucks that can drive themselves with no
direct human operator. Futurists see big benefits from reduced
accidents to better traffic coordination and saved driving time.
Genomics might be the most controversial of the new technologies
because it deals with applying scientific methods and technologies to
modifying living organisms, both plant and animal, including humans.
Applications like DNA sequencing, synthetic biology and genetic
decoding are part of genomics.
Genomics has enormous potential in anticipating and fighting disease,
repairing the body from injuries and accidents and improving
agricultural productivity. Of course, questions have been raised about
the appropriateness and possible consequences of intervening with
nature.
Advances in manufacturing and materials include 3D production, where a
customized product can be built virtually anywhere using a layering
technique, and nanomaterials, which are a class of materials of very
small scale. Some think 3D production will revolutionize manufacturing
by making products more adaptive and specific for tasks and thereby
more useful. Molecular-sized nanomaterials have widespread
applications in medical devices and electronics.
McKinsey sees two future advances in energy. One is in the storage of
energy. For example, improved battery capacity will allow electric
vehicles to have longer ranges, and this will significantly increase
their usefulness and appeal. Also, electric generating plants today
only store 3 to 4 percent of their electricity. Significantly
increasing this rate will reduce the need for expensive and sometimes
controversial power plants to be built.
McKinsey also sees big advances in techniques for safely accessing
non-renewable energy (oil, natural gas) and developing
cost-competitive renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.
While these expected technological advances are beyond most of our
comprehension (including yours truly), they do have the potential to
impact our everyday lives in many ways. The big question is, how?
Unfortunately, it will likely be many years down the road before we
can decide.
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