Times are changing and so is technology
While many people focus on the current economy, most people miss that a significant part of the current instability is a result of the transformation our economy is undergoing. We live in an era where science and technology has a greater impact on how we live and work than ever before, and that impact will only grow in the years ahead.
Since 1900, the car and airplane have become widespread. Since the 1950s, computers have gone from building sized behemoths to something we wear on our wrists or carry in our pockets. Since the 1990s, the Internet, cell phones, and satellite TV have connected our world together in ways that have made the world seem smaller and more accessible.
With these technologies have come a variety of consequences-good and bad-that have shaped our lives, our economy and our international relations. People are living longer, learning more, traveling further, and getting there faster than at any time in human history.
The pace of those changes has not slowed. If anything, it is getting faster.
The next few decades promise even more of those kinds of changes at greater frequency. Over the next nine issues, I will profile nine technologies that are rapidly developing and have the potential to change our world:
- Serial hybrid vehicles
- Flexible flat panel displays
- Embedded electronics
- Fuel cells
- Total recycling
- Bio-energy
- Commercial spaceflight
- Personal robotics
- Fusion energy