This is at the same time a thorny issue and one which we are all attracted to. What will the future hold for us? As you might be able to see from a few of this links, there are opportunities for all of us to pontificate about the future (like the 9 blind men and the elephant). There are some top 10 lists of things which will come about, lists of things which will disappear from our lives, and all sort so of points in between.
It isn’t my point to try to trivialize these lists, but to present these ideas with a bit more caution. We all see things from our own position of expertise…that is not necessarily the same thing as seeing the truth in something. You can see in some of these lists that a few of the items are pretty obvious to all of us (i.e. Newspapers will die sooner or later), and then there are some from further in left field (the potential for us to start worrying about battling with artificial intelligence…). I suspect that if you were to create a hierarchy of these items, they would cover areas from the next 5 years to the next several lifetimes.
Ten prophesies for the digital millennium
http://www.smh.com.au/news/executive-style/essential-gadgets/ten-prophesies-for-the-digital-millenium/2008/12/09/1228584805352.html
1. The internet will become the "supernet"
2. The decline of the PC
3. The rise of software as a service
4. The decline of copyright
5. The greening of IT
6. The threat from intelligent machines
7. Increased importance of technology for the aged
8. The decline of IT as a specialty
9. The death of newspapers
10. The growth of internet TV
21 Things That Will Be Obsolete by 2020
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/03/21-things-that-will-be-obsolete-by-2020
Another perspective would be to cover some specific, but strange and futuristic point of view. In the case of the next link, it is about the growing technology with which we may be able to actually lifecast. This means, at some future date, that you may be able to literally record you life…for reasons which will seem obvious to us….then.
Digital age may bring total recall in future
http://articles.cnn.com/2006-10-16/tech/explorers.memory_1_digital-age-digital-assets-electronic-items?_s=PM:TECH
Have you ever wished for a backup brain — a device that could remember everything in your life from the smallest of details to your most memorable moments?
Computer engineer Gordon Bell, a researcher for Microsoft Corp., is working on just such a mechanism. He’s trying to devise what amounts to a digital diary, a searchable database that contains digitized versions of nearly everything in his life.
"As a research project, the idea is being obsessed with recording everything I can," said Bell, the head researcher in a project called MyLifeBits for nearly five years at Microsoft.
There are two parts to the project. The first is Bell’s experiment with life storage — capturing his papers, faxes, phone calls, photographs and home movies in digitalized form. The second part focuses on developing software that would support this type of lifetime library on anyone’s computer.
Work in the digital age: A clouded future
http://www.economist.com/node/16116919
The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars
Scholarship: the wave of the future in the digital age
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/PUB7202t.pdf
