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Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the year 1997. We're going to pay a visit to a young Stanford University graduate student named Sergey Brin and take a look at his pet project, a new search engine called Google.
Hat tip: Freakonomics and Pajamas Media.
In his now-classic 1981 short story True Names, author Vernor Vinge imagined a worlldwide virtual reality network in which users could assume alter egos and manipulate data with techniques similar to wizardry and magic. Many computer users, particularly gamers, embraced those concepts wholeheartedly, as attested to by the success of Second Life and other online environments (including World of Warcraft and similar MMORPGs). Now a non-profit group is building a new type of internet specifically for VR games and applications:
Neuronet, which is separate from the Internet, "will evolve into the world's first public network capable of meeting the data transmission requirements of emerging cinematic and immersive virtual-reality technologies," according to a Wednesday announcement from the Vancouver-based International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies.
The first-generation Neuronet is scheduled to go live in 2007, the group said. Consumer applications are expected as early as 2009.
Virtual reality generally refers to environments with visual and audio information that makes a person feel immersed in a computer-generated realm. The growth of environments such as Second Life has spotlighted such efforts, and IBM believes that virtual worlds will open new doors to e-commerce as well.
The group promises that Neuronet will have high-speed communication, a key constraint for virtual reality, which requires transmission of large quantities of graphics and other data, as well as fast responses to give users a better illusion of realism.
Although the full impact is still years off, it's not much of a stretch to imagine the impact of such a VR network on project management and collaboration among remote team members. Online meetings and webinars, once a novelty, are now a staple in the business world. In 10 years, will it be commonplace for project teams to collaborate in simulated meeting rooms, solving problems by manipulating shared data models in 3D? IBM's endorsement of Second Life, and now Neuronet, is an indication that it may be.
Technology futurist and author Ray Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking vision of the not-so-distant-future:
Kurzweil told a keynote audience at last week's SCO6 supercomputing conference that nanobots will roam our blood streams fixing diseased or aging organs, while computers will back up our human memories and rejuvenate our bodies by keeping us young in appearance and health.
The author of the book The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil says within a quarter of a century, non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. He predicts that it will then soar past human ability because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge.
In an interview with InformationWeek, Kurzweil said people and computers will intermix with nanobots, blood cell-sized robots, that will be integrated into everything from our clothing to our bodies and brains. People simply need to live long enough—another 15 to 30 years—to live forever. Think of it as replacing everyone's "human body version 1.0" with nanotechnology that will repair or replace ailing or aging tissue, he says. Parts will become easily replaceable.
"A $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain," says Kurzweil, adding that in 25 years we'll have multiplied our computational power by a billion. "Fifteen years from now, it'll be a very different world. We'll have cured cancer and heart disease, or at least rendered them to manageable chronic conditions that aren't life threatening. We'll get to the point where we can stop the aging process and stave off death."
Kurzweil even goes out on a limb and predicts that nanotechnology will yield a cure for the common cold.
According to the BBC, two scientists claim to have cracked the physics of a working Star Trek-style cloaking device -- albeit at present on a very small scale:
Nicolae Nicorovici and Graeme Milton propose that placing certain objects close to a material called a superlens could make them appear to vanish...
The complex mathematical phenomenon outlined by Milton and Nicorovici closes the gap a little between science fiction and fact.
The phenomenon is analogous to a tuning fork (which rings with a single sound frequency) being placed next to a wine glass. The wine glass will start to ring with the same frequency; it resonates.
The cloaking effect would exploit a resonance with light waves rather than sound waves.
The concept is at such a primitive stage that scientists are talking only at the moment of being able to cloak particles of dust - not spaceships.
First replicators, now this. Arthur C. Clarke, who claims the mantle of both scientist and science fiction author, once famously said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Perhaps he should have added, "or pop culture sci-fi".
Some musings on why the future ain't what it used to be. In fact, what we used to think of "the future" seems to have left the building altogether:
The flying car became the SUV. The personal robot ended up bolted to the floor of an automobile plant, leaving us to wash our own clothes and make our own beds. While certainly adventurous and heroic, the astronauts were government functionaries, not latter-day Columbuses or Marco Polos exploring with autonomy. It may be just as well. Our naively romantic conception of the solar system with a Sahara-like Mars and a jungle-clad Venus are long abandoned. The other planets, as one scientist has observed, range from dead to murderous.
The author makes a good point that old romantic version of the future that was more or less universal (at least in industrialized societies) has given way to a more ephemeral, fragmented vision that frequently looks backward as much as it looks forward. Even so, there are advantages to being able to imagine a multitude of possible futures, both inspiring and terrifying, and for the notion of "the future" to be under constant construction. For one thing, it allows for far more possibilities than minor variations on "The Jetsons".
