What's Next?

I read an article in a magazine once that said a medical company was a little irritated when Star Trek, way back in the 60s, showed the doctor using a device that he simply waved over the patient and got an instant diagnosis. It seems the device had some similarities to something they had in development. I’m not sure how close their product was to what was shown on Star Trek, but I haven’t seen anything like it when I go to the doctor so I guess their device never made it out of development.

Along the same lines, I read another article that said a company was developing a 360 degree hologram projector. It beamed the image down from the ceiling and your spot in the room determined what you saw, very much like a round stage. I haven’t seen that one yet either.

Which brings me to my question; based on what we’ve seen change in the world in the past 40 years, what do you think will be changing next?

There were computers and magazines like Popular Mechanics would put out issues about the house and car of the future. They didn’t say much about phones, as I recall other than we would have video, sort of like a Dick Tracy video watch, although I think Chet Gould was closer to what the size would be than the magazine was.

Our cars are close to what some of the magazines guessed they would be, but nobody saw GPS coming. I don’t think they saw satellite radio coming either, not to mention CDs and DVDs.

So what’s coming?

In clothing, I don’t think much. I mean styles have changed, but nothing really drastic and jeans today are basically the same jeans our grandparents had, except their jeans became faded and holey from wearing them. They didn’t get them faded and holey straight off the rack, and for that matter, neither did we.

Electronics will continue to evolve and everything will eventually be one device. Phone, radio, computer, TV and anything else they can think of putting into one. Very much like the smart phones now, but a lot smaller. No bigger than an ear bud.

I think the biggest changes will be in energy and our food supply. We get there quicker, easier and more economically and within a couple of generations a lot of the foods we eat now will be gone.

I also think families will limit themselves to one maybe two kids, and a lot of them will choose not have any.

I also think nothing will change in politics and world affairs. Everyone will still be griping at each other.

Hopefully, this old world can find a way to keep going on for many more generations, but I don’t think they will have it as good as we did/do.