The World of Tomorrow I don’t know how many have noticed the fact technology is taking off. Inventions and proto-inventions are coming faster than ever. When I say proto-inventions I am talking about the progress which is made in a certain direction which allows for an invention at any time. Just look at what we are on the verge of. We are just a breath away from making routine human trips to the moon and on the verge of figuring out how to enable humans to travel to Mars. Would you ever believed humans would have the power to transform a planet into a place more resembling earth years ago? No that was the stuff of science fiction, but that is no longer the case. Many different scientists and engineers are talking about terraforming Mars and even possibly the moon. This would have seemed absurd when I was a child, but we didn’t believe those who talked about pay television either, and looked what happened with that. There has been work done by some countries to change their military into super soldiers. What many do not know it was begun in Germany during World War II. The idea was to alter their bodies so they could go much longer without sleep, make them stronger and impervious to pain. The German’s wanted even mortally wounded soldiers to still be able to fight until they died. Currently I have heard about this sort of thing again happening in China. The problem is there is no way yet to know if it is true or not. Just last month from when this article was written, NBC News online ran a story about China doing this. In a way we are also testing to make our soldiers better but in a different way and it is with a robotic suit which would allow them to run faster and longer, make them much stronger when they wear it and prevent them from getting tired on long treks. You can even take it off and use it as a robot fighter and it will take you back to base if you are wounded and get into it. Things are going to get much different on the battlefield, but overall, it looks like it will be even more dangerous for the individual soldiers. We are already seeing the very beginning of all sorts of vehicles driving and flying themselves and lest I forget, sailing themselves. It is already safer to have a computer drive you than a human even with the few accidents that occur. For people who are not capable of driving it will be an incredible boon for them. The elderly and sick will be able to get around without having to ask for help traveling to their friends, relatives and medical appointments. I have to admit it, I can’t wait for this to happen. It does make one wonder if the saving in less accidents will be passed on to owners of these types of vehicles or will the insurance companies keep all the increased profits? Our food will not come from the same places it does today. Take our supply of meat for example. Great strides are being made in creating meat in laboratories instead of factories and it is just a matter of time before it is perfected. This should cut down on recalls and contamination of meat since a laboratory is a much more sterile environment. I don’t think the current craze of making meat like products from vegetables will ever get to the majority of the population, but there will probably always be a niche for it, especially if the manufacturers can figure out how not to use actual meat juices in the manufacture. It has been talked about for more than 100 years. I am talking about flying cars. Will we all be zipping through the skies to avoid traffic jams? Every once in a while, someone comes out with a flying car. They all have a problem and that is no matter how good the vehicle is, you need a pilot’s license and have to obey FAA rules. This means filing a flight plan when you want to go somewhere. Hey can I file my flight plan; I have to fly to the drug store? No that won’t work. Not only do rules have to be changed, but foolproof sensors would be needed to avoid all those accidents waiting to happen. Remember what would be a fender bender in a car might be a deadly crash in a flying car. The time is coming when no one needs to be alone anymore. There are many different companies all over the world working on robot assistants for people. While none of them are 100 percent perfected, we are getting closer every day. It has been said by people who study the effect of robots on lonely people like some of the elderly, which they claim show after a while the person begins to think of the robot as another human. We are also getting to see many other uses for the robots such as working in hospitals and doing tasks like changing beds, delivering blood samples to the lab and bringing pills and such to patients. Many of the robots are equipped with cameras and a screen so the patient can see the doctor and he can see the patient and they can talk. We are on the verge of seeing a quantum leap in travel time reduction in flights. We know NASA is working on a plane which is much faster but will not make a loud sonic boom when it breaks the speed of sound. It is more than that however. What if I told you, you would be able to reach anywhere on earth in the future in 90 minutes or less. I am talking about plans to send travelers into orbit and bring them down over their destinations. It only takes 90 minutes to circle the entire earth so this means you can reach over anywhere you want to go in half that time depending on which way you are circling the earth. It might be quicker than taking a train into the city from the suburbs. All this could easily happen within the lifetime of a young person today. Speaking about age, all sorts of experiments are going on which have an aim of increasing the lifespan of a human. Scientists believe they know many of the causes of aging, but probably not all yet. As our science in this area gets more capable, we may finally conquer aging or at least slow it down.
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