Top 10 Futuristic Technologies We Hope To See Soon
As technology invents and reinvents the way we live our lives and think about things, one thing is for sure: the future may never truly arrive — at least not how we want it to. As nerds, we’ve become accustomed to being teased with countless painfully plausible devices from our favorite movies, books and shows that at times seem like they’re only a year or two away from proper execution in our digital world, until we realize that it’s been five years since we read the article telling us that it was finally happening. Some of the fictionalized tech exhibited in this list isn’t necessarily from a futuristic timeline, but is futuristic to us since we don’t have it yet. Maybe one day we’ll get our mitts on this fine machinery, but until then, all we can do is hope. Hope, of course, and look to the future.
10. The Rise of Electronic Paper:
At the present moment, e-paper is pretty much only used in e-readers like the Kindle, but it’s something researchers everywhere are eager to expand upon. Full-color video integration is the obvious next step, and as tablet prices fall, it’s likely newspapers will soon be fully eradicated from their current form. The good news: less deforestation, and more user control over your sources.
9. 4G will be the new standard:
In cell phone networks. What this means: your phone will download data about as fast as your home computer can. While you’ve probably seen lots of 4G banter from the big cell providers, it’s not very widely available in most phones. However, both Verizon and the EU intend to do away with 3G entirely by 2013, which will essentially bring broadband-level speeds to wireless devices on cell networks. It won’t do away with standard internet providers, but it will bring “worldwide WiFi” capabilities to anyone with a 4G data plan.
8. The Universal Translator
How wonderful would life be if we could instantly speak the language of anyone around us? No more years of arduous linguistic study to absorb another culture and its traditions, no sir. We’re taking the Captain Kirk way out here, which in case you haven’t heard, is always the best way. Bill Shatner’s Speech to Spoken Word Converter sold separately.
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7. Robo Lace:
The Back to the Future movies cursed us with the knowledge of many awesome pieces of hypothetical future technology that might never be born into existence the way we want them to. Although still a stretch, the sweet automatically lacing Nikes from Back to the Future Part II seem to have the most potential of ever actually happening. That and you could actually see normal people wearing them since they’re the great grandchildren of those oh-so-awesome Pumps that clearly helped us all get into the NBA. Nike made a limited edition pair of sneakers posing as these things in 2008, and even though they’d still cost you somewhere between 6 to 10 times what a normal pair of Nike basketball shoes normally would, they don’t power lace. How awesome?
6. The Neuralyzer
Imagine all of the things you could memory-wipe your way out of with one of these nifty gadgets from Men in Black — a bad interview answer, an awkward interaction with someone you have a crush on, spilling ketchup on yourself in the cafeteria…the possibilities are nearly infinite. And while it couldn’t be less ethical in most cases for the average citizen to be wielding one, we’d have a hard time not being first in line at Jack Jeebs’ universal pawnbroker shop once the Neuralyzer became available on the black market.
5. GLOOO:
Imagine if you could check the weather, news headlines, and your contacts all in one device? Oh wait, we can already do that with the BlackBerry. But this prototype goes one step further. The GLOOO by Igor Polyakov is a spherical-shaped, wireless world browser and communicator that’s meant to act as a visual device, similar to the Ambient Orb. It’s capable of showing users the current state of the planet (global warming, anyone?), weather, news headlines, and contacts from around the world using a technology
like Philips’ e-paper. The touch-sensitive globe also sports a built-in camera, speaker, and microphone for video-chatting. The technology is not so widespread, but I expect it to be widely used in the home and in the office within the next few years.
