As we stumble through the 21st century, burning fossil fuels and indulging in all kinds of other unsustainable practices, only technology can save us.
Main image: The 22nd century will be about much more than flying cars. Credit: Airbus
If predicting the future is dumb, then predicting advances in technology is even dumber. Challenges will appear that we’ve never contemplated, and knowledge we now hold dear will in many cases be proven false. The prediction game can soon become more a reflection of ‚us‘ in the 21st century rather than ‚them‘ in the 22nd century.
And yet, as we enter a period of hyper-adoption of new technology, we have more data than ever before to give us an idea of what the world could look like in 100 years. And we know one thing, it’s that the future is going to be home to some amazing technologies.
By the year 2100 the average temperature is projected to increase by at least 1C. Cue rising sea levels, which will threaten hundreds of cities worldwide. One solution could be floating cities, which the Seasteading Institute has been trying to encourage for years. It’s already happening in French Polynesia, where Blue Frontiers is planning the Floating Island Project. Seasteading Institute Blue Frontiers Floating Island Project
Predicted sea-level rises could mean floating cities. Credit: Blue Frontiers
„I foresee huge floating cities that can move, join together, pull apart – that’s the sort of future I see in a hundred years, not only because we will need to because environmental issues will become more severe, but because technology will make the ocean a lot more hospitable,“ says Paul Amstrong, founder of future technology consultancy Here/Forth. Here/Forth
He name-checks 4D printing and graphene as two of the technologies that will enable us to construct those cities, and adds that plastic-digesting nano-bots could be used to clean up the oceans, even gobbling up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 4D printing graphene Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Life expectancy for the United Nations-projected 11.2 billion people living by 2100 may not increase drastically, but older people will be healthier.
„With ageing populations, medicine will get a lot better, because otherwise you will have a lot of sick people, which would be a massive burden,“ says Armstrong. “Expect personalised medicine, from high-end genetic re-sequencing to bio-hacking and ‚wetware‘, which is still in its infancy.“ bio-hacking ‚wetware‘
Brain-computer connections are already possible, although developing the software and interfaces is going to take time. Another massive trend will be personalised medicine; expect medi-pods in our homes that can diagnose problems, and implants that do the same on the move. Brain-computer connections
Beyond both driverless cars and Amazon wanting to use drones to deliver parcels, the far-flung future could have a completely new kind of airspace.
At present, global airspace is managed in a rigid ‚airspace corridor‘ way, purely for the benefit of commercial and military aircraft, but that could change. „Global airspace could be managed in a continuously flexible and dynamic way for the benefit of all,“ says Robert Garbett, founder and CEO of Drone Major Group. Drone Major Group
Today, drones. Tomorrow, driverless flying cars and taxis. Credit: Terrafugiua
Garbett forsees „an airspace populated with vertical columns used by aircraft making sub-space jumps, shifting geo-routes allowing passenger drones to pass safely at any altitude, and shifting geo-fences protecting manned routes and high-value assets“.
That kind of dynamic use of airspace could lead to an explosion in unmanned transport systems – drones. It could mean “driverless flying taxis in our smart cities, and reduced accident response times through the use of driverless ambulances”, according to Garbett, while also making traveling to work a breeze by opening up rooftop drop-offs in built-up areas.
“The sky above us is an untapped sea of air that will have incredible value as the drone industry expands,” Garbett adds.
We live on a ‚blue planet‘, but we’re short of ‚blue gold‘. Droughts are on the increase, and where there’s drought, there are dams, and inevitable political conflict. However, the potential water wars of the future could be avoided if humans were able to so something that sounds like it should be simple: drink the sea.
Desalination plants remove salt and minerals from water to make it drinkable, but getting seawater into a plant is incredibly energy-intensive. Cue a fossil fuel-free idea from New Mexico-based wave energy company Atmocean, which involves wave-harnessing pumps to get seawater ashore more cost-effectively. Trialled off Peru a few years ago, the system also produces excess electricity. Atmocean
One day we could all be drinking seawater. Credit: Atmocean
From drinking water to irrigation, aquaculture and greening the deserts, advances like this in desalination technology could make a massive difference. The creation of micro-filtration using graphene sieves should also allow so-called ‚toilet to tap‘ technology to extract water from urine in homes. Gulp. micro-filtration
„We know that how we produce food now is unsustainable, so in a hundred years we’ll start to see a radically different way of feeding and farming,“ says Armstrong.
„Soon we’ll be able to have a meal that is nutritionally sufficient – it’s just about figuring out what the body needs, and listening to it,“ he says, adding that nano-materials and nano-technology that can live inside the body will become important.
It’s already happening; in the US, the Food and Drug Administration just approved a digital pill embedded with a sensor that send data to doctors detailing whether patients have taken their medication. The same could happen with food in humans and animals to introduce precision consumption. digital pill
„Are we going to start eating grasshoppers and drinking protein shakes?“ says Armstrong. „They may be the only options, but I definitely think that people will want to live without food preparation, so they can spend their lives doing other things.”
Artificial intelligence is so over-hyped right now that it’s obviously a reflection of people’s pathetic fears about ‚robot takeovers‘. But AI and computing power are destined to become the enablers for something 22nd society will need a lot of: energy.
Per capita energy consumption is already rising so fast that we’ll need a miracle to prevent humanity from entering a period of energy-starved stasis. Is that miracle nuclear fusion ? already rising so fast nuclear fusion
„Fusion will certainly be an essential part of the energy mix by 2100, providing between 15% and 35% of global energy,“ says Jonathan Carling, CEO of Tokamak Energy, which is now testing its third fusion reactor.
