Jim Baen's Universe

NonFiction articles

What I’ve Learned Interviewing Futurists

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Two years of asking people for their expectations about the future has radically changed my view of what is to come.

For decades I thought I had a pretty good notion of what the future might hold, certainly better than most people since I’ve been reading science fiction since I was in grade school, and have gone on to write several science fiction novels as an adult. But in hosting The Future And You I've listened to descriptions of trends that I had no idea were building all around me. I’ve heard of discoveries and innovations and areas of research I’d never expected. And I've listened to evidence in support of ideas that I’d previously thought too crazy to be true. Combing these many bits of data has painted for me a somewhat startling picture of the future.

Here are just a few of the conclusions I’ve come to.

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The changes we observe in our world will occur at an ever increasing rate. Not just change in the form of technological advancement, but all changes: social, economic, political, linguistic, you name it and it will change faster. This is because people will continue to be more and more connected. They will talk and share information and ideas more and more easily. And because of this, the changes which people bring about in every area of life will happen faster and faster.

Changes that would take ten years to occur today will be done in five years, then three years, then two, and eventually only one. The pace of life, and the sweep of changes, and the volatility of stock markets, will be overwhelming to some. These people will withdraw from society and seek refuge in quieter places of lower technology. But most will function at the more frantic pace; some will even thrive in it.

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We, and I mean every individual in every developed or developing country, will never again have as much privacy as we have today. From this point on into the future, at least for the next few decades, our privacy will shrink every year. And every year we will feel as though it has become invaded so much that it can't get any worse, and then the next year to our amazement it will get worse. And every little bit of privacy we lose, we will never get back.

This has nothing to do with our overprotective or paranoid governments spying on us; and has everything to do with the relentless progress of technology: cameras in cell phones, in public places, in every police car, and soon in ordinary eyeglasses. These will be increasingly popular, and the images they produce, increasingly accessible through networks—some through private networks and some through the internet.

Soon video cameras will be small enough to be glued onto the back of a bee or a housefly. You will find them in the electronics department at all the big stores. Teenaged boys all across America will release a fly camera into their neighbor’s house or the house of their girlfriend or the girl’s shower room at school.

Eventually the camera won't need the living fly to carry it through the air, and will instead use a robotic fly. Then it will go directly to where it is instructed, perhaps by joystick. And it will continue to shrink, eventually becoming too small to see or feel. Then it can be guided to travel under that woman's clothing who just happens to be walking by.

I suggest you enjoy the privacy you have today, because you won't have it for long, and you will never again have this much.

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Virtual worlds (sometimes called virtual reality) will become increasingly popular in direct proportion to how effectively they provide their users (or inhabitants) with a meaningful personal experience. The current limitations on this are: the power of home computers, the quality of the virtual world's programming, the power of the virtual world's computers, and the bandwidth available to the user and throughout the internet. Every one of these is improving at an exponential rate.

Eventually virtual worlds will look and feel and sound to their users as authentic as the natural world. For some it will be a world in which they are young and strong and beautiful, though in the real world they are old and frail and haggard. For others it will be a world in which they can walk and run, though in the real world they have no legs.

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Cell phones will merge with the internet. All popular forms of information technology will be accessible through cell phones and become completely portable. All TV shows, all radio stations, all newspapers, all video games, all commercially produced books, even encyclopedias and libraries. Any entertainment or information company that fails to make the transition to the internet, and therefore cell phones, will fade out of existence.

Books printed on paper will become like candles: decorative objects that we all love and give to one another as gifts but never actually rely upon for their original function.

As more visual entertainment becomes accessible through the cell phone, an optional screen worn as eyeglasses will gain popularity and become the dominant means of viewing TV and movies. This visual device will eventually be replaced