The Everyday World

                        The Shape of Things to Come


       "Ceramic-home living certainly makes life a lot easier than when your
     dad and I moved into our first home," said Ms. Nanton to her daughter.
     "Who would have thought that a house could be smarter and have a better
     memory than your father!"

       Farfetched? Such comments may not be unusual as we enter the third
     millennium. Homes guaranteed for more than twenty years, with no fire
     insurance (because they are made of silicon and limestone) and carrying a
     lower mortgage rate (because the financial lending institution can't
     lose) will be common. These homes will automatically equalize humidity
     levels with the outside air when you take a shower. They will turn up the
     heat an hour before a cold wave hits your district. Such homes will still
     have the refrigerator in the kitchen but the motor for that fridge (and
     that irritating buzzing sound) will be in the garage, where the heat it
     produces will keep your car from freezing.

       Of course the house will adjust each room as you enter for your thermal
     comfort level. Personal identity sensors will adjust to you, your
     partner, or the kids, depending on who is in the room. If everyone
     appears simultaneously, it will average or follow any specific
     pre-programmed command for such occasions. And the house automatically
     turns on your personal computer/robot education/information/
     entertainment holographic image projector in what will quickly grow to be
     the favorite room in the house. This is the residence of the knowledge
     navigator, your at-home-learning computer directed by an Apple-developed
     system that "understands" how you think.

       A project known as America, Part II will have a dramatic effect on our
     way of life and the way we perceive learning. The philosophy behind it
     says: if we can throw a switch for electricity and turn a tap for water,
     why can't we just hit a button for knowledge? A substantial portion of
     time previously spent watching TV entertainment will be converted into a
     learning process by building a high "interest factor" into shows, as is
     done now for commercials, sitcoms, and the evening news. Learning will
     become increasingly visual as it becomes obvious that static book
     knowledge cannot compete with dynamic visual information. Many people
     will have difficulty accepting this change: old habits are not
     automatically eradicated when the rules of life change suddenly.

       New forms of visual entertainment on a grand scale will appear. Large
     enclosed stadiums and convention centers will offer high-definition
     images on huge flat/curved screens, giving the impression that viewers
     are physically involved in the performance. (The beginnings of such
     developments are already evident in places like the SkyDome in Toronto,
     with its Jumbotron scoreboard.) Massive productions will be created at
     unbelievable cost for the one live production, recorded holographically.
     Such shows will be relayed via satellite, or more likely fiber-optic
     cables, to world centers for presentation in large arenas to huge
     audiences willing to pay $100 or more per viewing. "Nostalgia" theaters
     will continue to be supported by the older, more conventional segment of
     society, just as they are today. They will be accepted as the visual
     museums of yesterday.

       Obviously, those who live in smart houses won't put up with dumb cars.
     Many homes will have built-in natural gas and electric recharging units
     for "smart cars." Before the end of the twentieth century most cars will
     have microwave ovens next to the glove compartment. New "Heat & Eat"
     packaged foods will be sold at natural gas/electric recharging service
     stations. Most will carry the Campbell's Soup label as Campbell's
     research, under way since 1988, will give the company an "out front"
     image. Such cars will also contain sensors that keep us just twenty-five
     feet behind the car ahead. From other sensors farther along on the
     highway, the car will "know" of obstacles or slowing traffic that will
     require gradual braking. Such sensors will standardize traffic flow,
     permitting a 50 percent increase in the number of cars on the road with
     fewer traffic jams than today. Dashboard-projected video (DPV) will allow
     the driver to read all speed and other instruments without taking his or
     her eyes off the road.

       Permanently installed low-cost phones will serve as a back-up to your
     personal, wrist-implanted phone. This will be the fourth generation of
     the compact cordless phone introduced in Britain in 1989. Even then it
     weighed only four ounces. It fits into your shirt or blouse pocket and
     costs only one-tenth the price of a cellular phone with just one-quarter
     the operating costs. Motorola is now manufacturing its Silverlink 2000
     phone at the rate of 5,000 a week in Malaysia and selling it at the rate
     of 1,000 a week in Hong Kong and Singapore alone. Computer, fax, and
     satellite-delivered navigation signals will all be standard in any car
     built after 2001.

       It is possible that future cars will run on air. One U.S. institute,
     Solar Energy Research of Golden, Colorado, is working on a process to
     convert atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into methanol for use in cars.
     Other companies, like Delco Electronics, are working on "self-driving
     cars" that would incorporate such features as obstacle detection,
     collision-avoidance, and radar-controlled steering.

       Clothing will become even more diversified than during the 1980s and
     1990s. Dress fabric interwoven with fiber-optic cables will light up or
     glow. A person's phone number might be included in a fabric's weft and
     warp so that it could be flashed to a desired partner yet remain barely
     visible to others in a crowd. Fabric that would appear loose and
     free-flowing could become tight and clinging upon command. This will be
     accomplished through a technique known as molecular shrinking in which an
     electrical current minimizes the area between molecules. The procedure is
     already used in some forms of metallic adjustable springs. Clothing
     designers will incorporate this and other advanced technologies into
     previously static fabric.

       Life in the "crystal lane" (it will make the Industrial Age "fast lane"
     look like geriatric alley) will result in a rapid growth in monastic
     orders, based on the same tenets that caused them to dominate so much of
     Europe during the Middle Ages. Some people, feeling that the new age has
     too much change for them, will seek sanctuary from change in such temples
     of tranquillity. As in the Middle Ages, more men than women will follow
     that path. Women are more adaptable than men, and this will show up in
     their increased influence and affluence.

       Research indicates that a sizable percentage of the population finds
     that receptivity to new types of foods and cooking processes increases
     adaptability to change. The world interchange of various ethnic groups,
     new cooking methods, and amazing new "crops" produced by biotechnology
     will accelerate this change. A food "explosion" during the late 1990s
     will appear even more astounding than the consumer electronics explosion
     of the 1980s. Most of these foods, as yet unknown because they haven't
     been invented (just as jet planes, television, computers, and satellites
     were not invented or even dreamed of in the early days of the Industrial
     Revolution), will be created by the new science of biotechnology. No
     doubt, some country will come out with "new people" as well.

       This science will be so controversial during the years ahead that it
     will put the abortion issue on the rear burner. In 1989 the U.S.
     government approved genetic manipulation research on humans. Both the
     approval and the potential restrictions on it will have vast consequences
     for those countries that approve or disapprove of such practices.
     Biotechnology will basically mean the redesigning of the human body.
     Already, perhaps irretrievable steps have been taken that will result in
     our designing our own successors. Those who fight the process stand to
     lose incredible benefits. Those who support the process could unleash
     potentially hideous results. It will be the test of human intelligence to
     find a middle path.

       By the year 2010 the planet will be "alive." The billions of human
     brain cells in each of us, connected via computer and fiber-optic cable,
     will be exchanging information at femtosecond speeds around the globe and
     at relatively inexpensive rates. This will accentuate the feeling of
     interconnectedness among all planetary dwellers. Some people, through
     such close electronic contact, will develop a sense of intimacy that
     could equate to a form of mental telepathy. Some younger children already
     report such feelings.

       Photonics, the new science of acquiring, storing, and disseminating all
     types of media via light instead of electricity, will find a wide range
     of applications. It will make past advances, such as those in
     transportation, where we moved from covered wagons to jet planes, seem
     leisurely.

       You can dread the future, or relish its challenges. The Chinese
     character for "chaos" also reads as "opportunity." The Chinese saying on
     luck and disaster presents another double meaning useful in describing
     the future: We live in interesting times.