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 Lodei. "Who would have thought that a house could have a better memory than your father".

Such comments will not be unusual as we enter the Third Millennium. Homes guaranteed for more than 20 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 refrigeration in the kitchen but the motor for that fridge (remember that irritating buzzing sound?) will be in the garage, where naturally, it uses the heat it produces to keep your car from freezing.

Of course, the home adjusts each room as you enter for your personal thermal comfort level, 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 -- the residence of the Knowledge Navigator, your own at-home-learning, Apple-directed computer. Personal identity sensors will adjust for you, your wife or the kids, depending on just who is in the room. If all appear simultaneously it will average, or follow any specific pre-programmed command for such occasions.

A major project will be spawned in the United States in 1992, the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. This new American "dream" will instigate a renaissance for our near and giant neighbor. 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? The project known as America, Part II, will have a dramatic effect on Canada, our way of life and the way we perceive learning. It will convert a substantial portion of time previously spent watching TV entertainment to a learning process, as a high 'interest factor' will be built into such shows, as is done now for commercials, sitcoms and the evening news. Learning will become increasingly visual as it becomes obvious that static and dry book knowledge cannot compete with dynamic visual information in an age of instant communication. Many 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 the grand scale will appear. Large enclosed stadiums and convention centres will offer high definition on huge flat/curved screens, giving the impression that viewers are actually physically-involved in the performance. Massive productions will be created at unbelievable cost for the one "live" production, recorded holographically, of course. Such shows will be relayed, via satellite or more likely fibre optic cables, to world centres for presentation in large areas to huge audiences willing to pay $100 or more per viewing (About the same price as the good seats for the opera Aida to be staged in Vancouver's domed stadium April 27 & 29, 1989). "Nostalgia" theatres will continue to be supported by the older, more conventional segment of society, just like they are today. They will be accepted as the visual museums of yesterday.

Obviously, those who live in smart house won't put up with a dumb car. Many homes will have built-in natural gas & electric recharging units for "smart cars". Well before the end of the 20th century most cars will have microwave ovens next to the glove compartment. New "Heat & Eat" packaged foods will be sold at public natural gas/ electric recharging service stations. Most will carry the Campbell's Soup label as their research, underway since 1988 will give them an 'out front' image. Such cars will contain sensors that keep us just 25 feet behind the car ahead. The car will "know" from other sensors further along on the highway, and will always be informed of obstacles or slowing traffic that will require gradual braking. Such sensors will standardize traffic flow thus permitting a 50 percent increase in the number of cars on the road with fewer traffic jams than today. DPV (dashboard projected video) will allow the driver to read all speed and other instruments without taking his or her eyes off the road. Permanently installed low cost phone s will serve as a back-up to your personal implanted Forum phone. This will the fourth generation of the compact cordless phone introduced in Britain in March 1989. Even then it only weighed four oz., fits into your shirt or blouse pocket, costs but one-tenth the price of a cellular phone with just one-quarter the operating costs. Computer, fax and satellite-delivered navigation signals will all be possible from 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 already working on a process to convert atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) into methanol for use in cars. Others, 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 Seventies and Eighties. Dresses interwoven with fibre optic cables will "light up" or "glow" sending out pulses that beat with the music played. 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 convert to 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. People, their minds and their clothing will become more "alive".

As change becomes so pervasive that even the densest people notice, it will also become apparent that unless one wishes to turn "techno-peasant" (the Third Millinneum's match for "drop out" in the Sixties), continuous learning, for which workers will be paid, will take up at least one day a week and will take place mainly at home. Life in the "crystal lane" (it will makes the industrial age "fast lane" look like "geriatric alley"). this, in turn will result in a rapid growth in monastic orders, based only on the same tenats 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 tranquility. And, as in the Middle Ages more men than women will follow that path. Women are more adaptable to the future than men and this will show up in their increased influence and affluence by the year 2000.

Research already indicates that a sizeable percentage of the population finds that receptivity to new types of foods and cooking processes increases their adaptibility to change. The world interchange of various ethnic groups, new cooking methods but primarily astounding new "crops" produced via bio-tech engineering will accelerate this change. This will include cherries and oranges for examples grown without trees in vats. The Escagen Corporation in California is working on this now and have already succeeded in producing true vanilla flavour, previously only available from an orchid in Madagascar, in this fashion. A food "explosion" during the Nineties will appear even more astounding than the consumer electronics "explosion" of the Eighties. Most of these, as yet unknown because they haven't been "invented" as yet (just like jet planes, television, computers and satellites were not "invented" or even dreampt about in the early days of the Industrial Revolution) will be created by the new science of bio-technology. No doubt, some country will come out with "new people", as well. This science will bo so controversial during the years ahead, that it will put the abortion issue so far back on the rear burner it will never be heard from again!

By the year 2001 the planet will be "alive". The billions of human brain cells in each one of us, connected via computer and fibre optic cable, will be exchanging information at femto-second speeds around the globe and at relatively inexpensive rates. This will accentuate even to a higher degree the feeling of "interconnectiveness" between 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 diseminating all types of media via light instead of electricity, will make past advances as in transportation, were we moved from covered wagons to jet planes appear slow.

Perhaps the most controversial of all the developments now underway is that of biotechnology. In January of 1989 the U.S. Government approved genetic manipulation on humans. Both the approval of and the potential restriction will have vast consequences for those countries that approve or disapprove of such practices. It will basically mean the redesigning of the human body. Already, perhaps irretrievable steps have been taken that will, eventually, result, in us having set the course to design our own successors.

Those that fight the process stand to lose incredible benefits. Those that support the process could unleash potentially hideous results. It will be the current test of man's intelligence to find a middle path.

As the Chinese character for "chaos" reads to them as "opportunity" so too does their saying in regards to luck and disaster: "We live in interesting times".

The future is, as I like to point out, much like travelling to any destination: you really don't know just what it will be like -until you arrive.

* * *

< previous | chapter index | next >
back to Main Chapter Listing
back to Home Page