How Technology Will Affect Our Lives in Twenty Years to come

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:06:03 +0000

By Stanely Mwiinga

TECHNOLOGY is constantly advancing and changing very fast. Most of the movies we watched in the past predicting the future like the 1995 hit movie Back To The Future which made some predictions about life in 2015, of which most of the predictions actually came to reality.

Making predictions about future technology is both fun and scary at the same time because in just a few decades we have gone from telephones to cellular devices that offer all of the world’s information at our fingertips, with Advanced communication means such as Facebook, twitter which have replaced postal mailings, Cameras have gone digital and powerful picture quality, the cameras that where worth studio time are now in the palm of our hands through our high definition cellphones.

We can listen to our favourite songs anytime anywhere without buying a cassette or CD but just going online and stream or download.

However, these future predictions that will make are there to help any person out there, be it an investor or any business leaders to make better strategic plans for the future.

So with intensive research, we bring you technologies that will help change the course of history in a few years to come.

Robots could start thinking like humans

We have seen cyborgs in movies; well this might actually come to reality soon, these Machines could start thinking like humans as early as 2025 says Ian Pearson, , a futurist with an 85 percent accuracy record  said he thinks it’s very feasible that computers could gain consciousness by 2025, perhaps even earlier in 2020.

Pearson said even though he thinks the technology will be ready, he predicts government regulations will prevent most people from using it. Google has already obtained a patent on robot personalities, reminiscent of the ‘Genuine People Personalities’ of robots in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Owners could have a personality automatically chosen to match their needs, or select one based on a fictional character or even a loved one.

Pearson said If we can link people’s brains to computers by 2045, then we could use similar technology to turn people into part-machine, part-human. “I don’t think it’s politically possible anytime soon,” he said but if happens”That could be the beginning of the end, really.”

 Self-Driving Cars

Imagine a world without physical drivers but just autonomous cars, well that is no longer a prediction because self-driving cars are already being tested now, Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 1.25 million people die from car-related injuries per year therefore having autonomous cars will be safer and Cars will communicate with one another to avoid accidents and traffic jams while the owners are busy on cellphones or laptops.

Autonomous cars will appear for the public around 2020, which will even be controlled by different gadgets such as using your mobile device to instruct your car to come to your location or to take you to any destination, meaning our children soon will not require a driver’s licence. Business people such as taxi drivers, driving schools and other car dealers should start planning ahead or else their businesses will go down.

Computerised Medicine

We go to hospitals to seek medical help from experienced trained personals, but imagine having a diagnosing machine at home that helps you make informed medical decisions; Watches and wearable devices are already helping many people at monitoring heart rate and how many calories they burn when exercising,.Computers are becoming increasingly effective at diagnosing disease.

An artificial intelligence system recently diagnosed a rare disease that human doctors failed to diagnose by finding hidden patterns in 20 million cancer records.

Other software will enable users to just type in what they are feeling and it could predict the problem and a possible solution. Smart watches are now able to tell you when your stress levels are rising, what time you need to eat and the best food choice at that time for optimal health. With all these advancements, we would have few people in future going for medical checkups because those will be done home, hospitals will be for serious ailments or conditions.

No lying

In this edge of technology which seems to be both a blessing and a curse, lies are on the rise, many of us use these gadgets to lie, the other day I was on a bus and I overhead a woman lying about her fake location which made everyone laugh, well this might be a thing of the past because already there is an app called “moodies” which can tell in which mood you are in.

By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying or telling the truth. That would mean husbands and wives would be in a tight squeeze when being asked questions because if you lie the system would detect based on your facial expressions, imagine politicians debating and there is an app which shows whether they are telling the truth or not, be it a job interview. People would learn to tell the truth.

Clean Energy

We are very hopeful that very soon we will have clean energy For example; in Japan they are already using electric cars with more electric charging stations than gas stations.

By 2020 Electric cars might go global. There will be less noise in the cities due to silent cars running on electricity, already solar production is on the increase therefore electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean.

Drones and Flying Cars

Dr. Emmet Brown once said “Where we’re going we don’t need… roads.”

because drones are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications. Flying cars and aeroplanes will be significantly more affordable and convenient therefore there will be no need for pilots to control these airplanes, just like self-driving cars, all you need is to feed it with the location, seatback, relax and it will take you to your desired location.

Cryptocurrencies

Imagine a world without physical money. A Cryptocurrency is digital-only currency designed to work as a medium of exchange, considered as a better monetary system because of how it operates.

It would mean that there would be nothing like changing currency to another but just one form of worldwide currency (digital Coin) which is meant to be a self-stabilizing economy. and hopefully, it will help people to conduct business more easily.

High-Quality Online Education

Most colleges and university tuition fees are very high now, but very soon that would be a thing of the past because once people awaken and realise the advantages of online education, most schools and colleges will have few people.

Back in the days people used rely on books in the library to research and learn but now anyone with a smartphone can instantly access Wikipedia. You can learn from a community of millions of people such as Stack Overflow. YouTube has millions of tutorials and lecturers with top professors and universities who teach for free.

The quality of online education is getting better all the time, online educational sites such as MIT offers over 2000 courses, every child can use Khan Academy for everything a child needs to learn at school.

Virtual reality could replace textbooks during the next decade.

“You could take students to an environment in the past and show them what was happening, like watching a battle taking place,” Pearson said. “You can explain that sort of thing more easily if they can see it happening, than if you are looking at a textbook.”

Google’s Expedition App already lets students take trips in VR to places like the Great Barrier Reef. The app first launched in beta form in September.

 Less time spent on the counter

A few years ago we went to the grocery stores and the attendants would  manually calculate for you into a cash register but now we have checkers where you simply run a bar code over a scanner  but very soon that would be in the past because there will be no checkout lines but scanners will scan any items you leave the store with and automatically debit your financial account.

Fewer Jobs

We covered a full article on this; most Jobs about 70-80% will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs especially in the technology sector, already In the US; young start up lawyers already have problems getting jobs because of the IBM Watson which helps people get legal advice within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.

The Watson already helps nurses in diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses.  Most Insurance companies will go down especially with car insurance business mode which might be phased out because most cars will be autonomous and that would mean we would have less to zero percentage of road traffic accidents.

3D Printing

By 2027, most of the things being produced will be produced using 3D printers. Already in china a company named Winsun said it built 10 3D-printed houses in one day, each costing about K5, 000.

By next year most new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities which would mean you can 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

For comments and contributions or if you have a question or topic you would like us to cover in this column, email me on slickmedia6@gmail.com.