Something that I realized this year is that I like pondering the future -- looking way out and imagining how the world will be different, what things people will be doing, etc. This probably stems from my interest in technology.
Smart CarsJune 4
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that in the coming decades, cars are quite likely to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of technology. Although, perhaps cars have always been something that makes technological progress evident -- I was looking at a 1970s Toyota the other day and the interior was so ancient looking.
But what's coming isn't about plusher interiors, it's about the infusion of connectedness and software. Much of these things have caught my imagination over the years, but in 2010 these things are seeming ever more certain.
  | Cars that talk to infrastructure and to each other. For example, cars that talk to the traffic systems, such as stop lights. This will make the behavior of stop lights dependent on traffic, and at some point will also have an effect on the behavior of the car. ie. If you drive at a certain speed, the light will be green, and so you won't have to stop and start. Or not having to physically pay at a gas station or parking garage. I just watched an Audio video about these things and, wow, it just makes so much sense. Cars that automatically call 911 when you've been in an accident. (Does that exist already?) Cars that automatically stop if you try and run a red light, or perhaps even a stop sign. And maybe in that case, your car automatically informs the car behind that an evasive stop is about to occur... the cars could even negotiate information about their weight and stopping ability to predict whether the vehicle behind will be able to stop fast enough not to cream the vehicle in front... think trucks behind a car. And likewise, vehicles driving perpendicular to the offending vehicle being warned of a possible collision and thus being slowed down enough to avoid the incident, or being stopped. |
| Driving assistance: We're already seeing some parking assistance, but this is only the beginning. Software to detect children behind the vehicle and prevent you from running them over. Or even the tricycle. Software to help you stop ASAP if a pedestrian walks out in front of you. As mentioned, automatically stopping if you try and run a red light. And yes, at some point, being able to take your hands off of the wheel. That one still feels a bit sci-fi, but I highly expect that will happen. |
| Software to notify. For example, software to detect when you are going to run out of gas and route you to the nearest (or perhaps in some cases only possible) gas station, or to tell you if it is impossible to get to any refueling station. Software to monitor the health and performance of the vehicle and report any abnormalities to you and/or your mechanic. Software to monitor how the tires are interacting with the road and to notify you of danger. Knowing what comes up ahead on the road and, again, to notify you of danger. |
| Be able to play any song in your music collection without having to transfer it to the car, or even having to have your cell phone present. Or if you have a subscription, play any song ever written, by voice command. |
| Directions: Say where you want to go and get directions. |
| UI: The main thing being voice UI that works well and is flexible. The infusion of linguistic technology analogous to Wolfram|Alpha for querying and/or commanding. "How much further can I drive?", "What's my current ETA?", "Open the trunk", "Take me home", "Take me to the nearest Tim Hortons", "Where is Eli"? |
| High speed Internet built into the car -- other devices could tap into this as if the car were a router. |
| In-car entertainment: Internet/TV in the car, HD audio/video. |
| Energy sources: Electric vehicles, possibly hydrogen vehicles. |
| Energy transfer: Plug in cars, possibly even wireless charging or equivalent. |
| Efficiency: If a car rarely has to stop at red lights, recaptures energy when it does have to stop, doesn't use energy when it is stopped, drives at the optimum speed, is very aerodynamic, drives smart in terms of not accelerating too quickly, not touching the brakes unnecessarily, and all of this paired with the improvements of efficiency that come from engine and fuel technology, I expect that the cars a few decades from now will make the SUVs of today look completely insane. |
| Safety: I think the biggest thing here, as mentioned, is the infusion of intelligent overrides based on sensing of the environment as well as communication with infrastructure and other cars. I wonder what percentage of fatal or serious car accidents could be prevented by this type of thing? I'm guessing the large majority. Imagine living in a world where the number of car accident deaths is 1/10th what it is today... |
| The little things: In today's world, it would be USB ports for charging devices. |
| By air: And of course, as I've pondered before, getting there by air. Driving 5-10 km to the nearest runway, putting it on auto pilot, and having your car extend its wings, accelerate down the runway, fly autonomously to the destination runway communicating with ATC automatically, and then coming to a stop for you to takeover control and drive to your destination... admittedly, this one is probably the most futuristic sci-fi, yes, but I think it just might happen this century. |
Adding all of these things up, the car feels like a very different beast than it is in 2010... still a car, but a much smarter, more connected, car. And while I can imagine the various pieces, it's difficult to imagine just what it would be like to sit down in one of these things and go for a drive. Give it 30 years and we'll know...
Traffic AnalysisJune 4
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/06/04/0024211/Traffic-Flow-Algorithm-Can-Reduce-Fuel-ConsumptionI love this kind of thing...
Looking waaay back at 2010May 21
It's fun to think about the future. A slight twist on that is looking at the present as if it was many years ago... one way to do that is to think about problems/challenges/annoyances that you think there should be solutions to. Let's pretend it's 2060. I would be 80 years old.
Remember 2010?
Cars. Everyone was still driving these antiquated things that burned gasoline, which was derived from oil. And there was no such thing as a vehicle being able to drive itself back then... that lead to far more accidents. For instance, people would fall asleep at the wheel while driving late at night and their car would just drive off the road.
The Internet. Back in 2010, the Internet was still in its infancy, and the data rates weren't anything like they are today. You couldn't even really watch a movie over the Internet, you had to download it over the course of a few hours. And back then, the Internet was connected to your computer, but it wasn't connected to your TV. Today the Internet is an essential part of our society, but back then there were other ways to do most things, and some people didn't have Internet connectivity at all. There were separate wires that came into the home to supply video to your TV and yet another wire for you to make voice calls.
In 2010, you could make these video calls they called "Skype", but if you've ever seen a recording of what they were like, it's abysmal. The video is highly compressed with a low frame rate and the audio was hard to hear. Most times people would still talk to each other over phones that only had audio.
Storage. Back in 2010, people actually thought 1 terabyte was a lot of memory. Isn't that crazy? Today a cheap device has many many thousands of times that much memory, but back then people would buy these 1 TB hard drives and think they were really big. Memory cards back then were so small that you could only fit a few hundred high quality pictures on them.
Trying to manage your digital information was challenging. You could buy music on the Internet, but then it was difficult to move that music around. If you wanted it on your phone, you'd have to physically plug it in and then wait for it to download, and if you bought the music in one format, then it might be incompatible with other devices. Same with movies. It was a frustrating age to live in.
In 2010, it was still extremely special to go to space. There were literally only a few hundred people in the entirety of history that had gone to space, nothing like today. A few companies were working on commercializing space, but it was still something that people looked to the future to. And tickets were being sold in advance for upwards of $200,000, which might not sound all that high today, but back then it was the cost of a house!
It is also hard to imagine what medical technology was like. Medical imaging was still very poor, and it was very expensive and special to get what they called an "MRI", which was a very low quality 2D image, and so sometimes people would be almost dead with cancer before their doctor would even know! Beyond cancer, many of the things today that are detectable and fixable before they become an issue would develop into life threatening illnesses. And healthcare in the US was still something that millions of people didn't have adequate access to. That was before some of the major reforms that have occurred in the past decades.
Most of what we know about the brain we've learned in the last 30 years, and although we still have a very long way to go, it's incredible to compare what we know now with what we knew in 2010. Likewise for DNA and many other facets of biology.
But some things remain... and of course, more than a few things are worse. There are major challenges we face today that people back in 2010 didn't have to worry about. Despite the challenges many years ago, some people consider them to be the golden years.
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