"Prediction is difficult, especially of the future"
Neils Bohr

Twenty-five years ago there were no personal computers, laptop machines, liquid crystal displays, digital wrist watches or pocket calculators. Most households didn?t have a telephone or a colour television set and tape recorders still used open reels. Washing machines, cars and other domestic appliances contained no intelligence and there were no camcorders or VHS players. However, man had been to the moon and the space race, plus the cold war, had promoted the creation of integrated circuit technology. Since that time, our electronic based industries and society have seen a doubling in capability every one or two years across a broad range of technologies. Today, most people in the first world have a telephone, at least one colour television, a VHS player, camcorder, personal computer and any other item they desire. All of these have become consumer items.

The intelligence now available in a fairly average car is greater than that embedded into the first lunar lander! In fact, there are now wrist watches that have more computing capability than some main frame computers of twenty-five years ago. Given this rate of progress, we can expect to see somewhere between a thousand and a million-fold increase in electronic capability in the next twenty-five years. That is, the personal computer on your desk (or its derivatives) will be about a million times more powerful in twenty-five years. Moreover, this raw electronic capability will become more pervasive as we see mechatronics (the combination of mechanical and electronic engineering) realise a range of new devices ranging from internal body parts for humans through to robotic and cybernetic entities.

Looking back over history, it is plain that predicting the future is extremely difficult and whilst PhDs in hindsight are in great supply, PhDs in foresight are extremely rare! Futurologists currently employ a combination of projection, extrapolation and pure guessology to create their visions of technology and society in the decades ahead. In this brief paper, we have used the same techniques augmented by a survey of reports and publications from organisations across the globe. The listing that follows therefore represents the combined wisdom and guesses of a multitude of organisations and people. We have also taken the insights and projections of our own team to temper and shape the listing of two hundred technologies we predict to be key features of our society and individual lives by the year 2020. In most cases, the single line descriptors are self evident and sufficient, but we have chosen to amplify some items to add further depth and explanation.

Our purpose in compiling this list was to create a concise and, hopefully, visionary document that condenses a wide range of views from a large number of organisations. It is intended to act as a catalyst to thought and discussion for others pursuing a future vision. Experience of compiling, debating and presenting the material that follows has been fun - we hope that you enjoy a similar experience as you read and contemplate our efforts.

A technology calendar is appended to more graphically illustrate the progress of some of these technologies.

Biotechnology, health & medical

1. Effective management of the organic environment
   We will know the genomes of most plant and animal groups, so will be able to manage gene pools effectively, and also control their populations.
2. New engineered organisms used to produce chemicals
   Organisms will be designed for production of commodities, medicines and complex chemicals, and for waste disposal, agricultural processing and environmental management.
3. Widespread genetic intervention programs for animals and plants.
   Many genetic enhancement techniques will be applied to wild and domestic organisms, including pets.
4. Many new forms of plants and animals from genetic engineering
5. Custom foods for particular medical conditions will exist.
6. Genetic links of all diseases identified
   The important biochemical mechanisms and interactions with the environment will also be known for most diseases.
7. Genetic screening widely used
8. Genetic programs to enhance human well-being
   Beyond curing disease, we will see the enhancement of physical and mental abilities.
9. Genetic, chemical and physiological bases of human behaviour understood
   This will allow control of mental disorders. Brain and mind manipulation will allow control of emotions, learning, senses, memory and other psychological phenomena.
10. Full personal medical records stored on smart card
    Records will be highly comprehensive, with videos of operations, audio-visual interview records - complete life history on a smart card size device.
11. Individual's genome part of their medical record
12. More people will live into their 80s in good health
13. Many synthetic body parts available
14. Home (health) diagnostic systems, daily/real time check-up via radio
15. Home AI based elderly and handicapped support devices
16. Devices roaming within blood vessels under own power
17. Sensors directly connected to human sensory nerves. Also artificial nerves
18. Artificial senses, sensors directly stimulating nerves
19. Direct pleasure production
20. Prevention of cancer
21. Artificial ears, eyes, legs, lungs, hearts, pancreas, liver, kidneys, blood
22. Fine particle beam gene engineering

Business

23. Global electronic currency in use
24. Paper and coins largely replaced by electronic cash
25. Paper cash used mainly for black market
26. Virtual companies dominant
27. AI models used extensively in business management
28. Purely electronic companies exist - minimal human involvement
29. Universal monitoring of business transactions

Devices

30. Self recovering multiprocessor systems
31. Blue semiconductor lasers
32. 3D VLSI with at least 10 layers of devices
33. Optical inter-chip connection
34. Electronics with <10 nm line spacing
35. Optical ICs: optical devices & wave guides on SC substrate
36. Integrated logic devices with switching speed < 1ps
37. Digital optical binary logic using phase information
38. Three terminal super conductive devices
39. Quantum effect interferometer for flux measurement
40. High performance non linear optical 3rd order devices
41. Super lattice 2D or 3D controlled semiconductor devices
42. x-ray free electron lasers with few dozen angstroms wavelength
43. Self organising adaptive integrated circuits
44. Continuous sheet production of LSI semiconductor substrate

Education & Knowledge Pursuit

45. Life long learning is the norm
46. Distance learning widespread - virtual universities
47. Expert systems surpass human learning and logic abilities
48. Real time language translation for print and voice
49. Broadband networked?electronic libraries
50. Natural language home information retrieval and interaction
51. Very intelligent knowledge pursuit and consultation
52. Systems to understand text and drawings (eg patent information)
53. Subliminal learning
54. Machine use of human memorising, recognising, learning

Energy

55. Cost of energy will be higher
56. Cities and accommodation designed to be more efficient
57. Solar cells with efficiency > 30%
58. Multi layer solar cells with efficiency > 50%
59. Large area amorphous solar cells with efficiency > 20%
60. Conversion/storage of solar energy as biochemical energy
61. Common use of solar cells for residential power supply
62. Space solar power stations
63. Water decomposition by sunlight

Environment

64. Totally managed world environment
    Extensive large scale environmental engineering, including oceans, forests etc. Industry will be a part of the managed environment.
65. More effective resource management
    Recycling, re-engineering and resource recovery will be more effectively used
66. Extensive remote sensing use in environmental management
67. Effective intervention in natural disasters
    Mitigation, control or prevention of floods, earthquakes and landslides
68. World wide NIMBY problem for refugees, waste etc
69. Widespread contamination (worse than Chernobyl) by a nuclear device
70. Carbon dioxide fixation technologies for environment protection
71. Deep underground cities
72. Artificial precipitation induction
73. Global environmental management corporations

Interfaces

74. High quality A3 flat displays
75. Colour video display with > 2000 x 2000 pixels
76. Large, wall hung high definition colour displays
77. Wide screen (>100 in) with contrast ratio of > 10:1
78. Video walls, including living area use of VR (scenes)
79. Electronic notebook, contrast = paper even after power off
80. Video playback over network at 10 x normal speed
81. Many people sharing a virtual space
82. Positioning sound at any point in space
83. 3D TV without need for special glasses
84. Personal audio-visual interfaces well developed
85. 3D video conferencing
86. Computer link to biological sensory organs
87. Use of cheap holograms to convey 3D images
88. Full integration of processing, audio and video equipment

IT literacy

89. Everyone in advanced nations computer literate
90. IT literacy essential for any employment
91. Widespread VR use for recreation and training

Machine input

92. Highly integrated biosensors
93. Speech dialling, with recognition in switch equipment
94. Single chip multi-speaker-learning voice recognition
95. Odour and flavour sensors comparable to human
96. Tactile sensors comparable to human sensation
97. No-contact identification of individuals
98. Portable translation device for simple conversation
99. Machine recognition of body language and gestures
100. Hands in screen interface
101. Biosensors capable of processing information

Materials

102. Atomic customisation of materials
103. Polymers with conductivity > copper at room temperature
104. Material, refractive index variable by 0.1 in electric or magnetic field
105. Intelligent materials with sensors, storage and effectors
106. Smart skin for intelligent clothing and direct human repair
107. Manufacture of long diamond fibres
108. Use of polymer gels for muscles, bioreactors, information processing
109. Membranes with active transport and receptors

Memory & Storage

110. 1 TB memory chip
111. Large capacity recording faster than 1Gb/s
112. Hard x-ray holography
113. Memory with access time of 1ns
114. 100GB non volatile erasable RAM in few cm square
115. Molecular memory with density of 1 TB/sq cm
116. Retrieval from 1TB database within 10 seconds
117. Optical storage media will be static, e.g. optical card
118. Single storage medium usable for all forms of data
119. Memory/storage density still a bottleneck for some applications
120. Photochemical hole burning memory at 100GB per sq cm

Processing

121. Very widespread embedded intelligence
     Everything will use processors, sensors, and smart materials sensitive to heat, light, sound and electromagnetic fields where appropriate.
122. Computers with speed exceeding 10 TFLOPS
123. 3D OEICs for image processing > 500 x 500 pixels
124. Behaviour alarms based on human mistake mechanisms
125. Extensive use of analog and neural processing
126. AI technology imitating thinking processes of the brain
127. Optical neuro-computers
128. Parallel computer with 1000 million processors
129. PCs with clock rate > 100 GHz
130. Computers will write much of their own software
131. Processing speed still a bottleneck for some applications

Robotics

132. Robots will be commonplace
     In home, factories, agriculture, building & construction, undersea, space, mining, hospitals and streets for repair, construction, maintenance, security, entertainment, companionship, care.
133. Domestic robots will be small, specialised and attractive, e.g. cuddly
134. Robotised space vehicles and facilities
135. Totally automated factories commonplace
136. Autonomous robots with environmental awareness sensors
137. Intelligent robots for unmanned plants
138. Anthropomorphic robots used for factory jobs
139. Robots for almost any job in home or hospital
140. Housework robots for cleaning, washing etc
141. Artificial brains with ten thousand or more cells
142. Robots for guiding blind people
143. Self diagnostic self repairing robots

Security

144. Universal ID cards
     May include nationality, medical history, education, employment record, credit status, social security, affiliations, passport, life history etc.
145. Crime and terrorism will mainly be computer based
146. Viruses based on advanced AI will evolve and adapt
147. Replacement of card based ID by other methods
148. Almost all transmissions will be encrypted
149. Fire detection by odour or vibration
150. Fire fighting robots that can find and rescue people

Social

151. Products of all kinds will be customised
152. Infrastructures will be self monitoring, using smart materials and sensors.
153. Factory manufactured housing will be the norm
154. English still the global language
155. Numerous world-wide virtual communities
156. World-wide popular culture, regardless of government intervention
157. On line voting
158. Electronic shopping for many products will be the norm
159. National decisions influenced by electronic referenda
160. World population > 7.5 billion
161. Average age in advanced nations will be 41
162. Migration regulated by international law
163. State pensions on a need only basis
164. More recreation and leisure time in middle classes
165. Still mass starvation in 3rd world
166. Rise of secular substitutes for religion, such as network based groups
167. Electronic newspaper to households
168. Various forms of electronic addiction will be a big problem
169. Replacement of people leads to anti-technology subculture
170. Power will be held more by corporations than by countries
171. Some cybernations will exist which have significant economic muscle
172. Many people will have nationality of both geonation and cybernation
173. 3rd world technology highly vulnerable to 1st world hackers

Space

174. Orbiting space station well developed
175. Regular manned missions to Mars
176. Start of manned Mars laboratory construction
177. Space planes in practical use
178. Space factories for commercial production
179. Moon base the size of small village

Switching

180. Electronic ATM switches largely obsolete & replaced by photonic versions
181. Unified personal numbering for everything
182. All optic integrated logic, switching below 1 ps
183. Optical switches for 10,000 interactive video (3D/VR terminals)

Transmission

184. Global broadband fibre based network
185. Audio transmission at 2.4kb/s, quality = analogue telephony
186. Multiple channels of >100Gbit/s/ on single fibre
187. Tb/s on optical fibres over long distance
188. Light detection sensitivity exceeding shot noise limit
189. Network will still be a significant bottleneck for some services
190. New mechanisms for communication discovered
191. Laser interferometer detection of gravitational waves

Transport

192. Interactive vehicle highway systems
193. Use of fibre gyros in car navigation
194. Various traffic information systems in use
     These will help with navigation, traffic control, ETA, dynamic routing, monitoring, taxation and crime prevention/detection
195. Energy provided by hydrogen fuel cells and/or solar power
196. Nuclear propulsion systems for various transport types
197. Ships with super conductive electromagnetic thrust
198. Fully automatic ships able to navigate and dock automatically
199. Passenger planes with speed beyond Mach 4 and >300 capacity
200. Super conductive magnetic levitation railways at 500km/h

References

2) 'The Highly Probable Future, 83 assumptions about the year 2025, Joseph Coates, extracting from Project 2025, Anticipating Developments in Science and Technology and Their Implications for the Corporation', sponsored by 18 large corporations, The Futurist, July/August 1994

3) Fortune, September 5 1994 Calendars