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200 Futures for 2020
"Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want. The public does not know what is possible, but we do. So instead of doing a lot of market research, we refine our thinking on a product and its use and try to create a market for it by educating and communicating with the public"
Sony Corporation, Predicting The Future

"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

  1. Global electronic currency in use
  2. Paper and coins largely replaced by electronic cash
  3. Paper cash used mainly for black market
  4. Virtual companies dominant
  5. AI models used extensively in business management
  6. Purely electronic companies exist - minimal human involvement
  7. Universal monitoring of business transactions

Devices

  1. Self recovering multiprocessor systems
  2. Blue semiconductor lasers
  3. 3D VLSI with at least 10 layers of devices
  4. Optical inter-chip connection
  5. Electronics with <10 nm line spacing
  6. Optical ICs: optical devices & wave guides on SC substrate
  7. Integrated logic devices with switching speed < 1ps
  8. Digital optical binary logic using phase information
  9. Three terminal super conductive devices
  10. Quantum effect interferometer for flux measurement
  11. High performance non linear optical 3rd order devices
  12. Super lattice 2D or 3D controlled semiconductor devices
  13. x-ray free electron lasers with few dozen angstroms wavelength
  14. Self organising adaptive integrated circuits
  15. Continuous sheet production of LSI semiconductor substrate

Education & Knowledge Pursuit

  1. Life long learning is the norm
  2. Distance learning widespread - virtual universities
  3. Expert systems surpass human learning and logic abilities
  4. Real time language translation for print and voice
  5. Broadband networked?electronic libraries
  6. Natural language home information retrieval and interaction
  7. Very intelligent knowledge pursuit and consultation
  8. Systems to understand text and drawings (eg patent information)
  9. Subliminal learning
  10. Machine use of human memorising, recognising, learning

Energy

  1. Cost of energy will be higher
  2. Cities and accommodation designed to be more efficient
  3. Solar cells with efficiency > 30%
  4. Multi layer solar cells with efficiency > 50%
  5. Large area amorphous solar cells with efficiency > 20%
  6. Conversion/storage of solar energy as biochemical energy
  7. Common use of solar cells for residential power supply
  8. Space solar power stations
  9. Water decomposition by sunlight

Environment

  1. Totally managed world environment
    Extensive large scale environmental engineering, including oceans, forests etc. Industry will be a part of the managed environment.
  2. More effective resource management
    Recycling, re-engineering and resource recovery will be more effectively used
  3. Extensive remote sensing use in environmental management
  4. Effective intervention in natural disasters
    Mitigation, control or prevention of floods, earthquakes and landslides
  5. World wide NIMBY problem for refugees, waste etc
  6. Widespread contamination (worse than Chernobyl) by a nuclear device
  7. Carbon dioxide fixation technologies for environment protection
  8. Deep underground cities
  9. Artificial precipitation induction
  10. Global environmental management corporations

Interfaces

  1. High quality A3 flat displays
  2. Colour video display with > 2000 x 2000 pixels
  3. Large, wall hung high definition colour displays
  4. Wide screen (>100 in) with contrast ratio of > 10:1
  5. Video walls, including living area use of VR (scenes)
  6. Electronic notebook, contrast = paper even after power off
  7. Video playback over network at 10 x normal speed
  8. Many people sharing a virtual space
  9. Positioning sound at any point in space
  10. 3D TV without need for special glasses
  11. Personal audio-visual interfaces well developed
  12. 3D video conferencing
  13. Computer link to biological sensory organs
  14. Use of cheap holograms to convey 3D images
  15. Full integration of processing, audio and video equipment

IT literacy

  1. Everyone in advanced nations computer literate
  2. IT literacy essential for any employment
  3. Widespread VR use for recreation and training

Machine input

  1. Highly integrated biosensors
  2. Speech dialling, with recognition in switch equipment
  3. Single chip multi-speaker-learning voice recognition
  4. Odour and flavour sensors comparable to human
  5. Tactile sensors comparable to human sensation
  6. No-contact identification of individuals
  7. Portable translation device for simple conversation
  8. Machine recognition of body language and gestures
  9. Hands in screen interface
  10. Biosensors capable of processing information

Materials

  1. Atomic customisation of materials
  2. Polymers with conductivity > copper at room temperature
  3. Material, refractive index variable by 0.1 in electric or magnetic field
  4. Intelligent materials with sensors, storage and effectors
  5. Smart skin for intelligent clothing and direct human repair
  6. Manufacture of long diamond fibres
  7. Use of polymer gels for muscles, bioreactors, information processing
  8. Membranes with active transport and receptors

Memory & Storage

  1. 1 TB memory chip
  2. Large capacity recording faster than 1Gb/s
  3. Hard x-ray holography
  4. Memory with access time of 1ns
  5. 100GB non volatile erasable RAM in few cm square
  6. Molecular memory with density of 1 TB/sq cm
  7. Retrieval from 1TB database within 10 seconds
  8. Optical storage media will be static, e.g. optical card
  9. Single storage medium usable for all forms of data
  10. Memory/storage density still a bottleneck for some applications
  11. Photochemical hole burning memory at 100GB per sq cm

Processing

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

Robotics

  1. Robots will be commonplace
    In home, factories, agriculture, building & construction, undersea, space, mining, hospitals and streets for repair, construction, maintenance, security, entertainment, companionship, care.
  2. Domestic robots will be small, specialised and attractive, e.g. cuddly
  3. Robotised space vehicles and facilities
  4. Totally automated factories commonplace
  5. Autonomous robots with environmental awareness sensors
  6. Intelligent robots for unmanned plants
  7. Anthropomorphic robots used for factory jobs
  8. Robots for almost any job in home or hospital
  9. Housework robots for cleaning, washing etc
  10. Artificial brains with ten thousand or more cells
  11. Robots for guiding blind people
  12. Self diagnostic self repairing robots

Security

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

Social

  1. Products of all kinds will be customised
  2. Infrastructures will be self monitoring, using smart materials and sensors.
  3. Factory manufactured housing will be the norm
  4. English still the global language
  5. Numerous world-wide virtual communities
  6. World-wide popular culture, regardless of government intervention
  7. On line voting
  8. Electronic shopping for many products will be the norm
  9. National decisions influenced by electronic referenda
  10. World population > 7.5 billion
  11. Average age in advanced nations will be 41
  12. Migration regulated by international law
  13. State pensions on a need only basis
  14. More recreation and leisure time in middle classes
  15. Still mass starvation in 3rd world
  16. Rise of secular substitutes for religion, such as network based groups
  17. Electronic newspaper to households
  18. Various forms of electronic addiction will be a big problem
  19. Replacement of people leads to anti-technology subculture
  20. Power will be held more by corporations than by countries
  21. Some cybernations will exist which have significant economic muscle
  22. Many people will have nationality of both geonation and cybernation
  23. 3rd world technology highly vulnerable to 1st world hackers

Space

  1. Orbiting space station well developed
  2. Regular manned missions to Mars
  3. Start of manned Mars laboratory construction
  4. Space planes in practical use
  5. Space factories for commercial production
  6. Moon base the size of small village

Switching

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

Transmission

  1. Global broadband fibre based network
  2. Audio transmission at 2.4kb/s, quality = analogue telephony
  3. Multiple channels of >100Gbit/s/ on single fibre
  4. Tb/s on optical fibres over long distance
  5. Light detection sensitivity exceeding shot noise limit
  6. Network will still be a significant bottleneck for some services
  7. New mechanisms for communication discovered
  8. Laser interferometer detection of gravitational waves

Transport

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

References

1) 'Future technology in Japan toward the year 2020', by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy/Science and Technology Agency, The Institute for Future Technology

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

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