What will blow our minds in the *next* 30 years---2

“In 30 years, we could have our minds totally blown by what a high-energy planet would be like. if energy were clean, cheap and dense, we could lift everyone out of poverty, desalinate as much water as we need, incinerate trash completely so we’d have no waste and do many other amazing things limited only by our imaginations. We’d be able to leave large portions of the earth to nature and still live high quality, modern lives on an ecologically vibrant planet.

This isn’t inevitable though. It will take breakthroughs in energy technologies and major investments in scaling them up. Government, civil society and business  grade 9 titanium tubing will have to prioritize innovation and be realistic about the energy needs of 9 billion people living modern lives.”
Rachel Pritzker, president, Pritzker Innovation Fund

“I’m so astonished by the last 30 years that it’s hard to imagine what might blow our minds in the next 30. That’s how pervasive technology has become for many of us.

Nevertheless, if we agree that we (in the developed world) enjoy a richness of resources like:
– ever-greater storage and compression power
– ever tinier and more powerful chips
– a growing Internet of things (energy, lighting, cars, medical devices, quantified self devices for health)
– a proliferation of robotics applications

Then what *should* happen in the next 30 years is that this richness evolves and extends to places that today stumble along on 2G, dialup, or nothing at all. I’m optimistic about broadband over power lines and by balloon.

I know, though — shoulda, woulda, coulda, right? So I think that what will truly astonish me is if we humans bring ourselves to collectively care enough to *make technology pervasive and useful for everyone throughout the world in accordance with their needs and desires*.

What would be astonishing is if we can put aside excessive margins and corporate amenities to the degree it takes to do the world as a whole good.

I love what access to technology can do — I just want it to be evenly distributed. That would blow my mind, and I bet I’m not alone.”
Karen Wickre, editorial director, Twitter

“If the past 30 years were about the internet and the world wide web, the next 30 years will for me be about testing the limits of the human body infused with technology.

How far can we go. Can we truly become an interplanetary species, as Elon Musk suggests we could be?

What happens to us physically when we get to Mars?

Can we transform the way we learn? Will there be a need to spend 20 years studying when all knowledge is instantly available to all of us. What if to be is to know? How then do we apply what we know?

Do our children stand a chance to live forever?

How do we start relating to computers once they gain consciousness?”
Kelo Kubu, executive director, Gamatong

“In the next 30 years, the full Star Trek story will actually come true. Already, we’ve seen many of the show’s far-fetched ideas come to fruition. We’ve witnessed  some jamming technological progress. But none of the vision of humanity’s future that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed has materialized yet. His idea was that each person was able to contribute, that their differences were put to use, and that purpose aligned them to do better, together. That’s next.” [Read the full story, "How Star Trek will finally come true," in this piece written just for TED.]
Nilofer Merchant, author

“I think what will blow our minds in the next 30 titanium square tubing years will be watching the maturation and contributions of Generation Z. This is the first generation to grow up with wide access to advanced technology since their birth. I have seen kids like my godson — born in 2011 — be able to successfully navigate a tablet computer from before he was able to form complete sentences. I think that this type of exposure to super-computers, tablets, smartphones and social media since infancy makes their brains different, and as this generation comes of age and begins to take their place as leaders in society over the next 30 years, I think we will see mind-blowing advancements in every aspect of life that technology can affect.”
Ryan Coogler, filmmaker

“A much needed fundamental change in transportation, which will allow people to travel from any major city to any major city in the world in a couple of hours or less.”
Payam Zamani, founder and CEO, reply.com

“We will discover ‘Earth twins’: planets around other stars that are roughly the same size and distance as Earth and we will be able to detect what’s on their surface and their atmospheres … and finally really start answering the question: ‘Is there life out there?’

Back on Earth, quantum physics will lead us to new technologies that will transform communication security and change the conversation around privacy.”
Shohini Ghose, quantum physicist, educator and TED Fellow

“In the next 30 years, everyone in the world will be connected. Even the most remote communities that today can only be reached on foot will be in contact with the rest of the world thanks to mobile connections and delivery systems. Though I don’t expect that our traditional infrastructure (roads, landlines, postal services) will reach all corners of the earth, new modes of transportation will proliferate, allowing anyone to reach anyone else.

Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) or drones are just one such mode of transport. Recently, with the support of the Wasserman Foundation, IDEO.org explored how drones could play a role in last-mile health delivery. We see an astoundingly bright future for drones, one that recasts them from agents of war to agents of change.”
Jocelyn Wyatt, co-lead, executive director, IDEO.org 

“A democratic China with a GDP that exceeds America’s.

A geopolitical landscape that will see a return to inter-state warfare as dictators push back against the tide of democracy in a desperate attempt to grade 3 titanium tubing  hang on. Unfortunately, that won’t mean the end of intra-state warfare either. Those wars will continue, unabated.

The disappearance of small island developing states like the Maldives due to climate change.

Sitting in traffic, but not driving; instead working in one’s ‘car-office’ with a 100 gigabit wireless connection.

Thinking it’s normal to speak to a machine; Siri is only the tip of the iceberg. “Her” is already here.

And, since I’m Cambodian-American, the total transformation of Cambodia from a country where one political leader has been in charge for nearly a quarter of a century to a pluralistic society where good governance and human rights are the norm. Hope springs eternal.”
Sophal Ear, professor, author, speaker, US Naval postgraduate school 

“Five to ten years from now, search engines will be based not just on looking for combinations of words and links but actually on reading for understanding the billions of pages on the web and in books. So you’ll be walking along, Google will pop up, and say, ‘Mary, you expressed concern to me a month ago that your glutathione supplement wasn’t getting past the blood/brain barrier. Well, new research came out 13 seconds ago that shows a whole new approach to taking glutathione; let me summarize it for you.’

20 years from now, we’ll have nanobots — another exponential trend is the shrinking of technology — that go into our brain through the capillaries — and basically connect our synthetic neocortex and the cloud, providing an extension of our neocortex. Now today you have a computer in your phone but if you need 10,000 computers for a few seconds to do a complex search, you can access that for a second or two in the cloud. In the 2030s you’ll be able to connect to that directly from your brain. I ‘m walking along, there’s Chris Anderson, he’s coming my way, I’d better think of something clever to say. I’ve got three seconds — my 300 million modules in my neocortex won’t cut it — I need a billion more. I’ll be able to access that in the cloud. Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking.”

Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, CEO, KurzweilAI, speaking in session 8 of TED2014

“We are living on the verge of the greatest revolution in architecture since the invention of concrete, steel or of the elevator. And it’s a media revolution… We don’t need the Greeks any more to tell us what we think about architecture. We can tell each other what we think about architecture. Digital media hasn’t just changed the relationship between all of us, it’s changed the relationship between us and buildings.”