Future perfect?

As cellphones become smartphones, with built-in GPS and apps that both inform our friends where we are and alert us to nearby products or services we might want to buy, we will never leave our social networks behind. Technology is changing what we wear. It is helping conquer terminal diseases. It is connecting every imaginable object to the internet. It is helping combat climate change. It is creating machines that can make themselves. It is helping build a computer with a bigger brain than every existing computer put together. It will help us colonise space, build cars that can find the nearest petrol station, and create toilets that will diagnose our illnesses. Culture asked nine experts how how our lives will change thanks to technology.

Shopping

Forget about buying anything in the future – we'll make our own. 3D printing, originally a prototyping method for designers, is now being used as a way of making items from a few centimetres in size to as big a house.

Aucklander Vik Olliver works on the RepRap project, an international effort to develop machines that can replicate themselves – and make anything else besides – from designs found on the internet.

"I don't think we'll be printing a new pair of underwear every day, but the availability of the technology will have a huge number of knock-on effects," Olliver says. "Being able to fabricate medical equipment where and when it is needed will have a huge effect on the Third World and, indeed, the home."

Of course, such technology could be put to both good and bad ends – printing a P factory, for instance, or a shotgun.

"Some processes may require extortionate quantities of energy, or toxic ingredients."

Within a decade, atomic-scale fabricators will be possible. "This is the point of no return. After that, anyone can have one. No way is this going to be kept out of the hands of the general public, and I happen to think that overall this is a good thing. It will, however, be messy at the start."

And in a couple of decades? "All bets are off. With atomic-level tools comes a range of investigative tools and new era of discovery. You won't need to genetically engineer DNA, you just insert a nanomachine into each cell and make the cell do your bidding. Every cell in your body can have its own `pacemaker' and in theory you get to live forever. There will be a lot of stuff like that."

Shopping? "Shopping will be here for a while. If desired goods are not for sale, though, you will have the option of making them yourself."

Computers

We ain't seen nuthin' yet. Quantum computers, says Australian researcher Andrew Dzurak, could solve in minutes problems that every existing computer in the world working together would take thousands of years to calculate.

"We expect quantum computers will be able to perform certain tasks much faster than normal computers, such as searching databases, modelling complex molecules or developing new drugs," he says.

And by faster, he means more than billions of times – "as many zeros as you can think of".

There's just one catch: "Commercially available quantum computers are probably still at least two decades off."

ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus points to another computing trend – new types of interfaces, such as the touchscreens found on devices like Apple's iPad, and the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox motion sensor.

The movie Minority Report provided a glimpse of where computing devices are moving.

Internet

Immense new tasks are coming to keep quantum computers busy. Today's internet, connecting a few billion people, will be overshadowed by the forthcoming internet of things, which will grow to include every imaginable object.

"In a nutshell, that's when real world objects get connected to the internet. It includes household appliances like your television and fridge, personal possessions such as your car and garden shed, and environmental things like roads, bridges and buildings," says MacManus.

Says ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) chairman Peter Dengate Thrush: "We'll all benefit enormously from much greater connectivity and we won't understand how we could have lived without all the facilities that will become available.

"The ubiquity of computing power will be the biggest thing. If you think of early Star Trek, the captain would just say, `Plot a course', or he would ask a question into thin air, and get a reply – it's going to be along those kinds of lines."

Health

Medical technology, alas, is not going to advance fast enough to keep the children of baby-boomers alive forever. Bioinformatics – applying computing power to biological data – and genomics will, however, send cancer into retreat.

Says Parry Guilford, of the cancer genetics lab at the University of Otago: "We will get better at treating more and more cancer subtypes – the divide and conquer approach. Increasingly we will begin to see cancer as a chronic disease rather than a fatal one."

With technology's help, researchers are getting better at understanding the disease's mechanisms, providing the opportunity to tailor treatments to the individual. And rather than learn from the doctor that we have just months to live, it could be the toilet that breaks the bad news to us.

"Yes, one day toilets will be able to give us daily health status reports, including the earliest signs of emerging cancers," Guilford says.

But eternal life? "No. Cancer deaths will become less common and will occur at a greater age, but life has an impact on our genomes that will be very difficult to completely erase. One day perhaps, but not for several generations yet – when it will be too much of a good thing."

Getting around I: On land

Petrol prices might be going through the roof and oil running out, but don't imagine that this is the last generation that will be filling up their cars at the pump.

"Certainly not," says Ian Wright, a Kiwi who helped build the high-performance Tesla Roadster electric car. He points out the impressive efficiency of the internal combustion engine and the fact that new fuels are being found for it to burn.

"I actually think we'll see range-extended EVs [electric vehicles] become popular but certainly not universal, and those will be plugged in at home, and fuelled at petrol stations."

Electric motors aren't the only change coming for cars, says Wright.

"They'll get much more connected. Look at what you can do on a smartphone now. Cars will do all that, and more: find the nearest or cheapest petrol station, universal GPS, restaurant reviews, bookings, directions and parking; they'll pay the bridge tolls, know about traffic, roadworks and speed traps."

Too bad about the "interesting" Big Brother aspects. And if cars do become extinct, where will people go to make out?

"We'll still find a way...there will still be beaches, won't there? And grassy hills with pohutukawa trees, overlooking beaches..."

Getting around II: In space

Space could be the saviour of a depleted Earth, and colonising it humanity's toughest IQ test, thinks Mark Rocket, a Christchurch website developer and rocket entrepreneur who has booked a ticket with Virgin Galactic, the Richard Branson space tourism venture.

"The commercialisation of space will ultimately ease the burden on our planet. We will mine the vast resources of our solar system and tap into the immense energy of our sun."

But not tomorrow. In the meantime, new technology such as the Christchurch-developed Martin Jetpack will open up the heavens to more people.

"Similar to how automotive technology greatly advanced last century, I believe there will be a plethora of personal flight and transport options that will emerge this century," says Rocket, who would cheerfully strap on a jetpack. "I'd love to fly one."

Relationships I: With people

Social networking, internet dating, location-based services, avatars and robots – they're just new ways for people to do what they always do, relate to each other, says Victoria University psychologist Marc Wilson.

"What these things have done is greatly facilitate and speed certain types of communication, and they remove the need for intermediaries. Internet dating feels more controllable because you don't have to embarrass yourself by communicating with a `real person' in order to `meet' potential mates."

Says Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "Teenagers would rather text than talk. They feel that calls would reveal too much.

"They want the control that comes with texting or being able to `compose' an instant message. This means that they are learning how to `perform' – in a profile, as an avatar, but not respond to the easy give and take of conversation. Adults, too. In corporations, among friends, within academic departments, people readily admit that they would rather leave a voicemail or send an email than talk face to face. We turn to technology to help us find time. But we end up spending more time with technology and less with each other. Technology makes us busier than ever and so we seek online relationships that seem to have less emotional risk and can be customised to our wants."

Relationships II: With things

Turkle: "New technologies are not coy about their aspiration to substitute relationships with technology for relationships with people. First, technology proposes a substitution of virtual life for the other kind through social networking and, more generally, through life as an avatar.

"Second, roboticists propose sociable robots that will substitute for human companionship."

Researchers are working on robots that look after the elderly and the very young, but Turkle sees dangers in both.

"Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely, but fearful of intimacy. Connectivity offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We can't get enough of each other, if we can have each other at a distance, in amounts that we can control: the ability to hide from each other even as we are constantly connected to each other. We'd rather text than talk."

Technology is also watching our every move. We will all be part of the internet of things, says Dengate Thrush. "You will also become part of the data flow and data set, so others will know where you are at any time."

Think the surveillance society on steroids. "That's an old problem, and we've already had to deal with it. CCTV has already been around for 20 or 30 years and works to our advantage."

Only so long as encroachment on civil rights is resisted, Dengate Thrush says. Speaking of rights, has internet access become a fundamental right? "I think right now it would be pushing it [to say connectivity was a right] but it is the direction we're going."

And on the horizon ...

Personalised drugs

Artificially grown body parts

A complete digital record of one's life

Zero impact biofuel.

Invisibility surfaces

Electronic paper and paperless offices

Self-driving cars

Smart-product RFID tags

Copyright laws for digital age

THE PANEL

Richard MacManus is the founder and editor of technology blog ReadWriteWeb.

Parry Guilford is associate professor of genetics at the University of Otago and chief scientific officer at Pacific Edge Biotechnology.

Peter Dengate Thrush is a Wellington lawyer and chairman of international internet governance body ICANN.

Vik Olliver is a member of the RepRap rapid prototyping team

Sherry Turkle is professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT and author of new book Alone Together.

Mark Rocket is a Rocket Lab director and the first Kiwi to book a space flight with Virgin Galactic.

Ian Wright is a Kiwi electrical vehicle pioneer in Silicon Valley

Andrew Dzurak leads a quantum computer research group at the University of New South Wales.

Marc Wilson is associate professor of psychology at Victoria University.

- © Fairfax NZ News