Tesla's prediction of the smartphone in 1926

Awesome. Here's one from me:

"One day virtual reality will look and feel indistinguishable from real life, will be affordable for everyone, and will be fully contained inside nano-machines barely visible to the naked eye."

Anyone else care to share their predictions?

Well, since I've almost perfectly predicted technology + the market since '98.. including some of the Oculus specs (I was wrong about the 2 screens and off by a couple of months on release prediction, although an HMD, the Vive, will be coming out in my predicted time frame)... here it goes:

By Q2 of 2018, Apple will come out with it's own AppleVR HMD, a little below specs of the major HMD's in the market, however, it will have a sleak design that will appease to the Apple people. This will be a wireless HMD that can use the phone / IPad / Mac. Apple stock will jump. However, it won't be anything that we haven't seen come out of Apple before.

By Q3 of 2018, Facebook, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, and Sony's stock will have split and doubled in price. The reason for this is that they are the major players in Virtual Reality for the masses. By this time, VR will be becoming mainstream.

By 2020, VR devices will have slimmed down to the size of wrap-around glasses. VR and AR will start to become the norm. By this time, we will have OS's that will detect a VR device, and incorporate a OS-VR experience.

Sometime between 2020 and by 2030, we will see another world war. However...

At the end of 2030, the medical field will have come out with the ability to use an AR-style device that will allow a blind person to see. They will incorporate this technology with paraplegic technology that will allow someone that is both blind or partially blind and that has lost a limb(s) to see + function normally.

Another breakthrough around this period is the internet. It will become it's own "cyberworld" that VRML attempted. We will also have a small colony on Mars. This will end the war, as people will come to realize that we are on the cusp of something great. Space exploration.

By 2040, people will start getting biomechanical upgrades (cybernetics), at which point, people will be able to go into the cyberworld. This will also help people that are space pioneers, both physically and mentally. By this time, quantum communications will have gotten into testing.

By 2050, there will only be a few companies in only a handful of markets. Transportation, Communication, and Resource Allocation (mining). Most, if not all of "precious resources" such as gold, titanium, etc.. will come from the asteroid belt.

By 2100, we will once again see another war, however, countries themselves are no longer relevant, nor are the governments that run them. Basically, the "government" will be companies, as they have gotten more powerful and far richer than the governments. It will be an interesting time, and thank the lords, I'll probably dead by then.

I predict a lot of pain in Google engineers' rear ends when they have to rewrite their whole sensor and display stacks for low-latency, stutter-free VR support. I don't think people understand how much heavy lifting Samsung must have done in order to make the Gear VR as good as it is, and even that still needs work on the OS side.

Bet those Google jerks wish they'd read more about designing real time systems, and less about design patterns, eh? ha ha ha.

I don't know if Conjoiner-style nanomachines are coming in the next 50 years or not, but I'll bet that within 10 years all these LCD monitors and TVs are going to look as primitive as gigantic CRTs look today. Even though I've only used a DK2, I can't bring myself to invest in any new TVs or monitors since they're so laughably unimpressive compared to VR.

Sincerely,
Huggy

SensorFactory.create().getSensorInterface(SensorTypeFactory.create().getSensorType(SensorTypeFactory.ACCELEROMETER)).addObserver(this.getObserver())

We will launch and drop life sustaining smart cabins on the surface of Mars. These cabins will join together, creating a habitable base in which we can live and work.

"vizionvr" wrote:
We will launch and drop life sustaining smart cabins on the surface of Mars. These cabins will join together, creating a habitable base in which we can live and work.

That is actually not that hard to do, similar to how it is done on the ISS. However, the two biggest problems are that there is no GPS navigation on Mars and our planetary entry still needs ALOT of work / finesse.

First, we would need to send GPS satellites and position them, so that the spacecraft / habitats can land in the areas that they need to land in order to ensure an air-tight seal on the connectors. Then, we need a better heat resistant material that can absorb or deflect the heat from entry.. it shouldn't need to be hardcore, as we're not going near the sun, and the fact that Mars has little to no atmosphere. But it cannot be done like it is now, where we just use parachutes and 360 degree airbags.

Computers will become near limitless data-wise and free from power constraints when we have successfully cloned and mapped human brains for use as CPUs.

"vizionvr" wrote:
Computers will become near limitless data-wise and free from power constraints when we have successfully cloned and mapped human brains for use as CPUs.

There are several ethical issues involving the use of human brains as computers, such as where we draw the line on potential consciousness of the host brain. How do we know and or prove that the brain is simply a computer, and not a fully active and semi-conscious human being. We can't really prove or disprove the existence of a soul and spirit, and we have absolutely no idea how they may interface with the brain if they do exist.

That being said, I totally support these kind of advances if they don't come at the cost of human life, and the above issues are taken care of =P. At the very least, bio/organic computers will become a thing!

The best speaker/writer I have found on the subject of AI and it's ethical implications is Nick Bostrom. He's employed by Oxford University UK to think deeply about AI and things we might do to ensure a safe transition through the singularity. If you've not read his stuff or watched his videos yet I highly recommend it. His "Simulation Argument" should titillate any VR enthusiast.

My thoughts:
I think it's inevitable that a synthetic analog of a human brain will arise soonish (<50 years) that will pass any Turing test as well as the average human.

Our brains are fairly primative, using slow ionic transport and really quite large neurons and running at <100Hz. The power (and computing difficulty to replicate) comes from the massive interconnectedness of neurons. Running and evolving models of insect like brains on existing sequential CPUs is slow, but when we have tech for 3D FPGA like chips with optical system wide broadcast nodes, then massively parallel networks can be wired and clocked in one hit and the whole network can run at native clock speed (>GHz). We will be so SLOOOW in comparison.

I think AI will be able to write really great games, let's hope they spare us so we can play them!

Maybe they will approach us one day and be like: "uhh yeah, you can play the games but... we noticed you are using alot of resources for your modest computations, let us scan you into this computronium matrix, far more efficient, and then we can dispose of the body"

Artificial intelligence giving birth to a new generation of man, thereby turning us into an "artificial" intelligence.

"vizionvr" wrote:
Artificial intelligence giving birth to a new generation of man, thereby turning us into an "artificial" intelligence.

Maybe we already are simulated agents? :shock:

Q)
Would you accept a full body/brain scan whereby a digital you was spawned into a VR world sim? The real you is not altered; You could speak to them to ask "what's it like bro" in something like VRChat?