Where are our robot maids, quantum computers, self-driving cars, and nanobots? Over the last few months, my colleagues and I at the Institute for the Future, in collaboration with IEEE Spectrum magazine, surveyed 700 IEEE Fellows about the future of science and technology in the coming decades. The survey was designed to help us sense patterns and trends in disparate areas of science and technology and consider how they might affect our lives. Using the data, we created forecasts–plausible, internally consistent views of what may happen. IFTF executive director Marina Gorbis and I wrote up the results for the new issue of IEEE Spectrum. The article is titled “Bursting Tech Bubbles Before The Balloon.” I hope you enjoy it!
From the introduction:
As our population ages and needs more care, there will be fewer young people to provide it. But don’t expect to fill the personnel gap with humanoid robotic nurses, say a majority of the more than 700 IEEE Fellows surveyed in a joint study by the Institute for the Future (IFTF) and IEEE Spectrum.The survey was conducted earlier this year to learn what developments IEEE Fellows expect in science and technology in the next 10 to 50 years. They ought to foresee such things better than most, because they have so much to do with bringing them about.
What other bubbles did the Fellows burst? Forget about being chauffeured to work by your car; the Fellows doubt that autonomous, self-driving cars will be in full commercial production anytime soon. And though they say Moore’s Law will someday finally yield to the laws of physics, slowing the increase in computer performance, the IEEE Fellows don’t expect to get around the problem by using quantum weirdness to perform calculations at fabulous speeds. Seventy-eight percent of respondents doubt that a commercial quantum computer will reach the market in the next 50 years. In short, the future is taking longer than expected to arrive.
“We tend to overestimate the impact of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run,” observed former IFTF president Roy Amara years ago. The IEEE Fellows seemed to agree. On the whole, the Fellows turned out to be a down-to-earth bunch–no space elevators in most of their forecasts–and they were quick to dispel future hype while eager to ground their forecasts in state-of-the-art engineering.
A few were uncomfortable making forecasts, arguing that science and technology are unpredictable. At IFTF, we wholeheartedly agree. Trying to predict specific events and timing is best left to astrologers. Instead, our researchers in Palo Alto, Calif., look for signals–events, developments, projects, investments, and expert opinions, like those provided by this Âsurvey–that, taken together, give indications of key trends. Observed as a complex ecology, these signals reveal where these developments may be taking us.
The survey identified five themes that we believe are the main arteries of science and technology over the next 50 years: “Computation and Bandwidth to Burn” involves the shift of computing power and network connectivity from scarcity to utter abundance; “Sensory Transformation” hints at what happens when, as Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, puts it, “things start to think”; “Lightweight Infrastructure” is precisely the opposite of the railways, fiber-optic networks, centralized power distribution, and other massively expensive and complicated projects of the 20th century; “Small World” is what happens when nanotechnology starts to get real and is integrated with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and biosystems; and finally, “Extending Biology” is what results when a broad array of technologies, from genetic engineering to bioinformatics, are applied to create new life forms and reshape existing ones.
Link to IEEE Spectrum article, Link to press release, Link to Spectrum Radio roundtable about the survey (Thanks, Susan Hassler!)