![]() By all accounts, it looks as though there will be a robust private space industry by 2020. But we’re only willing to meet her half way here. This prediction came by way of Esther Dyson, who knows a thing or two about technology. So yeah, somebody might be able to put electronics inside somebody’s cranium, but i personally believe it’s only going to be nominally useful for very, very narrow therapeutic applications.” PopSci Predicts: We might have chips in the brain by 2020, but they won’t be doing much.Ĭommercial Space Will Take Us to the Moon and Asteroids (and We’ll be Mining Them) “And we have no idea about how that works, particularly in the semantics of neural communication. “Neural communications are both chemical and electrical,” Liebhold says. While it’s currently possible to implant a chip in the brain and even get one to respond to or stimulate gross neural activity, we simply don’t understand the brain’s nuance well enough to create the kind of interface that would let you channel surf by simply thinking about it. The human brain remains biology’s great, unconquered wilderness, and while the idea of meshing the raw power of the human mind with electronic stimulus and responsiveness has long existed in both science fiction and–to some degree–in reality, we likely won’t be controlling out devices with a thought in 2020 as Intel has predicted. We’ll Control Devices Via Microchips Implanted in Our Brains If the Navy is correct, biofuels–though still a contributor to CO2 emissions–could take a sizable chunk out of the amount of oil and gas we’re pumping from the ground (and, you know, fighting over) by decade’s end. The military buys fuel like everyone else, so the Navy’s forecast that biofuels will be cost-competitive with oil by 2020 bodes well for all of us, not just the military. But the military brass’s enthusiasm for biofuels doesn’t just spell cleaner naval fleets or ground vehicles burning a 50-50 blend. and its global military presence–for fuel puts us in a potential strategic bind. “Again, this is geopolitical, this isn’t technical.” The military understands as well as anyone that being dependent on foreign nations–some of whom have a tenuous relationship with the U.S. “I think that’s reasonable,” Liebhold says. ![]() The military on the whole has pledged to get half of its energy from renewable resources by 2020, and the Navy whole-heartedly believes that it can turn to fifty percent biofuels by that point in time. military has looked extensively into ways to wean its own operations off of fossil fuels. Navy, which along with the other branches of the U.S. This prediction comes courtesy of the U.S. PopSci Predicts: Certainly doable, but not by 2020.īiofuels Will be Cost-Competitive With Fossil Fuels “Although there are people who have a notion of the kinds of communication networks we need between vehicles, even if we made the decision today to implement something it probably wouldn’t be mature enough by 2020 to work.” Our global wireless infrastructure is inadequate even for all of our media computing, Liebhold says, so the idea of rolling out even more sophisticated wireless infrastructure to link our cars and other traffic tech within a decade is simply not likely. “It’s unlikely, in my opinion, because of the heterogenous nature of the vehicles in the world,” Liebhold says of self-driving tech. But before we can have cars that think for themselves (a la DARPA) or even “car trains” that sync up so several vehicles can follow the lead of one human driver, our cars have to be able to talk to each other. ![]() ![]() Self-driving cars that take to the streets autonomously while passengers kick back and relax have been both a sci-fi staple and a technological holy grail pursued by the likes of Google, DARPA, and automakers themselves (Stanford U’s self-driving Audi TT is pictured above). ![]()
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