Normal things now will be silly in 50 years
Technology has made our lives so much easier. Who could have dreamed that one day we would have the freedom to walk in oncoming traffic because we can not be bothered to look up sweet memes on our phones? So liberating. And no more than we have to pretend to be interested in the things that friends and loved ones have to say, now we can just watch our social media feeds and wish we could think of smart things to tweet about. This is the new normal.
Maybe it was all kind of sarcastic, but it's a fact that technology is changing our lives at such an astronomical rate that the only thing we know for sure is that in 50 years, everything will be really different. So different, in fact, that for better or for worse, things that still seem pretty normal to us today will sound ridiculous to our grandchildren. So, here's a small but somewhat cruel sampling of what it might be like when your grandchildren roll their eyes over you that you're poetic wax on the good OLE days of sugar binges, toilet scrubbers, and fashionable glasses.
1 Bathrooms are cleaning themselves, and it can not happen soon enough
There it is: the poop stain your significant other left behind in the toilet, just above the water line, where there is no hope that it will be washed away no matter how many rinses of water water that you desperately apply to the problem. If only this toilet dangée clean itself. But wait! One day, or while futurist sayeth Dr. Ian Pearson, the bathrooms will actually clean themselves up.
Pearson is considering robots that will do all the cleaning for you, and a central A / C system that can filter bacteria, pollen, and other harmful substances out of the air. In fact, airlines may already have the jump on the entire bathroom self-cleaning thing-Boeing engineers have designed an in-flight sink that self-cleans with UV light whenever it is used. Contactless taps and soap dispensers mean that you can use the restrooms at the end of an international 10-hour flight and no longer have to worry about wading into a cesspool of all the upset stomachs your fellow passengers have ever experienced .
It's hard to imagine the UV light could really do much for this poop stain in addition to turning it into a poop stain without bacteria, because even when it has been cleaned of all microbes, it's still basically a stain of poop. To really make this thing a reality, these bathroom cleaning robots will have to get jobs on Virgin Airlines, too. It's a brave new world.
2 Your pair of fashionable $ 400 glasses will look stupid
In what is perhaps the most terrifying development in today's medical science (but only if you are an optometrist trying to convince patients that they should spend $ 400 annually on new settings), scientists at Jerusalem are developing "drops" that can correct myopia and hyperopia. According to the Jerusalem Post, eye drops have already been shown to have some effectiveness in pigs, who are undoubtedly super-excited that they can actually actually see the slope they eat every day.
At first, it looks like a magic pill, so it's easy to be skeptical, but the technology behind nanotechnology is actually quite sophisticated. It involves (what else) a smartphone app that would measure a patient's ocular refraction and build a laser pattern. Then, and this is where it starts to look terrifying, patients would get a "Laser Corneal Stamping" pattern right on the surface of the eyeball, and then the drops would finish the job. Obviously, this has already been done on "Fresh Pig's Eye," which sounds frankly a lot less awesome for the pig than it did at first.
If the drops work as well in humans, they could eliminate the need for corrective glasses. So, when your grandchildren look back at photos of you wearing these super fashion $ 400 glasses your optometrist has talked to you about in buying, they might actually be sneering on how ridiculous you look in them. Remember that when you open your wallet.
3 You will be vaccinated like William Shatner
If you are still walking down to the pharmacy every October to introduce your poor, vulnerable arm to someone who looks like either a former Pro wrestler who has taken nursing care as a fallback career or someone who just finished nursing school a few hours ago and might not have graduated with all the honors, you will surely enjoy a future world where everyone gets flu shots like a Starfleet captain. That's right, one day needles will be a thing of the past.
We're closer to this reality than you might think-according to MIT, a startup called Instrument Portal invented a needle-free injection system that pulls a tiny, high pressure jet of medication through your skin, pretty much exactly as it is done in Star Trek. The jet is as thin as a strand of hair, and there is very little pain associated with the use of the device.
Do not be too excited, though - clinical trials will likely revolve around chronic medical conditions like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, conditions that require multiple injections over extended periods of time. The device, we hope, make these repeated treatments less painful and therefore more enjoyable for patients. So, it may actually be some time before you can get your vaccinations via Star Trek syringes, if these ex-pro wrestler nurses do not kill you first.
4 What laundry?
Remember when you got the first high school diploma, and going to a laundromat seemed like a fun novelty, or maybe a symbol of "the grown-up"? Well, by the time you've wasted your first weekend watching the clothes tumble in circles for hours and still never dry, the joy is all sapped. Even if you are lucky enough to have a machine at home, you still have to deal with troubles like separating your whites, lest they get stained with permanent red and blue stains-just ask the perpetually unlucky Peter Parker.
No matter how much laundry sucks, dealing with it is just a part of adult life. But that will change soon, according to researcher Rajesh Rigaud, who told CNN his team is developing a special solution that coats the tissues in such a way that the spots disappear after a few minutes in the sun. Yes, a real cure for laundry is on us. Meanwhile, a company named Threadsmith is doing "hydrophobic" white T-shirts, which according to the company Fast will repel anything from the spicy chocolate sauce. While the technology behind these gorgeous shirts is still a work in progress, according to some comments, there is a good chance your grandchildren will never suffer from the experience of sitting in a laundromat.
5 The chargers must not be a battle
Flip Phones lasted for days without plugging into a wall, but when society switched to smartphones, everyone accepted the sacrifice of having to find an outlet every time you go to someone's home. The cafes, once a lighthouse of tranquility, have become battle zones for oh-so-convenient seats next to the loaders. Really, modern life is grandiose.
Future generations, however, will think that your fancy, glowing blue USB charger seems as archaic as the sound of a dial-up modem. As with all the other technological advances on the horizon, the future of cell phones is solar. According to the telegraph, researchers are currently working on a way for phones to self-charge via sunlight, which means that in a few decades, no one will ever need to recharge their phone again - your little partner Pocket will be just Juiced Up 24/7. This leap into the future will save everyone countless hours of point-of-sale research, but it will also likely ruin horror movies for years to come as there will be no more room for everything "Oh no, my phone is dead!" Twists intrigues ... as long as the sun comes up again.
↚
6 People today are going to seem like sugar fiends
Many people want to eat healthy, but when your colleague gobbles up 16 chocolate chip cookies on their lunch break, it's really tempting to apologize for eating a ... just one, honest. This societal pressure from peers has made everyone crazy about sugar, to the point where some medical experts have asked the government to impose stricter regulations on sugar manufacturers or treat the substance as a controlled drug, according to Vox. Ouch!
42 percent of most people overconsumption of sugar comes from drinks-sorry, soda-and unless you're a corporate executive at a soft drink company, this indulgence does not make you any favors. As a business insider says, using the ideas of the World Health Organization as a guideline, even a bag of M & Ms is probably on your daily limit. The side effects of too much sugar are not only cavities and weight gain, but also diabetes, pancreatic cancer, gout, cognitive decline, and kidney disease. In a few decades, the terrible consequences of all this sugar consumption will become much more obvious, and future generations will probably look at today's sugar demons as a bunch of maniacs, obsessed with whimsical sweets. So no, sorry, the future will probably not be a "sweet" place ... but at least everyone will be a lot healthier.
7 Private prisons of America
To be fair, the dark secrets underlying the US prison system have been coming under a lot more microscope these days. But the truth is, most people are still going about their daily lives not sparing a moment of thought about what a living nightmare the US penitentiary system is like, and it's crazy.
The simple concept of private for-profit prisons sounds like something of a dystopian science fiction novel, but for millions of people it's a cold reality. According to the Washington Post, the private prison industry Rakes in millions of dollars in revenue every year, with big bags of cash in the direction of support politicians. The folly of what becomes more obvious when you consider how the problem of mass incarceration of America has gotten, with MIC pointing out that if the United States only has 5 percent of the world's population, it has 25 percent of the world's prisoners. About 2.4 million American individuals are behind bars, often for minor drug offenses, with a hefty racial disparity in the way people are tried and convicted. There is a reason lawyer Michelle Alexander has named mass incarceration "the new Jim Crow."
There are many things that future generations will judge today's society, but the combination of private prisons and mass incarceration? It'll look really, really bad
No comments:
Post a Comment