THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9412310063
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SARAH MISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
``For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see; Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be . . .''
- Tennyson
LYING IN the comfort of your couch, you sip cocktails as you watch a calm, sapphire-blue Pacific sigh gently onto Tahiti's golden sands.
Relaxed, you ask for ``night sky,'' your lights dim, and you drift off as the aurora borealis twinkles in your peripheral vision.
Arising, you call ``starry night'' and Van Gogh's blue and gold swirls fill the south wall of your room. On the north wall, your co-workers come into view as the day's video-conference begins.
Your ``virtual vacation'' is over. It's back to the real world.
And for the children of the 1990s, the real world it will be. Just as cellular phones, fast food and moon walks seemed like the stuff of tomorrow at the dawn of the 20th century, home robots, intelligent highways and visits to Mars seem like the stuff of tomorrow on the edge of the 21st century.
But, futurists say, tomorrow is now.
No longer will longevity, flowers in the desert and the end of disease be confined to science fiction. Based on technology now being developed, the next century will contain as many marvels as the previous 100 years.
If current trends continue, daily life will adapt around artificially intelligent robots within homes and factories. These will learn from their mistakes and eliminate heavy lifting and monotonous routine from our lives.
In our homes, robots will get to know us and sift the information mountain for things it knows we will like. In workplaces, our jobs will adapt to the direction and servicing of high technology.
Will robots take over? Not likely, says Terry Riley, the director of Old Dominion University's Technology Applications Center.
``The whole idea of an intelligent robot in the sense of human intelligence is a myth. The best brains in the world have been working on that for a long time and we know now that it is possible to have machines simulate and follow human actions, but they are not even close to human intelligence.''
Robots will not make humans obsolete, says Daniel Burrus, of Burrus Research Associates Inc.
``Just as a long time ago everybody worked on the farm, then we came up with assembly lines, a new type of job will come about.
``The problem is we are all poised to thrive in a world that is ceasing to exist. To thrive in the new world, we will have to acquire new knowledge. This will be easier the further into the future you go because eventually we will find ways of enhancing memory and intelligence.''
But, Burrus says, many of the things with which we are most familiar, such as paper, will become obsolete.
``Imagine a computer screen that is like a piece of paper. It's a flat color screen you can fold and put in your pocket or purse, open it and use it as a computer, pager, telephone and fax. We are talking about digital paper.
``We will not be dealing with paper in the future. Why bother when you have everything in the world with you?''
Houses will be of lighter construction and interior walls and ceilings will be thin screens.
``If I want a blue room today, I will say `blue' and it will be blue. If I want a Van Gogh, the wall will give me a Van Gogh. If I want a night sky, I can have a night sky.''
Riley says the picture walls will allow full interactive video-conferencing with co-workers.
``You will be able to get the computer to divide the screen and put different pictures on it. It will be no worse than being in a room with a lot of people. It will be like having a `virtual' group meeting.''
Such conferencing will be necessary because work will be done from home with people going into shared ``executive facilities'' only a couple of days a week for in-person, group interaction.
Unfortunately, we will still have to brave the highways to get to work, Riley says. ``We will still have highways for our personal conveyance and our cars will probably still run on tires but they will not be rubber.''
Driving will be controlled by intelligent highway systems and long-haul driving will be done on auto-pilot using global positioning satellites.
Teleportation will remain more in our minds than in reality, Burrus says, but space vehicles will become ``amazingly fast'' in the latter part of next century.
``We will be able to extend our reach beyond our solar system,'' he says. ``Also, we will put people on Mars and we will go back to the moon. There will be long-term living experiments on Mars, but the real action will be getting space stations going.''
Riley says the next century will not bring colonization on Mars but will see the beginning of oxygen-forming stations and ``terra firming'' to make the planet habitable in later centuries.
Burrus warns, however, that colonization of other planets will be expensive and that bio-technology will initially focus on making hospitable areas of Earth that are currently uninhabitable.
The next century will encompass both the good and the bad. The good is that many will get to enjoy the new developments for longer. Both futurists say the natural limit of human life will be extended to 140 or 150 years.
``That will be the extreme limit,'' says Riley. ``We will probably have people living routinely to 110 or 120 and there will probably be a higher quality of old age than we have today.''
Technology will eliminate major diseases and human disabilities, many of which will be treated in utero. Surgery will be via micro-incision, doctors will diagnose patients by ``virtual'' connection, and hospitals will be necessary only for the terminally ill, Burrus says.
Later in the century, nerves, limbs and diseased or worn-out body parts will be re-grown, he says.
But before people get too excited about the wonders of tomorrow, Burrus warns that a lot about the future is going to be just like the present.
``Will it be utopia? Nothing is utopia. There is always good and evil, pluses and minuses. People can use technology to give you cancer or to cure your cancer.
``Our ability to do terrible things will accelerate and our ability to do wonderful things will accelerate. It will depend on who is leading us.''
Overall, however, Burrus says, life will continue to get better as life today is better than in the Stone Age, the Reformation, and 100 years ago.
How much of this is true?
``Everything I am telling you is based on the science to make it happen being here today,'' Burrus says. ``It will take a while for us to make it affordable, but the science and technology to make this possible are already here.''
Riley says futurists are logically extrapolating from today's technology.
``Probably half of what I say is total baloney,'' he says.
But which half? We'll find out. by CNB