Going Down The Rabbit Hole
- Posted by: GOOD
- on April 7, 2009 at 3:27 am
The future of transportation may mean not moving at all.
Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and technology theorist, envisions a future in which advances in nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics give us immortality; clean, free energy; and a completely new definition of mobility. Think plug-in electric cars and maglev trains are the transportation innovations of tomorrow? Kurzweil is looking quite a bit further down the road.
GOOD: How will technological advances change transportation in the 21st century?
Ray Kurzweil: For starters, we will replace a lot of transportation with the ability to meet each other in virtual reality. I give about a third of my speeches around the world using a virtual-communication system that allows me to appear at a venue in three dimensions and in real time. My image is three-dimensional, life-sized, and fully realistic. As I move around, the audience sees their local background behind me.
Ultimately, virtual reality will be extremely realistic and incorporate all of the senses. If we go out to around 2030, we will be able to send someone an information file (as an email attachment, for example) and they will “print” it out in three dimensions to create virtually any three-dimensional object, such as a computer, a solar panel, a module to build housing, food, or clothing. This will replace most of the transportation needed to ship products.
G: So we’ll have realistic virtual reality and the ability to print three-dimensional products at home. Will travel be altogether obsolete in the future? What’s the time line for this happening?
RK: During the teen years of this century we will use high-resolution image beamers in our glasses to beam images directly to our retinas to create full-immersion visual virtual-reality environments, and use comparable devices for the audio component. Since most business interactions are visual and auditory, this will meet most business needs for meetings.
By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain (that will get there noninvasively, through the capillaries) will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. So if you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment. So this will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses. You will have a body in these virtual-reality environments that you can control just like your real body, but it does not need to be the same body that you have in real reality. We’ll be able to interact with people in any way in these virtual-reality environments. That will replace most travel, but we’ll also have new travel technologies for our real bodies using nanotechnology.
G: Wow. Well, in the near term, President Obama is talking about converting the federal fleet to hybrid cars and spending $8 billion on high-speed rail. Given the radical changes you envision, does this focus on hybrid cars and high-speed trains seem shortsighted to you?
RK: It’s not shortsighted. These are constructive steps and bring us closer to a world of clean energy. Twenty years from now we will be able to get all of the energy we need from very inexpensive nanoengineered solar panels and store the energy in small, decentralized nanoengineered fuel cells. Solar power is, in fact, doubling every two years and has been for 20 years, and we are only eight doublings away from it meeting 100 percent of the world’s energy needs. And we have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to do this. But we cannot simply implement a circa-2029 infrastructure today. We should use today’s technology aggressively to meet challenges such as clean energy.
“By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. That will replace most travel.”
G: As you say, we’re stuck with 2009 infrastructure for now, and it’s built for the automobile. What do you see as the future of the car?
RK: Our personal vehicle will depend on the era. Within a decade, cars will communicate with each other, avoiding accidents. Some navigation systems are already taking current traffic patterns into account. That will be ubiquitous quite soon. In the 2030s, we will have personal flying vehicles that use nanoengineered microwings.
G: What do you see as the future of travel in space?
RK: We will continue to explore space as an engineering challenge and as a way of exploring our part of the universe. But space travel will be of strategic importance to our human-machine civilization in the 22nd century. At that point, we will have exhausted the resources on Earth and will move out into the rest of the universe. For the most part, we won’t be sending out missions of squishy creatures but rather swarms of nanobots.
G: What future transportation challenges are we failing to anticipate right now?
RK: Right now, transportation is a major contributor to the negative environmental effects of energy usage (and I believe we should be looking at the full range of these environmental issues and not just greenhouse gases). But as I said, we will be less reliant on transportation as virtual reality becomes more realistic.
DISCUSSION: 35 Comments
I’m down with the virtual reality but I’m not sold on the ‘printing out’ of three-dimensional objects portion. Imagine the materials you would need. Do you buy a 10-pound block of every element at the store so you can create mini-factories in your basement?Maybe I’m not thinking far enough in the future.
Perhaps progress will lead to not wanting so much stuff that the need for 10-pound or 2000-pound blocks of elemental material will seem, pardon the pun, immaterial.
Ray Kurzwell is one of the most fascinating humans alive today. I read his book on the ’singularity’, which is his term for the possibility of transcending our biological limits and living for who-knows-how-long? Fascinating, but a bit frightening as well. For instance, he mentioned that we are well on our way to becoming cyborgs. All I could think of was “The Borg” in Startrek. “Resistance is futile. We are The Borg’. The only thing more frightening than meeting the Borg is being one!
Fascinating. I do wish Ray would clue us readers in how his sources for such bold predictions. J RandellJakarta, Indonesia
Randell, the first chapter of his book is available on his website. His bold predictions are based on his Law of Accelerating Returns in technology.
nanobots in the brain replacing travel? won’t you still feel lame for not actually travelling? i think ray is pulling a microsoft – he’s getting the technology right, but he’s missing the culture by a mile.
When he was talking about printing off 3d objects he meant making a virtual object that will have no value and serve no purpose to humans. But it will interact with you in the same way. Eg. A jack in a box. You will be able to spin the handle and hear the music. And the jack will pop out. You wont be able to feel the jack though.(AKA. in iron man when tony stark makes the virual armour)
“nanobots in the brain replacing travel? won’t you still feel lame for
not actually travelling? i think ray is pulling a microsoft – he’s
getting the technology right, but he’s missing the culture by a mile.”QFT. The whole point of traveling is to see the sights, to be in the place where history happened. The act of experience what the country is like is only the tip of the iceberg.
Eventually, the 3-d printing would not need “source elements” as described by JeffMoorley. It’s not entirely inconceivable that nano-technology, sufficiently advanced, could take atoms out of the air, break them apart and re-assemble them in order to have the right raw materials. I don’t see this happening in the time frame RK describes, but it is not necessarily just Star Trek fantasy stuff.
<devils advocate>Is it just me or is he invoking “nano” for anything and everything? And in 8 generations of doubling a lot of very strange things start to occur. I think he has some good ideas, but I feel like a lot of this is almost flippantly shooting in the dark.</devils advocate>
Everyone is a product of their environment. Most people (like ANONYMOUS commented) now perceive value in experiencing the real thing because that’s how they were raised (and, that’s what they were limited to). However, the definition of “real” will change drastically for our grandchildren (I’m 34) and it’s pretty narrow-minded to try and compare anything we’re experiencing today to the way we will experience it in 2040 or how a person that is born in 2020 will experience it. Once the word “reality” becomes a subjective term there is no reason one would sacrifice volume of experience for a modern qualification of “real” experience. I’m sure there will be a medium each individual fines satisfying. Unfortunately, there are those who will believe their opinion is the right one and progress will be stunted because of the foolish fears spawned by such institutions as religious ones or as Sydney said, “The Borg”.
A lot of these ideas are very old. I highly recommend “Diamond Age” by Neil Stephenson to anyone interested in how nanotechnology can change the future.
As for the time frame, I won’t hold by breath. The infrastructure to support working nano-factories will likely take a while to develop.
As for comments about wanting to travel IRL: perhaps this will seem dated to younger generations. I can imagine people having the identical reaction to telephones “why use a telephone when you can get the real experience by meeting in real life?” and yet the telephone has become ubiquitous.
My point is, don’t count out new technology because you can’t see culture moving that way. It’s impossible to predict what social norms will be in 50 years.
The singularity is a great concept but Ray Kurzweil seems to be saying things he thinks the media will eat up. The idea of these nanobots entering our brain to create a virtual reality may happen in the future – but in 20 years time? Seriously? Twenty years ago we were almost entering the nineties. Nothing THIS significant has happened since then. Even space exploration, for which billions of dollars are spent, has not passed our solar system. No. Neurosurgeons and brain experts still do not understand HOW to manipulate the brain accurately enough to alter perception and the things Mr Kurzweil is saying are not going to happen within 20 years. No way. Believe me, I wish they did, but the singularity is not approaching THAT fast.
“Twenty years ago we were almost entering the nineties. Nothing THIS significant has happened since then.”You are extrapolating from a linear view; Kurzweil’s whole thing is that technological development has always proceeded exponentially, and we are now on the cusp of a dramatic upward turn in the curve.
“…but in 20 years time? Seriously? Twenty years ago we were almost
entering the nineties. Nothing THIS significant has happened since then.”Are you mad? Do you remember the late 80s, early 90s? 20 years ago only the rich and famous, and scientists had computers. There was no world wide web. A cellular phone could barley work as a phone, and they were the size of a cinder block. Now we have the iPhone, lol. Compare a “brick phone” with an iPhone – without forgetting that technology advances at exponential rates – and try to imagine another 20 years development.Good rule of thumb: If ever you are skeptical about technology’s ability to accomplish a given task, you are probably wrong.
20 years ago people imagined machines that would understand the semantics of language. Google it yourself. Oh wait…
http://emforster.de/hypertext/template.php3?t=tms
Cancer is killing thousands and lets not even talk about AIDS.. the US and Europe wont raise the sanctions which are killing the African continent, South America and Parts of Asia.. turning the rest of the world into animals who bite the very hands that feed them.. And you people sit around feeling ‘fascinated’ by human beings such as Mr. Kurzweil and his research, understanding nothing related to how or why his research has been so well supported by the oppressors of this world. Before inventing nanobots, how about creating a true demo4cracy, or at least a system which wont kill some to feed others. Its amazing how the rulers of this world go so far as to detach each and every single one of us from the true sense of humanity that we are born with, using sick individuals such as Mr. Kurzwei to bring foward such ridiculous ideas, distracting you daily and keeping your mind far from thinking about important or life threating conditions and situations. Can’t wait for the next nobel prize awards, surely Mr. Kurzwei will be made into a humanity hero. God bless the Oppressors… right..?
great series on VBS.tv about him. Just went up today. http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=19261514001
“…I’m not sold on the ‘printing out’ of three-dimensional objects portion.”Actually, this has been done for years. It’s called 3-D rapid prototyping. Design engineers essentially “fax” their specs to a device in another location, where it’s “printed out” as a three-dimensional plastic object that can be manipulated and analyzed. Remember William Gibson’s famous line: “The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.”
There is so much about the future that will amaze everyone that this article doesn’t even begin to touch on. Yes, nanotechnology is and will continue to change the world. Eric Drexler was writing about it 20 years ago; saying we should be ready for the future. But, today it’s a technology that supports advancements in other areas that are also changing our lives. Machines will soon be smarter than humans. That will change everything. Our lifespans will be much longer because of nanotech but also because of advancements in genetic engineering and drug development made possible by advancements in quantum computing. Also, we haven’t even begun to use stem cells to literally fix birth defects, or things that have gone wrong. Ray has a team of people that scour sites like Science News. Some of the projections, like nano-induced VR is a bit out there. I mean, who’d really want to give over control of their brain like that. This year saw the first true flying car and it went basically unheralded. Last year we made a cloaking device. Who knew about it? We have created a transporter ala Star Trek, even if for only a single ion, but last year it was only a photon. We’re curing blindness and deafness, which is changing cultures. A lot is happening and happening very fast. Each advancement brings about major leaps in other areas of research. Machine intelligence, biotech, nanotech and energy research are all supporting one another.
Virtual reality. Read the first 2/3s of the scifi trilogy by David Louis Edelman — Infoquake (2006) and Multireal (2008) [Geosynchron - in progress]– to see how this sci fi author imagines it. Pretty interesting.
OK, this is just bullshit. Nanotech? Printing out 3D objects? Who cares!? He is a sick, sick man, using his sick ideas to make everyone believe they’ll be happier if they can “print out” a 3D pile of shit. What’s happened with GOOD’s green image? Why do you post shit like this? Already scientists are worried about how nano-particles might enter out bodies through the skin (because they’re that small!) and harm our cells. But that’s ok, as long as you can print your own 3D crap, while having robots in your brain that make you see what the government wants you to see.
Most every critical post I read misses the point of RK’s comments. Understandably, no one gets it when you blurb out comments “seemingly” from thin air. How’s this—-organ replacement in situ, such that your biological body never grows old, in fact it “grows” younger, through successive regeneration. Steak, but no cow. Optimal nutrition, regardless of what you eat. You get the idea.
All this technological progression is wonderful and fascinating, but I’m guessing it will end up as little more than a plaything for the wealthy, and we’ll be sitting in our comfy virtual-reality beds enjoying printed-out delicacies while the poorest 70% of the world suffers around us.