Tangential question, what are the areas of technology where we can expect to see substantial progress or breakthroughs within 2030, i.e. what are the most exciting areas to follow and look forward to? Here's my list:
I'd say fusion is a sleeper. You still have that stupid "30 years away and always will be" meme but there is real progress being made. Fusion would completely change the world, though not overnight because it would take another decade or so before it would advance enough to be cost competitive.
I'm semi-optimistic about space flight and longevity. I think Starship will fly, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of its most ambitious specs get dialed back a bit. I'll be somewhat (but not totally) surprised if the "chopsticks" idea works.
We will probably see aging-reversal to some limited extent within 10-20 years, but the effect will probably be more to extend "health span" than add that much to life span. (I'll take it.)
I'll add one not on the list: the use of deep learning to discover theories in areas like physics and math that have not occurred to humans and maybe are not capable of being found by ordinary human cognition.
Wildcard, but plausible: detection of a strong extrasolar biosphere candidate using JWST or another next-generation telescope. Detection would be based on albedo absorption spectra, so we wouldn't know for sure. Talk of an interstellar fly-by probe would start pretty quickly.
I wouldn't list sub-5nm as "far out." We will almost definitely get sub-5nm. AFAIK 3nm is in the pipeline. Sub-1nm is "far out" and may or may not happen.
Sadly I'd also qualify most of these as things that consumers are overly excited about but will never reach their expected potential (at least in our lifetimes) due to technological limits. Same as flying cars, 3D TVs, 3D printing, household robots, holograms, AR glasses.
3D TVs will come of age once autostereoscopic displays reach the right level of quality. After being blown away by my first glimpse of a display in around 1998 I fully expected them to be useable years ago. I guess we might still be another "10 years" away.
I really doubt that there's going to be huge desire for 3D TVs at any point. People can already look at video on a 2D display and interpret 3D visuals from it. And if you want to be fully immersed in something, maybe you want VR instead.
"People can already look at video on a 2D display and interpret 3D visuals from it. " way off, depends heavily on contrast sensitivity which is a function of brightness and displays have long way to go (esp with ambient around) +HDR even breaks current VR chain because stray light.
But you aren't "spending time" with that person. You're spending time with that person's poorly rendered avatar. You can't even hear them properly. You can't see them at all. You can't touch them or read a lot of the nonverbal cues. And for the privilege of not being in their presence, you also need to pay several hundred (if not thousands, this being Apple) dollars, and both sides need to use Apple products. I very strongly suspect that all but the most ardent Apple fans will pass on this generous offer.
Passthrough AR isn't glasses AR, and is much more likely to be rapidly made capable. Lynx-R launches in Q1, and Meta's and Apple's headsets will likely use passthrough AR next year.
I definitely hope for something novel with video see-through HMDs as they used to call them in 2002 [1] when I last worked on them. Latency wasn't solved last I checked and viewpoint offset is still an issue that throws users off.
Don't forget carbon sequestration and geoengineering.
I think longevity research is a path to stagnation, and ultimately counter-productive, and should cease. If science advances one funeral at a time, then longevity is counterproductive for all other progress.
There are reasons to worry about the ethics of longevity research (especially if the benefits of it are not justly shared), but I don't think you can justify withholding life-improving medical treatment from people just because you want to help science by letting people die early.
It's dishonest to characterize what I'm saying as "choosing death", as if I've got a nihilistic urge to nuke the planet. Death, birth, and renewal is part of the entire biosphere which has been existed for billions of years. The cells that defy death are called "cancer". The messiness with which humans come into being and then pass away again is NOT something to be engineered away - it is something to experience and learn to appreciate.
The thing that lives on, that can be effectively immortal (if we choose to protect it) is the biosphere in which we're embedded and, to a lesser extent, the nest of symbols humans have fashioned for themselves over the last few millenia. It is fascinating to imagine what it would be like to live through human history; however it is terrifying to imagine what the "great men" of history would have done or become if not cut down by time. The inevitability of death has surely stopped some great things from being done, but I'm equally sure it has stopped even worse things from being done - imagine human history if the Pharoahs of Egypt had had access to immortality! It's too horrible to imagine.
BTW the Logan's Run system was purely about maintaining homeostasis given limited resources, NOT about maintaining (or even enhancing) dynamism in the population by decreasing average life-span. In other words, unrelated.
I apologise for the "choosing death" meme, but I think it is only as inappropriate as you equating human beings with "cancer". You're right, though, that humans have to learn to experience and in some sense come to terms with the messiness of death.
I think what we disagree on is what it means to "engineer away" death. Are we engineering away death if we cure a disease, but don't extend the maximum lifespan of humans? Is extending the average lifespan to 100 years all right as long as those treatments are designed to not work on people over 100 years old? If a treatment is later found that helps 100 year olds to extend their age to 101, is that the treatment that should be banned, or is there some number N where adding N years to the previous maximum is morally wrong and the whole world has to agree on banning it?
Your point about the Pharaohs is maybe not as strong as you think, since of course the Pharaonic system did outlast any of the individual office holders. I don't think it was old age that lead to the fall of that regime, and there are plenty of regimes which manage to be equally horrible within a single lifetime, or that are overthrown within the space of one lifetime.
Thank you for that succinct explanation of the premise of Logan's Run. I wasn't sure if it worked as an analogy, since, as you say, the motivation of the society was different from the one you are advocating for, but I think the most relevant aspect of Logan's Run is the dystopian nature of a society which imposes age limits on its members, against their wishes.
Nothing wrong with improving quality of the life we do have, which naturally would mean increasing lifespan a little. In fact, I'd argue that's precisely the right way to spend resources - quality, not quantity.
I'm not at all against small increases in lifespan, and certainly for improving quality of life (e.g. defeating disease). I'm specifically against individual immortality because I strongly suspect it would quickly and inexorably lead to stagnation and death for our species.
I would argue that most of the items on this list can be subdivided into two types of hype.
short term hype (real advances that will happen in 1-2 years, but won't matter by 2030, because they are just a generational iteration)
Over-hyped far-future research. (things where the possibilities have yet to be brought down to earth by the practical limits of implementing them broadly / cost effectively) When these things do happen, they tend to be a bit of a let-down, because they don't actually provide the promised revolutionary changes. These things basically have to be over-hyped in order to get the necessary funding to bring them to reality.
Of the examples you have, I am only really excited about CRISPR, and to a lesser extent commercial spaceflight, and new nuclear. These have promise IMO, but I also don't expect them to be decade defining.
Personally I don't think we know what the next breakthrough will be yet. I expect it to take us very much by surprise, and start out as something unthreatening which then grows to a disruptive size / scale.
Interesting, I think all of those items have a good chance of actually happening ("longevity research" happening means some sort of meaningful progress).
I hope there will be some unexpected breakthroughs too.
As someone in their 30s who suffers from baldness and arthritis, two simple conditions yet no promising solutions in sight, I find it cute when people think we can somehow cheat death or aging in the next 300 years.
Compared to most of the other things listed, this is more of a nerd-aestheticism thing rather than something which is hugely important technologically.
But haven’t ARM based processors put already computers in billions of peoples hands that otherwise wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise? I could argue that is hugely important.
The ARM revolution has already happened, in this case I viewed the mention to be more of a wishlist for the types of computers the global well-off buy.
They are modern takes on the Space Shuttle and Concorde respectively, but with the benefit of hindsight as well as half a century of advances in material science and control systems. But really the defining feature is that the Space Shuttle and Concorde were government-funded prestige projects, while their modern incarnations are economically viable.
Desirable or not is subjective, but what's not as subjective is the liklihood of this technology stack arriving and becoming popular, which seems very likely/guaranteed at this point.
it does seem likely to arrive but whether it becomes popular more difficult to predict as it's conditioned on the sway of public opinion, which seems heterogeneous regarding AR/VR
I think we're learning the limits of screen-based education now. There's something about being in the same room with a person at a chalkboard that is far more effective - at least anecdotally. (I'd be surprised if there wasn't research backing this up). And this seems deeply unfortunate if true, because it means the cost of learning can't go all the way to the ground.
Two thoughts:
Africa can’t afford in-person teachers. The ones in my country are not great on average.
I couldn’t learn maths in class. Too distracted, too annoyed with stupid questions. But I increased 3 symbols in 3 school terms with a slide projector and audio tape, where I could focus and rewind. Teacher there was for bits I didn’t learn from the slides. I’m probably in the minority but I’m sure there are more of me.
Digital education catches kids like me and kids who have no access to excellent educators. And marginal cost is zero, so no harm in giving access to the world.
Half of these are on their way into "valley of disillusionment" before they become generally useful, though perhaps not as grandiose as originally promised.
And longevity research is not even a real need - we already live too long as it is, from the evolutionary and economic standpoint. I'd much rather someone came up with a way to cheaply and painlessly end one's life once quality of life begins to deteriorate due to chronic disease and such. Some kind of company (and legislative framework) where you pay, say $1K and they put you into a nitrogen chamber and then cremate and flush the ashes down the toilet afterwards. Or perhaps use them as fertilizer. I'd use the service myself at some point in distant future.
The How is not the issue. A combination of various drugs or an opiate overdose should do the trick. It's already legal in Switzerland, Canada, and Belgium.
Voluntary euthanasia is ultimately challenging because of similar legal issues as with the death penalty - it cannot be undone, and there are forces in society that can lead individuals to use it for other reasons than just being over and done with suffering through old age.
That's the point. As long as I'm lucid I should have full bodily autonomy, including the decision to shuffle off this mortal coil. In fact I already have control over this decision.
> and there are forces in society
So? You're going to tell me I can't go anytime I want to? That's not the case even now. It's just that now I'd have to procure the nitrogen myself (which isn't difficult), and my relatives would have to deal with the body. I'm merely suggesting a service that resolves this purely logistical complication, and excludes the possibility of not quite dying but living the rest of one's life as a vegetable.
Think of what we have now: people spend years, sometimes decades suffering from chronic diseases, or just plain not having anything or anyone to live for. And it'll get worse as medicine "improves", and lifespans "improve" with it. Is it humane to withhold the option to end it all from them? I don't think it is. I will grant you that there are likely tens of millions of such people on the planet right now. I will also grant that this is not an uncontroversial thing to suggest. But the alternative we have now doesn't seem any more humane or dignified to me.
If this still doesn't sit right with people, we could age and condition-restrict it, or require a long waiting period for when this is not related to acute incurable disease.
> as with the death penalty
Which is also inhumane, IMO. It's much worse to spend the rest of one's days in confinement instead of 30 seconds until barbiturates kick in. That's what the sadists who are against the death penalty are counting on.
Again, I am aware that there is no core technological or logistical issue. The issue is purely societal. Yes, I can get behind enabling people to specify policies on what to do when untreatable or mental diseases kick in.
The death penalty does not exist to reduce the suffering of the convicted, but to get rid of them. The true issue with the death penalty is that it can't be graduated (except by adding "cruel and unusual punishment") and it can't be undone. Prison sentences can be legally challenged and the innocent can be freed early.
There is a real slippery slope here: what length of prison sentence is considered to be worse than the death penalty? An additional thing to consider is that many countries without the death sentence actually don't impose true life sentences, but very longish ones (upwards from 20 years). Confinement for life is for those irredeemly judged to be a threat to society after their sentence. Compared to that, many death row inmates actually spend decades fighting their sentence. They could end it at any time if they wanted.
Regarding commercialization of suicide: I think you're missing my point entirely somehow. The "societal" issue where old people are unwanted already exists, and it will exist irrespective of any innovation of this kind. Moreover, old or terminally ill people already have full control in terms of whether they choose to live or kick the bucket. There's nothing whatsoever anyone can do about that. Tens of thousands of people in the United States take their lives every year. It's just that if they care about their loved ones (if any) the logistics of dying are horrific. I wouldn't want to subject anyone to that, but I'm afraid if I were terminally ill, that'd be a pretty shitty reason to continue living, and make everyone I love suffer with me.
> The death penalty does not exist to reduce the suffering of the convicted
There's an easy way out of your moral dilemma that you go into after this sentence, much like what I suggest for those on the outside: let the convicts choose whether they want to suffer for the rest of their days in prison, or be humanely and painlessly killed. I know which way I'd go, under the circumstances. And yes, I do insist that the killing must be humane, dignified, and painless. We have the technology to ensure all three of those things.
Regarding humane, dignified and painless killing: the Lethal Injection was supposed to be exactly this. But we humans are pretty good at botching things...
- Nuclear fusion (Helion, ZAP, TAE, Tokamak Energy, CFS, Wendelstein).
- Self-driving cars.
- New types of nuclear fission reactors.
- Spaceflight (SpaceX Starship).
- Supersonic airplanes (Boom).
- Solid state batteries.
- Quantum computing.
- CPUs and GPUs on sub-5nm nodes.
- CRISPR-based therapies.
- Longevity research.