Down the Rabbit Hole

The Forward March of Tech

30 Day Blogging Challenge
PROMPT January 4th
High schoolers graduating this year, in May 2019, are as old as the first iPod. Make a prediction for how technology will advance in the next 18 years.

I might be weird but talking about advancements in technology always makes me feel a little strange and uncomfortable. I've never been huge into technology (I refrained from getting a smart phone for years!) and so thinking about how much it will advance in the next 18 years seems like a task I am not equipped well to tackle. In 18 years I will be in my early 60's and my only child will be 27 and likely well into her own life. I honestly can't imagine what life will be like then on a ground level let alone as it relates to technological advances! I hope when I hit my 60's I'm at least planning a more "unplugged" existence...maybe even running a tiny, little beach side B&B in the keys perhaps? But in case I am still working then (which is pretty bloody likely) and for the purposes of the prompt, let me see....

I imagine by then that we will have fully automated self driving cars - we are quite close to that now I think. I am almost certain we will have found a way to capitalize off space travel, enabling those uber rich private citizens to be among the first to not only travel too but stay on the moon in some ultra-exclusive version of an Airbnb courtesy of NASA. I think we could see many more kiosk-based service, for everything we could need from food to pharmacies. If you need or want to acquire anything, there will be a colorful and user-friendly kiosk for that.

I would like to believe technology will also make major advances to aid in supporting our environmental - from new sources of sustainable energy to finding ways to grow produce in arid deserts and in more of those inhospitable habitats. I would hope that in the next 18 years technology has figured out ways to make our schools safer, or at least figured out how to make people stop blowing past school buses on our roads. I really hope by the time I am in my 60's, technology has enabled our CT DOT so people do not have to take the day off of work to register their cars! But, I also really hope technology then won't have rendered many of our hard working men and women obsolete, hasn't afforded people the ability to design perfectly engineered super children or crafted humanoid-like robots that eventually take over the world and force technology-challenged individuals like myself to live in community hovels near the edges of landfills