When we stop to think about it the materials for everything that has ever been invented has always been with us. So, TV, Radio, electricity and in fact everything else we have today could have been with us hundreds of years ago. The inventions of the future are there, just waiting to be discovered. It is exciting when you think in a hundred years there will be thousands of new things, that are here now in material form, but haven’t been tapped into yet.
It is amazing the speed that technology advanced in the 20th Century and seems to be advancing just as fast in the 21st Century. So, with technology in fast mode what can we expect tomorrow from the geniuses of today? No doubt computer technology will keep moving forward with higher definition screens and more and more memory. Maybe in fifty years a hard drive will hold millions of more gigabytes. What we think of as high tech today will probably be museum pieces, looking rather archaic. Maybe in a few hundred years or less space travel will be normal for everyone and taken for granted. As mere mortals we can only imagine what may be next because of what is around today.
How far would technology have come today if it hadn’t accelerated during the two world wars? As I said all materials in their raw state have always been here – it’s just someone coming along to make use of them. The trouble is things have to be done in stages. Before anything, for example electrical was invented, someone would have to know how to harness that power. So before electricity was put to use no one would have thought about things that could possibly work with it. How could you think of inventing anything that required power such as electricity, if you don’t know if such power will ever exist?
It was after the power of electricity was known that thinking caps were put on and things driven by electrical power saw the light of day. We could ask, if electricity had been discovered hundreds of years earlier would our technology today be far more advanced than it is today?
So what goodies will we see in the future? Things that will be around in a hundred years certainly won’t bother me but I am interested in what is here now and wonder what will be around when I’m not.