overview if some tech fir 2050

1. Some Future-Significant Technologies
by 2050
For the EC KT 2050 Scenarios Project
Jerome C. Glenn
The Millennium Project
www.themp.org

2. Increasingly Significant Technologies for 2050
• Synthetic Biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computational Science
• Pure meat, leather, without
animals & augmenting medicine
• Tele-Everything & Tele-
Everybody, the Semantic Web
• Augmented Reality, Tele-
Presence, Holographic
Communications
• Quantum computing
• Increasing individual and
collective intelligence
• 3-D Printing biology as well as
materials and 4-D Printing
• Nanotechnology
• Robotic manufacturing
• Conscious-Technology
Civilization potentials

3. Synthetic Biology – mixing species DNA
Microprobes to eat the plaque in your brain?
Produce hydrogen instead of CO2 in plants?

4. Artificial Intelligence: technological capacity to act based
on its own understanding and reasoning

5. When this
begins to
happen, the
speed of
increasing AI’s
intelligence will
be far faster
and produce
more change
than Moore’s
Law
Artificial Intelligence … that can autonomously
“write” and improve its code…
by responding to feedback from
sensor networks worldwide,
will accelerate AI’s intelligence
worldwide… moment by moment

6. Computational Science
Computational biology
Computational Chemistry
All accelerated with Moore’s Law AND Computational Physics
autonomous AI programing worldwide

7. Growing Pure Meat without Growing Animals
August 5, 2013 a London chef cooked and served hamburgers
without growing/killing a cow.

8. Tele-Everything, Tele-Everybody, and the Semantic Webs

9. Example of Tele-Everything/Everybody
Bio-tech
clothing

10. Augmented Reality, Tele-Presence, and holographic communications

11. Quantum Computing … D-Wave Developments today

12. Increasing Intelligence:
both Individual and Collective Intelligence
EU, US, China
Human Brain
Projects; Google &
IBM artificial brain
projects

13. Collective and Individual Intelligence

14. 3-D Printed Kidney, 4-D Printed self-assembly

15. Could nanorobotics, 3D printing, and AI make this obsolete?

16. Nanotech-Everything

17. Emerging Technologies Table
If Then Nano-technology
Synthetic
Biology
Artificial
Intelligence
Robotics 3-D Printing Augmented
Reality
Nano-technology
xxx
Synthetic
Biology xxx
Artificial
Intelligence xxx
Robotics xxx
3-D Printing xxx
Augmented
Reality xxx

18. Will 2050 technology begin to leave us behind? Or will we
shake hands, and then merge with Technology?
If you can’t
beat ‘em…
why not join ‘em?

19. Conscious-Technology
Humans becoming
cyborgs
1985
2015
2000
2030
Built environment
becoming intelligent
When the distinction between
these two trends becomes
blurred, we will have reached the
Post-Information Age

20. Simplification/Generalization of History
and an Alternative Future
Age /
Element Product Power Wealth Place War Time
Agricultural
Extraction
Food/Res Religion Land Earth/Res Location Cyclical
Industrial Machine Nation-
State
Capital Factory Resources Linear
Information Info/serv Corporation Access Office Perception Flexible
Conscious-
Technology
Linkage Individual Being Motion Identity Invented

21. Some questions to consider for KT 2050
Scenarios…

22. Our eye glasses,
microscopes,
telescopes have
affected our
consciousness for
years –
How might future
technologies affect
our consciousness?

23. Will we create
Floating
Vertical Farms
and
Carbon Sinks?
(as we have
windmills in
the oceans
today)

24. Could the
integration of
synthetic
biology, AI, and
nano-robotic
manufacturing
produce
Vertical Farming,
Carbon Sink,
transportation
structures like
these?
Vincent Callebaut

25. Will we create our own Avatars to be our Cyber-selves?
Could this be
our future
“immortality”
in Cyberspace?
Your own cyber
clone?

26. Will we Succeed in creating Eco-Smart
Cities and retrofitting cities?
Integrates
physics, biology,
engineering,
archeology, and
artificial
intelligence

27. And create these?
The DESERTEC
100 GW of solar
power
throughout
Northern Africa
for 15% of
Europe’s energy
demand
Space elevators and Solar
Power Satellites

28. Robot Farming replacing how many farmers?
This capability
exists today.
What integration
of nanotech
robotics and
synthetic biology
by 2050?

29. By 2050, could there be more drones then people?

30. Will we apply advances in Materials Science
to re-build our built environment ?
And produce more
“miracles” between
2015 and 2050 than
was produced
between 1980 and
2014. Today UCLA’s
Solar Cell Windows
could be used to retro
fit buildings for energy
production

31. Will we teach people to find markets worldwide
for self-employment ?
By 2050 everyone is connected
to the future Internet and
everyone is surrounded by a
9.6 billion person market

32. One-Person
Businesses
Find markets
around the
world for what
you are
interested in
doing
not non-existing
jobs
What could this look
like in 2050?

33. Will synergies among AI, robotics, nanotech,
synthetic biology, and quantum computing
create more jobs than they eliminate?
If not, then long-term structural unemployment
is inevitable, unless we create new concepts of
work and possibly guaranteed income for all.

34. 36 Years from Now (2050):
What will be emerging? And from what?

35. “Research and Innovation in the service of Economy and Society-European Neighbourhood
and the Black Sea region” 29 & 30 May 2014, THESSALONIKI, GREECE
To keep track of it all, and improve foresight,
a European Collective Intelligence System
(E-CIS) is needed that can:
1. make it easier for a “Whole-of-Europe” response to European challenges
2. make trans-disciplinary innovative research easier to accomplish and break down
some of the academic barriers
3. give experts and creative people a common platform to engage in building a
European “brain”
4. increase the internationalization of research as an E-CIS can connect local
challenges with global challenges via other CISs around the world to build –
eventually - global brains for a better civilization

36. For further information
Jerome C. Glenn
The Millennium Project
4421 Garrison Street, NW,
Washington, D.C. 20016 USA
+1-202-686-5179 phone/fax
Jerome.Glenn@Millennium-Project.org
www.StateoftheFuture.org
www.themp.org (Global Futures Intelligence System)