I wonder how many people have thought about what the future holds for us? There is a certain class of people, called futurists that try and tell us about some of the things that we can expect in the future. There are also scientists that try and predict where we will be in our technology in a certain number of years from now. Can anyone really predict where the human race will be in, say 100 years in the future, how about a thousand years or ten thousand years? It is hard enough trying to predict our futures 20 years from now. Just look at what has happened in the last twenty years. We have gotten cell phones, lcd televisions, hybrid cars, tiny pocket sized computers, full internet access and much, much more. Who would have believed this?

I though that I would like to take a crack at predicting the future in 100 years. Hey, this is easy because I won't be around to be laughed at if I am wrong. I can't do any worse than some of the predictions that I have seen. Lets start by looking into electrical storage. Batteries and such have been slow to advance, but their advancement has been gaining momentum. Right now lithium thionyl chloride batteries are said to be the most powerful batteries in the world. This is only a momentary honor. We have other power sources, such as fuel cells and tiny generators are on the books that will burn kerosene or alcohol and be small enough to power a notebook computer. I predict that in 100 years from now, battery power will not be a problem and we will have batteries that can be made as powerful as we want by adding layers to them. They will be made from inexpensive materials and a small one might be able to contain enough juice to power a home for at least an hour, if not longer. The current trend to miniaturization leads me to believe that this is possible. It might be possible to take one of today's large fuel cells and miniaturize it without losing any storage capacity.

If we talk about computing power a hundred years from now, it will be incredible. Looking back on the last 65 years, we see that we not only have shrunk the computer down from 10 tons or more to about 7 or 8 pounds in a laptop, but down to about 1.5 pounds or less in a pocket pc. This was not only a shrink job, we have increased the power of the computer by thousands of times. We are on the verge of creating quantum computers, while our standard computers are doubling in power in time spans of about a year, according to some experts. The official period is said to be a doubling every 18 months. Even with this formula and just considering our everyday, run of the mill home computer, it will have increased in power by doubling almost 67 times. It will become far more intelligent and if it isn't self aware, you won't be able to tell the difference. When you speak to your computer, it will be like speaking to another person. Lets hope that the computers haven't taken over the world by then.

We are experimenting with many new types of drives for space ships. One type, the improved ion engine is said to be capable of allowing us to travel to the closest star and furthermost planets in our solar system. As happened with the sound barrier, I believe that the scientists will be proven wrong again and we will be able to travel far in excess of the speed of light. A new light weight shielding will have been found or some sort of electronic shielding will be used to protect the occupants of the space ship from solar radiation. Along with this will be an electronic shield that will protect it from tiny collisions with space dust and tiny meteors. This will be necessary if we want to get into star travel. Space exploration will be accelerated as other countries get into the act, countries such as China, Japan, India, Great Britain and Korea. This will spur on the U.S.

New technologies that we have never even thought about will have appeared. For example, it might be possible to shrink solid objects down to small sizes by compressing the empty space between atoms. To bring the object back to it full size, you would have to somehow reinsert the space and move the atoms back to their original positions. Computer power may make this possible. Machines may be able to duplicate anything, even living animals, by copying them exactly then jump starting their hearts. Much of the world will be at the same economic level by then, due to under developed countries having gotten rich from manufacturing. Africa will be the last place to achieve this and will not have caught up fully, due to the social unrest and tribal hatreds. As many other people have already said, automobiles will drive themselves and if they still have wheels, there will be no more flat tires because tire technology will have created tires that are almost indestructible. The power source for these autos will not be gasoline engines, but rather some sort of electric engine that has a power source that allows it to go over 1,000 miles on a charge, because we will have figured out how to get back even more energy as we drive.

All train lines will have trains that are capable of speeds in excess of the speed of sound and designed in such a way that there will be no sonic boom as this speed is broken. It might even be possible to travel from the U.S. to Europe through some sort of tunnel that was dug with laser drills and created in only a couple of years. Medicine will have made tremendous leaps and all of us will have a chip that monitors all our bodily functions. We won't have to go to the doctor if anything goes wrong because we will all have millions of tiny robots in our systems that can repair anything. The doctor would only have to send out a signal to get them to take care of the problem. If you needed any replacement organs or other body parts, they would come from you. Your cells would grown them in a lab and when you got the organ or part, there would be no rejection since it was from you.

Our air transportation would travel so fast that we will be able to reach Europe in less than 1 hour from New York. A trip around the world would only take 3 or 4 hours at most and maybe less. Right now we are experimenting with pulse jets that are said to be able to reach speeds of 10 times the speed of sound. Depending on your altitude, that is something like 6,500 mph. Hey maybe I underestimated what the speed will be in a hundred years. No one will go to work to do their jobs unless they are in a service industry. All work will be done at home, on computers which will connect to everyone working for the same company. All connections will be wireless and extremely fast. We may not have schools by them since it will be quite possible to implant memory chips in people that have all the knowledge of an education which can never be forgotten. We will know by then if we are alone in the universe, or if there are other races willing to meet with us. Let's hope there are.

Well it was fun thinking ahead, I hope you enjoyed the exercise. I invite anyone to submit their ideas for the future 100 years from now and if I get enough responses, I will put them into an article. You can put them in an email and send them to me at Webmaster@aboutfacts.net