Things are not what they seem. We look at the technical progress that we have made since the beginning of the 19th century until now and we realize that we are advancing, but how fast is this happening. Some people say that since it took us a couple of hundred years since the first steam wagon to the first car, that it will take hundreds of years before things like life extending devices are ever implanted in a human. How often do we hear "that will never happen in my lifetime"? I was even guilty of this type of flawed thinking at one time. Things changed for me, however, when I realized what was really happening. We were not only experiencing a revolution in technology and biology, but we were also experiencing a revolution in the speed of the progression of technology. What I am trying to say is that things are happening faster and faster.

If one looks at the human genome project, where scientists are trying to find out what all the genes do in the human body, how fast is the discovery going? They found out that for the first gene, it took 10 years. This is only a 15 year project, so you would have to think that it is a complete failure, right? I mean, if it took 10 years for one gene, how could that ever finish in 15 years? Here is the answer. We build our research on top of other research and because of this, it only took under a month to find all the information on the last gene that they examined. Indeed, they could finish ahead of schedule at the new current rate. Not only that, but along the way they are finding out things that can help us with diseases. An example of this is that they have found a cure for hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure. This should be available to all in a few years. When this project is completed, then things will really begin to move way faster. In the next 20 years, we may be able to extend life. Yes that's right, if nothing stops us, like the government or wars, we could all see our lives extended greatly.

Right now, computing power is guided by something called Moore's Law. Moore was a cofounder of Intel. He said that every 24 months the amount of transistors in a cpu (central processing unit) double. The central processing unit is the brain of your computer. This quote has also been stated as every 18 months. Experts in the field are now saying that it is more like every 12 months. At this rate of advancement, the computing power of a ordinary home computer will surpass that of the human brain by 2020, but if the advancement speed increases or we perfect quantum computing, it may happen sooner. Can you imagine having a computer that is actually smarter than you are? Will these things ever acquire life? There are so many questions to be answered. I personally think that once we approach the point where computers can write their own programs, then this will become the danger area. As we grow and mature, we sort of write our own program for behavior, but in our case it is influenced by our environment and upbringing, will a machine act any different than we do if given the chance, since it will not have any of these events to base its program on?

Communication is speeding along and being perfected at an ever increasing rate. We think that we have perfected this art, but in truth we have only scratched the surface. I listened to a lecture by an expert in the field and some of things he has to say, might even be classified as scary. One thing that he had to say was something that I had never even thought of. He talked about where communications were headed. He stated that someday, in the near future, we would be able to hold virtual meetings with anybody that we were connected to with a special device. This doesn't sound like anything much different, right? Wrong, he said that we would do this in our minds. Yipes! He stated that devices are headed this way. We might just stick something in our ear, it would be tiny, and this receiver would broadcast right into our brain. I told you it was scary. I guess the step after this would be a chip implanted into our bodies so we wouldn't have to have a device in our ear.

I also heard that something is being worked on now that should be available by 2010. It is an artificial red blood cell. It turns out that even though our bodies are marvelous machines, some parts of that machine are not as efficient as they could be. Our red blood cells are one of these parts. The project that is being worked on now is a miniature machine, the size of the red blood cell that is over 1,000 times more efficient. If we had these new robotic red blood cells in our bodies, we would be able to run at full speed for over 15 minutes and not even breathe heavy. They are much more efficient at dispersing oxygen. Robots in our bodies? Yes that is the plan and not only robots to replace red blood cells, but robots that keep us healthy. They would find and eliminate any diseases before they could take hold. It looks like humans will become the first animal live on this planet to be fused with machines.

There is also the knowledge chip, I have written about this before. At the rate memory chips are increasing in capacity, it is only a matter of time before one of these can be filled with the entire knowledge of a profession, such as doctor, scientist or lawyer. In the near future schools may become obsolete, or just for people that don't qualify for a chip. There is a problem with this however. The problem is that we can't all be professionals and many people are worried that only the children of the rich and powerful will get the good memory chips implanted. The rest of us will either get nothing or chips that have just general knowledge, thus eliminating us from the good paying and prestigious professions. Others say that we shouldn't worry because the government will make sure the choices are fair. I have to believe that what will happen will be something like this, half of all the good chips will go automatically to the children of the rich and powerful and the rest will be given out in some type of system to the general population. When people tell me that things here are fair, I remind them about the Governor of Pennsylvania that found out he needed a heart. He was automatically put on the top of the list ahead of those they had waited for years.

Even our automobiles are quickly becoming self sufficient. We now have navigation and radar in some of them. Why there is even an automobile that parallel parks itself. I think that we can all see the next step here, it is a car that you won't have to drive at all, it will just drive itself to the destination that you tell it. I don't know how long this will take, but if we review what we already have and what we will have in 2020, it should be a done deal by then. We will have a computer that is at least as smart as us, satellites to guide it, radar to stop it from hitting anything or anyone else and some sort of remote driving system. Tests have been conducted on remote driving for the last few years and a contest is held every year. So far no vehicle has completed the complex course, but it is only a matter of time.

An astonishing advancement has just been made in robotics. South Korea has developed a robot sentry that will kill a human, if he or she gets too close. It is even rumored that it will kill a human that gives the wrong password. It was developed by the research wing of a famous South Korean electronics giant, according to information posted on the web. This is the first robot designed to kill humans. Rumors have it that it will be used to guard sensitive military installations and maybe on the border between North and South Korea. This doesn't bode well and it can't help but remind one of the Terminator movies.

So there you have it, we are progressing faster everyday, so you just can't go by how long things took in the past. As more of the technological foundation is put into place as we discover things, it just gets easier to develop newer things based on this past progress. It could be that by 2020, the world will be an entirely different place. This is also happening economically. If we look at Asia, we can see that poverty is disappearing. Sure there are still a lot of poor people, but they are only 10% as many as there were 20 years ago. The world is starting to even out in the standard of living. Sure it is painful for some of us here, but that will end eventually, it is the price of being on top. So if you are lucky enough to be around in about 13 years from now, you should see a profoundly changed world.