Forward to the Future: Visions of 2045
DARPA asked the world and our own researchers what technologies they expect to see 30 years from now—and received insightful, sometimes funny predictions
https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-10-21
Space: Interplanetary and interstellar travel, including faster-than-light travel; missions and permanent settlements on the Moon, Mars and the asteroid belt; space elevators
Transportation & Energy: Self-driving and electric vehicles; improved mass transit systems and intercontinental travel; flying cars and hoverboards; high-efficiency solar and other sustainable energy sources
Medicine & Health: Neurological devices for memory augmentation, storage and transfer, and perhaps to read people’s thoughts; life extension, including virtual immortality via uploading brains into computers; artificial cells and organs; “Star Trek”-style tricorder for home diagnostics and treatment; wearable technology, such as exoskeletons and augmented-reality glasses and contact lenses
Materials & Robotics: Ubiquitous nanotechnology, 3-D printing and robotics; invisibility and cloaking devices; energy shields; anti-gravity devices
Cyber & Big Data: Improved artificial intelligence; optical and quantum computing; faster, more secure Internet; better use of data analytics to improve use of resources
Forward to the Future: Visions of 2045 — Pam Melroy
Pam Melroy, an aerospace engineer, former astronaut and current deputy director of DARPA’s Tactical Technologies Office, foresees technologies that would enable machines to collaborate with humans as partners on tasks far more complex than those we can tackle today.
Forward to the Future: Visions of 2045 — Justin Sanchez
Justin Sanchez, a neuroscientist and program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office, imagines a world where neurotechnologies could enable users to interact with their environment and other people by thought alone.
Forward to the Future: Visions of 2045 — Stefanie Tompkins
Stefanie Tompkins, a geologist and director of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office, envisions building substances from the atomic or molecular level up to create “impossible” materials with previously unattainable capabilities.
What Is DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
For more than fifty years, DARPA has held to a singular and enduring mission: to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.
The genesis of that mission and of DARPA itself dates to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and a commitment by the United States that, from that time forward, it would be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprises. Working with innovators inside and outside of government, DARPA has repeatedly delivered on that mission, transforming revolutionary concepts and even seeming impossibilities into practical capabilities. The ultimate results have included not only game-changing military capabilities such as precision weapons and stealth technology, but also such icons of modern civilian society such as the Internet, automated voice recognition and language translation, and Global Positioning System receivers small enough to embed in myriad consumer devices.
https://www.darpa.mil/