Futurists of the 1950s and ’60s predicted that by the 2000s, flying cars and airborne robots would be a part of our everyday lives. Instead, we live in a world dominated by live streaming, smartphones and social networks.
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While those forecasters didn’t quite get the timing right, they got the technology right. Today, we are at the brink of another technological boom. This time, technologies like self-driving vehicles and robot assistants are under development. Soon, these and the other exciting technologies described below will go mainstream, changing the world in the process.
1. Voice assistants
In four years, the majority of American households are expected to own a voice assistant device like an Amazon Echo or an Apple Homepod. Thanks to the power of artificial intelligence (AI), voice assistants will grow increasingly helpful.
Even today, Amazon releases regular updates to Echo in order to help owners get more from the technology. The company recently reported seeing larger-than-expected gains from its voice assistant, which is why Amazon is now doubling down on the technology.
Voice assistants are making a significant impact in markets across the globe, and some observers expect that in the future we will communicate with technology through voice rather than text.
2. Crispr
Imagine a world where crushing genetic diseases like Huntington’s and cystic fibrosis can be cured. Thanks to crispr, genetic disease may be eliminated.
CRISPR Cas-9 (an abbreviation standing for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats”) is a gene-splicing technology capable of finding and removing mutated sections of DNA. Once this material is eliminated, crispr technology can replace the mutated sections with non-mutated variants.
