Future Technology¶

The tools that will shape the next 50 years. Some are already in labs, some are just leaving them.

A smart city street with connected vehicles.

Artificial intelligence¶

Machines that learn, reason and create. AlphaFold worked out protein structures that biologists had chased for 50 years. The open questions, alignment, consciousness and AGI, are in Unsolved: AI.

Robotics¶

General-purpose humanoid robots are leaving the lab, from Figure and Tesla to Boston Dynamics. The body was never the hard part. The brain is: handling the messy, unpredictable real world.

Quantum computing¶

Computers that use quantum states to solve problems ordinary machines can't, like drug design and materials. Still fragile and error-prone. See Unsolved: Computing.

Quantum computing hardware in a lab.

Fusion energy¶

The power source of the stars, on Earth. In 2022 a reaction released more energy than the fuel absorbed for the first time. Limitless clean power if we can make it continuous and cheap. See Unsolved: Earth.

The glowing interior of a fusion reactor.

Brain-computer interfaces¶

Chips that let the mind control machines directly. They are already restoring movement and speech to paralyzed people. This is the engineered version of telepathy, covered on the mind page.

Nanotechnology¶

Building at the scale of atoms: drug delivery that targets cancer cells, self-cleaning surfaces, stronger materials, and one day molecular machines.

Future transport¶

Reusable rockets, electric aircraft, hyperloop, self-driving cars, and small electric aircraft moving from prototype to pilot programs.

Smart cities¶

Cities that sense and respond, tuning traffic, energy and water in real time. The upside is efficiency; the tension is privacy and surveillance.