Image Source Flickr.com / goodweather.collective
It is official, the future is here. Sure, we don’t all have flying cars (yet), but we have voice recognition, smart phones, and other smart technology that is already helping make our lives easier.
But in our technological age, where advancements happen rapidly and new inventions can drastically alter our way of life, what does the future of technology hold for us? And how will this new technology impact or lives?
Here is just a glimpse of what our technologically enhanced future could look like.
Sit on your phone, and charge it.
In the future, you won’t ever have to worry about finding an outlet to charge your phone. Instead, you’ll just sit on it.
At least, that’s what the Wake Forest University Center for Nanotechnology envisions, with their newly created Power Felt, a product that looks and feels like fabric, but that creates electrical charges from temperature changes.
While Power Felt is available now, it is expensive to manufacture, costing over $1k per kilogram to produce. However, it is the Center’s hope that one day Power Felt will cost only $1 to add to cell phone cases.
Read more about Power Felt here: http://news.wfu.edu/2012/02/22/power-felt-gives-a-charge/
You will wash clothes by levitating them, and then cleaning them with dry ice.
In the future you will watch as your clothes levitate, wash, and dry, in minutes, with the Orbit washing machine.
Right now the Orbit it just a washing machine concept, that proposes to wash clothes quickly and easily by using a spherical drum that uses magnetic levitation to float the metal laundry basket. Once in orbit, dry ice breaks apart and speeds towards the basket, breaking down dirt and organic materials in your laundry. The dirt removed from the clothes and filtered through a tube, which you can later remove and rinse.
Learn more about this conceptual washing machine here: http://elieahovi.prosite.com/40900/382600/work/orbit-washing-machine-by-electrolux
All medicines will be dispensed internally though a memory stick.
In the future, you won’t have to
worry about remembering to take your medicine. That’s because you’ll have a small, wireless microchip implanted in your body that handles and manages medicine dispensing. The microchips are about the size of a small memory chip, and can be activated remotely by phone or computer.
Dispensing medicine this way can help make sure patients receive the proper dosage of medicine, and can be extremely helpful for patients who need painful injections to help manage illness.
Read more about how these medicine microchips work: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-02/first-time-wirelessly-controlled-implantable-pharma-chip-delivers-drugs-inside-body
You’ll have Terminator vision.
However, the biggest change for your future self is how you’ll see the world – through computerized lenses. Imagine a world where a Google map virtually overlays the street as you drive, making navigation effortless. Or, a world where a Google search happens, just by looking at an object.
This future may come sooner than you think, for Google is working on augmented reality eye wear, which they hope to make available by the end of 2012. The smart eyeglasses will use Android technology and an onboard camera to help you view and monitor information about the world around you, just like the Terminator.
Read more about the future of augmented reality eyewear here: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-02/google-basically-making-whole-world-googleable
These are just a few of the ways your future self will integrate with technology. Of course, with the way technology grows, who knows what the next technological game changer will be, but one thing is for certain, technology is only going to become more integrated with our daily lives.
How will you utilize technology in the future? Is there something cool in the works you think the world should know about? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think.
Julie Strier is a freelance writer who is interested in how technology will shape our future. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.mybusinesswriter.com.