NEWS AND NOTES FROMAROUND THEWORLD
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
NOVEMBER
2013
•
ILLUSTRATION BY NICHOLAS BLECHMAN
17
DISPATCHES
DUDE, WHERE’S
MY JETPACK?
Few kids announce that they want to be futurists when they
grow up, and perhaps that’s because it’s an awfully difficult job.
FromNostradamus to George Orwell, predicting the future has
always been a hit-or-miss proposition, emphasis onmiss. With
the World Future Society’s
The Futurist
magazine releasing its
annual predictions for the coming year this month, we’ve got a
few updates on the stuffwe’ve been promised.
PREDICTION:
Colonies on Mars
ETA:
10–15 years, maybe
Where is it?
More than
150,000 people have
already applied to join
the first-ever manned
journey to Mars, which
will be funded by
private investors and
a potential reality TV
show (yikes). Immigrants
should expect to work
to establish a colony for
future generations. And,
of course, they shouldn’t
expect to come back.
PREDICTION:
Dinner-in-a-Pill
ETA:
Never
There’s still no known
way to fit the roughly
2,000 calories an adult
human needs to con-
sume daily into a single
pill. However, the original
idea of the meal-in-a-pill
came from suffragette
Mary Elizabeth Lease,
who hoped that it would
help emancipate women
from kitchen drudgery.
Fortunately, that future
has arrived, pill or no.
PREDICTION:
Living Forever
ETA:
100–200 years
Where is it?
If a device
or drug could fix aging as
it occurs—and it seems
this is theoretically pos-
sible—we could buy time
to wait for better treat-
ments. Eventually, writes
biomedical gerontologist
Aubrey de Grey, we could
reach a point where each
new treatment makes
you “younger” than you
were when you got the
previous one.
PREDICTION:
Jetpacks
ETA:
1–3 years
Where is it?
If you’ve
got about $150,000,
this particular vision of
the future could soon be
yours. New Zealand’s
Martin Aircraft has
just gotten a jetpack
prototype approved for
human testing. Don’t
ditch your car just yet,
though—even after
approval, the jetpack
will not be allowed in
urban areas.
PREDICTION:
Robot Nurses/Nannies
ETA:
Available now
Where is it?
Robots
are everywhere these
days. Babysitting bots,
such as NEC’s prototype
PaPeRo, which can talk
and play games, are
just some of the helpers
that have appeared over
the last few years. The
question, of course, is
how beneficial it is for
kids to hang out with a
motorized companion all
day. Studies are ongoing.
TO MARK THE RELEASE OF THE WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY’S
ANNUAL PREDICTIONS, WE KEEP SCORE ON PROPHECIES PAST
BY JACQUELINE DETWILER
