The future of technology

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Something been playing on my mind today and I thought I ask you all on here what you think.

I have this feeling that in the near future we will have a central cloud network which all devices will be connected permanently so that everything from music to books will be accessed using streaming methods.

So there will no longer be a need to store locally on our devices.

Example:

Companies will provide subcription based services such as napster, netflix, amazon etc, people will subscribe and be able to access digitally in real time where ever you are.

Errosion of ownership may come into play as no one will physically own stuff like dvds, games, etc.

What do you all think?

Such technology will take time to create we still haven't been able to create good solar power technology yet.

It would be interesting to see what would have to change in order for humans to let go of the desire for personal ownership.

Right now I think a big priority should be trying to figure out ways to efficiently recycle as much waste as possible and to break down toxic substances. For some aspects of this I suspect that biotechnology will prove useful (genetically engineered bacteria can do amazing things). For others nanotechnology might be the way to go. And for a lot of things we probably don't even need something that advanced.

Another concept that I find fascinating is that of 3D printing. Especially if coupled with open source designs. Hopefully one day we'll even be able to print things like electronics at home, although that day is a long way off. However, good recycling would be necessary for this I believe--otherwise we would produce even more waste than we do now and use resources in a totally unsustainable way.

Technology has already exceeded the range of most humans.

Besides a lack of knowledge, they are just too big.

The action is in small, complex, low energy, and fast. Humans are none of these things.

Biology brings in self powered, CO2 and sunlight, that can do things at the molecular level.

Some inorganic processes power our world, Up to WWII natural Quartz Crystals were the only source for high quality optics, electronics, and just about the time we learned to grow better, Transistors, Intergrated Circuts became possible.

This allowed for custom impurities, new stable lattic patterns, with interesting properties. YAGs, Yittrium Arsenate Garnets made low cost lasers possible, then CDs, CD Burners, DVDs.

It is still based on records, spinning disks, but it could be combined with growing crystals, laying down a layer of data as each layer of Atoms forms. That combined with etching, changing the materials deposited, can turn it into a sunlight powered energy storage, with solid state backup, and enough data to build and control other devices to produce anything needed.

We are discovering planets around other stars, something Earth like seems just a matter of time. Then What?

Our rocket technology seems primitive, the distance long, and creating something information and function rich that also could survive the trip, and mostly the launch, very high Gs, points to something solid state, a solid object, voids are a weakness, perhaps diamond sheathed, that could withstand everything from a close slingshot around the Sun to a high G rise to some percentage of the speed of light, and survive the Gravity needed to capture it at the other end. Then orbit the planet, and send back data by laser.

It is an easy hundred year plus project. Just to be sure, we should probe all suns in our area, there may be forms of life we have never considered.

None of this will do us any good, in the hundreds of years it will take the Earth is going to change, humans will reach a peak population and decline, most likely very suddenly.

Data recovery from the probes will have to be automated, no technology is likely to last hundreds of years. Something in orbit. In some respects it could be very depressing, we find the perfect planet, it lacks intelligent life, it is perfect in every way, just as Earth was five hundred years ago.

The journey will take a thousand years, use resources no longer available, and knowledge that has been lost.

It is not what we could do, but what we have to do to survive. We are heading in the wrong direction.

We will run the Earth out of resources because we have medicines to keep sick and old people alive for much longer than nature intended, and it is morally unacceptable to create a threshold where people are too sick or old to be productive and no longer worth using a ton of resources to keep alive. Birth control is a wonderful thing, but it's hard to get people to use it (usually the people least equipped to care for children). People won't accept limits on how many children they may have, and abortions are morally distasteful at best.

So more and more babies are born, and less and less people die. We are overpopulating the Earth and using its resources at a ridiculous rate. We are on a clearly unsustainable course.
We have resigned ourselves to this fate to the point that the thought that we may have to send a ship with enough people and resources to another planet to repopulate isn't completely far-fetched.
There are a million reasons why finding and repopulating another planet won't work, and I figure it to be about 50/50 for us managing population and resources in a sustainable way before we wreck the Earth or destroy ourselves.

As far as the future of technology, I look forward to the merging of computers and neurotechnology.
A computer that you carry on you that plugs into a port on your body and is connected to your nervous system in several ways.
See a projection of your internet, cel phone, television, etc. right in your field of vision because it is all wired right up to your optic nerve.
Stream music from the web that only you can hear because it goes directly to whatever the nerves responsible for hearing are called.
Entertainment will encompass all 5 senses. Watch a movie and smell the smells, feel the temperature of the environment of the movie.
Social networking would go from Facebook to something akin to ESP where you can contact anyone you know anytime, send them something far superior to a picture message, or speak to them face to face from opposite sides of the world.
No longer having to hold a device in your hand to be connected means you're connected all the time. An aquaintance arrives, and you can see their name and relevant info virtually printed across their shirt. If you want to remember something about that person, just pin a virtual note to them and you see it any time you see them or search their info in your list of contacts.

Technologically speaking, we live in a very exciting time in our history. I just hope we don't screw things up so bad that our children and their children never get a chance to enjoy and make use of these amazing things we have created and have yet to create.

In a way that's already happening I believe. It is my understanding that with the new Playstation coming out, you'll basically be renting the games from them. In other words, they're only allowed to be installed on one system, you have to be connected to the internet to play, etc. I just read about it briefly on the news though so I could be inaccurate. All to prevent internet piracy!