From a difficult past to an incredible future, technology leads the way

By Dick Pelletier

      

     After celebrating my 78th birthday recently, I began thinking about how technologies have changed my life. In the early 1930s President Hoover announced that "Prosperity is just around the corner," but he could not have been more wrong. The 1929 Stock Market Crash had just brought America into the Great Depression.

     My five siblings and I were raised on a farm near Hermiston, Oregon. Our home had no electricity and few modern conveniences. We bathed in a small tub in the kitchen with little privacy, drank water from a hand pump in the back yard, and made bathroom trips to a two-seater outhouse.

     In 1938 our farm was connected to the electric grid. We quickly installed electric lights, a water pump, an inside shower, and replaced the outhouse with an indoor toilet. In 1939, we installed our first telephone. Technology was changing our lives dramatically.

     Jet travel didn’t exist in the 1930s; a five-day ocean trip was the main way to go from America to Europe, and wireless meant the wood-paneled Zenith radio in the living room.

     In the 30s and 40s, radio was the most popular form of in-home entertainment; for travel we drove rough-riding cars on bumpy, mostly unpaved roads. Today we take TV, cell phones, and computers for granted; and we ride in cars loaded with creature comforts on superhighways.

     America's mastery of the physical and biological world was destined to grow tremendously. Life expectancy soared from 50 years in 1930 to nearly 80 today, and automated machines transformed agriculture, which now provides food for nearly 7 billion people worldwide.

     In late 1930s, President Roosevelt, emboldened by his "New Deal" legislation which ended the depression, authorized the "Manhattan Project," a massive effort to build an atomic bomb and use it to hasten the end of World War II.

     Our understanding of atoms led to nuclear energy, which prompted demands for machines that could crunch numbers and arrange data; this brought us the PC and email. These technologies raised worker output by 2% per-year, giving Americans the world’s highest standard of living.

     So a fair question might be, if technology changed our lives so radically in the last 78 years, what might we expect over the next 78 years? The following forecast offers some amazing possibilities:

• By 2020 – Regenerative medicine, the ability to use organs and tissues built from stem cells and modified with genetic engineering, will replace most body parts damaged by aging.
  
  
• By 2030 – Molecular nanotech will provide replicators that supply food, clothing, and necessities at little or no cost; and nanobots that rejuvenate cells, allowing middle-aged and elderly people to regain their health, strength, and youthful beauty.
  
  
• By 2086 – NASA plans to return to the Moon in 2020 and land people on Mars by 2030. Experts predict off-world life will thrive during the 21st century. By 2086, 78 years from today, millions of Earthlings, which could include you, will be enjoying life in an exotic distant world.

     Can these events happen in such an aggressive timeframe? Forward thinkers say this "magical future" will become reality – and in time to include most people alive today.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.