Thinking about the future makes us feel good. Looking at the future with hope is actually essential to our survival. Men have always been curious about the future since ancient times. Magicians, fortune tellers and oracles looked at the crystal balls, stars or coffee remains in cups trying to see the future. Beyond those, humans also believed that future may also be predicted by dreams.
In my opinion, future, technology, science and imagination are all-in-one concept.
I have always been interested in science fiction and the future since I was a child. Jules Verne’s ‘Traveling the Moon’ and ’20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ were the most influential stories of my childhood. When I think of the past, I recall that my first introduction to the artificial intelligence (A.I.) was the “Magic Mirror” in the story of “Snow White”. Thinking more, we can find pieces of technology in the self opening cave door of Alibaba or Sinbad’s flying carpet. Don’t you think so?
My generation grew up in the science-fiction atmosphere of 70s and 80s bipolar world. Our childhood science fiction TV series such as “Star Trek”, “6 Million Dollar Man”, “Mission Impossible”, “Space 1999”, “The Jetsons” that we have found the chance to watch through a single channel Black & White TV entered in our homes, enhanced our imagination and also shaped our expectations about the future. Besides, Isaac Asimov, the legendary science-fiction writer, had a profound impact on our generation.
During middle and high school years, we were discussing and making predictions about what the world would be like in 2000s with our classmates. On those days, 2000s seemed to be very distant for us. Almost every single one of us were “futuristic”. In the new century, the progress of science & technology would reach at a level that, space stations, journey to Mars, building a human colony on the moon, flying cars would come true. During the decade of the 2000s which was a very distant future for us, problems such as hunger, health and shelter would be solved as a result of the advanced technology. We were supposed to feed by the food pills. We estimated that there would be an overpopulated world in 2000s. Population growth estimations predicted that the current world population of 4 billion was expected to reach 10 billion by 2000. The overpopulation would be controlled by the test tube (IVF) babies and the family structure would also be changed. We were going to live in overcrowded cities with a skyline dominated by skyscrapers and highways of flying cars.
In the 21st century, the world would be ‘federated’ under one single administration, named world government. On one hand, the positive aspect of this Federal World Government was that, a global peace environment would be achieved, on the other hand, advanced technologies controlled by one central authority could lead to a dystopian world. While optimistically considering technological progress would bring peace and equality, both the middle school English course book ‘Brave New World’ and the George Orwell’s classic novel “1984’ had enlightened us that, a totalitarian government could keep records of all the citizens in its own interest, and the reality, the media even history could be changed entirely for its own sake by using advanced technologies. I can say that, these books are the first examples of the ‘Black Mirror TV Series’ casting in Netflix today. The slogan ‘Big Brother is watching you’ became popular among us in those days.
The sic-fi movie ‘Terminator’ appeared in the mid-80s and the ‘Skynet’, mastermind computer of the enemy machines in that film, showed us one more time that there might be a dark side of technological progress. Skynet was the worst state of artificial intelligence. In 2001: A Space Odyssey; the best science fiction film of all time directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1968, the most advanced supercomputer of mankind named HAL was an enemy of humanity as well. (The 3 letters comprising HALs name come just before the letters I,B and M in the alphabet which symbolizes the largest IT and technology company named IBM at that time- despite Kubrick’s denying of any connection). Would advanced computers and robots which become smarter than humans destroy humanity?
Another fear was the exhaustion of oil resources in the 2000s. Yes, what you’ve just read is not wrong. In those years, it was written that by the early part of the 21st century, we must face the prospect of running out of oil. However, for us there would be no need of oil by the year 2000. In our vision, alternative energy sources, robots, androids and computers with artificial intelligence were the must-have developments for the new century. Furthermore, in 80s when we considered technological and electronic progresses, Japanese came into our minds. Especially for the Turks, everything that have had an advanced technology should be the Japanese invention. Sony was the worldwide leader company in technology. Only the Japanese would able to make the intelligent robots if they could even be made. There was no way we could be alone in the universe. The aliens were advanced species and friendly creatures. They could carry our civilization even further. Is it possible to forget Steven Spielberg’s ’cute’ E.T. ?
When we came to the ’90s, prophet Nostradamus suddenly entered into our life. This man who lived in 1500s accurately predicted all the important events of the 20th century years ago. The Eastern Bloc gave up and our bipolar world finally ended, new concepts such as globalization emerged. During 90s, ‘the Six Million Dollar Man’ evolved to ‘the Robocop’. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates introduced the idea of a personal computer that would completely change our lives, and in a very short period of time, the computer was no longer a large, unreachable device and entered into our homes. The fast-growing world wide web (www) emerged in those years would change everything in the future. Even if we have foreseen the developments, we were not fully aware of what would happen. Steve Jobs, I’ve watched his ‘missing interview’ later in internet, was quite aware of this coming future. (Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trzajy23xio)
The 1990s was an important decade in the development of telephone technology with the introduction of portable digital cell phones. Unlike today, at that time the mobile phones were getting smaller and smaller. It was predicted that the continuously shrinking size of these phones would reach to a size of a watch, a pen or a gaslighter. Because of their tiny sizes they were called “pocket cell phones”. The interesting sic-fi movie ‘Back To The Future Part II’, I watched in London, tried to predict the year 2015 from the year 1985. The 2000s were now more closer. In those years, while web technologies continued to progress, the concept of a virtual reality came to the public’s attention. The main impact on this concern was the most influential sic-fi film ‘The Matrix’ released just one year before 2000. The film combined technology with philosophy in the sense that our imagination would carry us to the simulation of life. What if we are not real?
I was also reading the contemporary writers like Peter F. Drucker and George Friedman with a curiosity of their predictions for the coming future. I was introduced the new concepts such as information age and the future information society. What’s interesting was that, they wrote that “the future can not be predicted”.
Eventually, arriving of the year 2000 which we have thought the unreachable distant year in our imagination was a big disappointment for our generation growing up with great expectations. The far and fabulous century has finally come but we did not land on the Mars, we could not establish Moonbase Alpha like in Space 1999 TV-series and flying car was still a dream for us. Thankfully we have had Mr. Spock’s cell phone since the 1990s, but the video call process has not been as desired. The fear of the nuclear war of 80s was over, but globalization and technological advancement did not bring peace and prosperity to the world. On the contrary, 9/11 terrorist attack occurred at the very beginning of the 2000s. We have learnt it was mathematically impossible to have 10 billion of the world population in 2000s, however we were starting to live in the tiny houses of megacities like the ones Japanese lived in 80s.
Social issues such as hunger, inequality and injustice have not been solved, but have risen. Terror became global, developing countries were still not developed, the concern of global warming has remained and even the world has gone backwards in an unseemly manner. However, developments in health and biology were ahead of our predictions. Cloning, Stem Cell Therapies, The Human Genome Project were very important developments, however we were still fighting against ‘cancer’. We weren’t fed with pills, but we have solved the harms and benefits of food. Apparently, our legendary childhood soft drink Coca Cola was harmful ? And, oil supply didn’t exhausted. What happened to the Japanese? Where did these Chinese come from?
As we grew up, we realized that advanced alien civilization could be hostile. Over time, we have learnt that in the history of the world, advanced civilizations always destroyed others. (I recommend Jared Diamond’s book : Rifle Guns, Germs and Steel). We discovered the space with the Hubble Telescope and together with the satellites that we send to the solar system. The bad news was that, ‘the galaxies are moving away from each other with increasing acceleration. The farther a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away.’ Nevertheless, the discovery of earth-like planets in space will accelerate with the Big Magellan Telescope, which equipped with new technologies to be completed in 2024.
Tragically, until the year 2000 the pace of technological progress has been much slower than we initially anticipated in our imagination (in fact, it has not). As it seemed to continue in the same slower rate, the Force was awakened gradually! In 2003, the Internet became faster with cable modems. In 2007, Apple’s smart mobile phone iPhone was introduced. Coming after Google’s and Amazon’s applications, following the booming of e-commerce and social media, ended in more commercialized digital world which we have all experienced a fabulous acceleration in information technology. Everyone’s jobs has required information technology and information technology has become the business for everyone.
As information technology became more advanced, new concepts such as 4G, virtualization, cloud technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, nanotechnology, intelligent robots, automation and Industry 4.0 have emerged in the second decade of 2000s. New tech companies, techno-cities, startups…etc everybody who took the opportunity has involved in the game to get a slice of the cake. In this technological environment, suddenly we have surprisingly witnessed that many sci-fi fantasies in the films and comics of our childhood have become real one by one. Considerable number of new technological inventions such as human robots (even one of them was officially a citizen of one country), driverless vehicles, 3D printers, image and voice recognition technologies, virtual & augmented reality applications, smart home appliances and musical instruments that communicate with each other and so on… finally took place.
The opportunities offered by these technologies have become at a level that would ensure a collective prosperity in Health, Education, Transport and Agriculture. Today, even our grandparents can make video calls with their smart phones. Mission Impossible’s self-destructing disk technology becomes real, while The Six Million Dollar Man’s bionic arms & legs, and the bionic eyes will almost possible in the coming decades. In 2015, when the film ‘Back to the Future: Part II’ was released again, some of the film’s predictions had already taken place. Drones, wearable technologies, biometric devices that can work with a fingerprint or eye retina, hands-free gaming consoles, electric cars, video calls and even a flying skateboard called, hoverboard.
Among these advances, what impressed me the most is Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have already reached an impressive level of sophistication while supposing it could not be improved more than chess simulations (remember Deep Blue success over the chess world champion Gary Kasparov). When it comes to A.I. horribly, the Skynet in the Terminator come to my mind rather than the friendly Knight Rider’s car, KITT. Additionally, I am also curious to know if Virtual Reality (VR) and the Augmented Reality (AR) would ever deliver real life to the full ‘The Matrix’ realm in the end. Welcome to the MetaVerse world?
Big Brother metaphor is unfortunately coming true with continuously developing technologies. Our internet activities, money transfers, routes in the traffic, cell phone calls, what we watch on TV can be tracked and moreover be analyzed and interpreted for the benefit of organizations. Will technologies like Big Data and Artificial Intelligence evolve beyond ‘Big Brother’ technology scenario over time? As Yuval Noah Harari foresees in Homo Deus, what if someday Google would say “I know you from the day you were born, know your favorite friends, your DNA, your entire history, every step of your whole life was recorded”; what would the world be like?
Would technology perceived as ‘good’ while making our life easier with its benefits; turn into be ‘bad’ when it could invade our privacy and put restrictions on our personal freedom and liberty in time?
A new vision of superior human species and ‘immortality’ is now on the agenda for the future. It is estimated that technological developments will bring discrimination rather than equality. Optimistic and inspiring visions of our generation are replacing with the more realistic ones. For instance, instead of going to distant stars, we are starting to concern ‘how do we turn Mars into Earth’?
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. William Shakespeare
In second part of my blog series, I will describe the future predicted from today in detail.
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