I’ve had reason to note that your signal to noise ratio has plummeted, Rich.

If you stick around long enough, you might even realize I’m not the eviscerated underbelly of humanity that you imagine me to be…

Look at the road safety merits of the hovercraft — you’ll never knock anyone down, you’ll just run them over and give them a blow dry!

Seriously though, the best way to predict is to ignore the technology itself and concentrate on the needs of people.

Technology is merely a means to enable stuff, that’s all.

I’ll keep coming back to Apple because they ‘get it’ better than anyone.

Let’s face it, most people are a bit thick when it comes to technology.

But that’s not because they’re some kind of latter-day Luddite, it’s because they just don’t care enough to want to learn technology.

And why should they?

We’re pay for a solution to a problem, not a problem in and of itself.

So you have the likes of Apple who just make stuff that just works the way you’d expect it to.

Wasn’t it Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who said that form follows function?

Steve Jackson has a game called ‘Car Wars’ where vehicles are powered electrically by hydrogen fuel-cell. Wheels are the motors, just like the E-Traction bus. Hydrogen fuel cells were invented in 1839 by Sir William Robert Grove.

I wouldn’t say William Gibson predicted the Internet’s future with Neuromancer, but rather that he shaped it. Almost like Wintermute crawled out of the book to give us USB flash sticks…

So, not unpredictable: you’ve just got to be kinked the same way the future is, keep an eye out for bullshit like the household nuclear reactors that would power our kitchens, and don’t imagine that business failures like the C5 and the Newton are the end of the line.
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Hovercraft are all well and good, but would you trust something invented by someone called ‘Cockerell’? I want ground-effect planes!

A personal air balloon would be pretty cool, there’s no doubt about that…

There was even talk of using RFID (radio frequency identification) tags for both children and criminals.

Setting aside the obvious privacy invasion issues, there’s also the more worrying possibility of tracking children.

The implications of this being the empowerment of already clearly organized and technically literate roving bands of pedophiles.

As for other kinds of implantations, well, this is a societal thing.

Before people become accepting of such ‘out there’ ideas, they have to be presented with a long, long line of good news stories.

At the minute, the main stay of implantations is within the healthcare industry.

Let’s not forget the humble pace-maker!

Then you have neurological implantations for people with motor-disruptive illnesses, such as Parkinson’s Disease.

Then you have people with certain types of blindness where they are having implantations into the back of their eyes which replace the damaged or lacking parts of the eye that would otherwise function to transmit the visual input to the brain.

Also, you have Japanese scientists who have figured out how to extract energy from the blood stream. While at the moment, the amount of power is piffling, in time the power derived from the blood stream will be easily enough to power any device attached to your person.

Once people have seen the good that comes of such things, then the worrying content of sci-fi films and television shows will be seen in the correct context.

There’s no doubt in my mind that in years to come, humans will be physically augmented for tasks that would otherwise be harmful of just plain lethal.

Whether this augmentation is performed at the cellular level, or by means in implantations would be specific to the task, but the reason for being so sure is actually quite simple: there is a need for this kind of thing.

Where there is need, then a solution is soon to follow.

That’s just human nature…

FAB catchphrase, pithy, earthy, and so true

Things will get small enough when we’re all (everyone who wants it) cybernetically and/or genetically enhanced to provide us with all the technological advantages we want/need within us.

For example, (here’s another starter for 10 blog post), currently you can get a chip implanted in your pets ear so that if they get lost they can be identified as yours. Same chip can contain health information about the pet so that the vet can scan it and know it’s health records.

So if you’re worried about your dog getting lost, what about your child? Wouldn’t you like to be able to have your child/baby identified as yours and returned? Simple, very small incision, very small chip, back of the neck, instant security.

Scary? Maybe, but you can surely see the benefits. No?

Well I’d like to be able to have access to my music collection anywhere - how about a chip implanted behind your ear that’s connected up to your hearing so that you can ‘plug yourself in’ to your pc, download music to the chip, unplug, press play (remote control) and go. Scary? Too far into the future? The technology exists now.

Things will get small enough - when you have so many nanotech robots inside you that you are effectively your own walking pc/media centre/etc.

That’s my prediction.
But I’ve been known to be wrong!