9 Jul 2012

Fast forward 50 years: Marcus Weldon dares to go where no one has gone before

Image of Telstar I satellite

50 years ago, Telstar!

By Wendy Zajack – follow her @wendyzajack

Let’s face it asking someone to predict the future – especially those who think about it daily — is tough. We are all very caught up with our day to day lives, the immediate problems of the moment both at work and home to think much about what the future will bring.

There is also something about scientists, engineers and technologists who are in the midst of making the future happen — they hate to guess. I know in the past when I have asked the question what will happen in the next 5, 10, 20 years? There are groans, breath exhaled and eyes rolled. The next words are not pearly gems of wisdom but something closer to “really Wendy – not that one again?”

So it must be dumb luck – or something that celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Telstar launch that I was able to pin someone down, Marcus Weldon, Chief Technology Officer of Alcatel-Lucent. Maybe it was a weak moment for him – but it turns into a lucky moment for us!  My favorite is #5 – we would love to hear your opinions as well. You can muse more on these or add your own thoughts or ideas. You can comment here on this blog or on Twitter using the hashtag #Telstar50. Hopefully the ones from Marcus below will get your predictive juices flowing. I look at it this way – in 50 years if I am lucky enough to still be alive – I don’t think I will worry about having been wrong : )

1. We will all have digital personal assistants who automate our digital lives in every way, from predicting from what we want and need, to delivering it, scheduling it and giving advice and recommendations.

2. Our digital personal assistants will be a new form of companion that will replace some human companions!

3. Our digital assets and information needs will be delivered to us (by our digital companions) on any surface, medium or device – the Minority Report vision will be a reality

4. Our digital companions will define and manage our knowledge – intelligent use and presentation of that knowledge will therefore become more important than the knowledge itself.

5. The accidental location of your birth will not define your success, as all information and education is available to all: a true global meritocracy will exist.

6. We will have avatar companions who can emulate the physical presence of any digital friend to satisfy the need for human contact

7. We will have settled Mars, with a population of human avatars

8. The performance and capacity of the (wireless) telecom network will be the primary criterion for a nation’s economic success and desirability

9. 100Mbps wireless bandwidth will be provided to every user *simultaneously*

10. England will win the World Cup

 
 

8 Responses to Fast forward 50 years: Marcus Weldon dares to go where no one has gone before

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  1. Thierry says:
    July 10, 2012 at 9:46 AM

    Interesting list and indeed #5 looks good, however i understand it would assume all nations are able and willing to provide equal access to knowledge to every one and all humans have equal access to “digital personal assistant”, and – unfortunately – i’m afraid it will take much more than 50 years to get there!

    Reply
  2. Dave says:
    July 10, 2012 at 12:52 PM

    Interesting comments about personal assistants being more capable. 100 years ago Alan Turing was born who famously defined the Turing test for intelligent machines. Is the digital PA a new form of the intelligent machine test

    Reply
  3. Paul Fredette says:
    July 10, 2012 at 2:35 PM

    When I was a young boy of 13 from MA, a relative in Maine was contracted to cut the timber for the road up to the Andover station. I visited it when the horn was up but the computer tape drives were still just cabinets in control room. I was fascinated and later worked at Bell Lab’s in Holmdel, have an MSEE from MIT and still run a communications system company in RI. Sometimes the simplest road trips can change lives.. I still have a Telstar brochure questioning the ability to reach geosynchronous orbit. There is a later story on Andover told to me by the designers of TDMA that a wrench in the waveguide was found by measuring a signal reflection during testing and when the “wrench in the system” was removed, caused the system to work perfectly..

    Reply
  4. Patrick Frene says:
    July 10, 2012 at 3:09 PM

    Marcus,

    This is very creative. You forgot to mention that digital companions will follow three laws, called the Weldon’s laws:

    1. A digital assistant may not injure a digital being or, through inaction, allow a digital being come to harm.
    2. A digital assistant must obey the orders given to it by digital beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    3. A digital assistant must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

    Reply
  5. Mike Maney says:
    July 10, 2012 at 4:27 PM

    Seven more for the prediction bucket:

    1. Advances and collaboration in biology, big data and molecular computing will allow scientists to fully replicate the human brain.

    2. Data — not oil — flowing through pipes will drive the global economy.

    3. Formal education will cease at high school, replaced by self-driven/community-based collaborative learning; coffee shops, incubators and salons will become the new universities.

    4. Society will shun commodity for craft products and services.

    5. Big data analysis will create a “Tear down this wall (street)” moment, eliminating/equalizing the finance industry’s arcane methods of financial magic.

    6. All transactions will be digital, forcing a massive reset of global monetary policies.

    7. Cape Town will usurp Silicon Valley as the world’s innovation capital.

    Reply
  6. J. Morabito says:
    July 18, 2012 at 3:29 PM

    My predictions bucket:

    1. I would add Intelligent Agents to Digital Personal Systems. Intelligent software agents will be deployed across the network, whose function is to mine data, act on that data, observe trends, carry out tasks dynamically, and adapt to their environment. This will create considerably more network traffic generated, not so much by humans, but by these embedded devices and these intelligent software agents. Hence, large collections of self-organizing systems controlling vast and fast networks and huge amounts of information flashing across networks instantaneously, with this information undergoing enormous processing and informing the sophisticated decision support and control systems of our society. The Internet will essentially be an invisible infrastructure serving as a global nervous system for the peoples and processes of this planet and will play a critical role in the transformation to a sustainable society and a new economy, i.e., A Third Industrial Revolution.

    2. Explosive growth of electronic and telecommunication capabilities, e.g., telemedicine, telepresence, etc.

    3. Exponential growth in computing power, information explosion, and Big Data, etc. Computers will become the new microscopes allowing us to see behind the curtains. Their power will approach the neuro computation that occurs in brains and will enable us to crack many of the brains mysteries and to decode the language of the brain. This will change everything.

    4. Convergence of traditionally different fields, e.g., Biology, Computer Science, Telecommunications, Electric Utilities, etc.

    – Smart Electrical Grid with Energy Storage, Human Protein Genome, Gene Therapy, etc.
    – Robotics, Metamaterials, Nanotechnology, and The Age of Magnetism/Superconductivity.

    5. World electrification (and hunger for access) to create A Third Industrial Revolution.

    6. Sustainable Development, i.e., world industrial production within the carrying capacity of the earth’s eco-system.

    – Population growth (50% by 2050), Grayer, more Urbanized
    – Natural resource demand pressures, i.e., peak oil, peak everything
    – Transformation to a sustainable global energy supply based on Renewable Energy Technology
    – Globalization and effective Earth System Governance and planetary stewardship

    Reply
  7. J. Morabito says:
    July 20, 2012 at 5:29 PM

    The Molecular Biological Revolution/Fast Forward 50 Years

    It is not an area of current interest to ALU, but to be fair, I believe that the impact on the human condition of advances in Molecular Biology will be considerably greater than advances in electronics over the next 50 years. More specifically, besides obviously health, it will have significant impacts on the spheres of energy and food. Advances in Molecular Biology will result in micro-organisms that transform carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water into fuel. Any fuel that can be synthetically grown in a factory will be economically more viable for mass production than the conversion of sunlight, wind, and agricultural goods. The shift of harvesting to manufacturing energy would not only affect the economy, geopolitics, and the environment: Turning human kind from mere harvesters of energy to manufacturers of energy would lead to a whole new way of thinking, one that in turn could lead to even greater innovations, because every form of economic and technological empowerment always initiates leaps that go beyond the practical application of new technology. Health, Food, and Energy……it doesn’t get much bigger than that.

    We are at the beginning of the beginning of the Molecular Biological Revolution. It will be a bigger and longer revolution than that in electronics. Molecular Biology is human mastery over the life-creating organizing processes that arose spontaneously out of the chaos that started about a billion years ago. That has got to be one hell of a milestone for a species.

    Reply

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