The Future of Technology

The first decade of the 21^st century is over (that is, if you consider the year 2000 as the beginning of the decade). This decade has seen great strides in Technology. The world has become far more connected than our parents or grandparents could ever imagine. From walkie talkies just a few years ago, to the Iphone and Smartphones. What does the future hold in the world of technology?

The Web and Social Media

The World Wide Web has seen huge leaps in innovation over the past decade. At the year 2000 we were at what was called Web 1.0 where websites primarily dispense information, But with the rise of Youtube, Facebook and other companies the Web has become more interactive which gave rise to the term Web 2.0. The User is primarily the producer of information. Indeed without users sharing photos, videos and pictures there would be no Facebook, Flickr or Youtube and without contributors there will be no Wikipedia. A new kind of media has now risen called Social Media. Users now make contributors to news items and even create news items of their own. What would the new decade bring for news media? I see a gradual decline in traditional news media. Newspapers especially will be worse hit, people are spending less and less time on the written word and prefer to get their news through more “fun ways”.

Teleportation A.K.A Quantum Communication

Technology is blurring the line between imagination and reality. If I want to travel, I get a on a bus or board a plane. What about getting to anywhere in the World instantaneously? This is called Teleportation or as experts call it, Quantum Communication. Believe it or not, this is possible. The technology is based on a principle in quantum mechanics called Entanglement. It really involves transferring extremely detailed information about the teleportee, down to the quantum state of each of it’s atoms, to another location where it can be recreated. Foxnews.com describes the basic process:

“Teleporting, say, an electron would first involve “entangling” a pair of electrons.

After the particles are made to interact in a certain manner, whatever one does influences the other, regardless of the distance between them — a bit of quantum physics that Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

Next, one electron — the one you want teleported — would stay wherever you like while you would physically bring the other electron to whatever destination you wish.

Then you have to measure the quantum state of the electron you want teleported and send that in a signal to your destination, where it can be used on the other electron to recreate the first one.

Voilà — quantum teleportation.”

Obviously teleporting a person thru space-time is much more complex than teleporting an electron. And we should not expect to ditch our conventional means of transportation just yet, the future is indeed promising for this technology as active research is taking place. Will this Technology be available before the new decade is over? Time will tell