Good afternoon all,
Im currently preparing a paper on the impact of new technologies on our field. More specifically, Im addressing the consequences of the exponential growing rate of
processor speed, computer performance, memory capacity, etc. that Ray Kurzweil is talking about in his last book The Singularity is Near.
Without going as far as him in the future and without addressing the philosophical debates on human enhancement and this kind of subject, I would like to give some ideas in my paper about the impact on our GIS field of coming technologies like the following:
- The developpement of Robot Drivers for road vehicles as illustrated by the DARPA challenge. Sebastian Thrun, Director of the Stanford AI Lab, thinks that by
2010, we'll have reliable urban robot driving. This, he argues will have huge impact on the way we drive. For example, a urban highway packet with vehicles at 4pm on a weekday is still only used at 8% of its capacity. This is because we, as bad human drivers, need a huge front and rear distance to drive safely. What if much better computer drivers are doing the job?
- Another technology that might be coming within the next 20 years is Personal Nanofactories (see this link for an interesting animation movie about this: http://www.lizardfire.com/html_nano/themovies.html). This small device will allow us to build almost anything from raw material. For example, at the moment, when you are sending a fax, you are not actually sending the paper but only the information that is on it. In the same way, with a Personal Nanofactory, we will be able to recreate an iPod that we ordered on Amazon just by receiving the information from their web site about the design of it. This is likely to drastically change the transport industry.
- Another example can be the miniaturisation of GPS devices. At the current miniaturisation pace, such a device will so small as to be imbedded in almost
anything in 20 years from now. This means that the position of nearly anything from your credit card to your car keys (if such things are still needed then) will be permanently known. We might not lose anything anymore.
Now what are the consequences of such technologies in the daily practice of our jobs in 20 years from now is the subject of my article (I only mention a couple technologies that are coming to my
mind but maybe you can come up with some more). While this might be a dangerous exercise, I think it is still worth thinking about such a perspective.
Any of your ideas will be most welcome even if theyre crazy of far fetched.
Thanks for your input.
Serge Bédard
Project Manager
Hansa Luftbild
Lèche-vitrine ou lèche-écran ? Yahoo! Magasinage.
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