From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Wed Jan 06 1999 - 10:50:48 MST
Regarding future scenarios:
Many hotly-anticipated technologies take much longer to occur than
expected. Nuclear fusion, AI, and space colonization have all been
twenty years away since the 1950s.
What has happened instead is that an unanticipated technology, the
Internet, has arisen and transformed the world.
I suspect that the same thing will continue to happen. Nanotech will
keep running into problems which will keep it 20 years away. (Current
consensus from the FX game is early 2020's.) AI will also stay at
the horizon.
With biotech I am more optimistic, because that seems to be making
accelerating progress, similar to computers in the 1970s. Maybe this will
be the field with an unexpected breakthrough, like suddenly discovering
how to prevent aging. Immortality in a pill by, say, 2015, would be
revolutionary.
Hal
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