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tank in Louisville, Colorado. “We’re too spread out to emphasize mass transit.” Look for semi- or fully autonomous vehicles with cameras, radar, and computers that can take the wheel. Much of the technology already exists—see the adaptive cruise control and parking-assist features in high-end autos today—and General Motors aims to have a self-driving car on the road by 2018. Frey predicts that such vehicles could be available on demand, like cabs without cabbies: “You’ll get in a car, punch into a computer where you want to go, and sit back while the car drives you there.” The rise of the robo-cabs could rewrite the rules of the road. The traffic jam could become a thing of the past. So could the traffic-related fatality. “At some point it will become illegal for people to drive their own cars,” envisions Lifeboat Foundation futurist Eric Klien. “It will be too dangerous.” NEW FOR 2021! THE CHEVY HOVER-ETTE! A futurology staple since George Jetson commuted to work in one, the flying car is finally in the showroom. Sticker price: $1 million (including your parachute). For terrestrial transport, the nation’s highways are increasingly dominated by electric vehicles. And we don’t really “drive” them, since collision-avoidance systems are standard equipment. Transit proponents yearn for big changes in how Americans get around, from a national high-speed rail network to urban people-movers that use small electric “podcars.” But chances are that 2020, for better or worse, will still be all about cars. “We’re a highly individualized country,” says Tom Frey of the DaVinci Institute, a think THE ROAD AHEAD GETTING AROUND
LONGEVITY
WHEN I’M 164
BIRTHDAY CANDLES ARE SOLD IN PACKS OF 50: Americans’ average life xpectancy has crept up to 80 (back in 2010 it was 78). But the generation born this year might live much longer—even forever, in a sense. Experts foresee a time, still years on the horizon, when we might enjoy a kind of virtual immortality: Our minds could be “uploaded” into supercomputers whose artificial intelligence far outpaces our own brainpower.
That space-age scenario,
dubbed the Singularity and
popularized by futurist Ray
Kurzweil, predicts that com-
puters—which have been
getting more powerful every
year—will soon outsmart the
human mind, ushering in an
epoch of explosive techno-
logical progress. In The
Singularity Is Near: When
Humans Transcend Biology,
Kurzweil describes the
possibilities of man-plus-
machine: Tiny “nanobots” will
repair aging cells, radically
extending life spans; “Human
Body Version 3.0” will let us
change our appearance at
will; and our conscious selves
will eventually dwell inside
the digital realm, safely
stored in supercomputers
for, well, forever.
