What the Future is Bringing Us (2016)



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 * (2004) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) planning document developed by David Moursund. The goal was to facilitate the development of a sequence of 1-credit (quarter hour system) graduate-level joint preservice and inservice courses to be taught at the University of Oregon.


 * (2000 to 2003) Golden Oldie News Oct-December 2000 up through Jan-March 2003. These materials were moved from an old Oregon Technology Education Council (OTEC) site developed by David Moursund. Most of the links in the referenced articles no longer work.


 * (1987 Futuristic Math Education Scenarios).


 * (1974 to 2001) All of David Moursund's editorials published in Learning and Leading with Technology from its inception in 1974 until he retired from ISTE in 2001.

BigDog is a rough-terrain robot built by Boston Dynamics that walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by an engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog has four legs that are articulated like an animal’s, with compliant elements to absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule; about 3 feet long, 2.5 feet tall and weighs 240 lbs. See more pictures of social robots at http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=pictures+social+robots&qpvt=pictures+social+robots&qpvt=pictures+social+robots&FORM=IQFRML.



See MIT's Electric Cheetah Robot video at http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/15/mit-darpa-cheetah-robot/.



The Cray-2 supercomputer was the world's fastest supercomputer until 1990. But even with a performance of up to 1.9 GFLOPS, the liquid-cooled, 200-kilowatt machine ranks behind a number of "modern" portable, battery-powered Smart phones when it comes to GFLOPS ratings.

Year 2016 Table of Contents



 * "All education springs from some image of the future. If the image of the future held by a society is grossly inaccurate, its education system will betray its youth." (Alvin Toffler; American writer and futurist; born October 3, 1928.)


 * "Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!" (Alan Kay; American computer scientist and educator; born May 17, 1940.)

Introduction
All of education is future oriented. Through informal and formal education, students are being prepared for their futures. Of course, a major goal of education is to preserve and pass on the culture, values, history, and so on from the past. Ideally, this is done in a manner that helps prepare students for their futures as members of local, regional, national, and world societies.

Technology Forecasting Quoting from Wikipedia:


 * Primarily, a technological forecast deals with the characteristics of technology, such as levels of technical performance, like speed of a military aircraft, the power in watts of a particular future engine, the accuracy or precision of a measuring instrument, the number of transistors in a chip in the year 2015, etc. The forecast does not have to state how these characteristics will be achieved.




 * If a decision maker has several alternatives open to him, he will choose among them on the basis of which provides him with the most desirable outcome. Thus his decision is inevitably based on a forecast. His only choice is whether the forecast is obtained by rational and explicit methods, or by intuitive means.

Forecasting is an important field of study and of human intellectual endeavor. Continuing to quote from the Wikipedia page cited above: "The virtue of the use of explicit methods is that they can be reviewed by others, and can be checked for consistency. Furthermore, the forecast can be reviewed at any subsequent time. Technology forecasting is not imagination."

Special Message for Teachers Consider establishing a "futures" time period each week, in which you engage your students in an exploration of possible futures they will live in and how the subject(s) you are teaching are helping to prepare them for these possible futures. One way to do this is to select a topic from this year's list, or other annual lists published on this website. Engage students in a discussion of what they know about the topic. Perhaps point them to some material to read. Engage them in a discussion of how the content you are teaching fits in with preparing them for life in a world in which the forecasts on this website may well come true.

Another approach is to encourage your students to bring in hard copy materials and Web links that contain forecasts of the future. Each week a different small team of students could assume responsibility for leading the weekly "futures" session.

Still another approach is to raise the following question with your students near the beginning of any new unit of study: "What changes are going on around the world that are having a major impact on this unit of study?" The idea is to emphasize change and the understanding that you are helping your students to get an education that prepares them for a changing world.

Teachers working with students may also be interested in having the students research and report on one or more "futures predictions" from 5 to 10 years ago, or perhaps when they were in first grade, or the year they were born, and so on. They can find out which predictions have become part of our world today and which ones failed to materialize, and why or why not in each case.

Looking Forward
This section contains relatively recent forecasts of future technology that are important to our current and future educational systems. For the most part, the newest entries are at the top of this section.

Smart Skin
Akst, Jef (9/1/2016). Smart Skin Enables Magnetoreception. The Scientist. Retrieved 9/29/2016 from http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46786/title/Smart-Skin-Enables-Magnetoreception/&utm_campaign=NEWSLETTER_TS_The-Scientist-Daily_2016&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=35017124&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9bFt2GjyTRnyzG1o0ZYoDNkysIOq69TwdJU8-T_FCyxloMkBzxYGre8gO391-ivLR6Nli1RjLBmBzewwBHQutNiZNwNg&_hsmi=35015278. Quoting from the article:


 * Thinner than plastic wrap and lighter than a feather, electronic skin, also known as smart skin or imperceptible electronics, detects information about the internal and external environments. Such technology has been in development for wearable medical instruments, health monitors, prosthetics with sensory feedback, and even robotic skin. Now, scientists are expanding electronic skin into the realm of the once-impossible: endowing humans with a sixth sense.

Computers That Can Argue
Amit, Gilead (9/7/2016). Computers that Can Argue Will be Satnav for the Moral Maze. New Scientist. Retrieved 9/16 2016 from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130900-700-rage-against-the-machine-why-computers-need-to-argue-with-us/. Quoting from the article:


 * Machines that can use facts to present a convincing case could transform the way we make decisions – and help us understand our own rhetoric


 * Since the Jeopardy! success, Slonim has been collaborating with the Watson team to see whether a machine could graduate from facts to arguments. Ask it, for example, “Should violent video games be sold to children?”, and instead of presenting you with links to other people’s opinions, it would synthesize facts into arguments for and against the idea.

Advanced Computing in the U.S. 2017-2020
The National Academies Press has published a free (downloadable) book Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure to Support U.S. Science and Engineering in 2017-2020. Quoting from the website http://www.nap.edu/catalog/21886/future-directions-for-nsf-advanced-computing-infrastructure-to-support-us-science-and-engineering-in-2017-2020?utm_source=NAP+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b5255f0ac5-Final_Book_2016_07_15_21886&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_96101de015-b5255f0ac5-102102713&goal=0_96101de015-b5255f0ac5-102102713&mc_cid=b5255f0ac5&mc_eid=879f77277d:


 * Advanced computing capabilities are used to tackle a rapidly growing range of challenging science and engineering problems, many of which are compute- and data-intensive as well. Demand for advanced computing has been growing for all types and capabilities of systems, from large numbers of single commodity nodes to jobs requiring thousands of cores; for systems with fast interconnects; for systems with excellent data handling and management; and for an increasingly diverse set of applications that includes data analytics as well as modeling and simulation. Since the advent of its supercomputing centers, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided its researchers with state-of-the-art computing systems. The growth of new models of computing, including cloud computing and publically available by privately held data repositories, opens up new possibilities for NSF.

Thought-controlled Devices
Zuier, S. (6/24/2016). Neurotechnology Could Lead to Thought-controlled Devices. EdTech. Retrieved 2/13/2017 from http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2016/06/neurotechnology-could-lead-thought-controlled-devices. Quoting from the article:


 * Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have spent years developing a portable cerebral monitoring device that when wrapped around the head — similar to a virtual reality headset — can allow users to control a computer by simply thinking what they want the machine to do. Specialized software enables this headset to interpret brain activity, translating it into commands.


 * While still in an experimental phase, the device shows promise for a new kind of human-machine interaction. Commercially, such an interface can allow users to control a computer without the need for a mouse, keyboard or touch screen. It also could enable people to interact more directly with games and other software. And beyond that, the applications are far-reaching. Such advances in brain-computer interfaces might even help the disabled to steer a wheelchair or control a robotic arm, the researchers suggest.

Emergence of Digital-based Communication in K-12 Schools

 * SpeakUp (2016). From Print to Pixel: The Role of Videos, Games, Animations and Simulations within K-12 Education. Retrieved 7/9/2016 from http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/SU15AnnualReport.html.

Quoting from the report:


 * For the past thirteen years, Project Tomorrow’s® annual Speak Up Research Project has provided schools and districts nationwide and throughout the globe with new insights into how today’s students want to leverage digital tools for learning based upon the authentic, unfiltered ideas of students themselves. Each year, education, policy, research, and business leaders leverage the Speak Up findings to understand the trends around students’ use of technology, and how schools and communities can better serve the learning needs of today’s digital learners.

Here are two forecasts from high school students:


 * “I believe that in 2020 all of my classes will have online resources, and be almost completely digital. We will still attend school and interact but it will not be on paper, it will be on the computer. We will be able to find our own resources to learn from as well as what the teacher gives us.” Male student, 10th grade, Virginia.


 * “I think that schools will be completely paperless in 5 years. There will be a lot more online classes for younger generations. I think that a lot of learning children do will be through the medium of the Internet or interactive apps/games.” Female student, 12th grade, Wisconsin.

Some Twenty-Year-Old Forecasts from Steve Jobs
See http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/03/16/twenty-years-ago-steve-jobs-offered-some-predictions-for-the-future-of-technology-and-he-was-spot-on/. This 3/16/2016 article is titled, Twenty Years Ago, Steve Jobs Offered Some Predictions for the Future of Technology — and He Was Spot-On. Quoting from the article:


 * Two decades ago, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave a [Two decades ago, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave a presentation] in which he announced several predictions for the future. And he was spot on.


 * When Jobs delivered the presentation in 1996, Google was still a research startup at Stanford University, the most sophisticated PC operating system was Windows 95 and Amazon was just getting its start selling books.

Popular Science: What's New 2013
See http://www.popsci.com/article/science/december-2013-best-whats-new. Enjoy reading this list and comparing it with what is actually available and in routine use in 2016 or later.

Popular Science: What's New 2014
See http://bestofwhatsnew.popsci.com/. Enjoy reading this list and comparing it with what is actually available and in routine use in 2016 or later.

Popular Science: What's New 2015
See http://www.popsci.com/best-whats-new. Enjoy reading this list and comparing it with what is actually available and in routine use in 2016 or later.

World's Fastest Computer
In many problems where computers are essential to their solution, speed matters. The US is no longer the world's speed leader.

Tiezzi, S. (8/4/2015); US to Challenge China for World's Fastest Supercomputer. The Diplomat. Retrieved 1/31/2016 from http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/us-to-challenge-china-for-worlds-fastest-supercomputer/. Quoting from this article:


 * Since June 2013, China has boasted the world’s fastest supercomputer: the Tianhe-2, built by China’s National University of Defense Technology and housed at the National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou. According to the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, Tianhe-2 boasts a speed of 33.86 petaflops (one petaflop is one quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), nearly double the United States’ second-place computer, Titan (housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee). The United States still holds the title for most systems on the list, accounting for 233 of the 500 (China only had 37 supercomputers on the July 2015 list).

Social Robots
Quoting from the Wikipedia:


 * A social robot is an autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans or other autonomous physical agents by following social behaviors and rules attached to its role.

The mass production of social robots has now begun. See:

Tobe, F. (12/13/2015). 2016 Will be a Pivotal Year for Social Robots. The Robot Report. Retrieved 1/30/2016 from http://www.therobotreport.com/news/2016-will-be-a-big-year-for-social-robots.

Quoting from the article:


 * As social and companion products come to market, they incorporate artificial intelligence from 1-5 years past. Yet almost every day there are breakthroughs in learning systems that will soon be commercialized and incorporated into future personal devices. These AI improvements will enable ubiquitous robotic and robot-like personal assistants and companions. Consequently, today's social robots are transition devices for early adopters to scrutinize, play with, suggest improvements to, and talk about - which is why 2016 is a pivotal year. It's the time when companies will sell enough units to learn whether their bots provide a real and lasting service or are just a passing fancy. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Decreasing Cost of Graphene
Graphene is a sheet of interlinked carbon atoms just one atom thick. It has many useful properties because of its strength and conductivity. But, until recently, it has been frightfully expensive. The following article discusses a hundred-fold decrease in manufacturing cost:

Jeffrey, C. (11/22/2015). Scientists Produce Graphene 100 Times Cheaper than Ever Before. Gizmag. Retrieved 1/30/2016 from http://www.gizmag.com/graphene-inexpensive-electronics-university-glasgow/40508/.

Quoting from the article:


 * The [research] team believes that large-scale, inexpensive synthesis of high quality graphene films through their method could realize graphene-based flexible optoelectronic systems, including such things as cell phones with roll-up displays, e-paper, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, medical patches to deliver drugs or monitor vital signs, and tactile or electronic skin for robotics and prosthetics.

Here is a "tidbit" quoted from the 1/16/2016 issue of New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22930562-300-first-ever-pictures-of-single-proteins-thanks-to-graphene-sheet/

First Ever Picture of a Single Protein.
 * It is tricky studying protein under a microscope, since modern imaging can destroy the molecules. Now, thanks to ultra-thin graphene, we have the first ever picture of a single protein.

Solar Power Is Disrupting Public Utilities
The generation and use of solar power is expanding throughout the world. This is now creating competition with utility companies that build and maintain massive power generation facilities. Read about this in:


 * Buhayar, N. (1/28/2016). Who Owns the Sun? Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 1/30/2016 from http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-solar-power-buffett-vs-musk/.

Part of the issue is what happens to the investors who paid for and own the "traditional" facilities and distribution systems. Each home or other structure with solar is no longer paying "its share" of the huge investments that were made in the past. When government helps pay for solar power, they are helping to create a direct competitor for the existing companies.

Virtual Reality Is Becoming Mainstream
Virtual Reality (also called Virtual Environment) is an expanding area of research, development, and commercially available products. For an overview of the field, see:


 * Strickland, J. (n.d.) How Virtual Reality Works. How Stuff Works Tech. Retrieved 1/28/2016 from: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/virtual-reality.htm.

Here is a little background information quoted from the article:


 * Naming discrepancies aside, the concept remains the same - using computer technology to create a simulated, three-dimensional world that a user can manipulate and explore while feeling as if he were in that world. Scientists, theorists and engineers have designed dozens of devices and applications to achieve this goal. Opinions differ on what exactly constitutes a true VR experience, but in general it should include:


 * • Three-dimensional images that appear to be life-sized from the perspective of the user.


 * • The ability to track a user's motions, particula­rly his head and eye movements, and correspondingly adjust the images on the user's display to reflect the change in perspective.

The Latest in Solar Cell Technology
An overview of recent advances in solar cell technology and related storage devices is available at http://www.altenergy.org/renewables/solar/latest-solar-technology.html. Retrieved 1/28/2016. Here is a short section from the article:


 * Light-Sensitive Nanoparticles. Recently, a group of scientists at the University of Toronto unveiled a new type of light-sensitive nanoparticle called colloidal quantum dots, that many believe will offer a less expensive and more flexible material for solar cells. Specifically, the new materials use n-type and p-type semiconductors - but ones that can actually function outdoors. This is a unique discovery since previous designs weren't capable of functioning outdoors and therefore not practical applications for the solar market. University of Toronto researchers discovered that n-type materials bind to oxygen - the new colloidal quantum dots don't bind to air and therefore can maintain their stability outside. This helps increase radiant light absorption. Panels using this new technology were found to be up to eight percent more efficient at converting sunlight.