The Future
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How the future appears in my mind
Nathan Mittelstaedt
Salt Lake Community college
The Future of 2050
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The future of 2050
The future has always been a scary and yet important topic that everyone talks about.
During the length of this course I have come to many conclusions that have helped me paint a
picture of what the future will appear and how. In this essay I will discuss some key concepts
and equipment that will help us accomplish this futuristic idea. All topics in this world will
contribute towards the future, so I have narrowed them down to what I think would take the most
impact towards my life. Throughout this entire essay I would like you to remember that this
takes place close to 35-85 years down the road and are very imaginative and I will keep them as
closely related to what technology that have been successful today that are considered futuristic,
but mankind has advanced so quickly that things we couldn’t even comprehend, could be
possible in 2050-2100. The topics that I have chosen to draw my picture is, energy how it will be
used and some different sources we could use, transportation how we are going to move billions
of people around efficiently and effectively, cities and homes how they are going to adapt and
transform into everyday living and not affect our earth in a negative fashion but in a way that can
keep billions of civilians under protections and help the earth with natural production, finally 3
random topic I have picked that I have taken a great liking towards and you will have to continue
to read to figure out what my topics are.
Energy
No matter what technology you talk about efficiency is always important. Energy is very
scarce on what we use today, we base our energy off power plants and fossil fuels for our
primary fueling, but we also use wind mill, solar energy and electricity. The future has gone
brighter on other sources of energy that we have not used very well. For example wind mills
have been changed dramatically. Bladeless wind turbines in the Netherlands have come popular.
The Future of 2050
Traditional wind turbines have long been plagued by a few disadvantages such as noise, create
shadows and vibrations and require significant maintenance. Researchers at Delft University of
technology in the Netherlands have developed and installed the EWICON (Electrostatic Wind
Energy Converter) the first generator that requires no blades or moving parts. Basically you set
up a cube shaped steel frame that contains about 40 steel tubes that run horizontally within the
frame, these tubes generate charged water droplets. The droplets are discharged from the steel
tubes and blown by the wind. Their movement generates power that is transferred to the
electricity grid. The fancy thing is that we can make these into any size and can be very
adjustable, you could set these up on buildings or in houses.
Now the future looks bright with all of these different technologies but wouldn’t it be nice that
use that technology so effectively that we could put them anywhere even under your feet!
Solar sidewalks has been recently developed in George Washington University. The walkway is
100 square feet and contains 27 PV panels. This side walk can withhold 400 watts for now. And
will be used to power 450 LED lights that will illuminate the walkway after dark. The sidewalk
is connected to the solar walk, which also includes a solar trellis that provides electricity for the
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The Future of 2050
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campus at innovation hall at George Washington University. Now I know what we are all
wondering, what about durability? Well the panels are slip resistant and are durable enough to
handle 850 pounds of weight, 2 hippos stacked on top of each other could not break one panels!
Transportation
Now off course everyone is excited for the future of Ferrari and find out how ridiculously
in debt they need to get to acquire one. But I say why charge that which is unnecessary? We have
more than 8 billion people on the earth around 2050 (unless terminators don’t kill us all before
then :) and we are all worried about Ferrari’s next upcoming model. We need to get out of our
little box of cars and find new ways to transport millions of people at a time. How about a train
that can travel faster than 600 approximate miles? Elon Musk’s alpha design lays out a plan for a
Hyperloop extending from Los Angeles to San Francisco with the capacity to transport
passengers in 35 minutes! The hyper loop travel through the steel tube, floating in approximately
one millimeter of air that is forced through openings on the bottom of the capsule. But what
about resources? That’s going to take a lot of electricity from power generators, this hyper loop
will be powered by solar panels located on top of the tube and will be entirely emissions free
according to Elon Musk.
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Now once we get the hyper popular enough to move all the civilians to their destination, we still
have a problem with moving imported goods such as food from town to town. How are we going
to keep our variety of food in the stores without any useful transportation? My next solution is e
highways! a road that can link up with vehicle’s such as diesels garbage trucks, school busses,
etc. electric high ways have already been integrated into our road systems. Los Angeles and long
beach bring in roughly 40 percent of the goods shipped to the United States. A huge stretch of
about 20 miles have been solely used by large transportation vehicle’s that run off of electric
cable’s just like trams in Utah. This has settled gas emissions that are released into the air
causing damage to the earth’s ozone and breathing quality for humans.
Home and Businesses
Homes and business have always taken an effect against oxygen and happy living. I
believe that making homes simpler and more nature friendly would make a human very happy.
Houses need to turn greener! For new houses green space such as plants or tree’s need to cover
about 40% of the area of the city. For one of the future ideas we could implement into our houses
is our waste system. Doing away with conventional process that involves trash bags and dump
trucks, every kitchen in the city has a pneumatic trash shoot that funnels garbage to a central
waste processing center. Once arrived to its destination food waste is put to use for agricultural
purposes while much of the rest of the trash is recycled. Water is also managed by a central
utility that recycles 40% of the waste water!
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For my first option of randomness I chose something that is exciting to most college students
how we can get access to electronics easier! Thanks to Samsung we have an idea about Samsung
display. Screens that can show virtually anything on an electrical paper. The demonstration
shows little children playing games on this paper and drops it off the table. The paper falls on the
ground and takes no damage. Also screens that can transform into alarm clocks or into a TV. The
limits on this technology are virtually limitless and can help us achieve greater heights. Different
business are already investing into a technology called Giganet. Giganet can upload unlimited
videos from anywhere. Video games, television, tweet, Facebook, watch major games, and even
upload documents. If characters are displayed on the screen you can also (during watching the
video) look at the background of that character what else they act in and their history. This could
be very useful for military to identify enemies. Also the Giganet can upload different documents
at once, for a doctor this can be very effective by acquiring medicine for the patient while
documenting the patient’s problems. What is truly outstanding about the Giganet is that it can be
very adjustable and used in many different situations.
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Weapons of war
Now I am 21 years old and love talking and playing video games about war weapons
from the future, so of course if I get a chance to talk about the future of weaponry….. I am going
to take it! First I would like to talk about ‘hyper stealth’ or ‘quantum stealth’. Using natural met
materials, scientists have been designing light wave bending materials that can greatly reduce the
thermal and visible signatures of a target. The adaptive camouflage renders what lies behind the
object wearing the material by bending the light around it! And the second is the warp speed of
today: Boeing’s X-51A Wave Rider. A military development that travels a mile in a second! The
Wave rider is in development today but is believe to be the turning point of space travel.
Price of technology
Now throughout the entire paper I have described how these fancy technologies can
change our future in these spectacular ways. But we all know that to start this projects it’s going
to take a mountain bigger than Everest of money to pay for all of these changes! So how do we
pay for all these expensive projects to change our entire society? The truth is we need to always
keep in mind that those who do these experiments need to find ways to make the efficient and
cheap. Many people have went the way of creating their own machinery that works for them and
are at a cheaper price. The good news is that with all these new developments there are going to
be multiple jobs opening up that could help people afford such expensive adjustments. Also
since most of these machineries do have benefits that we don’t have to spend so much money on
keeping them maintained or even use up sources to keep them working.
Conclusion
The Future of 2050
I have now explained what the picture in my mind has painted for the future. These are
fantastic solutions that brilliant men have worked on for many years to make our future more
enjoyable. The sad thing is that society will not change unless absolutely forced upon it. The
majority will always like to stay in their own homes and their same old vehicles until they die.
But I hope that in our future not only does our technology change but our societies want to
develop and grow will do the same.
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The Future of 2050
Future Technology (AENews)
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/future-energy/
Five future transportation technologies that will actually happen (Fox News)
By: Brandon, John.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/11/27/five-future-transportation-technologies-that-willactually-happen/
Los Angeles Is Building an e-Highway
By: Berg, Nate.
http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/09/los-angeles-is-building-an-e-highway/380914/
Green Cities of the Future (Green Cities Campaign)
http://www.earthday.org/greencities/cities-of-the-future/
6 rooms into 1: morphing apartment packs 1100 sq ft into 420 (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYV0qATsyts
The Future According To Samsung (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0IR40ud0jU
Future Entertainment Technology...Here Today (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZnEtqAz7
Future Weapons H&K 416 (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F17Pet5zBtw
10 Scary Future Weapons Of War (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGd2XZcgCr0
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