It’s no secret that tech has both destroyed and improved our lives. Constant innovative discoveries are being implemented in every aspect of our lives, from education to home improvement, communication, travel, and lifestyle.

Alphabet’s executive chairman (and Google chief) Eric Schmidt has spent his entire career predicting how technology can change the world. Travelling the globe as the company’s ambassador, he has listed the top six most important future technologies.

We’re all going to be vegetarian one day

Schmidt predicts that in the future plants will replace meat. The idea is that scientists will develop plant proteins that allow communities to replace livestock, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

The meat industry, cattle producers, in particular, emit significant greenhouse gases.

The development of plant proteins that communities could use to replace meat would also lower the cost of foods in developing countries where food is sometimes scarce.

Delivering a pound of meat to the grocery store (raising it, slaughtering it, shipping it) is a relatively inefficient and costly process compared with delivering a pound of many protein-based plants.

I will miss those steaks, though, but maybe it’s time we all get a cow and learn to slaughter it ourselves.

We will get to print our own building

I just think SIMS. 3D printing can create buildings that are lower cost, quicker to build, and better for the environment.

These 3D printed buildings can be generated in an industrial and customisable way and assembled on site, which is far more efficient than building a house piece by piece on the plot of land where it’s going to reside.

3D printing can also encourage the use of recycled materials.

And when we run out of those recycled materials we can just recycle the material used in the buildings we get bored of.

We won’t really need reality

Just the other day Barack Obama was photographed wearing a virtual reality headset. With the leaders in tech producing their own version of the headsets, the future holds more than video games and entertainment.

The technology will play a critical role in making society better informed by “augmenting reality,” or adding visual and audio cues in environments like cars, in the workplace or in education.

Doctor visits may become a thing of the past

We touch our cellphones more than 1 500 times a week. That makes them one of the most intimate and connected devices to our bodies.

The phone’s computing capacity, network connection, camera, and other sensors make it a surprisingly powerful device for connecting patients and doctors with medical data.

Tesla and iCar will probably be joined by other models

Having computers drive our cars will make the world a much safer place. 

32,800 people will die this year on the roads in the U.S., we just don’t know who they are yet,” said Schmidt. The world should have a global moonshot program focused on self-driving cars, advocated Schmidt, whose own company is also working on the technology.

The old school ways of teaching will be replaced

It’s horribly dated that teachers treat a class of 30 kids the same. Everyone learns differently, whether it’s understanding or trying to remember something. Not to worry, technology will help with that.

Computing technology can easily monitor how students learn and then identify the most effective teaching methods for each one of them. We need to create more tools to help teachers augment their teaching and make education more effective, said Schmidt.

[source: fortune]

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