One of my favorite methods of looking at the future is to study what words (or descriptors) I might be able to drop from the past.
Here’s what I mean. When automobiles were first introduced, they were referred to as “horseless carriages.” Eventually, society just dropped the “horseless” part and shortened “carriage” to car. In the beginning, movies were referred to as “talking” movies. Today, of course, all movies are assumed to be talking movies. Much the same happened with “colored” TVs.
In the future, I believe we will stop referring to “flat-panel” TVs because all TVs will be flat. We will also stop talking about “green” energy and instead just call it energy–because the vast majority of energy will be renewable. I recently spoke to an agriculture group on “precision” farming. In the not-too-distant future all farming will just assumed to be precision farming.
Others worth considering include: ”online education,” ”robotic surgery,” ”cloud computing;” ”3D manufacturing” and ”artificial intelligence.”
