In "the age of spiritual machines" of 1999, RK made a lot of interesting predictions about the world of 2009.
Let's have a look:
Personal computers with high resolution interface embedded in clothing and jewelry, networked in Body LAN's.
You're lucky if you happen to own a dumb Blackberry or iPhone.
The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) software.
Actually nobody wants to use it.
Computer displays built into eyeglasses project the images directly onto the user's retinas.
Still science fiction.
In terms of circuitry, three-dimensional chips are commonly used.
The latest offerings from Intel & AMD are still two-dimensional.
Translating Telephone technology is commonly used for many language pairs.
Currently works a little bit on desktop PC's, far from a cellphone application.
Warfare is dominated by unmanned intelligent airborne devices. Many of these flying weapons are the size of small birds, or smaller.
Who needs a Surge when you can just send them robo-birds to kill Al Qaeda/Taliban suckers?
Intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel. Once your car's computer guidance system locks onto the control sensors on one of these highways, you can sit back and relax.
This morning my GPS said "general exception error - windows ce restart". Thank God i was not sleeping on the middle of the highway in my computer guided car.
Were his predictions accurate, most of the technology he described should be in the production stage right now.
Unfortunately, they're not even functioning in the laboratory. It's going to take at least another 10 years.
Therefore, we can safely conclude that RK was way too optimistic.
Now if he was wrong about 2009, what about 2019 or 2029?
I don't hate Ray, i read all his books and articles and agree on a lot of topics. But this doesn't look good for his expectations about the first half of the 21st century. Actually, i think Ray is going to eat a lot of his words and will die before reaching escape velocity to radical life extension.
