A disruptive future

Self-driving cars have always been part of fiction. You had Disney’s Herbie, the television series Knight Rider, the BMW in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, and even Bollywood movies — two with Amitabh Bachchan (Khuddar and Akeyla) — and Tarzan: The Wonder Car. 

It’s 2017 and fiction has become reality, thanks to Google and Tesla taking THAT disruptive step forward. But it’s not just cars. If you grew up in the 1990s, the classic cartoon The Jetsons about a futuristic family and their state-of-the-art technologies seemed fascinating then. Twenty years on, some of what we saw on television are a reality. Some of those that seemed too far-fetched such as space vacations are on the brink of actually happening.

The world has become smaller thanks to technology. You can video chat with a family member in another country when you feel like, you can use a cell phone as a remote control, a music player, a dictaphone, a movie screen, a work station and — before we forget — even a phone.

But as humans we always want more. And more we shall get.

In the next 10 years, we can expect technology to reach advancements that we never thought were possible.

Here are some of those innovations

Fitness trackers that monitor your health:

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Right now, fitness trackers only monitor your heart rate and the distance you travel. And there is a problem with these devices because the calibration isn’t 100 per cent accurate. But imagine devices that respond to your brain signal and can ensure you don’t put too much strain on a weaker section of your body, while simultaneously giving you that much-required exercise based on your requirements.

Self-driving cars:

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Sure, we spoke about it at the beginning of this article. It’s also true that the Indian government isn’t too keen on the idea of introducing self-driving cars, given the way we tend to zoom around on our roads. However, there may be a time — and it will be soon — that the world will have driverless cars

Virtual reality vacations:

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Headsets give us the virtual reality (VR) experience, but imagine taking a break and exploring places that you could only dream of for a while to get away from the rut. Of course, the real experience is something, but if you owned a VR device, you could experience the northern lights every single day of your life, even if you lived in Mumbai or New Delhi

Robot assistants:

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It’s an Isaac Asimov story coming to life. Imagine Robo-cops, robot domestic helps, robot subeditors, robot surgeons (that already exist in many parts of the world), robot pilots — you name it and the world will be dominated by machines. It’s a scary thought, but humans need to be smart and try not to create a Terminator-like situation.