What will technology be like when Generation Y gets old?

When I think about the future, I wonder what technology will be 40 years from now. Today’s older generation love to boast to the younger crowd about how they got through life without computers, tablets, or smartphones. However, when I’m older, what am I going to say to the younger generation? “When I was your age, we didn’t have mind-controlled submarines!”?

It’s certainly interesting to think about, and while we can’t accurately predict what new technologies will be invented during the next 30 or 40 years (since anything can happen), it’s still fun to predict at least how technology might evolve over the next few decades.

In my opinion, technology has evolved and progressed so quickly the past 10 years alone that I feel like it’s going to reach a plateau soon. We’ll still have the traditional computers, tablets, and smartphones, but they’ll simply be thinner, lighter, and much faster. That is until a completely new revolution comes along, like when personal computers came into fruition or when the automobile was invented.

Then again, I have no idea what “completely new revolution” will come since it hasn’t even been invented yet. I mean, before automobiles and planes were invented, nobody had any idea that we’d be able to travel to another part of the world in less than a day. That’s how I feel about the future of technology when I’m 65 — what crazy new things will be invented at that point that I never would have dreamed of?

The only reason that I say that technology might be reaching a plateau soon is that Moore’s Law simply cannot last forever, even though it’s lasted almost a half-century so far. It’s said to only be around until around 2020, give or take a few years.

If you’re not familiar with Moore’s Law, it’s basically an observation of sorts where the number of transistors that can fit onto an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. It’s named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and coined by computer scientist and former Caltech professor Carver Mead.

One of my biggest questions is, when Moore’s Law eventually collapses, how will technology evolve? Will there be another “law” that replaces Moore’s Law? Or will technology simply just evolve at a slower pace than before?

Image Credit: Sean McEntee