Zach Anderson

March 29, 2017

Tech-1010-001
Richard Winter
Life in the Future

What will life be like in the future? No ones knows for certain and it is

still very unclear. We as humans have come a very long way in the last 100

years; since 1900 we are able to power massive cites that cover the size of

Vermont very easily and with minimal interruptions. Man has mastered cities

along with the infrastructure to support a mass population and maintain a

high quality of health for the people. There have been major advancements

in robotics and artificial intelligence that will soon aid us (or take us over)

more and more each year. Our transportation systems are unlike anything

else in recorded history; we are able to travel to the other side of the planet

in less than a day, when it took a whole day for Salt Lake Pioneers to get to

the end of the valley. Communications networks are incredible, just about

anyone can communicate with anyone on the planet with the added benefit

of privacy. Probably the biggest advancement over the last one-hundred

years is food production; food was once a huge obstacle for man, people only

grew for themselves and maybe a little more and were always worrying

about not having enough or even having too much to store, now we dont

really think about famine in first world countries so were able to move on to

greater things.
 Those were a taste of all that we have accomplished in 117 years,

there was great sacrifice and achievements but not everything will be as it

was if we do not change some attributes in our day to day lives to conserve

depleting resources. What worked then, will have to change now if we are to

continue as a species.

Energy

Energy has always been something that man has always sought

whether its in the form of wood to animal fat for warmth or oil to power our

automobiles and industry. Energy is everything as we know it because it goes

into every aspect of our lives; everything we touch, move, consume, and see

has taken some amount of energy to accomplish whatever is happening.

How we use all this energy is very important if we are to last; right now,

mass amounts of energy are being wasted upwards around 60 quadrillion

BTUs every year (Casten, 2009). This information is a little outdated but

takes time for the latest research to be done; on that note, it has probably

gone up a little bit due to higher use of energy, I say only a little for the

reason that since 2009, advancements have been made to make objects that

are used most often more efficient thus using less power. Example would be

the light bulb, before they used a lot of power, sometimes up to 150 watts, a

lot of that energy was wasted through heat when

Shows lifespans of different bulbs burning at same rate. http://www.westbridgehomes.com/the-benefits-of-led-

lighting-for-your-home/

the electricity moved through wires, the life of these bulbs was also very

short, with burning hours of 1,000 hours or less. Today we have LED bulbs

that are just as bright as the incandescent bulbs and use far less power

sometimes as low as 3 watts for an intensity that compares to a 60-watt

bulb; not to mention LED bulbs have life spans that of 100 of their

incandescent counter parts, saving money, time, and the headache of a

burned out light bulb. I presume that it is a same assumption that %99 of

people in America use light bulbs, thats a lot of power being consumed just

by light bulbs and if everyone changed to LEDs we could save an untold

amount of power for other uses.

Continuing, other ways to ensure that our resources will last far into

the future, different energy sources must be considered such as wind, solar,

geothermal, and tidal generators. Right now, we depend on fossil fuels that

are vastly in-efficient due to a lot of energy loss when it is transferred from

one form to another, an example of that would be a basic coal power plant.

With-in this plant there is a bin where the coal burns and above that is a
basin of water; the energy dense coal releases its energy in the form of heat

that transfers to water. During this transferring of energy, some energy is

lost to the structure that houses the coal/water along with steam that

escapes the plant though vents and other openings. Though todays plants

are very efficient, this problem still exists, not to mention we only have a

limited amount of coal to burn on this planet and when it runs low or is

completely gone we are out of luck with this form of energy. We have this

problem with every form of fossil fuel; problems with natural gas or oil is a lot

of it goes right to waste through flaring when the producer has to burn it

because they have reached storage or production capacity. In 2012, just

about $1-billion was wasted in North Dakota through flaring. That made the

US one of the top ten flaring countries in the world! (Peixe, 2013). This is

more than enough to justify using Renewable energy sources such as wind

or solar. Right now, these wind and solar are still relatively expensive along

with the amount of energy it costs to make them is still fairly high so for it to

be energy positive will take quite some time but it isnt impossible. Solar

cells have a dirty side to them and that is they use power most likely

generated from a fossil fuel power plant; it takes one to three years to pay

back the energy that it took to create them (Biello, 2008).

I foresee in the near future, that alternative energy sources will

become cheaper and easier to implement. Also, that fossil fuels will be re-

allocated to create more efficient solar panels that makes it cheaper for the

consumer to go solar. We may also see a decline in fossil fuel power plants
over the next decade to do the incline of these alternative renewable

resources.

Cities

In everyday life, most of the worlds population lives in or just outside

of major cities. These

cities also consume a

massive amount of

energy and space to

operate in day to day

actives such as transportation, living, and regular human activities. Some

cities have more people living in them than whole countries. Right now, the

worlds largest city is Tokyo-Yokohama with a population with almost

38million covering about 3,300 square miles. That puts the density roughly

at 11,500 people per square mile (Cox, 2015). Thanks to Cox and the

Huffington Post we have this chart to look at of the 10 largest cities by

population and as we can see these cities are enormous! Number 7 on the

list is very dense with over 60,600 people per square mile. Just think of all

the power the city of Karachi would save if all they did was change the light

bulbs to LED or even change the thermostat just a few degrees.

In cities, you can only spread out so far and before the city it runs out

of space. We must plan ahead with accounting for traffic on all ends such as

auto-mobile, semi-trucks, airplane, bike, and foot travel while utilizing the
space efficiently for livable/business space; instead of expanding out across

a broad area so that people have to travel 10 miles to go somewhere. If we

were to expand upwards and not out, there would be a lot more of the

living/business space available and easier to access. Cutting travel time can

ultimately reduce the carbon foot print of a city; if city intersections were

planned carefully enough, who knows how much that would cut down

emissions from vehicles on the road. If city buildings were built with energy

producing panels on the outside or even with architecture that induced

natural A/C and even heating. In cities One important thing that needs to be

considered by city planners is green space. Green space is parks, recreation

fields, trails, etc. This is vital for a city because it can help with peoples

mental state and give them a place with in the concrete jungle to go be

with nature and clear their heads.

We need to re-allocate some of the land in the heart of cities that

smaller buildings are sitting on and create larger more efficient buildings to

better use that space. City planners can plan to build such a building that is

very multi-use for living, business, and also make something like a park with

real grass and trees; we can also make this building energy positive by

implementing very efficient solar panels on surfaces that are in constant

contact with the sun. Extra energy from this building would be able to power

nearby buildings to curb their carbon foot print. The materials we make the

structure from can be sourced from places that to are energy positive. Over

time, if we would continue that process of building energy positive buildings

with components that were also made from energy positive places, the

problem of running out of power would be snuffed out and we could

reallocate our resources to other problems we face as a society.

Transportation

Transportation is used every day by every species that moves from

point A to point B. We as human beings are getting more and more efficient

with our many forms of transportation; the way our cities are laid out also

play a big role in our daily commutes. Different ways that the city planners

can help with commutes in the inner-city areas is to make some areas more

walkable. Walking from place to place is the cheapest form of transport. You

may ask if it is so great, then why dont we change every city to make them

more walkable? Well the simple answer for that is because we still have to

move a massive amount of goods along with wanting to get to your

destination quicker throughout the city, thus making roads a very necessary.

One major problem that we have always had with transportation is

other people; if you were the only one, it wouldnt be much of an issue

because you can go anywhere and everywhere provided you have the proper

transport. Since that isnt the case we must learn how to commute with one

another. Some of the longest travel times by car, are located in New York

with the average of 30.4 minutes and the fastest being in Kansas at 16.3

minutes (Longley, 2016). As we can see with that info, the more populated

an area, the longer the commute.

 Some things we can do to provide relief to commuters is considering

autonomous cars that communicate to one another and cycle out any control

of the vehicle by humans because we always make mistakes that cause us to

be inefficient. Lets take the Tesla Model S for example, you get in the car

and tell it where to go, the car will then find the most optimal route then go

(Tesla, 2017). Imagine if we went one step above that, all cars have this self-

driving tech and communicate

with other cars along with city

infrastructure such as street

lights, roads them-selves, and

parking lots.

Google Self driving car picture brought to you by

gizmodo.com.au at https://www.bing.com/images/search?view= detailV2&ccid=Ph286vN2&id=

70D5DEB215321CC2C14BBD7B257C89D3D7213745&q= autonomous+cars&simid=

608001619179080354&selectedIndex= 24&ajaxhist=0 I speculate that if cars can

communicate with one another, it would reduce traffic jams and idling by an

unimaginable amount because of all the wasted time brought upon by driver

hesitation and distraction. This would be especially helpful in the traffic

jammed areas of the north east United States like New York and D.C. I feel

that the more we take humans out of driving, the better quality our

commutes will be. Right now, something like this is almost impossible since

self-driving cars just came about. In the next decade or two, they may

become ever more popular and the change to go autonomous will begin to

happen.
 Communications, Security, and Surveillance

Communication is something no one can escape. We communicate

with speaking, writing, and body language. We have created several means

of how we communicate such as cell-phones, letters, and through the

internet on chat boxes and emails; we communicate even if we dont say

anything through body language. Body language is sometimes

communicates better than speaking because, we see how people react to

certain subjects while they say the exact opposite. Other things that we use

for communication have only come about heavily in the last century;

communicating through mobile devices such as cell-phones or even smart

phones. Smart phones contain amazing technology that allows it to access

the internet opening even more channels for communicating. Back in 2011,

the International Telecommunications Union reported that 35% of the world

population is online (Wilson, 2012). Now that were in 2017, the number has

increased due to the increase of this technology. Also, the same union has

also reported that there were over 5.9 billion cellphone subscriptions (Wilson,

2012).

Iphone 7plus one of the most advanced smartphones on the market, created by Apple Inc. image brought to you by

iphone7manuals.com With the number of people having access to mobile

communications devices increases, the ease of communicating has greatly

increased; it is said that you can find just about anyone in the world with the

greatest of ease, all we need is a little bit of information to get started. Pipl

is a very comprehensive and doesnt require more than a name. (Dachis,

 2011). This is very disturbing to know

that someone only needs your name

to find out who you are. We need to

be careful of who we communicate

with because it could become a security problem. Personal information is

critical to protect and we must take security measures to protect against

surveillance.

Unfortunately, something that came along with this awesome

communicating tech is surveillance. Surveillance can be either good or bad

depending on what and why its being watched. With ever improving

communications technology, we may have to give up privacy all together

because somewhere, someone, is listening even your own government.

US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of

tens of millions of Americans. (BBC, 2014). This whole scandal of the US

government made world headlines and forced many tech companies to re-

think their security measures. The NSA didnt stop with American citizens,

they went worldwide from China to Europe hacking major Chinese

networking hubs and European leaders such as Angela Merkels cell phone

(BBC,2014). Costs for this issue were immeasurable because we lost our

allies trust and basically betrayed them.

In the future for this I can only imagine that electronic

communications, security, and surveillance is going to get more advanced

especially when you mix in artificial intelligence and robotics.

 Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

First, before we talk about robotics we must understand how robots work and

basic laws that govern them. Law One: A robot may not injure a human

being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Law Two:

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such

orders would conflict with the First Law. Law Three: A Robot must protect its

own existence as long as such protection does not conflict

with the First or Second Laws

(Bizony, 2015). These are known

as the Three Laws that

supposedly govern robots to

think for themselves. However,

robots have not yet come to

that point yet, they can still only do simple

tasks programmed into them. Right now, robots are starting to help us with

our dire need for labor in factories, warehouses, military, and farms. Back in

2008, there were over 1.3million industrial and about 7.3 million service

robots (Guizzo, 2010). Thats back in 2008, in 2017, there is probably 3 or

even 4 times as many robots in service in every sector of the market making

or doing all sorts of things.

This picture brought to us by slideshare.net at https://www.bing .com/images/search?view

=detailV2&ccid =9XbLrmHF&id= 36F611FB9F728772CADF3 96BC090A39590FCF7D2&q =Robot+Timeline&simid=

608019542060696172&selectedIndex=18&ajaxhist=0, shows various types of robots that have

been created from the 60s to 2010. Clearly in this picture we can see that

robotics have advanced quite a bit in the last 50 years. Maybe in the next 50

years robots will have whats called Artificial Intelligence and fully self-

aware, this is when the Three Laws will really come into play.

Artificial Intelligence is almost something that came out of a science

fiction movie, as time goes on however, it becomes more and more of a real

thing. There have been movies made about this subject that include but are

not limited to I-Robot, Avengers Age of Ultron, and of course the

Terminator series. In the terminator, the computer program called Skynet

becomes self-aware and realizes that humans are a threat to its existence

and decides that it must Terminate all human life. In the future when we

create computers that are able to become self-aware, I believe that we must

take every precaution we can in order to ensure that robots and humans can

all live together on the same planet.

Food

What would be the point to have or create anything if we starve to

death? Food is a basic human need, without it we wouldnt be here. All

around the world we have massive farms that produce massive amounts of

food every year. Problems of that would come with over producing food

would be that a lot just goes to waste because it isnt used, when the unused

food goes bad or attracts pests like rats, mice and bugs, and its just an over-

all waste when we when food goes unused. $165Billion in food is wasted
every year amounting to $1,350-$2,275 a year for a family of four (CNN,

2012). Not to mention the cost of this waste on an environmental scale.

Food production accounts for 80% of the countries fresh water consumption,

but the waste of food means 25% of the fresh water is actually wasted.

(CNN, 2012).

This shows annual food waste by

region this picture is brought to you

by shrinkthatfootprint.com at
https://www.bing.com/image s/search?view=detailV

2&ccid=qX%2bjJjOb&id= 2C5B78401E895F1FA39C

F92AEF2B6B876DD0D47B

&q=wasted+food+charts&sim

id=607991581831856980&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0.

Why is it that America wastes so much food? If we would redistribute

resources, our waste could most likely end world hunger.

One problem that we are seeing today with food is that our labor force

is very limited. Around 70% of farm workers are from other countries and

around half are illegal-immigrants (Wainer, 2014). This is simply because no

U.S. born citizen wants to slave away in a field and farmers can get away

with paying next to nothing for this labor because they are illegal. More

recently, we have seen President Trump crack down on illegal immigration

and many workers are or already have been deported. This is a part in a
chain of events that is going to drive up food costs. Farmers are either going

to have to get other people at fair wages which would drive up food costs or

they can develop machines that go through and plant, take care of, and

harvest the field. I believe that technology is the answer when it comes to

farming.

Another thing technology can do for farming is developing super crops

that can withstand just about anything and produce bundles of food these

are called Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs for short. We have made

crops of corn, wheat, and soybeans that can withstand harsh pesticides and

herbicides better overall taste and appearance, more notorious (Healthcare,

2013). Some cons of GMOs would be that it can lead to super weeds and

allergic reactions to eating them (Healthcare, 2013).

I believe that in the future, we will have mastered GMOs and farming

robots. Food will never again be a problem for the world and that will help us

go to farther places like space or even into the earth.

In conclusion, we need to be careful with innovative technology, see

what we can do with it, and how to make it beneficial to society. As we

advance in technology, so will society. We are at the precipice as a species,

either start to die or make advancements to solve our problems we have in

the world. This I leave you to ponder and research.

References:
1. Casten Sean, September 12, 2009, How Much Energy Does the US

Waste? grist.org, http://grist.org/article/2009-09-11-how-much-energy-

does-the-us-waste/
2. Peixe Joao, July 31, 2013, $1 Billion of Natural Gas Wasted in North

Dakota through Flaring in 2012 oilprice.com,

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/1-Billion-of-Natural-Gas-Wasted-

in-North-Dakota-through-Flaring-in-2012.html
3. Biello, David, February 21, 2008, Dark Side of Solar Cells Brightens

Nature America, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-cells-

prove-cleaner-way-to-produce-power/
4. Cox, Wendell, February 17, 2015, The Worlds Ten Largest Megacities

The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-cox/the-

worlds-ten-largest-me_b_6684694.html
5. Longley, Robert, May 17, 2016, Americans Now Spend Over 100 Hours

a Year Commuting thoughtco.com,

https://www.thoughtco.com/americans-commuting-over-100-hours-

yearly-3320980
6. Tesla, April 11, 2017, Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars

Tesla.com, https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
7. Wilson, Denise, December 7, 2012, Intelligence in the Age of

Smartphones, The Huffington Post,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/denise-wilson/smartphones-internet-

brains_b_1134065.html
8. Dachis, Adam, October 3, 2011, How to Use the Internet to Investigate

Your Next Date, Coworker, or New Friend (Without Being Creepy),

lifehacker.com, http://lifehacker.com/5845900/how-to-use-the-internet-
 to-investigate-your-next-date-co-worker-or-new-friend-to-ensure-

theyre-not-crazy
9. BBC, January 17, 2014, Edward Snowden: Leaks that exposed US spy

programme, bbc.com, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-

23123964
10. Bizony, Piers, June 15, 2015, Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics,

truthseeker.com, http://www.truthseekersurvival.com/asimovs-three-

laws-of-robotics/
11. Guizzo, Erico, April 14. 2010, World Robot Population Reaches

8.6 Million, sprectrum.ieee.org,

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/041410-

world-robot-population
12. CNN, August 22, 2012, 40% od U.S. food wasted, report says,

cnn.com, http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/22/40-of-u-s-food-wasted-

report-says/
13. Wainer, Andrew, June 15, 2014, Immigrants in the U.S. Food

System, hungerreport.org,

http://hungerreport.org/featured/immigrants-us-food-system/
14. Healthcare Articles and Infographics, December 4, 2013, Pros and

Cons of Genetically Modified Foods, healthcarereasearchfunding.org,

http://healthresearchfunding.org/pros-cons-genetically-modified-foods/