Imagining the tech world in 2050

At a kickoff event for collaboration between IBM and the University of Southern California to explore the intersection of creative arts and science and technology, five IBM scientists offered their best guesses on how life would be different in 2050.
In keeping with the Hollywood theme, the moderator of the panel, Bill Pulleyblank, noted that the Mini Cooper automobile has more computing power than Apollo 13--the space capsule that "almost got Tom Hanks killed," he said, referring to the 1995 movie of that name.

Pulleybank led the development of IBM's Blue Gene systems, which account for 4 of the world's top 10 most powerful supercomputers. By 2050, he predicted, the capabilities housed in those giant supercomputers will be available in the palm of your hand.
Harnessing photosynthesisSharon Nunes, who leads IBM's green-research initiatives, launched IBM's Computational Biology Center. She predicted that by 2050, clean water and energy would be available to the entire planet.
Nunes is looking to synthetic biology and systems biology to help solve the critical problems the planet faces. "We have to try to learn from nature and the 4-plus billion years of knowledge," she said.
She gave an example of applying an understanding of the chemical and biological processes of photosynthesis to building solar cells and converting algae into environmentally friendly fuels. "We have to learn how to scale (these developments) and make them affordable," she said.

Life extension and parallel human processingDon Eigler was the IBM scientist who, in 1989, took a small number of xenon atoms and spelled out "IBM" using a liquid helium temperature-scanning tunneling microscope that he had constructed. In his 2050 predictions, Eigler focused on embedded and nanoscale technologies that could lead to life extension.
"In the labs today, people are discovering how to fabricate new nanometer-scale structures for regenerative medicine," he said. Eigler believes that this technology could blossom over the next 10 to 15 years and that it eventually will result in pharmacies built into the human body that automatically administer medicines based on readings from internal sensors.
He also discussed parallel human processing. The idea is that a person could think about two problems at once consciously. This capability could be realized through training or symbiant embedded devices.

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