When you look back to the 1950s and examine the typical idea of what the ‘future’ looked like, you get a lot of the same stereotypical imagery – flying cars, space travel, chrome jumpsuits. The world today might not look much like that at all, but there are so many bizarre and advanced technologies that surround each person that it’s worth asking whether or not the future is now in a certain sense.
You might not have to look much further than your smartphone to see this for yourself, but it’s far from the most extreme example, and understanding what these are might have you shifting your perception about what tomorrow might look like.
Artificial Intelligence
You don’t have to look much further than famous movies like Terminator to get a sense of some of the historical fears that people have had around artificial intelligence (AI), and a lot of these fears persist today, even when the technology is actively developed and applied to a multitude of industries. However, the image that you might have of AI in your head could be quite different from the way that it’s used today, and you might not even be aware of how widespread its use already is.
In fact, that might be the truly surprising thing about it, and discovering the variety of ways that it’s used and how well that use is often concealed might have you getting a sense of how much more advanced it is than you previously expected.
Cryptocurrency
The idea of a digital currency replacing the current one is yet another sci-fi trope that you see in all manners of examples from the genre, but while cryptocurrency in today’s world might not be something that you can expect to replace traditional currency anytime soon, it’s still worth seeing how far it’s come since its conception. While bitcoin has been around since 2009, it has grown past its initial perception as being a niche, fringe internet phenomenon and has attracted the attention of investors and backers to the point where a multitude of other examples have arisen.
The sophistication comes in how this ecosystem is being observed and interconnected by examples like cosmos that can be seen as being part of the process of making cryptocurrency less niche and more acceptable. The OKX.com cosmos guide can teach you more about this and what the current landscape looks like.
The Cloud
The internet itself is something that could be seen as an incredibly futuristic concept, and trying to understand how so many devices connect to it and rely on it might not be the kind of thing that’s easily digestible, leading it to just being taken for granted by a lot of people. However, the technology behind the internet hasn’t sat still, and while that has generally led to improvements such as greater connectivity and wider access, it also means that it’s given way to the cloud.
The cloud allows people to store information online instead of on a dedicated hard drive or physical device, where it can then be accessed from a variety of locations. It’s not hard to imagine how this can be useful, and it leads to a much more flexible environment that can be used in a wide variety of settings and circumstances, from work and business to gaming. In fact, the way your phone saves information and photos might already be utilizing the cloud without your knowledge – making it yet another example of a technology that’s been quietly yet widely implemented throughout a variety of industries.
The Metaverse
On the newer end of the spectrum, you have the metaverse, something that’s risen in popularity with the growing advancement of virtual reality (VR) and associated technologies. To many people, the metaverse is seen as the logical ‘next step’ of the internet, where you interact with people in a virtual 3D space, though different businesses and individuals might have different ideas about what this ultimately looks like.
Of course, to become as widely used as it would need to be in order to be a true success, more and more people need to have access to the proper headsets, which will take time. However, with the popularization of such headsets through examples like the gaming landscape, it’s not too difficult to imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when this is a possibility. Though once again, its applications could be more far-reaching than simply being a novelty, and with the speed that technology develops, you might see those being put into practice before you know it.
