The Best of CES 2012: PopSci's Products of the Future

Great future predictions! All your future predictions look amazing.
As you know there are two ways of predicting the future. One by using the current technology and the other by understanding human needs.
Most futurists take up the short-sighted one where they predict the future based off of today's technology. There is both pro and con. The pro is, they are much safer predictions
and most of them come out true, only a few fail. The con is in the longer term they may not hold good. Future predictions can be made much more reliable if both approaches are used simultaneously.

The second approach which is based on “human needs” is derived from the fundamental fact that "Humans drive technology and not the other way around".
It is always we who determine which technology should be successful or a failure.
How do we figure this out? By understanding the “evolutionary criterion” associated with each product, that is responsible for its evolution. With this we can see the future much more clearly and much deeper.

For example some of the evolutionary criterions for automobiles are: Speed, security and comfort. The criterion “Speed” gives rise to high-speed cars and it does not matter what the technology is. If you combine, all three factors “speed, security and comforts,” it will invariably point us towards self-driving cars, again it does not matter what the technology is. Ones we are in the automated world, out future predictions take a different turn. The cars of the future look a lot different than what is predicted so far. They may not look like car at all, because we are not driving it any more.
If future predictions are made based on what we have in hand, it may or may not be accurate. We would be much better of combining these two factors for reliable predictions.

I have discussed this in my award winning book: "The Art of Looking into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"
ISBN: 0983157405

-R.S. Amblee