When Minority Report was first released in 2002, Steven Spielberg turned to MIT researcher John Underkoffler to create a vision of what the future would look like. Much of the technology in that movie, including drones, targeted advertising, and so on, soon became common.
With the development of the Minority Report TV show, producers have once again turned to MIT researchers, asking Greg Borenstein, a Media Lab graduate, to create the futuristic vision for the show. The show debuts tonight, Sept. 21, at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox.
The technology envisioned by Borenstein is what he thinks we might have 50 years from now.
The first thing that Borenstein came up with was emotionally tailored advertising. Advertising is currently targeted to particular emotions, but Borenstein expects that it will soon also be tailored to the emotions of specific users.
Next up is a 3D version of Skype. With one of the main problems of online communications being that we are talking to flat screens, it is expected that things like virtual reality technology will advance enough to make it seem like the person is standing right there. This would be through a 3D-scanning camera, which would scan each user as they talk, projecting that scan on the other end.
While 3D Skype is conceivable, being able to control animals using a remote control is a little harder to imagine. In the show, we see one of the characters being able to control an entire flock of birds through a remote control. These animals essentially have a chip implanted in their brain. While the technology itself might be there, it's unlikely that every animal that a person could run into would have these chips.
In the show we also see an extinct species being brought back to life. This is not so hard to imagine, with people currently working on sequencing the DNA of passenger pigeons, with one being expected to be brought to life in the next few years.
Law enforcement is currently being told that it needs to use on-person cameras so the truth of certain situations can be revealed. In the future, however, those cameras might be found in contact lenses, according to predictions from Borenstein.
Next up are self-driving mega cars. While self-driving technology is currently already on its way, Borenstein envisions a future in which these cars join together to form much larger vehicles. These will be designed to drastically reduce traffic congestion.
Being able to virtually recreate a crime through data collected at the crime scene would be extremely helpful for law enforcement, and according to Borenstein, in the future we might be able to do just that. Augmented reality technology is currently able to pull information about a scene and put data over the top of that video feed. That technology, combined with development in things like the Microsoft HoloLens, could allow law enforcement to recreate what happened in order to see if a particular scenario is viable.
Of course, we won't know exactly what kind of technology we will see in 50 years until, well, it's 50 years from now. But these particular inventions certainly seem exciting.
Via: Fast Co.Create
