THU the complete list and if they had asked me what I would have voted for, I would have answered the web without any particular doubts.
But since we're talking about products, maybe I would have just mentioned NETSCAPE. Yes! Because it was the first "door" through which we entered the internet and began to navigate this sea of information and data made by people of any nation and everywhere. A free planet, with rules made by the people themselves who populate it, inhabited by people of all types but above all free. He doesn't ask for anything! He offers you what he has. I don't want to fall into false moralism or get lost in useless chatter and pepper my comment with metaphors, but I like to think that it's a world apart!
Returning to the title of this number 4, I thought given the prophetic soul that lives in this blog, but what will be the hi-tech products or future inventions that will populate this near future? Every now and then I tell myself that there is still little to invent on this planet, at least at a hi-tech level or perhaps that the real innovations will arise when we have the convergence between man and machine, which is not just around the corner. but almost. But until then what will they sell us... foldable, indestructible, very small objects that will do the same things as today? instead, I believe that the key to the future will be to make what we already know more intelligent than it is by its own nature and increasingly integrated with the world around us.
What do I mean by “more intelligent than one is naturally intelligent”? The iPhone of the future, for example, what can it do? Beyond the telephone, music, radio, video, etc... Well, if he were intelligent and became the best connoisseur of ourselves, he could choose music based on our mood, turn on his own functions in correspondence with our behavior and the environment that we are dating, it could record the noises when it hears words that can increase our databases, it could tomorrow be controlled by our senses. He could at our nervous command seek information and provide it to us. It could do many other things. How much it is? If he were as intelligent as his surroundings would allow him! It could evolve with us. It could tell our story, our life! Not a simple audiovisual recorder but an extension of us.
Why did I think about this? Simple. Because I have seen and touch our limits as men every day. We multitask, cooperate in one, two or many. We exchange information, data convulsively in large quantities. All limited by our being men, therefore limited by age, energy and abilities that we have. But what if we had a hi-tech companion who, trained by us over time, perhaps since childhood, would expand and support our functions? We would become the ground on which to implant nanotechnologies for the development of new functions. We would make the fantastic Japanese robot dreams, the so-called cyborgs, come true. In some video games we already see military soldiers fighting and using technologically advanced weapons, integrated with suits, with visual systems, able to communicate with all the armed forces, with functions for camouflage, hiding and even enhancing brain functions.
If all this then, one day, were to be able to enter daily life, what could it possibly become? In that moment I see the birth of new revolutionary products with high added value that will change our life again. Maybe someone will improve it. Others will make it worse. We would always have among us the traditionalists who will regret fields of flowers, paper books, bars and post-its. There will be more and more avant-gardists who will sow "new feelings" and new moods.
It will be the revolution of man, his transformation, his new evolution. Then in fifty years he will answer: "if NETSCAPE in 2007 was judged the first among 50 of the best hi-tech products of all time, today I will only be able to vote I-LIFE by MicroApple. Born in 2033 from an invention by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in the MicroApple laboratories, it is implanted in children's bodies from the age of 4 with all sensory functions active. I-LIFE grows with YOU, gets to know you and will contribute over time to providing you with information and data by communicating directly with your mind. I-LIFE is integrated with the artificial intelligences and information systems of the planet and will provide you with territorial and spatial functions of interaction. I-LIFE is now used by over 2 million people. Its motor extensions will allow you to enable interaction functions similar to those allowed by your arms…" - I stop here.
What direction will the great and brilliant engineers of the future take when faced with the ideas and tools to transform man? Will they do it without caring as they do today about the interference they will cause in people? Yes! They will move forward seeking the perfection of technological thinking to the detriment of the personality and heart of man. Tomorrow's hi-tech product will pass through here.
