Most of you will know the BT timeline with future expectations in terms of technological innovations. Now, Robert Watson over at nowandnext.com published a second version of his innovation timeline (see also article here). Looking a 107 years back and about 43 years ahead, the timeline sees future innovations such as: robotic soldiers, prison countries, reputation trading, global voting, invisi-spray, etc. It is not clear what the vertical axis stands for.

As the author mentions, these ‘expectations’ need to be taken with a grain of salt. For some of the things mentioned, the future has already arrived or is near in lab conditions, for others developments lie further ahead, some are scary, some bring a smile upon one’s face, … as such they all reflect someone‘s view on the future. It would be interesting to put several of these maps together and use their comparison as the basis for a discussion tool, a mapping of people’s viewpoints, perspectives, future expectations (not to mention people’s different views on a common past, as experience shows).

Maps and timelines are valuable tools because they show relationships. As such it might be interesting to ask people to draw lines and relate past innovation events to new future breakthroughs. In other words, what do they see as today’s preludes to tomorrow’s world?

Thanks for the link Mark

Related posts:

1. BT
2. images of the future
3. 2019 according to Microsoft

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 21:51 and is filed under future, technology, trends, visions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.