What 2013 was Supposed to Look like (according to 2003), and other Predictions.

A lot of what we see in our GrabCAD feeds is really what the future looks like. I’m not talking about large-scale private collaborations to make incredible designs (Solidwork City, for example). I’m talking about Futuristic Tractors, Cars, Bikes and Airplanes. And as it turns out, in 2003,  Sonia Zjawinski wrote down her predictions in Wired Magazine. And she got pretty close…. but she never saw GrabCAD coming!

A wearable iPhone? Complete with touchscreen? It never happened the way it was expected, but Apple made a phone in the end. I’m glad they didn’t make an wristband version though….

Remember when Noise-cancelling headphones became the rage? Of course, in the future, people would be buying smaller and smaller headphones. And today, you can buy these.

This one came out of left-field and to my knowledge, no one has created one of these ‘food testers’ (I’m not kidding). Sonia wrote in 2003, “Whether counting calories or minding your lactose intake, you can never know too much about what you’re eating. This handheld food scanner’s neural network divines ingredients and quantities, giving an instant read on your favorite foods. Fido’s artificial nose also sniffs out bacteria like E. coli and allergens such as peanuts or milk. Tell the scanner what you want to avoid and it barks a warning. Let’s just hope it likes your cooking.”.

But if you told me we had these in 2013, I’d doubt it. But my doubts died the moment I saw this video for the Google Glasses.

The tech is not quite there. Close enough.

This one hit it right on the nail. Flexible OLED Screens have been around for a few years now, and as it so happens, LG just launched their line of OLED TVs today. Can we imagine tooling about on GrabCAD with this TV? Why not….

There have been a few curious predictions found elsewhere. Tomorrow in Brief talked about Future Cars having the ability to generate electricity while parked, creating a little extra revenue for the owner and delivering power directly the grid. Transmission of power from far-off places is an inefficient process – directly feeding it where needed – the city usually (and where cars are packed in). Would definitely necessitate a lot of trips to the gas station, to be sure you have enough  to get home!

One prediction we can’t guarantee, but would be interesting if it did happen. The sheer amount of data and interconnectivity of the GrabCAD network comes to a point at which GrabCAD is now sentient, blessed with high-quality CAD skills and the Engineer’s knack for problem-solving. But totally unable to make or drink coffee. Imagine collaborating with Grabby himself…. what a fun project that would be. I can’t imagine what our back-end software team would think of it… another member on the team I suppose!