This is from a Wired magazine feature in 1997, which predicted what 2020 would be like.
“Right about the turn of the century, the third of the five waves of technology kicks in. After a couple false starts in the 1980s and 1990s, biotechnology begins to transform the medical field. One benchmark comes in 2001 with the completion of the Human Genome Project, the effort to map out all human genes. That understanding of our genetic makeup triggers a series of breakthroughs in stopping genetic disease. Around 2012, a gene therapy for cancer is perfected. Five years later, almost one-third of the 4,000 known genetic diseases can be avoided through genetic manipulation.
Throughout the early part of the century, the combination of a deeper understanding of genetics, human biology, and organic chemistry leads to a vast array of powerful medications and therapies. The health care system, having faced a crossroads in 1994 with President Clinton’s proposed national plan, continues restructuring along the more decentralized, privatized model of HMOs. The industry is already booming when biotech advances begin clicking in the first decade of the century. It receives a further stimulus when the baby boomers begin retiring en masse in 2011. The industry becomes a big jobs provider for years to come.
The biotech revolution profoundly affects another economic sector – agriculture. The same deeper understanding of genetics leads to much more precise breeding of plants. By about 2007, most US produce is being genetically engineered by these new direct techniques. The same process takes place with livestock. In 1997, the cloning of sheep in the United Kingdom startles the world and kicks off a flurry of activity in this field. By the turn of the century, prize livestock is being genetically tweaked as often as traditionally bred. By about 2005, animals are used for developing organs that can be donated to humans. Superproductive animals and ultrahardy, high-yielding plants bring another veritable green revolution to countries sustaining large populations.
By the end of the transitional era, around 2020, real advances begin to be made in the field of biological computation, where billions of relatively slow computations, done at the level of DNA, can be run simultaneously and brought together in the aggregate to create the ultimate in parallel processing. So-called DNA computing looks as though it will bring about big advances in the speed of processing sometime after 2025 – certainly by the middle of the century.
Then comes the fourth technology wave – nanotechnology. Once the realm of science fiction, this microscopic method of construction becomes a reality in 2015. Scientists and engineers figure out reliable methods to construct objects one atom at a time. Among the first commercially viable products are tiny sensors that can enter a person’s bloodstream and bring back information about its composition. By 2018, these micromachines are able to do basic cell repair. However, nanotechnology promises to have a much more profound impact on traditional manufacturing as the century rolls on. Theoretically, most products could be produced much more efficiently through nanotech techniques. By 2025, the theory is still far from proven, but small desktop factories for producing simple products arrive.
By about 2015, nanotech techniques begin to be applied to the development of computing at the atomic level. Quantum computing, rather than DNA computing, proves to be the heir to microprocessors in the short run. In working up to the billion-transistor microprocessor in 2010, engineers seem to hit insurmountable technical barriers: the scale of integrated circuits has shrunk so small that optical-lithography techniques fail to function. Fortunately, just as the pace of microprocessing power begins to wane, quantum computing clicks in. Frequent increases in computing power once again promise to continue unabated for the foreseeable future.”
Future Human 