http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinio...ience-forecasts
Page down to see the links to summaries. In the summaries, at the bottom, is a link to the full article.
Full Version: The next 50 years
too bad the predictions are limited to 250 words or less. Seriously, how much can you possibly say in 250 words or less? I get the sense that many people would have written more detailed and profoundly if not for the word limit and instead provide superficial blurbs, for the most part.
Given that the cost of posting the articles on the internet is zero, I don't see why there should have been any word limit in the first place.
Oliver Sacks' forecast for the next 50 years simply reads:
Or how about Lewis Wolpert's:
Given that the cost of posting the articles on the internet is zero, I don't see why there should have been any word limit in the first place.
Oliver Sacks' forecast for the next 50 years simply reads:
QUOTE
I expect a general theory of imagination, consciousness and self that will be powerful and illuminating – and applicable in principle to sentient species everywhere. A happy coming-together of physiology, psychology and philosophy – the “PPP†I dreamed about as a student 50 years ago.
and no, the typos are not mine. That's his forecast for the next 50 years, a meager 2 sentences!Or how about Lewis Wolpert's:
QUOTE
There has been good progress in understanding the principles that determine how embryos develop, but the current situation is rather boring, as many papers merely provide details of the role of a few genes in a particular developmental process. In the next 50 years, as systems biology and computer models take over, the embryo will become fully "computable": given a fertilised egg, with the details of its genome and contents of its cytoplasm, it will be possible to predict the embryo's entire development. From this, new general principles may emerge. It will be possible to understand the basis of developmental abnormalities and how they could be corrected. But the development of connections between nerve cells in the brain may still be out of reach.
Yeah thanks Lewis, that's really informative! Who would have guessed that the next 50 years would bring greater predictive capabilities!QUOTE
Yeah thanks Lewis, that's really informative! Who would have guessed that the next 50 years would bring greater predictive capabilities!
hehehe...
QUOTE(lucid_dream @ Dec 17, 2006, 08:35 PM) 
Yeah thanks Lewis, that's really informative! Who would have guessed that the next 50 years would bring greater predictive capabilities!
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.