Visions of the Future: Reviewing 2057

The Discovery Channel had a special recently: 3 shows about different aspects of what the year 2057 might look like. These hour-long programs examined "The Body" (flying cars, medical advances and health care), "The City" (holograms, robots, self-driving cars, and how cities could be run), and "The World" (warfare, space travel, alternative energy sources and geopolitics).

Similar to other Discovery Channel programs that involve projections (either of the distant future, the distant past, a distant planet or foreseeable natural disasters), these programs showed how one family, or small group of people, might navigate their way through this new environment. I think this might just be why these shows are so successful: they don't only show cold scientific projections, they show how normal people (or anthropomorphized non-people) live in these strange new worlds. Since we can relate to these people, we can more easily imagine ourselves using their technologies (or lack thereof) and confronting their problems and thus get a greater understanding of the science involved.

And the science, as always, is fascinating. If I had to point out one thing that the Discovery Channel does incredibly well, it is presenting good science in an interesting way.

Of course, if I had to point out one thing they do badly, it is presenting economics, politics and government in a realistic way. And that is what this (short) series of posts will be about. Because, while I was learning about scientific breakthroughs that could extend lives, I was also seeing completely unrealistic mechanisms for getting them to real people. Oh, and I had no sympathy for the main character.

So, to be continued in the next post...The Body.