Local Sourcing

Is 3D printing part of a larger trend toward local sourcing EVERYTHING?  The answer is going to have to be yes over time, because the cost of energy (read "oil") will go up so high, that only those items not physically available at a location will be shipped.  For the earth, and with human ingenuity, the only things not capable of being produced locally are raw materials like metals and fuels.

But what can be produced locally, if given the right incentive?  Food, energy, consumer goods, services.  200 years past, farms could be isolated by 100 miles of wilderness, and they would have to create everything on their own. In the future, we may have to return to that.  Admittedly it will be a slow process, but moving certain manufacturing and production facilities back from the outsourced nether will be beneficial as the cost of fuels keeps climbing.

Local sourcing.... not just a made-up phrase anymore.

How much TV will be in your transportation?

Today, there is an epidemic of distracted driving.  The most visible cause is texting on cell phones - reading and typing at 60 MPH.  All the old causes are still there - eating, reading the newspaper, cell phone calls, shaving, makeup, and plain old inattentiveness.  None of those, or any of the other distracted driving causes, are built into your car. 

Unfortunately that isn't going to be the case forever.  Aftermarket tech providers are offering a multitude of digital monitors that you can install into the dashboard of your car.  One web site actually gave directions on how to mount your iPad to your car, presumably for hands-free distraction.  

Just like texting in cars, this is going to cause many accidents.  There will always be people that choose to do things at inappropriate and sometimes dangerous times.  And as more people do, it will cause more accidents, and there will eventually be a backlash by the public.  

So my prediction is that we will start seeing more dashboard televisions in cars, rather than just the digital status display in many cars today.  And then their use will get out of hand, including streaming video from internet services while driving.  And finally there will be laws against their use in some states, and they will only be available through aftermarket sellers again.  

Will that save us from distracted drivers?  No, but it will certainly cut the number of drivers who hit you while watching their favorite television shows.  

Computer Mind Reading

When computers were first invented, they had a keyboard and a cursor.  Then later we added a mouse and graphical displays.  Video games came out with joysticks.  Trackballs.  Touch-screen virtual keyboards.  Swipe-typing.  All of them are physical physical physical!  

Enter the brainwave control helmets!  The ones for sale a few years ago were definitely geeky.  They had electrodes, wires, and probably gears and steam engines.  But today the helmets are becoming smaller, more stylish, and more sensitive.  

Eventually someone (ghost of Steve Jobs) is going to make a product that has no controls other than a headband.  Typing a paper will no longer give you carpal tunnel syndrome.  And it could be faster for navigation, too, as long as you can remember what you need to navigate to.  

And that's just within the next 20 years!  There is every possibility that these types of controls will eventually be implantable, and that people will be able to continuously link to computers around them.  You could have a iHouse that links to your iBrain.  The danger, of course, is the possibility of viruses!  There needs to be some damn good error testing!  

-sjk

Modern Day Hitchhiking

In the golden years, you often saw idealized accounts of people hitchhiking across the United States.  Or hopping on trains and riding the rails.  Those idyllic scenes have been changed over the years.  Stories of hitchhikers attacking kind motorists or motorists picking up hitchhikers for nefarious purposes percolated through our culture and now I know of very few people who would be on either side (hitcher or motorist) for their own safety.  

Our current energy crisis could be alleviated a little by hitchhiking.  I see many cars with only the driver, which is a huge waste of space.  And many places people want to go are destinations for thousands of others, making it more likely that both hitchhikers and motorists would want to go there.  If we could double the average occupancy of each car, we could save millions of driving hours a year!

It would require some very important changes.   

• An electronic thumb of some sort (like in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), rather than using your regular thumb.  
• The ability for hitchhikers and motorists to rate one another, similar to couch-surfing.  
• The tipping point where both motorists and hitchhikers have a large enough pool on the other side to use the app.  
• Cultural adaption to having strangers in your car. 

Hitchhiking, or a sanitized version of it, can make a comeback if the right minds get behind it.  In the future, community will be ever more important.  Sharing (or selling?) resources like your driving time would be a great way to spread the wealth.  

Government Gridlock Consequences

Many people today are worried about the fact that politicians today can't agree upon issues.  You see articles all the time such as "Medicaid group can't agree on cuts."  If you'd like more, just do a google search.  Many people are concerned about the polarization that seems to be happening in the political system - when the Democrats and the Republicans take increasingly divergent positions - because it makes compromise almost unthinkable for the two sides.  But what does a grid-locked political system do to our world?  I've listed below several outcomes that intrigue and/or frighten me.  And it will all happen because our government can't agree on action.

Shrunken FDA

All that needs to happen to cripple the FDA is for the government to allow Prescription Drug User Fees Act (PDUFA) to lapse.  That would mean the FDA wouldn't be able to collect user fees from drug companies for expediting approvals.  Which would reduce the number of drugs coming through.  It is also a major source of funding for the agency, and would cut drastically into their activities, including inspecting food and drug companies.  

State-Level International Policy

When you think of international policy, I'm sure you think of the ability to sign treaties.  But I'm talking specifically about immigration a possible slippery slope.  If the federal government can't agree on a standard US  immigration policy, then the states will take it on themselves.  Arizona, for example, passed a bill that is targeted at curbing illegal immigration, and is on its way to the Supreme Court to hear whether it is constitutional.  If it survives, individual states could use it to take international policy away from the Federal government, which is the rightful holder of those duties.  

Unending War

We've been at war for most of the past 20 years.  The reasons why are debated, and I'm not going to get into them.  But without the government working together, it's unlikely we will ever get fully out of the unpopular conflicts in the Middle East.  A strong force keeping us involved is the inertia we've gathered during the military actions of the recent past.  That inertia is reinforced by the stalemate in the government, because its almost impossible to get a large enough majority to do something dramatic, like end a war, with 100% die-hard opposition.  

Market Volatility

Immobile law makers or regulatory agencies put strain on our markets.  And that strain is translated into volatile stock and bond prices, as speculators cause large swings in the value of market instruments.  The market actually responds favorably to final action by the government, because that reduces uncertainty and calms risk.  The less that gets done in the government, though, the more uncertainty there is as issues build up in the queue.  

I'm not a doom-sayer.  I don't think that the worst will happen in all cases.  But I do think there needs to be a change in the political landscape so we can avoid some of the consequences above.  What do you see as the biggest outcome of a fully gridlocked government?