Future of Technology
November 30, 2008
My friend wanted me to help him write some multiple-choice questions about the future of technology. This was my initial list of questions:
When will computers be able to pass the turing test (ie “If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.”)?
- 30 years
- 50 years
- 80 years
- never
When will we pass the singulairty (“ie. this would open up all sorts of new possibilities, including abrogation of the laws of Physics, interdimensional travel, and a possible infinite extension of existence (true immortality)”)?
- 30 years
- 50 years
- 80 years
- never
When will we be able to solve an NP-Complete problem (NP-complete is a subset of NP, the set of all decision problems whose solutions can be verified in polynomial time; NP may be equivalently defined as the set of decision problems that can be solved in polynomial time on a nondeterministic Turing machine.)?
- 30 years
- 50 years
- 80 years
- never
What technology is going to drive the next wave of search?
- Semantic Web technology. (ie. structured data)
- Natural language processing. (ie. computers “reading” text)
- Other? _______
But then he wanted me to create a list of questions that an average college student could understand. Therefore, this was my new list:
Will the majority of consumers move to web-based office apps (eg. Google Docs) within 4 years?
- Yes
- No
What % of the world will be using the internet in 4 years?
(Source)
- 20-25%
- 25-30%
- 30-40%
- >40%
Who will be the dominant technology player (bottom line) in 4 years?
- Microsoft
- HP
- Other______
Will IP based household devices in the consumer marketplace grow over 200 million within 4 years?
(Source)
- Yes
- No
What is your list of questions about the future of technology?
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