1) Consider cones of uncertainty. Pick a year and apply them to the question, "What will it be like in that year?" If you prefer, you may choose a different question to apply them to.
At first I had trouble understanding what the 'it' in the question, "What will 'it' be like in that year?" On momentary reflection I am taking 'it' to mean 'life', or 'existence' or 'experience' in a given year. These are such broad strokes that I find them too voluminous in possibility to cope with, my brain melts down at the very thought of it! So, with the reader's indulgence I would like to substitute three concrete concepts for the 'it'. Those concepts include the first of the three basic needs of economics, 'food' from 'food', 'clothing' and 'shelter'. A cone of uncertainty needs a time frame, and a unit of advance, so I will choose a logarithmic progression (base ten) of 1 year, 10 years, 100 years and 1000 years.
Food in 1 year:
- Foodstuff selection will be the same as now (2019).
- Bread price will decrease by a few percent.
- Meat price will increase by a few percent.
- Going to the grocery store by car will decrease a few percent.
- Home delivery of both raw ingredients will increase a few percent.
- Home delivery of prepared meals will increase a few percent.
- Eating out will decrease a few percent.
- There will be increasing emphasis on healthful ingredients.
- There will be reduction in gratuitous carbohydrates by a few percent.
Food in 10 years:
- There will be new artificial foods increasing selection by 10's of percent.
- Bread price will decrease by a 10's of percent.
- Meat price will increase by a 10's of percent.
- Going to the grocery store by car will decrease 10's of percent.
- Home delivery of both raw ingredients will increase 10's of percent.
- Home delivery of prepared meals will increase 10's of percent.
- Eating out will decrease 10's of percent.
- There will be increasing emphasis on healthful ingredients.
- There will be reduction in gratuitous carbohydrates by a 10's of percent.
- There will be new artificial foods increasing selection by 100's of percent.
- Bread price will approach a constant.
- Meat price will increase by a 100's of percent.
- Going to the grocery store by car will not exist.
- Autonomous home delivery of both raw ingredients will be the sole mode.
- Autonomous home delivery of prepared meals will be the sole mode.
- Eating out will approach a constant that is less than 2019.
- Healthful ingredients will be mandated by law.
- Reduction in carbohydrates will be mandated by law.
Food in 1000 years:
- All foods will be compounded in ready to fix, ready to eat form.
- Individual ingredients will be less commonplace.
- Going to the grocery store by car will not exist.
- Autonomous home delivery of both raw ingredients will be the sole mode.
- Autonomous home delivery of prepared meals will be the sole mode.
- Eating out will approach a constant that is less than the 100 year mark.
- Eating Unhealthful ingredients will be a misdemeanor crime.
- Carbohydrate quotas will be strictly enforced.
2) For your term project [] do an equivalent amount of work on it. Your work can involve applying cones of uncertainty, theories of innovation, or whatever you like. It's up to you.
For the vTMS™ / vBrain™ Class Demonstration
This week has been several hours of bench work fabricating and assembling both the vTMS™ and the vBrain™components. I am glad this work started early because there is a lot of detail to cover, even for a simple demonstration.
Positioning the vTMS™ rotors in the vicinity of the vBrain™ simulator has been one part of the design process. I originally started with an optical bench, where the rotors could slide closer or nearer to the vBrain™ and the rotors could be raised up and down by the lens rods. This provided y (lower and higher in the head), and z (closer to and further from the head) degrees of freedom, but no ability to move in the x direction (fore and aft in the brain case). I have abandoned this approach and am now treating the rotors as goose-necked lighting fixtures where the 'light' is the rotor and its swirling magnetic field. Preliminary testing indicates this is a more versatile and robust experimental arrangement than the optical bench and will provide all three degrees of freedom in more of a spherical than Cartesian coordinate system. This is more apropos for navigating the landscape of the head and brain. It is interesting that both the optical bench and the gooseneck lamp mounts exploit a 'lighting' analogy, treating a rotating magnetic field as electromagnetic signals.
3) Grad students: Continue with the book you obtained. Read the next 20 pages. Explain what you agree with, disagree with, learned, and how your views compare with those of other reviewers on Amazon or elsewhere.
I have moved this answer to my ongoing review of the book, "The Human Race to the Future" a single curated document that is here. In the session for this question I reviewed chapters thirteen and fourteen of the book.
Chapter thirteen, "Space Empire - From Mercury to Neptune", explores notions of interplanetary colonization. The book makes a turn towards the more speculative at this point, diving further into the cone of uncertainty.
Chapter fourteen, "Chasing the Future — Spoilsports of the Prediction Game" changes gears examining the fundamental physical limits on knowing. This chapter is very useful for examining and avoiding specious claims that violate physical law, like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
