Is it possible, just possible, that you, sitting at your computer reading this article could live 500 years?  Might our education system be completely transformed in the future such that we download the information we need directly into our brain instead of attending school?  How about a vacation to a truly exotic place in 20 years, like the moon?  Is it possible?

You bet it is.  In fact, what we know about technology, like economics, is that it's predictable.  We cannot predict what an individual consumer will choose to buy, or explain why an individual entrepreneur chooses a certain industry to enter.  But we can look at the aggregate of economic activity and predict certain trends and outcomes.  In the same way, we cannot understand the behavior of an individual atom, but we can look at a mixture of atoms and predict the pressure it is exerting, or how it will react when a new solution is introduced.  

Technology is advancing in a predictable way, and because of that, we can begin to understand where it will lead us, and what our world will look like in 20, 40, or 200 years.  

By recognizing the paradigm shifts to come, we can enhance our lives.  Fortunes can be made. passions ignited, and visions realized. The impossible can become reality.   

But along with that knowledge comes a threat.  The ability to live for hundreds of years, the harnessing of amazing computing power, the development of the brain into a sponge that can absorb all the information on the planet in a matter of days or weeks, the understanding of paranormal activity and it's conversion to scientifically understood reality, and the harnessing of virtually limitless energy is surely turning ordinary oligarchs into power crazed fiends.  We know right now that these technologies are coming, and that there are people that would like very much to keep them for themselves.  This is likely the struggle of our generations.  In the past, governments and elite oligarchs prevented "the masses" from having access to information, technology, freedom, and power.  Can we prevent today's governments and today's elite oligarchs from becoming too large and too powerful?  Can we maintain and preserve the Constitution of the United States, a document that overturned that past oppression and led to the boom of wealth and technology?  Can we, "the masses", share in the bright future to come?  This is the backdrop for any discussion of the future of which we must all be aware.  

So to introduce this topic and allow your mind to wander a bit, here is engineer and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil addressing the TED conference in 2005.