Predicting the Future?

For some reason I have always had difficulty when presented with the problem of imagining the technology of the future. This seems especially odd because I have grown up always loving a good sci-fi story and with so much exposure to predictions of the future I would think that it would fill my head with all sorts of ideas about what the future will hold. However, for whatever reason I still continue to have difficulty with this. I always feel like whatever I think of is either too far fetched or too cliché.

Perhaps this has had something to do with the major advances in technology (particularly in the way that we get news and information) that have taken place in my lifetime. It’s not like I didn’t embrace the technology though, even from a young age I was fascinated with technology. By all accounts it would make sense for the future of technology to be something I am always thinking about but for whatever reason it never really has been. I always imagine that advances will be similar to what I have access too now yet when I think back I would never have thought one day I would be able to type something like this on a portable version of the hulking mass that was our family computer.

I guess in order to try and predict what is ahead it is easier for me to look back over the changes I have experienced in my life and look for a pattern that might continue on. What immediately sticks out to me is the size. Just about everything technology related has been getting smaller over the course of my life from computers to phones to the sizes of electronic files. So, I guess if I had to predict what was in our future I would wager that our technology will continue to shrink, yet while this happens, what these devices are capable will increases dramatically. Even though it’s hard for me to imagine how our access to news and information will become any faster and easier than it already is today I’m sure it will continue to do so.