Wired UK

2021 Male birth control

Richard Anderson says pharmaceutical male birth control could involve "steroid administrations to suppress the reproductive axis".

Yet hopes for a simple male pill may be, well, premature. "The trouble is that, for men, you need to do it much more thoroughly than you do for women. For women, you just need to suppress things so they don't ovulate, whereas for men you've got to get rid of all those sperm that the male testes are making, all day, every day."

Nick Bostrom, however, is less pessimistic. He thinks a male birth-control pill or injection "wouldn't be too hard to develop" and Marian Salzman sees a product of this kind as "inevitable".
Certainly, Anderson tells us, there would be plenty of demand for it.

2024 AIDS Vaccine
A vaccine against HIV has so far proved elusive. "It is about the trickiest virus of all to try to develop a vaccine for," says Richard Barker.

"It mutates very rapidly, so to have something that hits all forms of the virus is that much more difficult. I think all researchers working in this field know it's about the hardest target they've ever seen. But nobody has said, 'Let's give up,' because it is almost impossible to treat your way out of the Aids epidemic."

A vaccine could be with us soon, despite these difficulties.

"Because of clinical development time," says Barker, "my guess is that we're ten years away."
Marian Salzman thinks it will be "before 2020." But Patrick Dixon is not so optimistic. He reckons that, by 2025, "we'll have the first Aids vaccine that looks like giving some protection against HIV infection but not complete. I don't think we'll see an effective Aids vaccine before 2035."

2024 Microbial diesel provides most of our fuel

Our cars may eventually run on fuel from genetically engineered bacteria that create diesel. Peter Schwartz says "bacteria have been modified so that they produce diesel fuel" and expects that "by 2050 most of our fuel will be made biologically".

In fact we already have synthetic fuels, as Karl Littau points out. "Sasol has several plants running coal to liquid fuel and natural gas to liquid fuel conversion."

Jon Ballesteros works for California company LS9, which aims to use microbes to produce what it calls "UltraClean" diesel on a commercial scale by 2012.

This would mean a "greater than 75 per cent reduction in the carbon footprint" of diesel production and, he says, will be "able to compete with $45-a-barrel oil".

Eventually LS9 says it will make gasoline but diesel is more pressing as "the economy runs on diesel and everything we have here in the States is touched by diesel in some way."

As to microbes providing most of our fuel, Richard Yada says "closer to five than ten years would be probably a good time frame."

2026 Vertical city farms

Imagine what Richard Watson describes as a "high-rise block of flats, but instead of people, you put agriculture in there." Well, Dickson Despommier is already working on it. He says the first such structure will possibly be "five storeys tall and an eighth of a city block in footprint", will overcome the lack of soil in desert countries and step in when crops fail due to floods and droughts.

Finnish expert, Elina Hiltunen adds that these farms-in-buildings would improve self-sufficiency, but Richard Yada worries that the infrastructure costs for maintaining them would outweigh the benefits. However, he still sees them springing up in cities "in 20 years if we can work out the economics".

2029 Lab-grown meat in fast-food restaurants

Test-tube burgers could provide your future fast-food fix. But what exactly will lab-meat be? Lisa Bodell thinks we could be cloning animals for this by 2020, although she sees "political and psychological hurdles".

Others envisage lab-meat as more like a lump of cultivated cells. This is why Tamar Kasriel is sceptical about its mainstream acceptance. "It'll be all one type of tissue," she says, "whereas natural meat is actually lots of different bits."

Sara Risch agrees: "There's fat, nutrients and it's a very complex biological system." However, she still thinks lab-meat would be widely accepted "If you delivered on the eating experience."

Lab-meat could be developed within 15 years, she says, but "in terms of its being on a fast-food menu, I think it's further out than that. And you'd have to create factories to be able to do it... Maybe in 30 years."

The idea of lab-meat is supported by Peta, an organisation that campaigns against cruelty to animals. But will vegetarians abandon their tofu? That none of our panel were willing to predict.

2029 Intelligent advertising posters

In 1759, Samuel Johnson wrote: "Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement." Well, times have changed - the buzzword is now "addressability" - or personalised advertising. Intelligent advertising posters "Advertising created mythology around mass-produced goods," says Douglas Rushkoff, "and people are no longer so interested in consuming those mythologies."

This is where new media comes in. According to Martin Sorrell, "online will occupy a third of the market in five- to ten years - that's search-and display, mobile and viral."

And all this will of be targeted, of course - something sites such as Google already do but which will become a common capability of television advertising "imminently - though not immediately", says Sorrell.

So will we see Minority Report-style personalised video posters? Peter Schwartz, who worked as a consultant on the film, predicts they will be with us "easily within ten to 15 years". Stefan Bardega thinks the posters will recognise us via our mobile phones - which we then use to buy the product - and within three to five years.

2033 Live to over 100 with ease

James Bellini thinks that, "in Europe and the UK, the first man or woman to live to 125 is probably already born."

Ian Pearson, predicts healthcare will extend life, as "smart drugs deliver treatment to an exact site and target a few specific cells." And in 2025, he says, we will be consuming "clusters of specific proteins which are essentially nanotech robots".

Richard Silberglitt suggests nanoshells for beating cancer (a technique proposed by Rice University, Houston), which find their way into a tumour and are then irradiated with a laser, where they heat up and explode, destroying the cells. Peter Schwartz imagines that in 40 years, we will see antiageing pills and a boom in regenerative medicine, where we grow replacement organs.


Latest on wired.co.uk