Some of this is overly technical for me, but still interesting. I still barely understand what 3-D printing is.
And much of the stuff predicted over the last 55 years of my life still hasn't happened. In the 1970's supposedly guns would be obsolete and we'd be fighting, on the ground and in space, with lasers now. Or the book Future Shock by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, that even Newt Gingrich was enthusiastic about, is not discussed anymore, apparently less prescient than initially thought.
On the other hand, the future of warfare in the book Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, although not a prediction but just a vision of war in the future, has become very influential on the forming of modern warfare in the U.S., to the point that it is required reading at West Point for cadets. For example, soldiers having helmets with video cameras and radio-linked platoon communication. And in the above video, they are working on exo-skeleton robotics that could give people, and soldiers, superhuman abilities, as was forseen in Heinlain's Starship Troopers. One visual I recall from the novel was soldiers in armored exoskeletons that made them like human fleas, that leap several thousand yards at a time to take better combat positions during a battle.
I'm a bit skeptical about the rapidity, if ever, of abandoning fossil feuls because of an alleged imminent breakthrough in green energy to replace it. I'll believe it when it happens. And I hope it does. My view is that if green energy did evolve to that point it would replace oil, gas and coal quickly, not for environmental reasons, but simply because it would be cheaper, and therefore would make fossil fuels obsolete. Not because green energy would be cleaner, but only because it would be cheaper.
Self-driving cars and trucks could happen either slower than envisioned here, or faster than we might have imagined.
If you read the book I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, a collection of loosely related short stories about the devolopment of robots in the future, as he envisioned writing in the 1940's and 1950's, his forseen timeframe is pretty damn close to what has been actually occurring. We already have robots that can vaccuum carpets, sweep pools, cook dinner and other tasks, although not in wide use yet, until they develop further.
