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CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL
FUTURE FAST FORWARD
Aired December 24, 2009 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight: FUTURE FAST FORWARD - a Campbell Brown special.
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN HOST: What will the world be like in the next 10, 20, 30 years? Will machines think like humans? How about a computer chip that can restore your sight? What about a world without cancer or AIDS?
At the end of this hour, you'll be right in the middle of what's in store for the future. We'll show you the minor miracles that will change your life.
What will be the next iPod? Will your cell phone be built into your clothes? Will virtual worlds replace real life?
The future is closer than you think, so get ready to see what your future holds.
ANNOUNCER: Right now, FUTURE FAST FORWARD. Here's Campbell Brown.
BROWN: Hi, everybody. Tonight at the dawn of a new decade, we are taking you on a journey to the future.
But first, think how far we have come in the last ten years: Blackberries, i-Phones, Facebook, face transplants, Mars exploration, DVRs, the Wii -- none of these things even existed in the year 2000.
But there's another darker side to the past decade: 9/11 changed the way we think about security, war and peace. The global population has exploded. There's global warming now, and swine flu. That is the present.
Tonight, we fast forward and we have put together some of the smartest minds on earth to help us look into the future -- what's on the horizon for the next ten years and beyond.
But first, we asked Tom Foreman to take us back to the future and show us what today was supposed to look like.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN (voice-over): The Internet is filled with old corporate films, world's fair promotions and even cartoons, showing how we have tried for decades to imagine the future, as in this 1967 film, about how we might shop from home by the year 2000.
ANNOUNCER: This video console will be channelled into the store of her choice. There, a camera will scan a display of wares which she will select by push button. All bills and transactions will be carried out electronically.
FOREMAN: Predictions about computers, cell phones and vastly-improved travel have been around for more than a century. And in a crude way, many have been right, even if their expected results were not.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to a journey into the future -- a journey for everyone today into the everywhere of tomorrow.
FOREMAN: When predictions are wrong, it is often because they are wildly optimistic, like this General Motors film from the 1960s. Man had not yet landed on the moon and yet it predicts us living there.
ANNOUNCER: Here are bases of communication and supply. Men in space now monitor the Earth, while men on Earth are finding a whole new world of answers to the worldwide needs of man.
FOREMAN: The same movie predicted farming beneath the ocean.
ANNOUNCER: While trains of submarines transport materials and goods along the waterways of the undersea.
FOREMAN: And so much more:
ANNOUNCER: And for our deserts, a new technology: waters from the sea made fresh as rain, to nourish crops planted in the sand.
FOREMAN: If all that had played out, maybe Thomas Edison would have been correct in 1911 when he predicted that, by this time, Americans would evolve into the master culture of the world, capable of almost anything.
Such predictions have often told us less about the future than about our past. Many are suspiciously like the wishes of former generations, their hopes for years to come.
ANNOUNCER: Apparently in A.D. 2000, we shall be having a hair-raising time.
FOREMAN: And so, like all those folks in those old YouTube videos, we keep trying to predict, even though the future is never what it once was.
Tom Foreman, CNN, the present.
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: So will some of the more ambitious predictions of the past ever come true?
Technology is getting better, stronger, faster.
Will we ever create machines that can outsmart humans?
Our guests say it is possible right now, in the year 2010.
Joining me now, futurist Watts Wacker and "Wired" magazine senior editor, Nick Thompson.
Watt, I know that you believe in the next 10 years, we're -- we're -- this decade is going to belong to a group of people you call digital natives.
Who are these people?
What does that mean?
What do they do?
WATTS WACKER, FUTURIST CEO OF FIRST MATTER: Well, I think Nick will expand on it, as well. But if you really, you know, think of it as (INAUDIBLE), the people who have been born in an entire digital world -- their whole life has been surrounded by the ether, as it would be called. And, you know, we're going through airwaves on our show, but e-mails go through the ether.
So their whole life has been framed like that -- by that.
BROWN: So they don't have to adapt the way many of us?
WACKER: Right. They're the Creoles, if you will.
BROWN: Right.
WACKER: The first generation, OK.
BROWN: Why do you think, Nick?
NICK THOMPSON, WIRED: I -- well, I think, absolutely. They'll have a lot of power, they'll have a lot of influence. One thing we're going to see is that computer power expands extremely quickly. And the next time you make a fast computer, it helps you invent the next faster computer.
So if trends continue, but about, say, two decades from now, the average person will have computers that are more powerful than what all of NASA has right now.
So you're going to have this incredible capacity to use computers. Now, some of that will be good and some of it will be less good.
BROWN: So, but -- but what are the implications of that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure.
BROWN: Give me -- give me -- I'm not the most tech savvy person in the world...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BROWN: ...some real world examples that I can get my head around.
WACKER: So, for example, I think that drug trials -- right now, the way a drug trial works is it's done in people. You test a do you in 1,000 different people and you see how they react. I think we'll have simulated models of human beings. We're already starting to have that. And you'll have drug trials that happen much more rapidly inside of computers. There are all sorts of consequences to that.
BROWN: That's incredible.
THOMPSON: It -- it's beginning now. In 10 years, I think it will be relatively common. In 25 years, it will be a huge part of medicine.
BROWN: Watts, I know you also predict that there -- you know, what you have is this sort of different -- these different groupings of people that it can cause a generational clash.
I think we're already seeing that, to a certain extent, don't you think?
WACKER: I do. I think it will be more pronounced. But as it relates to what Nick was talking about, assimilation of technology, computational advances, we're going to see the first 65 plus age cohorts, minds, the baby boomers, who are actually going to not say I'm too old for this. And so we're going to see the next generation of oldsters who are technically savvy.
That isn't going to necessarily stop any sort of conflict. But if anything, it's going to allow them the opportunity to dialogue.
BROWN: But we -- when you say dialogue -- and we're -- we're Twittering, we're Facebooking, we're doing so much...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BROWN: Talk to me about -- and that's, obviously, only going to increase and all of these new avenues are going to open up in terms of how we communicate.
But what does that do to us in terms of our relationships as human beings and our communities?
They've already changed so much just because of things like Facebook and Twitter.
THOMPSON: Well, I think that one thing that, you know, people have said before, I think is very perceptive, is that what these technologies do is they bring your distant friends closer and they make your closer friends a lot more distant.
BROWN: More distant.
THOMPSON: Because you're -- you're not engaging with 10 very close people who or just with your nuclear family, you're engaging with thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So it does that to our friendships.
But it also changes the way we think, right?
I think the next generation of people will be much better at multi- tasking. They'll be much better at like making quick decisions. They'll be much better at navigating large groups of people, but they'll probably be less good at extended periods of concentration.
BROWN: Do you agree?
WACKER: Well, I agree on the first point of what Nick said, in that we used to have very few friends that we had very deep relationships that lasted a lifetime. Now we have very little relationships that last for nanoseconds with lots of people.
BROWN: Right.
WACKER: That part, I think, we -- we've got pat. What -- what I think is the most interesting about it -- because social media is not a fad.
THOMPSON: Right.
WACKER: We -- I think we all agree on that.
BROWN: Right. Absolutely.
WACKER: How it's being used may be faddish at the moment...
BROWN: Right.
WACKER: ...because we're trying to figure it all out, is that we've created two things that I'm concerned and kind of paying attention to. One is we've become neo-tribes and we're desperately searching to find people like ourselves. And if that's the case, then it's too easy to shut out someone's opinion that you don't like, OK?
OK. So we're not sharing like we could, because I don't have to be exposed to something I don't want to.
The second is what it means for the concept of being an expert or an authority. We have naive sourced knowledge. I can go to the doctor and know more about my maladies than they or more about the drug interaction effects than they can, because they can't do the reading to keep up with their profession anymore.
So we're not so sure that anyone is truly an expert. And if you think of it in a verb as well as a noun, you know, expertise can be created by one's self without any formal training.
BROWN: Well, let me take you both -- big picture and just talk to me about like a problem that you think won't exist for us 10 years out and a challenge we don't have now that we're going to have to deal with 10 years out.
Nick?
THOMPSON: Well, let me -- let me pull one that I think is really important, which is global warming. And I think what's going to happen in the next 10 years is there's going to be a realization that all these things we've said to do, to conserve or to come up with taxes, they're just not going to work. It's like somebody who's, you know, relatively unhealthy and the doctor says you need to walk more, you need to eat better -- they're just not going to walk better, they're just not going to eat better.
BROWN: Right.
THOMPSON: So at some point, you have to have surgery. And that's sort of what -- what happens with geo-engineering. And that's where people say, OK, we've got this really bad climate change problem. Instead of saying turn off your light bulbs, we're going to, for example, shoot sulfur into the atmosphere to try to reverse it.
And I think 10 years from now, we're going to be in the midst of a very serious debate about whether taking it -- we should take a huge risk to prevent and limit climate change, whereas, in exchange, if we do that, if we shoot sulfur up or if we seed the oceans with algae, we could create even worse problems.
So that's coming...
BROWN: Yes, because we don't know...
THOMPSON: ...and we'll see what happens.
BROWN: You don't know what the implications are...
THOMPSON: You don't.
BROWN: ...or the long-term effects of something like this.
THOMPSON: Well, it's like a massive surgery. It would be better if we all just walked more and eat better food.
BROWN: Right.
THOMPSON: But if we don't, at some point you have to, you know...
BROWN: Do something...
THOMPSON: ...unclog the artery and there are often terrible consequences to that.
BROWN: What do you think, Watts?
WACKER: I think the most interesting thing that will happen in 10 years is that we completely reverse our orientation to the subject of big brother and privacy. And the paradox of the times we live in is that ever since George Orwell wrote the book that gave us Big Brother, we've organized our future around ensuring that that would never happen.
BROWN: Right.
WACKER: Right?
Well, the reality is you don't have any privacy anymore. You use a cell phone, you use E-ZPass, you know, any...
BROWN: If you're online period, it's gone.
WACKER: Right.
BROWN: Your information is out there.
WACKER: And we're going to have a whole new industry called privacy management consulting, where you're going to pay someone...
(LAUGHTER)
WACKER: ...to manage your...
BROWN: All those college graduates out there, pay attention.
WACKER: ...privacy and you're going to be part of a -- you're going to get part of the fee -- they're going to get the majority of it, but you're going to get enough of a percentage that it could be $4,000 or $5,000 per household for just allowing the information about you to be used by others.
BROWN: Wow!
Interesting times. We shall see here if you're both right.
Watts Wacker joining us, as well as Nick Thompson.
Thanks so much, guys.
Appreciate it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You bet, Campbell.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
BROWN: That is the big picture for the future. Now we're going to zoom in on amazing technologies to repair and heal the body in ways you could never imagine -- growing organs to avoid transplants, curing cancer, ending pain.
So in the future, Fast Forward, will we even need doctors?
Plus, 10 years ago, you probably never heard of social media.
What is the next big thing that you can't live without?
Wait until you see what's in store. The future is here and we're going to show it to you next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tonight, we are taking an exciting step into the future fast forward. New medical breakthroughs already help us live better, healthier and longer. Before the end of the century, promising innovations could dramatically extend people's lives. CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, tells us that, when it comes to medicine, science fiction is turning into science fact.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There are these medical advances that have tremendous implications for all of humanity. Then there are advances that simply give us pause, really wow us.
One example of the wow factor, this idea of creating organs, in fact just genetically engineering organs in laboratories. There was this tremendous story -- it was a story of a woman who had a bladder that was no bigger than the size of a thimble. They removed that bladder, scraped cells from it, and then allowed those cells to multiply in a petri dish. They then molded the cells into a new bladder, a bigger bladder, and they transplanted it back into the body.
Another unconventional transplant as well, face transplants. When we first heard about this, like everybody else, we thought this was science fiction. Again, it was a remarkable story. This was a woman who was shot in the face, severe physical damage. And doctors were able to essentially replace 80 percent of her face. It was just a breathtaking transformation.
I would also mention, there are advances that are going to have a tremendous impact on a wider swath of people. And one of the holy grails for some time is this idea of cancer prevention, a vaccine for cancer. It is something you didn't often hear together in the same sentence. That's exactly what happened. They were able to create a vaccine that prevented the virus from taking hold that is so often associated with cervical cancer. And the hope is that one day it will decrease cervical cancer risks all over the world.
And finally, what if I told you that, with nothing more than some ice and some chilled saline, you could potentially decrease the chance of death from cardiac arrest by half. You could double survival, again, with the simplest things -- just ice and chilled saline. It's called hypothermia. The idea is that when you are in cardiac arrest, the body comes screaming to a halt. There's simply not enough oxygen getting to all the organs that are craving it. But if you use hypothermia, you can decrease the demand for that oxygen. sort of putting the body at a state of rest. More than anything, it buys doctors and health care professionals time to try to save someone's life. I can tell you, it is already working.
If this is how far we have gotten just in the past few years alone, think about what the future of medicine holds.
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: That is some of the wow factor we have today.
But that's nothing compared to what's in store for the future.
We have brought together some of the smartest minds in medicine to help us go fast forward into the future.
And Dr. David Sinclair is from Harvard University.
Joining us now from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. William Gahl.
And from Carnegie Mellon University, Professor Seth Goldstein.
Dr. Sinclair, let me start with you here. The key to our future, getting a better understanding of who we are and how we work, and that's the genetics. And you say that in four years, a parent will be able to buy a full genetic map of their child.
Tell us what that could mean.
DR. DAVID SINCLAIR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, this is the area of science that's proceeding the fastest. Right now, it costs about $40,000 to get all of your DNA sequence -- that means your whole genome. In about four or five years, it will just be a few thousand dollars. That means every child that's born could theoretically be -- have their whole genome sequenced. And that could predict what diseases they'll get, how tall they'll be, even how healthy they'll be, how long they'll live.
So there's going to be a very big change in how -- in how we think of ourselves and how -- our own health.
BROWN: Dr. Gahl, you know, when you think about it, I guess, and -- and sort of let your mind go to where that may take us, some of this stuff sounds straight out of science fiction. I know you're working on taking cells from one organ in the body and growing them in a completely different organ.
Explain how that works.
DR WILLIAM GAHL, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: Well, I think that many other people are doing this work, as well. But, really, you take an imitator cell or a cell that's not well differentiated into its specialized case and by changing the transcription pattern, which is essentially the organization of that cell, you're able to make it into another type of cell that is specialized in something else.
A -- a good example of this might be to take a skin cell, which would be called a fibroblast, and grow it in culture and give it the regulation that's required to make it into a nerve cell. And if the cell started out as having a disease that was really manifest in the nervous system, then one can study the nerve cells of pain from that individual with that particular mutation and to try to find out what the basic defect is so that some therapies can be promoted for the patient's care.
BROWN: Let me go to Professor Goldstein here. And talk to us a little bit about technology. You know, we're already seeing doctors use robotics to make huge advances in medicine.
What's next? PROF. SETH GOLDSTEIN, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think there are -- there's a multitude of technologies being developed, particularly with respect to robots, to assist in surgery and general therapies that make it possible for surgeons who aren't exactly in the room with you to operate on you, to perform surgeries that couldn't have been done before without general anesthetics that now can be done with local anesthetics.
My particular area is not directly related to medical robotics, but we're working on a new form of matter we call programmable matter that can change its shape under program control. And one of the things that -- one of the near term applications we're thinking, of that, is if you take this matter that can change its shape, you can imagine swallowing it like a pill. It goes down your intestinal tract and it changes shape to go into your colon. It sort of walks around your colon taking video of what the inside of your colon looks like. And then you expel it.
And this would eliminate the need to go into the hospital or go to a doctor and have -- have a colonoscopy. Instead, you could take this at home, send the video to your doctor and it would be quite painless, for instance.
BROWN: All right.
Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time.
Appreciate it.
We'll be back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Suzanne Malveaux, in THE SITUATION ROOM. FUTURE FAST FORWARD, a Campbell Brown special, continues in a moment.
But first, some of today's top stories.
President Obama and lawmakers are finally getting a start on vacation, after the Senate passed a landmark health care reform bill by a party- line vote of 60-39.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: With today's vote, we are now incredibly close to making health insurance reform a reality in this country. Our challenge then is to finish the job. We can't do doom another generation of Americans to soaring costs and eroding coverage and exploding deficits.
Instead we need do what we were sent here to do and improve the lives of the people we serve.
(END VIDFEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: The president spoke before heading to Hawaii for the holiday.
When members of Congress return to Washington, they will have to reconcile the House and Senate health care bills.
A scary moment for Pope Benedict XVI as he prepared to lead the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at the Vatican. As the pope made his way to the altar, gasps rang out among worshipers. A Vatican official told CNN someone tried to touch the pope, and the pontiff fell down during the commotion. Pope Benedict is fine and continued on with the service.
Millions of Americans will get a white Christmas and then some, as a winter storm barrels across the country. There's a statewide emergency in Oklahoma where snow was whipped by wind gusts of 60 miles per hour. There are also blizzard warnings in Texas, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Tornadoes are a threat on the Gulf Coast.
I'm Suzanne Malveaux in THE SITUATION ROOM. FUTURE FAST FORWARD, a Campbell Brown special, returns after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, we are taking a step into the future, Fast Forward. In the future, each of us may know important details about the genetic code in our bodies, much the same way we know our blood type now. Decoding DNA will guide scientists towards innovations in fighting cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, helping everybody live a little longer.
We have brought together some of the smartest minds in medical research to help unlock the mysteries of the future.
And back with us once again from Harvard, Dr. David Sinclair.
Joining us from Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Dr. Dean Ornish, author of "The Spectrum."
And from Rice University, the head of the Nanoengineering Unit, Professor Naomi Halas.
Welcome to all of you.
Professor Hala, obviously, so many of us are focused on cancer. And I know you are working on an entirely different approach for cancer therapy.
Explain what it is.
NAOMI HALAS NANOENGINEERING UNIT, RICE UNIVERSITY: OK. Well, we are -- we are taking the approach of using nanoparticles that interact with light that can -- that are designed to absorb light at wavelengths that the body -- that transmit through the body. We take these nanoparticles and place them in tumors. They'll absorb light, convert the light to heat and locally heat the cancer cells and kill them. So these nanoparticles and the type of therapy called cytothermal (ph) cancer therapy actually has remarkably high success rates with eliminating tumors and it is -- has actually transitioned to the clinic in the last year-and-a-half.
BROWN: Do -- traditional cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy are often, we know, so difficult, so hard on the body and the patient.
Is nanomedicine any different in that regard?
HALAS: Nanomedicine can be profoundly different. Not only are we looking at a -- techniques that have -- that will give us high success rates, but we're also looking at techniques that are based on non- toxic materials, unlike chemotherapy, which is essentially a toxin injected into the body and kills both living -- both -- both normal cells and cancer cells for -- in nanomedicine, we can tailor this -- we can tailor this response and by all -- delivering a safe nanoparticle into the body, we can actually eliminate -- or the promise is that we can reduce or eliminate side effects.
BROWN: That's so exciting for so many people to hear this.
Let me turn to Dr. Sinclair now. Everybody interested, obviously, in -- in prolonging their lives.
And the drug companies, we know, are hard at work to get that first anti-aging drug on the market, aren't they?
DR. DAVID SINCLAIR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, only recently -- because a few years ago it was -- you wouldn't expect a company to work on anti-aging. This was snake oil arena. But since the 1990s, we have discovered, as a community of scientists, the genes that we call longevity genes. And they control how fast organisms age and totally how fast we age, as well.
And now there are drugs that are actually in human clinical trials trying to activate these anti-aging pathways in our bodies and turn on our bodies' natural defenses against disease.
And we hope that one day you'll have a -- a drug for diabetes or cancer that will put -- will protect you against maybe a dozen other different diseases and extend your lifespan.
BROWN: But well, explain a little more what we mean when we talk about anti-aging, what -- what exactly it encompasses.
SINCLAIR: Sure. Well, we used to think of anti-aging as -- as trying to make people live an extra hundred years. Well, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about finding a pill that will mimic the health benefits of dieting and exercise, which many of us, like myself, don't have time for -- to -- to really practice these diets well.
But we've found the genes that control those healthy responses and the drugs should be able to mimic dieting and exercise and -- and give the elderly and the frail a much better chance of fighting disease and staying fit.
BROWN: Dr. Ornish, I know you have a different take on -- on all of these medical achievements. Tell -- pointing to that, I think, somewhat, diet and exercise, you believe we've already figured it all out -- how to fix the big four -- heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity.
What is the solution?
DEAN ORNISH, PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Well, you're right. We tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as being a new drug or a new laser, something really high tech that's been discussed here. Craig Venturi (ph) will say, you know, one way to change your genes is to synthesize new ones.
But we've found that when you change your lifestyle, it actually changes your genes -- hundreds of them within just three months -- in effect, turning on the good genes that prevent disease, turning off or down regulating the genes that cause pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other conditions.
And as far as anti-aging goes, we collaborated with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, who recently won the Nobel Prize for discovering telomerase, which is an enzyme that lengthens our telomeres, which are the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. And we've found that when you change your lifestyle, it increases your telemeres and thus your telemere length by 30 percent in just three months.
So these simple choices that we make in our lives each day can have a powerful impact, in the ways that drugs can, but at a fraction of the cost and without the side effects.
BROWN: And if they are such simple choices, why aren't more of us making those simple choices?
ORNISH: Well, because we think of lifestyle changes as something that we do today and maybe years later we might, you know, live a little longer and that we have a lot of false choices -- am I going to live longer or is it just going to seem longer, you know?
And we've found that sustainable choices are based -- changes are based on pleasure. And because these mechanisms are so dynamic, when you change your lifestyle, you can grow so many new brain cells that your brain gets bigger in just three months. Your skin gets more blood so you don't age as quickly. Your sexual organs get more blood in the same way that Viagra works.
So it's not just about living longer, it's about living better. And when you make these changes, most people find they feel so much better so quickly it reframes the reason from making them from fear of dying to joy of living. And joy is what's sustainable.
BROWN: Dr. Sinclair, Dr. Ornish, Professor Dr. Halas, thank you all - appreciate it.
SINCLAIR: You're welcome. HALAS: Thank you.
ORNISH: Thanks so much.
BROWN: Those are the revolutionary innovations in medicine, but ten years ago, who would have thought the information revolution would have such a profound effect on our lives? These days, we can't live without e-commerce, video web chats and music downloads -- ideas in their infancy a decade ago. So what is just around the corner? We're going to show you the amazing ways we will live our lives in the future, fast forward, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Tonight we are going into the future, fast forward. Tt took 200 years to fill the Library of Congress with all of the information it holds. These day, thanks to e-mail, social media, web cams and more, computer experts tell us that the online world creates just as much information every 15 minutes.
Ali Velshi looks at how the information revolution set the stage for life in 2010.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There have been two massive developments in the last ten years, and that is the lowering of cost of storage and bandwidth. The size of a flash drive that you can put in your pocket, you can now carry more storage than a typical computer would have held a decade ago.
I think one has to look toward Apple and the iPod as the big game changer. There are other devices that can do the same thing, but Apple brought it to the people. It made it accessible.
The idea of Tivo, time shifting, when you watch television. Kids today don't know really what time things come on TV the way we did when we were kids because they can record everything. The idea you can customize your music, you can customize your news. So customization is really the theme over the last decade and the iPod has really been central to that concept.
I think the -- the word that's entered into the lexicon in the last decade that will stand out is googling. That really has become the replacement for not just searching and researching but the use of the Internet. That has primarily been what this decade has been about for people. It doesn't sound that sophisticated, but in my life it is all about the e-mail, the fact that I'm not tied to a desk. I've got one e-mail device here, another one here, and I still have a cell phone over here. I use three different devices so that I can be on the phone and I can be looking things up or e-mailing.
Social media is remarkable in its ability to target people. We don't talk on the phone the same way, we don't interact the same way. Social media has tried to replace some of that. It is the automatic network. People are finding jobs and job opportunities and business opportunities because of things like Facebook. They are getting information faster or in unusual circumstances because of Twitter.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Everyone wants a little more quality time, time to enjoy the benefits of technology.
So what trends will change our lifestyle in the future?
Joining me now, Jeremy -- say it one more time.
JEREMY GUTSCHE, TRENDHUNTER.COM: Jeremy Gutsche.
BROWN: Gutsche. Gutsche.
OK. Let's start over.
Everyone wants a little more quality time, time to enjoy the benefits of technology.
So what trends will change our lifestyle in the future?
And joining me now, back again, "Wired" magazine's Nick Thompson and trend spotter Jeremy Gutsche of TrendHunter.com.
And, Nick, so many advancements, I think, in the last decade, when you look at how we communicate in particular. And you think what could happen next, given how much we do online. But you have some ideas. And you think there are many advancements we're going to see very soon.
NICK THOMPSON, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: Well, technological advances. I think one thing that's going to be fascinating we're going to see fairly soon is that our cell phones are going to bring us what's called augmented reality. And that is, you know, we're starting to see that. But you'll take your cell phone -- it will be much more powerful. You'll pay your bills with your cell phone. You'll get into the metro with your cell phone.
BROWN: Yes?
THOMPSON: But you'll also be able to say OK, I'm walking on 58th and Eighth Avenue and you'll sort of flash and it will tell you the history of the area. Or you'll look at the fruit stand and you'll get some information about where that orange came from and things like that. And suddenly you'll have windows into, you know, massive amounts of information that you didn't have before.
BROWN: That is instant and at your fingertips.
THOMPSON: Instant and that's in your cell phone, which will be more powerful than your computer.
BROWN: And -- and what about -- examine that a little bit in terms of how we get our information. I just bought my husband a Kindle, but are they actually going to take off, because they haven't quite yet reached that sort of pinnacle point, have they? And -- and what are some other examples?
GUTSCHE: OK. Well, at TrendHunter.com, we've already been living in a paperless office. And I'm already in a state where everything that, in our company, we produce is digital content. And it was funny because when my books came out, for the first time I saw that we had made something that was in paper form and it -- it kind of looked weird to see that. And that's me in, you know, a world where I think a lot of other people in the future will be in this more digital type world. And it will look weird when you look at somebody that has a paper book or a paper newspaper.
Instead, you'll see electronic technologies like eInk that are colorful, interactive, allowing you to browse the Web, books, magazines in a much more video way.
BROWN: What is the next big thing, the -- the next iPod that's going to take everybody by storm that we're going to see in the years ahead?
GUTSCHE: Well, we're going to see a table. We might see it in the next year. It won't take off -- all these gadgets take a whole bunch of time. But there's going to be a tablet. It may well be made by Apple. And it will be sort of halfway between your computer and your iPod. And that will be, you know, the way you read magazines. It will be a way that -- the problem with the Kindle right now is that you can't -- you know, there aren't very -- there aren't graphics. It's all black and white.
BROWN: Right.
GUTSCHE: It's all eInk. So the idea of a tablet would be a like a Kindle-like experience where you could have immersive graphics, where you could have Internet access, where you could interact with it.
So maybe it will be Apple and maybe it will be Amazon, but that's going to come out next year and in five years it's going to be huge.
BROWN: You've been looking at a lot of stuff involving robotics, too, in terms of how that's going to change (INAUDIBLE).
GUTSCHE: Yes, you know, it's funny that our view of robots tends to be impacted by pop culture. But increasingly in the future,. You're going to see a lot more examples of robots in places where you'd expect human interaction. On TrendHunter, we've actually seen more than 1,000 examples of things like robot chefs, robot bartenders, robot nurses, robot hairstylists. And there is even a robot that can perform a biopsy surgery.
BROWN: Wow!
GUTSCHE: So it's not just these places where you'll have an interaction, but actually places where robots can save lives.
BROWN: That scares me a little bit, though. I don't know. That -- that's taking away...
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: You know, because you also said, Jeremy, you are tracking some -- some items that will actually be able to sense our emotions?
GUTSCHE: Yes. Philips and other companies like them have patented dozens of emotion sensitive technologies. So we've seen emotion sensitive apparel, emotion sensitive jewelry and accessories. So imagine having...
BROWN: Right. You're talking about those like stones that turn colors or whatever when you're happy or sad?
GUTSCHE: No, this is something that's more technological...
BROWN: No, that was -- that was the '60s, Campbell...
(CROSSTALK)
THOMPSON: Imagine (INAUDIBLE) your cell phone, when you get frustrated with it...
BROWN: Yes.
THOMPSON: It just gets harder to use.
BROWN: Exactly. Exactly.
GUTSCHE: But imagine, you know, jewelry that can sense your biorhythms and better understand whether or not you're frustrated. Or imagine coming home after a stressful day and your emotion sensitive technologies can understand that so the mood lighting in your house, your play list starts to be based on something that will cheer you up.
BROWN: That is bizarre.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Although I like that. I -- I do.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: I like that.
GUTSCHE: To take it even a step further, there's actually simple video games that can read your thoughts and thought controlled wheelchairs. So maybe that house will even start to predict what you want for dinner.
THOMPSON: I mean and this gets into one of the craziest things that might happen, is that, you know, the brain is a series of electrical signals. And you can already sort of create chips and implant them in mice that will give them sort of memories and ability to recognize things. And you could conceivably have, you know, not necessary -- you couldn't have an implantable memory that I remember being with you last Tuesday, but you could implant memories of space or texture or things like that.
And that's something that people are going to try to do and it may work, it may not. But so in a way, it will start becoming more robotic a little bit.
BROWN: Yes.
THOMPSON: We'll be, you know, physically in computer hands.
BROWN: I know. Whoo, it's going to get scary.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Interesting.
THOMPSON: -- the tablet happens next year, this is going to happen -- what I was just talking about -- a lot further than that.
BROWN: Yes.
Nick Thompson, Jeremy Gutsche, appreciate it.
Thanks, guys.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks a lot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you very much.
BROWN: America has remained a superpower over the past 10 years.
But as we begin a new decade, the question is will America still be the world's only superpower or is America even only the world's only superpower now?
Will China, with three billion people and one of the fastest growing economies in the world, surpass us?
Who rules the world in The Future Fast Forward?
The smartest minds tells us why right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL)
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to FUTURE FAST FORWARD.
Tonight, at the dawn of a new decade, we are looking at how advances in technology and medicine will affect our lifestyles and our lives. One thing is clear, in the future, we will need more of everything and workers in developing and emerging countries will be using new technologies in the hopes of out competing, out building and outperforming the United States.
Meanwhile, the U.S., which spent much of the last decade at war, will have to deal with new hot spots around the globe.
Will there be a newer world order that we have to deal with? Helping us navigate this for us, CNN's Fareed Zakaria and CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.
Fareed, in the beginning of the decade, I guess few people would have imagined that we would be going to war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Do you think we'll still be there in some form 10 years from now?
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Most likely we will still be in Afghanistan. I think we'll probably be out of Iraq. And I think they illustrate the central challenge that the United States faces. For the United States to compete in the kind of world you are describing, it needs to focus in on the core elements of its -- of it was power position -- economic vitality, technological productivity, things like that.
But yet, it is the sole superpower and there will be crises and hot spots and flash points around the world and they will pull the United States, because it alone has the military. It alone has the capacity to act.
But this is a double-edged sword. Britain was in quite a similar position at the start of the last century. You know, in 1900, if you looked around the world at every flashpoint, there were British troops trying to stabilize Iran -- I'm sorry, there were British troops trying to stabilize Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia. And in all of those cases, what happened collectively is it distracted Britain from its core mission, which was to maintain its economic productivity, which is the -- the basis of its military and political influence.
So the United States will have to find a way to deal with these problems politically that will come up -- and there will be others, Iran, North Korea -- but at the same time keep its eye on the prize, which is it cannot go down too many of these quasi imperial tasks or else it will sap its vitality economically and technically...
BROWN: (INAUDIBLE)...
ZAKARIA: It won't keep its eye on the prize.
BROWN: And Christiane, how does it evolve?
How does this strategy evolve?
I mean you're talking about 10 years, a long time.
If we are still in Afghanistan and if we are dealing with some of these other challenges, how do you see us moving, in what direction?
AMANPOUR: Well, already the U.S. military at the highest levels, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that the United States will have to have long military partnerships with countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq and maybe Pakistan, as well, to try to keep all of this in some kind of -- of level setting for the rest of the decade. It's not quick. The other idea is development -- how do you make sure that these places which you have invaded and now you own actually are secure so that you can then leave at some point. And that will require nation building.
And unfortunately in the United States, there is a collective allergy to that term. And yet President Obama constantly speaks -- even at the Nobel, about his admiration of George C. Marshall, whose name is on the Marshall Plan. And he talks at length about how what the United States did then stabilized Europe, stabilized Japan and yet they can't talk about that in Afghanistan. But it does seem that they will be doing that.
But even beyond that, a whole maybe new decade of consecutive engagement instead of isolation -- and, again, we'll have to wait and see how this administration engages in places such as Iran, with its nuclear issue, such as Burma, Myanmar, with its oppression of freedom and the icon of freedom, Aung San Suu Kyi; such as Sudan, where there's the Darfur crisis, where they have to deal with a government run by an indicted war criminal.
So, in other words, will there be a policy of engagement and neutral interests plus principle?
So will pragmatism be married with principle?
And I think people are still looking at that.
BROWN: And put that in the context of influence that may be trumped over the next decade by China and India.
ZAKARIA: There's no question that the great story over this next decade is going to be the rise of Asia, the rise of China and India in particular. If you look at 2009 as a symptomatic year, this is the year the U.S. economy collapsed and the Chinese economy is still going to grow at 8.7 percent -- no financial problems, no subprime loans, no maxed out consumers. And you are beginning to see the big emerging market economies -- China, India, Brazil -- take a path that is quite independent of what happens in the West. So far from being hooked on Western export markets, these guys are now moving. And they are developing a confidence politically, culturally of their own. And this is going to be the great story of the next decade.
And it will take many twists and turns, by the way, because you will have the rise of China. But that will cause a certain amount of consternation in Japan and in India.
So you see the Indians now looking at the Americans more carefully and saying, do you guys want to ally with us?
So there's going to be a kind of complicated set of geopolitics takes place, particularly in Asia. But all of it will be under girded by this extraordinary renaissance of Asian economic power.
BROWN: And -- and talk to me, Christiane, about the challenge, over the next decade, the many challenges for the developing world. But I want to focus particularly on drinking water, because, obviously, in -- in key countries, this is going to be a huge issue that we give almost no attention to.
AMANPOUR: Well, exactly. You know, there are so many geopolitical challenges. But what gets to the very humanity of our species, and that is the availability, for instance, of water -- part of this whole environmental challenge that we have as -- as a civilization.
Right now, six billion people in the world, 1.1 billion do not have access to drinking water.
Right here in the United States, some 20 percent of this nation does not have clean drinking water. In other words, some of the water is contaminated by things like radioactive -- radioactive uranium, things like arsenic, things like sewage that's found -- you know, bacteria that's found in the sewage.
But beyond that, Americans have something like 150 gallons of water per day. In the developing world, they can barely find five gallons.
So these things of -- of life and death are going to cause not just humanitarian crises, but national security crises. And the Pentagon, for the last several years, has identified climate change and the environmental challenges as a major security threat.
So really, hopefully, it will be the decade when the most powerful country in the world, the United States, focuses on the environmental challenges.
BROWN: Fareed Zakaria, Christiane Amanpour, thanks so much.
Appreciate it.
ZAKARIA: A pleasure.
BROWN: Christiane Amanpour, Fareed Zakaria, thanks so much.
And a footnote to all of this. As 2010 begins, the world population is estimated to be just under seven billion people. It will hit seven billion people in just two years, eight billion in the year 2028 and nine billion by the year 2048.
The dawn of a new decade gives all of us the chance to live our lives a little bit better, whether we're exploring outer space or the space between molecules, whether advances in medicine enable us to heal faster and live longer or advances in technology help us reach out faster and communicate better.
How we live with others in the world will always be the greatest challenge ahead of us.
Tonight, The Future Fast Forward has already begun.
I'm Campbell Brown.
You can follow me on Twitter any time. Thanks for joining us.
Have a good night.
