It’s funny to look back on cinema of the past and see how they predicted the world would be today. Films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey portrayed humans as being far more technologically advanced in this era than has turned out to be the case. Yet these films have also missed technological advancements that have occurred and the impact they have had. Developments like the internet and mobile phones were not assumed by the movie-makers of Hollywood. While touch screen and technology similar to new multi touch capabilities have been guessed at, their use on tiny screens everyone takes around with them would have been difficult to predict.

There are a number of advancements we still project in our movies that we’d like to see in real life. Namely, time travel, space exploration and the like but the actual developments have been in the opposite direction. Instead of being related to exploring, technological advancements have tended to deal with the person having their world suit them, making things as convenient and easy to access as possible.

What will things look like in just a few years time? If you believe many who deal in the world of cosmology and numerology, as well as Hollywood filmmakers, you might think the world will be completely changed after 2012. While this is a very questionable assumption, it’s very likely that there will at least be major changes with the way we interact with computers, and the behaviour of these computers themselves. It’s been estimated that capacitive touch screens may take the place of the common computer mouse in the coming years, due to its more intuitive nature. It seems unlikely that we’ll lose something that’s become so integral to our use of computers, but the success of differing systems such as the iPhone has made it possible to interface with programs without the mouse, and this has shown that it may soon be a thing of the past.

Another good way to see how technology could change is to look at the technology of years ago. It was recently reported that email is looked at by teenagers as being ”old school” technology. The new way to talk to friends and meet new people over the net is through interfaces such as Facebook and Twitter, in which the conversations happen far more rapidly, with less detail given to each sentence, and good grammar not being the least of anyone’s concern. If this is how technology has changed so far, what will be next? Can the brief sentences we send to each other get any smaller? Is it possible that in the future Facebook and Twitter will seem like dinosaurs to a new generation?

It should be clear from this article that technology is changing at a faster pace than ever. It will be fun to see how long technology can improve the ease of our lives, and provide more and more help to us before we come completely dependent on technology to run our lives. In that case, perhaps many of Hollywood’s predictions will someday come true?