Solar Wind Bridge

Man was always intrigued by the future prospects of life and 'gadgets' which will exist. One future prospect could be the Solar Wind Bridge, designed by Italian designers Francesco Colarossi, Giovanna Saracino and Luisa Saracino. The proposed bridge has turbines among the pillars whilst at the surface solar panels are located. The turbines will be able to produce 36 million KWh annually and the solar panels 11.2 million KWh annually. This energy will be enough to power a town of 15.000 homes a year.

Nevertheless the designers did not stop there. They thought to create a greenhouse as seen in the picture, where vegetables can grow and could eventually be sold to the drivers. However this project won second place in the competition "Solar Park Works-Solar Highway" which asked contestants to create an elevated highway which will connect the cities Bagnara and Scilla in Italy. Although being merely a proposal I think this is one excellent idea to implement where ever possible in order to promote natural resources, like the sun and the wind, which are of course free.

Revolutions in the future will be on line

Revolutions in the future will be on line, although this is currently the case in many countries which have had political problems and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. In countries where official news cease to broadcast news or are told what to show people have been replaced by bloggers or via social networks, by people who are in the centre of the revolution. 

Wikileaks has emphasised how this has already started and that the internet will eventually be the leading force in any revolution. Previous examples show how this is already the fact, e.g. in Iran Twitter was used and in Tunisia Facebook was the main source of information and source for starting demonstrations. I have a personal experience when the police man shot the 15 year old teenager in Athens. Many of my friends where sending messages with updates whilst trying to organise a demonstration.

A recent paradigm is Tunisia where people demonstrated in order to bring democracy to the African state. Their main weapon was the internet. That is why the Tunisian authorities started stealing passwords and spying on the citizens in order to control the situation and limit the critical voices which constantly expanded internally and beyond the borders. On the other hand Facebook has realised its important role of information exchange especially amid any crisis and has publicly committed to not censor anything. 

Information and global communication currently available are unprecedented; this will of course continue to be the case in the future. The internet has already become a critical form of struggle of the modern epoch. All needed now is a click, a keyboard will do all the job. Rebels can easier complain against corruption and the system. This has made it more difficult for governments and powerful individuals to stop various people talking and acting against corruption, especially against authoritarian regimes, as is the current case in many states in the Middle East and North Africa. 

The on line revolution is inevitable and will increase in the future. 

How people in 1900 imagined the year 2000

Time travel has always fascinated, not only me, but millions of people of all epochs. It is always, I think, interesting to see how people from other eras imagined and depicted the future. 

The past is evident through archaeology, monuments, books, stories and more. But the future is unknown, magical, full of hope (in most cases) and prosperity. 

Here I show some pictures which emphasise how people in 1900 imagined life in 2000. 

They have imagined some extraordinary things, which have happened but also some that have yet not come to existence. 

This is the chronic mistake people have always made, as is evident in many films, where we believe that for example in 20 years we will be flying around instead of driving to our destination. 

This is what people in the 80s or 90s believed would happen in the present era. 

Taking this in mind we could forgive them for their mistakes and congratulate them for their imagination.

Future airplanes

The United States Military Airforce is looking to replace the F-22 Raptor Fighter plane with aircrafts that will not need any pilots. Their target is to have by 2030 the new generation fighter planes which will have the pilots safe at home, flying the planes from a distance, still making them able of retrieving all the information needed to fly and controlling the planes.

This will also empower the pilots to make radical maneuvers which could not be achieved with manned aircrafts due to their high risk. This of course will change any future warfare, creating many ethical problems, as was the case with the war in Yugoslavia, where NATO only fought via the air. Not even Carl von Clausewitz' s book 'On War' will be relevant any more, since the ethical and human part of a war will be non existent, except for the rising collateral damage which will not be considered, since this might be seen as a computer game...