Tech

Digital tattoos, mind-reading headphones: The shape of things to come?

Forecasting future technology has never been easy. In the 1950s, scientists and technologists envisaged that by now the world would be free from disease, traversed by flying cars, and fueled by minerals from distant planets.

Such visions, of course, have not come to pass. But then again, as recently as 10 years ago, few would have envisaged that 3D-printed food, bionic body parts and invisibility cloaks were just around the corner.

So, in what areas will the next major breakthroughs occur? Keeping in mind that prediction is more of an art than a science, CNN spoke to a host of design and technology experts -- from academics to magazine editors -- in search of what might well just be the shape of things to come.

The Editor

According to Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief of influential design magazine Dezeen, the most high-impact developments over the next decade will be primarily in the areas of manufacturing and wearable technology.

"New digital design tech, 3D printing, robotics and the emerging field of 3D scanning, plus exponential leaps in manufacturing -- together, they are putting really powerful tools into the hands of individuals," he says.

"In the same way that laptops revolutionized personal computing two decades ago and cheap video editing software did for film, so too there will now be a revolution in manufacturing."

For Fairs, wearable technologies such as Google Glass point to another major evolution in design: the disappearance of objects altogether.

"The broader movement in design no longer asks 'is something a nice object?' but rather 'how can we get rid of this completely?'"

From wearable devices such as those being pioneered by sportswear manufacturer Nike, and Jawbone to digital tattoos and "things that you can swallow that will check you out from inside, (such as) a project that adds an artificial organ to help the body use water more sparingly", Fairs believes the future could well be defined by objects almost disappearing entirely.