Envisioning the Future (part 4)

It's hard to see past our paradigms—the way we are accustomed to viewing reality based on our assumptions and experience. As a small example, when writing scifi RPG Solar Echoes, it was easy to assume that in the future, something light night-vision goggles would be used by the military, but it would probably be more efficient, lightweight, and smaller than the current military apparatus used today. However, this assumption was based on what I know of today's technology. Several years later, I read an article about research that is being done on eye-drops that can allow a person to see in the dark for several hours before it wears off. This shocked me, because it was such a shift away from the concept I was accustomed to, but it made total sense. Bio-technology is something that probably receives less attention and consideration when we try to envision the future, but it might be a huge part of what we will see someday. What if we no longer had to wear a set of VR goggles to see into the virtual world? What if our eyes could be altered to receive signals through a remote device, so we could see into the AR/VR “spectrum” without having to use a clunky piece of hardware? With voice recognition technology rapidly improving, the means of interface might someday simply be your voice. However, I suspect it will even be beyond that—there are already neural technologies being developed that can scan and pick up words you think to say but haven't yet spoken. It's quite possible that a digital “telepathy” isn't too far away for us, where we will be sending and receiving messages with our thoughts rather than texting with our smartphone keyboards.