So I was talking about time travel today and something hit me. The net result:

Our future is indeterminate at this time. But if a future traveler were to come back to our current time wouldn’t that destroy the indeterminacy? We’d basically know how the future unfolds.

Now I’ve been one to prognosticate on what is coming in the near term future. Sort of like foldable, bendable computers.

AI to the point where large numbers of people will be un-employed, and what the impact on car ownership and on policing will be when autonomous cars are the majority of vehicle. Because what most people don’t know about their cars is we only use it for a few hours a day – the rest of the day it sits idle in a parking space or lot.

Medicine is rapidly evolving as I type. We can now do targeted genetic therapies and there have already been some astounding ones – for instance restoring sight of folks who’d been blinded by genetic disease. And in one case – reversing macular degeneration. And I saw a video this week where we may just be able to re-grow limbs and organs.

And then there’s robotics – we’ve all seen how advanced the robots are getting. And the U.S. military is just chomping at the bit for these artificially intelligent robots. One big stumbling block I see is power  – but I suspect that will be resolved in the next decade.

But beyond about ten years you cannot reliably foretell the future. You can only ponder the effects of what we have today.