Exhilarating and fast-paced, this following video on ever accelerating change by the U.S. Air Force, named ‘Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise,’ references 3DPrinting among many other amazing developing and future technological shifts in materials, manufacturing, cyberspace and aerospace. The Air University‘s U.S. Air Force Center for Strategy and Technology based the on Blue Horizons, a multiple year future study being conducted for the Air Force Chief of Staff: “We can predict broad outlines, but we don’t know the ramifications,” the video suggests “the collective intelligence of humanity drives innovation in every direction while enabling new threats from super-empowered individuals with new domains, interconnecting faster than ever before. Unlimited combinations create unforeseen consequences…”
Blue Horizons: air, space, and cyberspace in 20 years
Air Force 2025, the previous major internal study of the future, was produced at Air University in 1996. Over 260 officers worked through the research that led to a large report outlining alternative futures and technologies required for those complex worlds. The Blue Horizons study is designed to answer questions similar to those addressed in the Air Force 2025 study. These include:
- What are the emerging technologies that will shape the US Air Force and the conflict arena in which it must operate in 20 years in the future?
- What could air, space and cyberspace power look like 20 years in the future?
- Who will have access to emerging technologies that can make a difference?
- How soon will these important technological achievements become fielded systems?
The students researched future systems and technological concepts working closely with subject matter experts from the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Defense Research Projects Agency, major universities and businesses, and other government laboratories and agencies. In addition to producing the reports posted here, the result was a cadre of officers conversant enough in critical areas of emerging technologies to ask critical questions and make assessments of systems in directed energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology and cyber technologies and what they mean for the future of the U.S. Air Force. Blue Horizons 2007 was only the beginning of a series of annual long range vision studies which are known collectively as “Blue Horizons.” These annual studies serve as an input for the development of Title X wargames, Strategic Planning Guidance, Quadrennial Defense Review scenarios and the development of service requirements. Here’s that amazing video:
Adapted from: http://www.kurzweilai.net/welcome-to-2035-the-age-of-surprise (September 10, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica, editor of KurzweilAI.)
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