We are living in an age where science and technology are already assisting us in our daily lives, and will likely continue in more and more complex ways. The technology we're already experiencing and familiar with has paved the way for us, and my ponderings might give food for thought for the future.

I wondered about our homes for the future - will they be as futuristic as I think they might be? Perhaps our homes won’t be anything like they are now. Geothermal energy from deep within the earth’s crust will probably heat our homes and water - or will mini-nuclear plants be in the basement? Perhaps the atmosphere will have heated up so much that we will be looking at ways to cool off, and will insulation be the key? Will our homes be partially embedded into the ground, or even totally underground?

No more laundry?

Maybe doing laundry will be a thing of the past (I am all for that!). Perhaps our clothes won’t get dirty or we just leave them in the sun for 10 minutes and they will self-clean. Maybe they won’t wear out, and everything will be made from plants and be disposable – just chuck it away, or dig it into the garden? Or will we be in some kind of temperature-controlled spacesuit, everyone looking the same?

Maybe no more bedding - sleeping in a pod might be the norm, floating on air, the temperature computer-controlled to personal preferences. No curtains, no windows, just glass that will darken or lighten on its own, giving the illusion of dawn and dusk, with the option to perhaps change our daily outlook through this screen - maybe a view of a city, a rainforest or an underwater view, or even your diary for the day.

Cooking may not exist, everything perhaps in pill form, or perhaps freeze-dried and just add water in a bowl - maybe the bowls might be edible too, thus eliminating washing up! How about recycling by chutes that lead from the kitchen straight down into crushers or incinerators below ground, piped out in the same way as sewage?

TV might be a thing of the past, instead we will all wear special goggles or helmets - all sitting down together perhaps, but silently watching something of our personal choice (this isn’t so far from the truth already).

Flexible rooms

Perhaps room sizes might be flexible, walls could be pushed out or pulled in. You could make your existing kitchen smaller or living space bigger by way of a keypad.

And will robots be taking over some jobs – mending roads, building, digging and weeding? Will children no longer go to school but have ‘learning chips’ inserted, and upgraded every few years?

Veering away slightly, maybe a cure will be found for all ailments, and perhaps something will be discovered to extend lives beyond our norm – but then where will all these extra people live? Will we all live in huge tall apartment blocks, in micro-apartments, with fold-out furniture, with each building being so enormous, it is a micro-city in its own right?

Are we already wreaking so much havoc on our planet that this world of ours perhaps will only put up with mankind's destructive nature for so long. Who knows? In the future, if we don't destroy it, maybe we'll one day outgrow it. Plans are supposedly already in hand to colonise other planets and Mars might be the first port of call. Future generations might well end up as Martians themselves! With leaps forward in technology, this vision of the future is quickly becoming science-fact, rather than science-fiction.

Abraham Lincoln once said: ‘The best way to predict your future is to create it’, so perhaps we should be doing just that. The greatest threat to our planet is the thought that someone else will save it. As the Earth is the only thing we have in common, who should take more care of it right now?

Author

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan