明天就要來臨

????“預測未來并不困難，但有時候卻很難把預測出來的各個點串起來，”著名遺傳學家喬治?丘奇在上周末于紐約市愛麗絲杜莉廳（Alice Tully Hall）舉行的全球未來2045大會（Global Futures 2045 Congress）上演講時開場就這樣說道。雖然他提醒的是觀眾、而不是大會的其他演講者，但他對未來學家的這個工作總結卻一語中的。受一位年輕的俄羅斯科技大亨邀請，許多頗具聲望的技術專家、科學家、未來學家以及企業家參加了這場大會，而他們的終極使命是全力以赴，借助科技實現永生。會上，這些大名鼎鼎的人們描繪了一幅時而駭人，時而驚人的畫面，展現了未來幾十年后的世界面貌，描述了科技怎樣徹底地改變經濟學、生物學甚至是意識本身。

????每年一次的全球未來2045大會由“2045行動”（2045 Initiative）及其創始人德米特里?伊茨科夫組織，今年是第二屆。32歲的伊茨科夫是俄羅斯科技企業家，他把龐大的財力和堅定的決心傾注于掌握、攻克21世紀一些最具挑戰性和激動人心的前沿技術，其中包括人類意識、腦機接口以及生物技術一體化。伊茨科夫阿凡達項目（Avatar Project，2045行動的一部分）的終極目標是解放人類，擺脫身體的限制。第一步是要弄清怎樣將大腦（以及意識自我）從人的身體中分離出來，同時使它存活于機器替身里，最后弄明白怎樣把包括意識和其他一切在內的思維上傳到電腦上。實現這種數字化永生的截止期限是2045年。

????如果你覺得這些聽上去像白日夢，看看伊茨科夫都有哪些同僚：全球未來2045大會發言人包括丘奇（首個真正有效的基因測序技術開創者和人類基因組計劃發起人）、發明家及未來學家雷?庫茲韋爾【現任谷歌（Google）首席工程師】、X大獎基金會（X-PRIZE Foundation）創始人及尖端技術企業家彼得?戴爾蒙迪斯博士（目前正在推進小行星采礦項目）以及傳奇的電腦技術專家詹姆斯?馬丁博士【牛津大學（Oxford University）的牛津馬丁學院（Oxford Martin School）就是以他的名字命名的】。雖然演講并不意味著對阿凡達項目及其崇高目標的首肯，但這些著名發言人的集結顯然給全球未來2045大會增加了些許學術份量。

????盡管2045行動的首要目標是永生，全球未來2045大會卻更像是二十多位各行業領軍人士濟濟一堂、相互對話的盛會。他們中許多人有準確預測未來的記錄。換句話說，這些人成功串聯起了下面這些點：我們目前在哪里，未來向何處去，以及科技會通過什么樣的方式把我們帶到未來。下面將介紹六大預測，描述科技以及我們所知的生活在接下來的三十年里會發生怎樣徹底的改變。

Here comes tomorrow

????"It's not so hard to predict the future, but it's sometimes hard to connect the dots." In the opening of his lecture to the Global Futures 2045 Congress, famed geneticist Dr. George Church neatly summed up what being a futurist is all about, though he was reminding the audience rather than the other speakers assembled at Alice Tully Hall in New York City this past weekend. Gathered there by a young Russian tech tycoon on a mission to do nothing less than achieve immortality through technology, a who's-who of renowned technologists, scientists, futurists, and entrepreneurs painted a sometimes terrifying, sometimes electrifying picture of what the world is going to look like in the decades to come, describing how technology is going to drastically alter economies, biologies, and perhaps even consciousness itself.

????Global Futures 2045 is organized annually (this was the second) by the 2045 Initiative and its founder, Russian tech entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov, who at 32 years of age has turned his vast financial resources and dogged determination toward understanding and conquering some of the 21st century's most challenging and exciting frontiers, including human consciousness, brain-machine interfaces, and the integration of biology and technology. The ultimate goal of Itskov's Avatar Project (part of the 2045 Initiative) is to free humankind from the limitations imposed on it by the body, first by figuring out how to remove the brain (and the conscious self) from the body and keep it alive in a robotic surrogate, and ultimately how to upload the mind -- consciousness and all -- to a computer. The deadline for delivering this kind of digital immortality: 2045.

????If all that sounds like a fantasy, consider Itskov's colleagues: Speakers at Global Futures 2045 included Church (who pioneered the first truly effective gene sequencing techniques and helped initiate the Human Genome Project), inventor-futurist Ray Kurzweil (now engineering chief at Google), X-PRIZE Foundation founder and far-out tech entrepreneur Dr. Peter H. Diamandis (current project: asteroid mining), and legendary computer technologist Dr. James Martin, who shares a name with the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University (and not by happenstance). And while speaking doesn't imply blanket endorsement of the Avatar Project and its lofty aims, this roll call of renowned speakers certainly lends Global Futures 2045 some intellectual heft.

????But while immortality is the overarching goal of the 2045 Initiative, the Global Futures congress is more of a conversation between two dozen or so individuals at the top of their fields, many with established track records of seeing what's coming before it gets here. In other words, these are the people who successfully connect the dots between where we are now, where we're going, and how technology is going to get us there. Below: Six prognostications on just how drastically technology -- and life as we know it -- will change in the over the next three decades.