The personal brander job doesn’t sound like such a stretch, and the space pilot gig is definitely something for young rocket enthusiasts to aspire to… but grower-of-body-parts is definitely not something you expect to see advertised at a job fair this year. But a new study done by the British government has indeed included this unique profession as one of the important jobs in the future.
The report commissioned by Britain’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was carried out by market research group Fast Future, and tried to determine a list of both jobs that do not currently exist and current jobs that could become more prominent by 2030.
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As medicine becomes super advanced, and super expensive, the super rich may evolve into a completely different species from everyone else, according to American futurologist Paul Saffo. He thinks medical technology such as replacement organs, specially tailored drugs, and genetic research tools to alert the moneybags of any possible hereditary health dangers, could all lead to a new class of rich, elite, and longer-living humans.
Here are Saffo’s thoughts on the advantages this would give the rich, as reported in the Guardian:
“I sometimes wonder if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That’s 20 more years of earning and saving. Think about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children.”
At the very least, they’ll be able to afford health care—and keep opposing it for the rest of is.
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Image: iStockphoto
Meet SkyTran, a proposed rapid transportation system that uses computer-controlled vehicles that use magnets to “levitate” from their rails. A passenger would enter a pod, type in where he or she wants to go, and the computer system would do the navigating (and driving). The pods would carry up to three people and travel up to 150 mph. The system would be computerized to deploy the pods to crowded areas, and smart enough to re-route to avoid traffic jams.
Discovery Channel reports:
The pods are designed to hang beneath an elevated guideway. They are propelled by the interaction of electromagnetic fields. Unimodal expects the pods to eventually be capable of traveling at speeds of up to 150 mph.
The California based company that came up with the design, Unimodal Systems, wants to make SkyTran a reality. According to their Web site:
The internet allows more throughput and better connectivity than the circuit switching method of the classic telephone network. SkyTran does the exact same thing for transportation – individually switched SkyTran vehicles rather than single-destination trains.
First, the company would like to build the systems in crowded areas like airports or downtown. The next step would be to hook the pods up with public transportation systems like San Fran’s BART. And ultimately, the company plans to break into the consumer market and reduce our reliance on cars.
Anyone curious about how the system would look can check it out when it goes on display in NASA Research Park at Ames (sometime in the near future).
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Images: SkyTran
