They promised us flying cars which is nearly a thing; they promised us holographic telecommunications which again is nearly a thing; they promised us teleportation which really is nearly a thing; and they promised us the replicator, this is actually becoming a thing.

Read on.

British science historian James Burke has quite the view of the future, he’s quoted as saying:

“Something is going to happen in the next forty years that will change things, probably more than anything else since we left the caves.”

And these changes, he says, will not be because of revolutionaries, war, or anything of the sort.

Instead, our world will change because of a miracle of science known as a nanofabricator, think Star Trek Replicator and that’s the device he’s talking about.

Let me introduce the DARPA program called Atoms to Product.

Manufacturing by assembly provides the flexibility to freely combine materials and components and is fundamental to creating devices from cell phones to appliances to airplanes. However, assembly processes are currently not practical at the nanoscale. The A2P program was conceived to deliver scalable technologies for assembly of nanometer- to micron-scale components—which frequently possess unique characteristics due to their small size—into larger, human-scale systems. The goal of the A2P program is to achieve never-before-seen functionality by using scalable processes to assemble fully 3-dimensional devices that include nanometer- to micron-scale components.

The guys at DARPA are working on building these tiny factories, the hope is you’ll be able to buy one that can fit on a desk.

You’ll be able to use any type of raw material such as soil, water and even air mixed with some other rare elements and the nanofabricator will start breaking them down and remixing them on the atomic level to produce anything you like even food.

Imagine for one second, you’re flying in your car, speaking to a holographic image of your boo whilst voice activating your replicator to make you a double espresso with cream, wait did I also just invent the voice activated espresso maker?

So humans, the future doesn’t have to look bleak. If we make it to 2043 then these things will become actual things.

I can’t wait to make old school fizzy cola bottles with actual kola nut flavouring, these new ones just ain’t the same.