Are you lonely?

4/17/2012 3:20 PM EDT

No, you didn’t link to your match.com site by mistake. 

An upcoming conference—IEEE Technology Time Machine (TTM)—A Symposium on Technologies Beyond 2020, to be held in Dresden Germany on May 23-25, 2012, will bring together 300 CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, and leading scientists.  The central question: How will humans live in 10, 50, and 100 years?

Attendees share a passion: developing intelligent future technologies. In Dresden discuss the consequences of new technologies on human society and how those technologies can contribute to solving our global challenges.

Topics are those that will play an integral part in shaping our future, ranging from intelligent networks, artificial intelligence and Cyber Physical Systems to energy, communication (or lack thereof), traffic control, and E-mobility.

This type of discussion is not new. In 1962, leading scientists and industry representatives dared to take a look into the future and discuss what imagined life would be in 2012. Some of their predictions included: 

• 3D-television
• Minimal invasive surgery
• Fuel cell operated vehicles
• Mobile phones
• At home tele-medical provision
• Learning machines that would replace school or real-time communication among different languages and with intelligent animals

Predictions from 1962 also included intelligent traffic systems, increased use of artificial intelligence, and a steadily growing, technology-dominated society. 

Pretty cool in an eerie sort of way, huh? I like the thought of talking to my dog, Murphy.