3d printing is NOT mostly unnattended. For now it requires a bit of fiddling to get it right...

Now that we have private astronauts or are on the verge of having them, NASA should be redefined as having the missione of expanding knowledge, but not via manned flight, at least for a couple of decades. Let the "adventure" be funded by private enterprise, which can best recoup the cost via marketing. That Man can go to space safely has already be proven by NASA and others. The other way of looking at it is that NASAs unstated mission was to subsidize Cold War defense research, to make strong domestic industrial aeronautics industries. If it spent its budget on private space flights it will get a bigger bang for the buck, foment an industrial rennaissance in America at least, and do serious science on its own, with robots. Privatize the risk of human casualties, remove it from the politicians concerns.

Siri is the paradigm shift! No keyboard, just dictate long texts and ask for actions, do not do them by hand yourself. The only benefit from RIM is their network effect, messaging between users who don't need to pay sms costs. But surely they can implement that too, like Apple has done, at less than a billion or two of costs...

Hype: everyone will print all their stuff at home. Mass production will be replace by 3d printing. Reality: Some specific manufacturing will be done at smaller, nimbler, less expensive factories (sometimes neighborhood print shops) using 3d printers. Hobbyists will have fun with home 3d printers, like with PCs in the early 80's. A lot of people will be able to get into manufacturing, due to low entrance price, ability to print interesting parts (witness Shapeways), and advantage of being local/imaginative/sell personalized stuff/have not stock (so lower financial needs). It's great to see a new industry arising, current ones are boring.

All that survived deserved to survive, in a Darwinian way... All that perished deserved it too.

We can speculate about 3d printing changing manufacturing radically, but in the same light we can imagine cheaper non-oil-based energy changing the balance of payments substantially too, which will make the dollar stronger I believe (USA will have less deficit, can print less money). Unfortunately that won't happen soon enough, as long as oil is affordable (if you use less it will be affordable longer). What if we had cheap available solar energy and did not need oil for so many things?

satellites? high altitude ballons? solar powered uavs? sounds like a way to spend many billions which could be better used to just bribe any enemies... or build a stronger economy, a much better defense!

my citroen piccaso also has a center mounted gauge, and I love it. it's less distracting, as it is not directly under your nose. Kinda like movies with subtitles, its hard not to read them even if you understand the language perfectly, simply because its there...

it will be done via computer viruses. All vehicles that need to communicate will be attackable at light speed by infected communications. All conceivable vehicles will have computer links, not just "radios"... so if you can infiltrate their comms, you win. This is both manned and unmanned vehicles, stealth or hidden or whatever.

And of course the K govt will say its only 8 yrs old, not 94M, and they are responsible for finding it....

precisely, it's a release of thousands of emails showing the goverment has been spying on citizens, illegally, and harassing oponents sometimes with made up charges. The blocking is stupid, it took me 2 minutes to download it all via a proxy...

if the USA had to stop all imports from China due to a war it would probably not be alone, with European and other partners perhaps following suit to some degree, since any reason that warrants such a ww4 move (think of the cold war as ww3) may trigger alliances. I don't know if Chinese rulers would not have an insurrection at home from the massive unemployment created there. They are in a tenuous position now, with many local protests squashed and kept quiet each year. India and others could probably substitute China within five years with such a situation. Of course the whole world would suffer more disruption than in the Great Depression! I really doubt it would ever come to that. Chinese and US leaders represent ecomic interests that would not allow any scenario where they all lose.

wow, finally got first comment! :-) Forgot to say that iOS and OSX are likely to merge sometime in the future too, and are related technologies... but I suppose so is this Android with the other ones. Will Android ever run desktop/laptop/server computers?

iOS works on tables AND phones... is Android inferior?