The World in 2030

The World in 2030 261
Even as shopping develops into a leisure pursuit, ‘smart
materials’ will be changing the nature of the physical
world around us. The coming marriage of molecularnanotechnology
and the plastics industry promises to
deliver astonishing environments for our lives in 2030. This
prediction comes from the allbusiness.com website:
Picture, if you will, a chair that automatically adjusts
its shape and temperature for each user, walls that
change color and texture at your whim, and a display
screen where objects come out of its flat surface and
toward you.
It’s nanoplastics – the theoretical fusion of traditional
plastics and the developing field of nanotechnology,
in which microscopic machines and other objects are
constructed atom by atom.
The hypothetical field of nanoplastics represents a
new conceptual landscape for product design in the
home – one in which the home of tomorrow is a
system of truly intelligent, adaptive, self-organizing
products.
Computers the size of a blood cell would be contained
within nanoplastic materials, giving objects
enormous processing power (‘intelligence’). Sensors
and emitters would be constructed to absorb
and transmit pressure, sound, and nearly the entire
electromagnetic spectrum. These would provide
nanoplastic materials with the ability to sense their
surroundings and to respond with physical change