ABSTRACT
Writing a chapter on the future technological advances of any sector is fraught with danger, and engaging in this process is to some extent becoming a hostage to fortune. Examples of terribly inaccurate predictions of the future technology are well known and numerous. They can be classified either as predictions that never happened (for example, the prediction in 1955 that ‘nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years’ [1]) or as predictions that underestimated the advance in science (for example, that it would be possible to travel from New York to Liverpool in two days [2]) (Figure 19.1).
