The future’s so bright

It would seem that technology—its past, present, and predicting its future, is at the forefront of peoples’ thinking these days.

A little over a week ago, the Institute for the Future laid out the Future of Science 2021 Map. A little over a month ago, Michell Zappa created his interactive table that plots out the direction of emerging trends in technology.

And it just keeps coming. Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies takes a stab at naming emerging technologies that will likely have major social, economic, and environmental impacts in 2012. Among them: informatics, synthetic biology, and the Green Revolution 2.0—which seeks to maximize returns on food production while minimizing the environmental toll.

Bonus! Technologies from Fiction to Reality timeline: