Susan L. Crowley

After consulting almost two dozen expert sources, Susan L. Crowley, a senior editor on the staff of the AARP Bulletin, wrote this 2000 forecast of how "smart" technologies will change and enhance people's lives in the future. She elicited some very rosy predictions. Brainy robots and smart houses will improve life at home and at work. How people travel, how they fight diseases and aging, and how they entertain themselves will all be transformed by computers and the Internet. Some of these developments may not be realized for about fifty years, but others are expected to happen in less than a decade.

Pretty dazzling ideas, and many...