My Impressions after Visiting "The Future Starts Here" Exhibition

The “the future starts here” exhibition was held in the Victoria and Albert museum in London.

after visiting the Victoria and Albert’s latest exhibition “The Future Starts Here” which sets out to explore how some objects are “shaping the world of tomorrow”, I can tell you that it was quite sinister.

The exhibition holds 112 objects, including solar-powered shirts that can charge a smartphone, and driverless cars, which have been a staple of futuristic exhibition’s for years even though engineers have yet to guarantee their safety, The exhibition also included inventions like Jalaila Essaidi's tree antenna, a basic-looking coil which is placed around a trunk and enables the entire tree to receive and broadcast radio signals. Also featured was a sailing ship that can clean up oil slicks.

I really enjoyed the numerous ways you could interact with certain objects or projects for example, there was a sandbox where you could plunge your hands into. It didn’t look like one because projected colored light’s made it resemble a natural terrain, As you scoop and pile up the sand the interactive system changes the projection such that lakes and snowy peaks appear and disappear. The object is to tell you about the effects of intervention that happen on landscapes. I also liked the mini quiz at the end of the exhibition witch asked around 10 questions about what you think about technology and told you what kind of person or what you mind set was towards technology and the future of it.

The exhibition itself was quite small I expected it to be much bigger but there was still a decent amount of objects and the exhibition itself looked colorful and beautiful, I guess they went with quality over quantity witch is a fair trade.

There was plenty to marvel at but High above everything else is a drone which is currently being developed by Facebook, It’s called “Aquila” witch is (Latin for eagle), which sounds noble, but also carries scary dark associations. This feels appropriate, since Aquila, which had a 140ft wingspan (comparable to a Boeing 737) and also making it the largest object ever to be installed in the Victoria and Albert museum it is designed to be able to glide at an altitude of 60,000ft around the stratosphere for months at a time, to enhance internet connectivity by beaming down invisible laser beams . At least that is what Facebook is saying. But, who would trust their word even I can see that Aquila has the potential to be a surveillance tool, taking personal information.

Aquila has a wingspan that is almost wider a Boeing 737, but has to weigh as little as possible to stay up for a longer time. That's why the drone is made of a carbon fiber composite so the whole drone weighs around 1000 pounds or the same as a grand piano weighs.

The amount of energy Aquila needs to intake from the sun has to be enough to keep its communications payload, propellers, heaters and light systems running when it's dark. That means using about the same power of three hairdryers which is 5,000W of power at cruising altitude.

Aquila will be able to use lasers to transfer data more than 10 times faster than existing systems by carrying a communications payload. It will be able to aim its lasers precisely enough to hit a coin about 11 miles away while moving this will drastically change the internet speed a lot for the future generations.

The Aquila drone will definitely benefit the future generation by providing almost 10 times faster internet connectivity in the future. But it could also be very dangerous because this might also be just a really good way for Facebook to steal personal information from any individual but this is not proven and purely speculations.

Putting dangers aside for a moment the positive thing is that Facebook is looking at the future of technology for the next generations to come.

In the end technology can be very helpful and beneficial to us and our next generation of humans but it can sometimes be very dangerous in rare occasions, but I think we should not spend all our time worrying about the future at least we should think about what we are doing right now then start worrying or planning for the future. Technology will continue to grow every day. The technology we have now will soon be considered antiques and will no longer be used by anyone. Some think eventually people will hit a point where they will no longer progress any further but I think will continue to improve our technology hopefully for the best.