Went and saw Avatar again tonight. Great movie. The computer animation is so beautiful and well done. The 3D is also wonderful. It’s done subtle, which is great. It’s not all “hey look what we can do” shoving things in your face. It’s very natural.

I had a conversation with my sister earlier in the day about it. She told me about the date on the video blog screen in the movie. It takes place in the year 2154.  Which leads me to a couple of thoughts about the technology in the movie.

It’s hard to judge where we will be by that year. That’s 144 years in the future. Will we be traveling to far away planets by then? Very possibly. But then again its been 41 years since we landed on the moon and we haven’t done a lot of space travel since. Yeah we’ve sent a lot of probes and even set up the international space station, but not any manned missions to other planets like Mars. It’s very possible we may not even get a small colony on Mars until 2154, let alone flying to other planets far far away. Then again, you never know.

What struck me most about the movie however, considering the year it took place, was all the old technology in it. Yeah a lot of that stuff looks really cool to us and is totally new to us. Those wrap around glass touch screen computers, the walking robot suits and the dual blade helicopters. But we’re not that far away from stuff like that right now. We’ll have computers like that within the next 10-15 years easily. Those robotic suits are probably 20 years out. Which begs the question, will they really still be using stuff like that 120+ years in the future? How much technology from 120 years ago do you still use on a daily basis?  

I’m not saying it’s not possible or that it can’t happen. I know it’s a movie. I do believe James Cameron was being conservative about the technology in the movie and I kinda like that. But it does really make me wonder, what are we going to have 144 years from now?