The family of the future

As part of our Welcome to the Future special report, we recently asked for our readers' thoughts on the future of the family.

This week, we are publishing a selection of their e-mails, which predict a range of changes, from more single men adopting children to a resurgence in traditional family values to declining birthrates to the increased acceptance of gay marriage.

Family life in the coming years will look more like it did in the past. With rising costs of housing, land, and utilities, more extended families will be created. Grandmothers and grandfathers will live with mothers, fathers, and children to help make ends meet. Maleesha, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Unfortunately, I feel that the family of the future will be spinning in their own personal electronic worlds. iPods, gaming, Blackberries, computers, etc. This is sad to me because we will have lost the era of actually sitting down and spending quality time with our family members without the interruption of things that can be plugged in.
April Trice, Albany, Georgia

Today, we see women waiting till their late 30s and 40s to have children. This is going to lead to problems in the teen and college years, when parents begin to feel their age while children need their support the most. This will lead, in turn, to a reverse trend, in which the next generation seeks family first. Younger parents will also foster an increase in the average family size, up from two now to three or more in the future.
Summer Shidler, Madison, Wisconsin

More single guys will become dads by adoption. This is a win-win situation for kids sitting in orphanages or foster care and for the potential dads out there who want to be parents, but don't want to get married. Single women have been doing this for years. This is one of the last ways that the definition of family can change in large numbers. I am a single guy and have two boys I adopted from Vietnam in 1998 and 2001.
Kevin McGarry, Arlington, Virginia

Read more here.

Amazing Concept Cars for 2057

These are some of the most recent concept cars from the last LA auto show.

Manufacturers like Honda, Mazda, Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Nissan and Mercedes Benz have come up with revolutionary designs that are fit fot the probable roads of the future.

The coolest future cars

Designs for futuristic vehicles have been around for decades. Many of those speculative wonders of the past are now actually realistic and even available (for a price). Here are four of the coolest FutureCars you can own today.

by Aaron Turpen

The Flying Car

The dream of climbing into the family commuter and zipping off down the street only to take to the air and fly effortlessly to your destination is now reality. Several iterations of the flying car have been attempted and even been somewhat successful over the years.

Flying cars are nothing new to FutureCars, of course. But until now, they have not been commercially available.

 

Personal Hovercraft

Hovercraft have populated movies since the first working prototypes were created in the 1930s. Action stars like Jackie Chan have featured them in their movies and a growing and popular sport of hovercraft racing has recently taken off.

Most hovercraft are large, commercial machines with a hefty price tag. A new market of personal hovercraft, however, has emerged. These range from single-rider options such as the AirBoard to the multi-occupant units like the Hov Pod. Some are meant as watercraft, others as land-only, but all hover over the ground and have the extreme coolness factor associated with hovercraft.

One thing's for sure: put any type of hovercraft in your driveway and you attain instant James Bond status in the neighborhood.

Monocycle

Many motorized unicycles, single-wheeled scooters, and even one-wheel motorcycles have been attempted and marketed. But the monocycle, which has normally been only in the realm of pedaled vehicles, has finally been commercialized in a self-propelled machine.

The Wheelsurf is a single-seat monocycle that goes up to 25mph thanks to its 31cc Honda engine. It's not street legal, but at those speeds, it's not much of a stretch to call it a motorized bicycle or low speed urban vehicle.

Want to turn heads? Then the motorized monocycle is for you.

Personal Submarines

If you're more of the Jules Verne, underwater type, then this is your lucky century. Personal submarines are no longer for deeply-funded scientific expeditions or questionable sci-fi movies. Now, assuming you've got the cash, you can buy your own 1, 2, or even 6 passenger submersible and go down 100 ñ 1,000 meters into the deep.

Hoping to discover new worlds (or undiscovered treasure ships) beneath? Now it's possible, Captain Nemo.

Read more about this, here.

The future of screen technology

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