The major drivers of economic progress are technological advancements. Booms have often been associated with the periods following an exciting new technology - the South Sea Bubble, the dotcom Boom, the long Nuclear and Space Age boom following on from World War 2, etc. On the other hand once technology matures growth and employment always slow.
Technology in the world today is generally taken to refer to computers, electronic whizzbangs that glow and look shiny and do all sorts of cool things. People have hopes for real technological advancement outside of that, but the sort of insanely awesome visions of the future people had in the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s just don't exist any more. That is a mistake.
The first two technologies are energy based. Consider the Nickel-Hydrogen Fusion Technology currently under development by multiple laboratories:
"If Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, is correct, the future of energy
may lie in a nuclear reactor small enough and safe enough to be
installed where the home water heater once sat. Using weak nuclear
forces that turn nickel and hydrogen into a new source of atomic energy,
the process offers a light, portable means of producing tremendous
amounts of energy for the amount of fuel used. It could conceivably
power homes, revolutionize transportation and even clean the
environment."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/02/22/0219216/nasas-basement-nuclear-reactor
The article postulates a home reactor, but that is not really economically feasible in my opinion. People have been predicting home based energy production for a long time, the reality is that capital outlay is too high, distribution costs too low and most people aren't technically minded enough for this to be a competitive solution.
Before you dismiss this technology as speculative, consider the following:
Robert Duncan, Vice Chancellor for Research University of Missouri:
"There have been great advances in this discipline over the last five
years by research labs and private institutions around the world, and
this work will be explored at ICCF-18. The Naval Research Lab (NRL), and
many other excellent laboratories have confirmed that the excess heat
effects reported by Fleischmann and Pons are real, and roughly one
thousand times larger than can be attributed to a chemical process."
http://iccf18.research.missouri.edu/welcome.php
Dennis Bushnell, NASA:
"The current situation is that we now have over
two decades of hundreds of experiments worldwide indicating heat and
transmutations with minimal radiation and low energy input. By any
rational measure, this evidence indicates something real is occurring.
So, is LENR "Real?" Evidently, from the now long standing and diverse
experimental evidence. And, yes - with effects occurring from using
diverse materials, methods of energy addition etc. This is far from a
"Narrow Band" set of physical phenomena. "
http://futureinnovation.larc.nasa.go...reactions.html
Sergio Martellucci, President of the Italian National Agency For Energy (ENEA):
"In other
words, two government programs – carried out in close interaction and
with check of results – have proved the existence of this phenomenon in
terms that are not ascribable to a chemical process."
http://old.enea.it/produzione_scient...oldFusion.html
Another interesting new technology is thorium based fission. This is a technology that substitutes thorium metal in place of the traditional uranium metal in a nuclear reactor. Thorium is cheaper and more plentiful than uranium, and is found in a wider variety of locations. Consider the following:
"The Energy From Thorium blog reports, 'The People's Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology. It was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences
annual conference on Tuesday, January 25.' The liquid-fluoride thorium
reactor is an alternative reactor design that 1) burns existing nuclear
waste, 2) uses abundant thorium as a base fuel, 3) produces far less
toxic, shorter-lived waste than existing designs, and 4) can be mass
produced, run unattended for years, and installed underground for
safety."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/047232/china-starts-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-project
The idea of using Thorium as a nuclear fuel is quite old, and it was in fact used in several "pebble bed" reactors, at least two of which generated electricity, one in Germany and one Colorado, however they both had problems and were closed as uneconomic. It appears that the new technology of Thorium reactor will probably run on the molten fluoride salt of Thorium, using a liquid nuclear fuel as opposed to a solid might improve safety, though only time will tell.
Its worth noting that fuel cost is only a small proportion of the cost of generating nuclear electricity. It equates to 0.68 cents / kWh out of a 2.19 cents / kWh total, according to the US nuclear industry lobby group
Nuclear Energy Institute (and these costs are probably understated as a result of indirect subsidies like centralised waste disposal and loan guarantees).
Nonetheless, the ability to produce electricity in the volumes it would be needed at, at any reasonable cost, in the absence of fossil fuels such as coal and oil might be vitally important to a future economy.
The final new technology I would detail is far more speculative, though this research all comes from the most reputable of sources:
ESA Announces Gravity-Modification Breakthrough
The European Space Agency announced
the results of an experimental test in which a superconductor rotating
at 6,500 rpm is shown to gain acceleration as the result of what is
believed to be a gravity-modification effect.
...
Dr. Clive Woods of Iowa State University addressed the issue of
gravitational-coupling in superconductors in a recent publication
entitled "High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Optics". His research
revisits earlier calculations by Li & Torr showing that
gravitational waves inside a Type-II superconductor propogate with a
phase-velocity 300 times slower than in free-space, and leading to the
hypothesis that a superconductor may require focusing in order to
correctly absorb & re-radiate gravitational waves. This notion may
explain in part at least some of the difficulty found in obtaining
consistent experimental results, as illustrated by the experimental
failure of Dr. Raymond Chiao's "gravity-radio" experiment in 2003.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb364473.htm
This technology is fascinating, and although obviously of no practical use now, might someday replace expensive and unreliable rocket engines for space transport (the majority of the cost of space flight is related to the issue of propulsion, not only fuel, which is typically less than 1%, but also surprisingly complex rocket motors, light weight materials, and the shielding needed to protect a ship during a fast descent through the atmosphere).
With new technologies such as these developed to open up new frontiers as well as to lower costs of living at home, there is good reason to be cheerful about the future. We need optimism and caution more than anything.
