Richard Hart has a bright view of the future.
"In spite of media portrayals to the contrary, the future is not apocalyptic; it does not look like Ridley Scott's Bladerunner," he said.
The host of the upcoming CNET News.com and the former host of the Discovery Channel's The Next Step will deliver the keynote at the Future Tech 99 conference in San Jose on Saturday.
See also: A 3D Tour of Silicon History- - - - - -
Future Tech is billed as a "celebration that explores how technology will impact our personal and professional lives in the future." The one-day conference, hosted by the Tech Museum of Innovation and sponsored by KCBS news radio, focuses on the ways in which our lives can and will be improved by technology.
Representatives from the health care, IT, automotive, education, and financial industries will talk about how their fields are changing in response to technology, and about how these changes are not shifts to fear, but to embrace.
"The media is always portraying the future as looking 'futuristic'" -- which to them means 'dark,'" said Hart. "In movies, TV ads, about the future, it's as if there is a light bulb shortage."
Speakers will also examine how the Internet has relocated the balance of power in the United States -- in the economy, politics, and in the workplace.
"The bulk of the power in our country is now in the hands of the 48- to 58-year-olds," said Dianna Morgan, the CEO of information database Fifty Plus. "And their use of technology is growing by leaps and bounds, so that through their demands, they are starting to change the shape of technology itself, and certainly information available on the Web," she said.
Richard Johnson, president and CEO of Hotjobs.com, will talk about how the pendulum of power has whipped violently in the direction of the employee, largely through Internet technologies.
"Instant access to information, like job openings, has made the knowledge-based worker -- and all workers -- more powerful and less at the mercy of employers," said Johnson.
He said a recent study found that the mass exodus of baby boomers from the work force beginning in 2003 will begin a long-term trend in which more people will be leaving the work force than entering it.
