*Each year, Wired publishes a 132-page standalone magazine (and app) in which our expert writers forecast the year ahead.
Here's a sneak preview of the Wired World in 2014 -- from bitcoin fraud to the men's lib movement.* Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Many inventors and engineers have dedicated their lives to how we get from A to B. Transport technology propelled us beyond the industrial revolution; our fixed steam-engines becoming railed locomotives.
But we've run out of puff. High-speed trains are slowly debated.
Cars go a bit faster, albeit more safely. Transport systems creak with booming populations. But 2014 will be a year when transport leaps ahead again.
I was a child of the Eagle generation, a wonderful comic-book with beautifully detailed schematics, promising a technological utopia by the year 2000 -- our own homespun precursor to wired.
Supersonic jets flying from Northolt to Sydney in three hours; helicopter cars -- and bagless vacuum cleaners that did not lose suction. Well, at least that's how I remember it.
The slowdown occurred because we pushed the boundaries of transport further and faster than at any time in history, and material sciences and physics needed to catch up. Now they have.
Carbon fibre is becoming the norm in cars and planes. Graphene and other supermaterials are making headlines for their potential.
Nanotechnology is turning what used to be bigger and better into smaller and cleverer.
There is much more than High Speed 2 on the horizon. Elon Musk has unveiled plans for the Hyperloop, a train-like vehicle that will travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes, part air-hockey table, part railgun. His team of engineers won't be content to eke out an extra ten per cent of performance -- they aim to create an entire new mode of transport. You only have to look to Japan's new prototype magnetic-levitation bullet train to see the possibilities.
Concorde -- an engineering success but an economic failure -- is being revisited. Supersonic Aerospace International is developing a plane that produces 1/100th of Concorde's mighty boom. In its first incarnation it will only carry 30 passengers but will slash transatlantic journey times. After a three-year hold-up, in 2014 the project will be back on course, with the aim of flying by the end of the decade. Earlier in 2013, Boeing's WaveRider reached speeds of Mach 5.1. Things that are developed for military advantage often find their way into everyday life. It won't be long until Boeing's developments show up in civilian aircraft. Perhaps Dyson's next invention may have a touch of the hypersonic about it.
But of course, transport is more than vehicles -- great infrastructure is required to support those machines. Populations are growing and cities are more congested. Only clever engineers can solve the headache of polluted urban transport networks.
Electrified roads are one option because they allow vehicles to carry smaller batteries, making them lighter. Korea has already switched on a 12km stretch of road that recharges electrical vehicles as they drive over it.
Grander ideas are being thought up in China. Huashi Future Parking is developing an elevated bus system that straddles two lanes, passing above cars as it moves. Its Beijing pilot project promises to cut traffic jams by a third. This idea stalled in 2010 but may be reimagined as traffic pressures in China rise.
2014 will be the year engineers shift gear, from small design tweaks to big ideas. Entirely new modes of transport only come about when inventive minds are given open briefs and asked to create genuinely new and different technology. This won't happen unless governments and businesses alike adopt a longer-term view of research and development. Material-science breakthroughs give engineers a chance to make what was formerly out of reach a tangible possibility. The tools are there. It just needs companies willing to invest in long-term projects and the guts to take a punt on new ideas. Less conservatism, more determination. Bright engineers had better get a move on.
James Dyson is the founder of Dyson. He wrote about engineering in The Wired World in 2013.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
