Okay so we are going to visualize the progress of us as humans in the form of an Amoeba-like map:

Length of a Pseudopod [outgrowth] vaguely represents the relative extent of progress in a particular direction. Notable people / organizations / technologies pulling through in that direction are also represented by icons:

As you might notice, in some areas we have definitely made some progress, while not so much in others.

Communication, which encompasses advancements in Telecom, Social Networks, IOT is something I’d say we have made substantial headway. I also include marketplace business models into this which, at the end of day, solve for communication as the constituent entities they connect pre-existed.

One key factor for making headway in any direction would be —

1. How hard is it to overcome the cold start problem
2. How easy is it to gather swarm of humans behind a direction so as to start making quick headways in that direction

I think the progression of Capitalism towards the VC — Angel based growth models has aligned relevant incentives and solved [2] to a great extent, though directions where outcomes are delayed are something which still need focused solutions.

[1] still needs to be looked into and needs solving, esp. in developing societies. Easing up the social structures for someone to break free and start out and making it less harder to start something is what I’m talking about here.

Another thing you might have noticed is that this is looking very different than than what people might have imagined it to be, 50–100 years ago, viz.:

• Flying saucers? No, we don’t have that yet.
• Making clones at scale? Nopes!
• A colony on Moon, after 52 years of reaching there? Embarrassingly no!

A good benchmark for imagination w.r.t. things achievable in upcoming future could come from movies. Here are some of the recent movies pointing in different specific directions:

What do you think — which direction looks more probable to stretch this Amoeba in?