What will the world look like in 2017?

It’s not exactly “The Jetsons” — not yet, anyway — but the world is getting closer.

Thanks to some truly incredible technology, the world will look very different in 10 years:

• Advances in miniaturization and wireless communication mean technology will be almost invisible but threaded throughout bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms and workplaces, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies predicts. “All family members will be occupied with different activities, from playing piano to making cheese, brewing beer and designing clothes, to painting, backyard golf and fitness,” it says.
• When everything is connected like this, the details of your life will be flying around the air. In that world, security becomes paramount. Forget face-recognition software; in 2017, it will be all about the eyes. “I think it’s possible to free us completely from our wallets and keys using biometric technology if that’s what people want in 10 years’ time,” said Don Monro, a professor at the University of Bath in England.
• In 2017, more of us will be living with cancer, but the good news is that a cancer diagnosis will be quicker and easier — as simple as taking a breath. And when a frightening diagnosis comes in, effective treatments will be at hand. “We will start to see successful treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease that actually treat the disease process, not just the symptoms, like current drugs do,” said Dr. Rudolph Tanzi of Massachusetts General Hospital.

In short, it will be a world run by technology, and that means finding the people to oversee all that technology is the most critical task facing educators in the next decade. Shifting demographics mean many children will not be going to school but learning at home, instead, at a cyberschool.

The networked classroom
Tiny Branson, Colo., is proof that the information highway can take you anywhere. Faced with declining enrollment at its traditional schoolhouse, Branson started offering an online public school education to students in far-flung areas of the state.

Branson’s population may be just 100, but via the Internet, 850 children go to school there. One of them is Riley South, an eighth-grader who “attends” class from his family’s ranch 165 miles away in Penrose.

Riley gets up on his own and is on the computer between 6:30 and 7 a.m. everyday. “The best part is I can get my school work done earlier and I can get my horse exercised and rode every day,” he told NBC’s Kevin Tibbles.

“Good teaching is good teaching,” said Troy Mayfield, Branson’s school superintendent. “The only difference is how we do it.”

Christina Narayan of Colorado Springs has taught online for five years, even though she has never been to Branson.

“No matter which city my students live in, how far they are from me in terms of distance ... they feel like they’re part of a classroom, part of a family,” she said.

Some experts agree, saying students can get more one-on-one attention than they would in a traditional classroom.

“Online teachers actually report that they know their online students better than they know their classroom students, because they’re constantly interacting by e-mail, by phone [and] in discussion boards,” said John Watson, a consultant with Evergreen Consulting Associates, a network of professionals in online education.

According to Mayfield, the future of education is a lifeline in the present in Branson.

“I think it would be realistic to say if the school wasn’t open, the town would probably no longer exist,” he said.

‘A whole new range of talents’
Halfway around the world, they have a different philosophy. In China, more and more parents are stretching their thin budgets to find intensive personal tutoring for children as young as 3 years old.

“Talking about the future, the biggest word I’m concerned about is ‘competition,’ ” said Joseph Tan, an automotive executive in Shanghai, who spends $160 every month to send his daughter, You-See, to what are called “early MBA” lessons.

At a learning center in Shanghai, 3-year-old boys line up to have their fingerprints scanned into a computer. Parents pay up to $60 to have their sons’ prints and brain waves analyzed to figure out what subjects they should specialize in.

“Society demands a whole new range of talents,” Li Yue Er, a child education specialist, told NBC News’ Mark Mullen. “It’s more fierce than any time in the past 20 years with a market for jobs that never even existed in the past.”

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