The wild card in the future of technology is quantum computing, which would allow us to place heretofore unimaginable power in every shirt pocket. From Adam Frank in the New York Times:

“Classical computers use ‘bits’ of information that can be either 0 or 1. But quantum-information technologies let scientists consider ‘qubits,’ quantum bits of information that are both 0 and 1 at the same time. Logic circuits, made of qubits directly harnessing the weirdness of superpositions, allow a quantum computer to calculate vastly faster than anything existing today. A quantum machine using no more than 300 qubits would be a million, trillion, trillion, trillion times faster than the most modern supercomputer.

Going even further is the seemingly science-fiction possibility of ‘quantum teleportation.’ Based on experiments going on today with simple quantum systems, it is at least a theoretical possibility that one day objects could be reconstituted — beamed — across a space without ever crossing the distance.

When a revolution in science yields powerful new technologies, its effect on human culture is multiplied exponentially. Think of the relation between thermodynamics, steam engines and the onset of the industrial era. Quantum information could well be the thermodynamics of the next technological revolution.'”