01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, January 5, 2005

BY JACK COX
The Denver Post

In the year 2015, checkbooks could be a not-so-fond memory, doctors might have the ability to zap cells gone awry, and cars will drive themselves -- or maybe even fly.

Most Americans have a hard time embracing the future beyond 2005 New Year's resolutions, but for some, contemplating what lies ahead is a full-time job, if not an obsession.

These are the futurists, the trend-spotters, strategists, forecasters or visionaries. They will tell you about flying cars and miracle cures, but they also focus on the subtle aspects of life, or alert you to the possible use of DNA technology for nefarious purposes.

Thomas Frey, a former IBM researcher who is perhaps the dean of futurists, specializes in anticipating the emergence of new products and services -- and the corresponding disappearance of old ones.

Among his predictions for the next 10 years: The end of checkbooks, fax machines, AM-FM radios, cable TV, home phone lines, drill-and-fill dentistry and invasive surgery. And the beginning of -- what?

"I always tell people that the next big thing is already out there. It was invented 25 years ago," says Frey, the founder of a Louisville-based think tank known as the DaVinci Institute. But as was the case with the Internet [invented in 1969] and cell phones [1973], "It takes an entire generation for things to kick in."

Louis Hornyak, a University of Denver physicist who is spearheading a fledgling effort to promote nanotechnology in Colorado, says engineering at the molecular level may enhance everyday life in numerous ways: tennis balls that don't lose their bounce, car finishes that can't be scratched, mattresses that can't be stained.

But the most satisfying advances, he suggests, may come in medicine, through the use of microscopic sensors that help doctors spot diseased or errant cells, then zap them with heat or chemicals.

"The drawback of a regular drug is that it goes through your whole body. That's why you have these terrible side effects, with huge headaches and nausea," Hornyak says. "If you can deliver a nano-sized particle to an individual cell, you avoid all this, and it can be eliminated through regular bodily processes."

More predictions: Alex Pang, an expert on emerging technologies with the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., sees the whole notion of cyberspace vanishing like spam sent to the delete box.

"In the future we'll constantly be interacting with computing, but almost never be aware of it," Pang says.

Flexible displays, perhaps mounted on eyeglasses or projected on a car's windshield, will make printed maps superfluous, Pang says. In the kitchen, recipes may appear in the corner of the cutting board: "You just move the carrots aside and see what the next ingredient is, and go and get it."

But there's a dark side to infotech, too. Internet security consultant Ori Eisen of Phoenix, founder of a firm called The 41st Parameter, has made a business out of worrying about it.

Specifically, Eisen believes that identity theft will continue to be a threat to commerce, but the bad guys won't be stealing just passwords and account numbers. They may be pilfering DNA to place people at the scene of crimes they never committed.

As he envisions it, a criminal of the future could obtain a sample of DNA from someone (via a used Kleenex, perhaps), use recombinant technology to clone more of it, then deposit the genetic material in locations that would finger the unwitting victim.

Call it CSI in reverse.

Still, you may be wondering, what about flying cars? Tom Frey of the DaVinci Institute is convinced they'll be on the market within 10 years. A company in California is testing a prototype, and "both Honda and Toyota have groups dedicated to this," he says.

But given technical challenges and uncertainties about air traffic control for low-level flights, robotic vehicles may be a more likely prospect in the near term.

Steven Shladover, a researcher with Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH), a joint project of the California Department of Transportation and the University of California at Berkeley, says automated buses and tractor-trailers will be the trailblazers.

Traveling back-to-back on protected guideways, their routes delineated by magnets and speeds governed by remote control, such units could run much more efficiently than vehicles today.