If you keep up with the latest technology news, you probably are aware that the current research and development being done by various people in various fields is already reaching into sci-fi territory.

So, it’s not difficult to imagine that we are going to see a lot of exotic technologies come to light in just 10 years. Technology has a habit of increasing at an exponential rate, after all.

It also has a habit of changing our lives and the way we live it. It has been happening in the past and it will keep on happening always. But, an interesting thing is happening for the first time.

Now, technology is slowly influencing and enhancing our physical and mental capabilities beyond what would be considered “normal” and in the future, it is not crazy to think that we might even get some of the superpowers we see in movies.

1. Flight

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Airplanes made it possible for us humans to fly but what would really be cool is personal flight and I’m not talking about the flying cars that are on the horizon already. I am talking about Iron Man style flight, baby!

Just recently a British inventor demonstrated his Iron man like flight suit at a TED convention. Before you ask, no, it can’t shoot weapons and it is more of a hover suit than a full fledged flight suit. Watch for yourself:

It doesn't seem like much but technology always starts from with an idea at the bottom and improves from there on. Who knows what improvements we will see from this in the next 10 years. The US army is said to be working on an Iron Man suit too.

Other than a suit, many people are also heavily researching and developing jet packs which would be really cool to have.

2. Invisibility

Invisibility would be such a cool power to have. Apart from the nefarious ways it could be used, there are some ways you could use it for good. It would be priceless for stealth missions.

Although I don’t think the common man will get his hands on the tech when it is unveiled, it will sure be nice to know that it existed. The technology is being worked on aggressively by, you guessed it, the various militaries of the world and some other independent researchers.

Right now, the technology renders objects translucent at best but it is advancing rapidly and is now only a matter of when and not if. If you want to read more about the latest in this space, you can check out this link and this link.

3. Super Strength

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If you are imagining a serum that will turn people into green beasts, then no, we are not going on that route for super strength. It seems like exoskeletons are the popular choice among researchers to grant this ability to us humans.

The current generation of exoskeletons are not too impressive, although they allow users to lift 20 kilos as if nothing but the next generation of such ‘suits’ will allow user to perform a host of tasks, essentially giving the wearer super strength.

Abilities of next-gen suits would include, being able to lift 5 times their weight, run faster, be bullet proof, walk insanely long distances without wearing the user and much more. (Sorry, still no Hulk smash)

Apart from this, such suits will also be able to make the lives of elderly people much easier and will be a boon to people who need prosthetic parts.

4. Mind Powers

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Personally, enhancement of mental powers is something I’m most excited about. There are all sorts of ways that this is being pursued and they are all very exciting.

Elon Musk, the real like Tony Stark, is leading the Neuralink venture to merge the human brain with AI. This might serve as a contingency if ever AI decides to erase all of humanity.

Also, it would result in advanced intelligence, perfect memory, enhanced creativity, insane pattern recognition abilities and much more. If researchers have their way, we could also one day upload skills directly to the brain like in the Matrix movies.

It can be argued that in essence, if achieved, this would mean that humanity will have evolved into a much better version of itself and this time it would be us doing the evolution and not nature.

There are tons of other ‘superpowers’ that technology has the power of granting us and I will talk about them in a part 2 of this post.