3. Shape Shifting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGHKHmOUWb0 Everyone's favourite monosyllabic shape-shifter, Terminator, could be a reality sooner than you think. Okay, hopefully not the murderous-time-travelling-robotic-rampage element of it, but the remarkable shape-shifting abilities we see in The Terminator and plenty of other sci-fi. In the next 30-40 years, you could be the proud owner of a shape-shifting ... well, whatever you want it to be. Shape-shifting technology would essentially mesh swarm- and nano- robotics to create an intelligent soup of claytronic atoms, or "catoms" that could form and reform new objects at the flick of a switch. These microscopic computer chips could be programmed to form anything you like. A vase, a car, a house, even a city. They actually already exist in prototype form, developed by none other than Intel, the people who power your laptop, but they're a bit bigger than we would like. Getting the size down will be one of the major tasks facing the developers if you want a super-intelligent, shape-shifting goo for Christmas 2050.