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How do you think computing will change in the future
Hi guys,
I'm just wondering what you think about future computing..
do you think it will become mind controlled, touch projectors, glasses where you put them on and it's your computer at your eyes (wouldn't last long because of too many eye cancers) or same laptops just more powerful with maybe 500-bit systems?
Perhaps there won't even be computers, and television will replace it having tvs which have a operating system and record all your favourite things to do, sites to visit etc. sorta like TiVo, just with a operating system on tv..
I'm on the younger side of most of you, so my ideas are probably different to yours in many different ways.
What do you guys think?
I'm just wondering what you think about future computing..
do you think it will become mind controlled, touch projectors, glasses where you put them on and it's your computer at your eyes (wouldn't last long because of too many eye cancers) or same laptops just more powerful with maybe 500-bit systems?
Perhaps there won't even be computers, and television will replace it having tvs which have a operating system and record all your favourite things to do, sites to visit etc. sorta like TiVo, just with a operating system on tv..
I'm on the younger side of most of you, so my ideas are probably different to yours in many different ways.
What do you guys think?
Views: 86
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nathan on -
If you listen to google we are all going to live in the cloud and desktop computers will no longer be around which is a theory that i do not support and think its completely impossible to see in reality as pure cloud use.
I think personally that for a few years we will have allot of touch screen technology all around us in all devices BUT if this is going to be very popular there needs to be a standard of quality when dealing with the touch screen its self.
Then i also think that there will be an uprising in wearable tech so that we can all have out technology in our clothes and all gadgetry be linked together so for example speakers and microphone in hoodies And other good stuff like that.
After that or even before that who knows? i think there might be places allot more technological so example Microsoft surface in every public place well a type of technology very similar so lets say ordering your food and drink off the table (i know this already exists but this i think will become allot more available and everywhere)
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Permalink Reply by vr villa on -
If no one has been watching what is happening with graphene...
they may have a little problem believing this. (but, I have been watching.)
Take you biggest, baddest system, with gobs of ram, Pumped up multiple GPUs, 48 CPUs, 64 GB 1st cache.. a half tByte ram... put it on a pin head... and that is where it is heading.
And not too far down the road.
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Permalink Reply by Stormbreaker on -
I think in the near future, computing will get so advanced, that microprocessors made of silicon will eventually reach their limits of speed and miniaturization. Then we will have to search for a new type of computer, such as the DNA computer.
With that, many inventors will come up with new ideas for interfaces, and maybe one day we will have something like the glass screen from Minority Report.
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Permalink Reply by Alex Ferreira on -
I don´t know what is gonna happen, but if something happens I don´t want it to replace the way we use the internet today. All those things that you mentioned just made me think that the internet is gonna be more restrictive and not everyone will be able to contribute for it. I feel kinda scar about what is gonna happen not that much to the computers, but to the internet because I just LOVE the way it is now.
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Permalink Reply by Peter Comfort on -
Gandog:
Small. Wear on the wrist (also tells the time.) Voice activated. Voice response. Ask it any question. Get instant relevant reply.
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Permalink Reply by vr villa on
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Silicon is not the element of the future. Graphene is one atom thick, and now can be doped for making transistors, and made into sheets big enough to make computer circuits. (just starting from not much over a year or so ago...)
When the technology is in place, processors 100 times faster (circuits already tested at over 30 times faster last time I read something) than ANYTHING out today...
It is not technology that can not produce, it is who controls the government and has already threatened access and speech on the inter net and the media, that will determine what happens in one year... let alone, forever.
How's that hope and change treating you now?
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Permalink Reply by Marc Solomon on -
Ok, to begin any conversation about where computers are going in the future we should look a bit at both where they came from and some of the predictions about the past to see just how wrong they were. Just to give a quick look at the progress over the lifetime of my career in software development, I offer this image:
I remember the common belief on the future of computers was that they would get larger and larger. Isaac Asimov in his stories (e.g., The Last Question) prophesied that computers would grow towards a centralized super computers (Multivac, and all its decedents until a super computer-human merger happened). Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM supposedly said in 1943, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
While most of my contemporaries back in the late 70s and early 80s were working on progressively larger supercomputers, I was working on microprocessors. I was laughed at for the small 'toys' I were developing while they were toiling on their monolithic monstrosities. My 'toys' were the basis of the first personal computers, back then called 'Intelligent Terminals' based on an 8085 and running a CP/M operating system. My 'toys' were the embedded systems still used to keep fighter and reconnaissance planes from being detected and aid in submarine navigation. My 'toys' sort checks for the Federal Reserve and for many banks around the country. My 'toys' are embedded in every GM car in production today.
Which brings us to today where the smart phone in your pocket has more computing power then the computer lab I used at Columbia University (if I recall correctly, an IBM S/360-95 being fed by an IBM S/360-75) in the mid 1970s. Today's talk of cloud computing and virtual servers sounds like we are heading back to the large supercomputers of the 1960s and 1970s. Are we really heading there again or is the personal aspect of computing going to overwhelm the evil central megacomputer scenario again?
With the terabytes or even petabytes of data being generated each day, it would seem that some parallel processing megacloud of a system would be needed to sort, index, access, analyze, categorize, and summarize all this data (aka Google) so that it could be accessed and used. Are we looking at a schism in the computer field between centralized megasystems and personal use systems or are we looking at a merger between them?
There is a trend (once again one that Google is spearheading) to centralize your data (mail, documents, photos, calendar, music, videos, social network) into one place so that you have access to it from any where in the world over whatever type of internet connection you have access to at the moment (smart phone, laptop, touch pad, work desktop, home desktop, store kiosk, car, etc...) as well as anyone you authorize to access it. While the device you need to access the data will not need to be much more than a web browser with a small local storage device and some means of accessing the internet (cellular, WiMax, LTE, ethernet, WiFi, bluetooth, or whatever wireless media follows). Add in some multimedia capabilities (audio and visual input and output) and possibly some speech to text and text to speech abilities and we are set to go, no?
Or, as memory storage devices become less and less expensive and quicker and quicker to access, as microprocessors become even faster, and all forms of communications become faster, will we see a new trend for localization and personalization of data? Instead of Facebook and LinkedIn collecting our social networking data, will your always on always connected personal device share it directly with your friends always on always connected devices? Will personal and corporate privacy, security, and customization defeat centralized mega super clouds? Time will tell.
Things I predict will finally come to pass: more touch screens and data input methodologies to take advantage of them, more speech to text and vocal computer control, more personal and/or less obtrusive displays (glasses with displays built in, heads up displays in cars), 3-D displays, more automated systems (aka robotic, but not like the Asimov robots, more like every day devices that are more automatic, cars that drive themselves, kitchens that cook, etc...).
- Marc
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Permalink Reply by vr villa on
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I remember on article in Analog magazine, by Mr. Asimov. He cited an article he had written as 'science fact' 10 years earlier. That article (from 10 years earlier) was noted because, 10 years later, everything he 'knew' 10 years earlier, was wrong... (which he freely admitted. )
I have read almost all of Asimov's works (Including 'The Sensuous Dirty Old Man' written under a pseudonym)
Much of what had predicted (and some of what was implemented) years ago, is not as it turned out. I worked on much better computer systems (digital computers, even, not binary) which were broken for a business because of a poorly concocted math processor in the x86 series, since it was cheap (No one needs more than 640K - ring a bell?)
But, looking into the future, is a hard thing to do with specific dates... not necessarily with general ideas.
If processors 'can' be made 100 times faster, in the near future (which is HIGHLY possible) and the chips so small (drawing so little power) that wiring them up is more the problem than making the processor...
What was predicted in 'The President's Analyst' could come to pass and eliminate 'interfaces' completely (It would be planted in the body, and kept there for life, or until the next generation replaced it using a hypodermic (or even a 'transporter')
Theory and reality, being somewhat different, though...
If it is to come to pass, without private or government intervention, those computers would change all the playing fields.
But the way. the push towards Robotics, is more a self interest one (meaning robots with friendly human traits). They are pushing for them in Japan to help take care of the older generation. I know that Japan has many large scale robots (they perfected the oil tanker construction method of turning a ship on its axis to speed up and have better quality production). The need for 'humanoid' robots is thought to be dire and urgent, if they are to take care of their rapidly increasing number of frail elderly population, live somewhat more independent of their children in their old age... (when it is thought they would be abandoned to nursing homes, instead.)
Back to the point...
Computers as we hope for them to be, are coming. But, like the trickery of the jinn, we have to be careful to realize what we are asking for. Unless stopped bye those in power (business or government... or crazed zealots of varying degrees), what may be coming will be so 'revolutionary' we really can not see all coming to pass. What form they take (meaning how we will use them, is moot. The options of today are nothing when thinking of the power they will have.
With items, if really feasible, like the 'Bloom Box'...
One could live in a mobile home, with only an occasional stop at an old dump for energy, and never stop moving around. Transportation, personal facilities with all the amenities, including clean water processors, cooking, 't.v.' is one like ancient enjoyments, massive data (books, movies, education, available from massive storage capacity, but almost invisible in size (NOTE: for all the talk of 'cloud' computing... it is a technology with nor 'real' security... this too shall pass), near endless power to run, move and meet people, if such physical interfacing is still desired (humanoid sex partners??)
I am not on the 'younger side'... but have been watching and predicting some of this for years. I would love to be able to see where we could have gotten, without Intel and Microsoft choking the works, with their stuff. (Personally, I like the 60 bit word, decimal computer I used to program, much better.)
Tied to one architecture, One O/S (I don't use Windows, at all now) means you are tied to what 'they tell you.'
And, the X86 processor is lousy at math...
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Permalink Reply by Marc Solomon on
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Nathan is correct about your two cents being negative, but off on it being realistic. Technologic change is historically never sweeping. Look at the printing press, the light bulb, cars, automobiles, the personal computer, the mouse, and even the iPhone. All of these took many years to move into mainstream society (and, no, the iPhone isn't there yet). As to your comment about the desktop/work station, they are already being phased out at many corporations in lieu of laptops. Laptops can be taken to meetings, on business trips, home, etc.. making the employee more mobile and more productive. Most corporations I work with nowadays issue a laptop instead of a desktop to their employees.
As to touch screens and 'those little teeny hand held things', the possibilities of what they can do has not yet been touched (pardon the pun). Touch screens allow for new interactive ways to handle data and the possibility of better designed human machine interaction. Using them has barely been developed. Hand held, or better yet, worn, devices are already being envisioned, enabled, and, soon, even legislated into being voice enabled in both output and input. You sound like the same people I heard when Apple introduced the mouse who said they could never imagine removing a hand off the keyboard to work 'that mousey thing'.
As to Macs, I will give you both an agreement and a disagreement. Macs are not screwing up main stream compatibility as much as Windows is. Microsoft continually develops proprietary formats that are not compatible with OS/X, Solaris, Unix, and Linux systems. I will agree with you that if Macs obtain more market share, that will make them larger targets for malware and viruses.
My final comment about your post is about the statement you made about other OS's getting a toe hold for small niches and not 'serve any real function in the real world of computing'. Most routers, WAPs, gateways, and other network appliances these days are Linux based. Most web servers on the Internet are Solaris, Unix, or Linux based, Microsoft's IIS counting for less than 25% of all websites. While Microsoft has put out a mobile version(s) of Windows, fewer and fewer little teeny hand held things manufacturers are using it switching to Android (Linux based), iPhone OS (which is OS/X based which in turn is Unix based), webOS (which is also Linux based). So let's see, we have the Windows machines (laptops mostly) using non Windows routers and gateways to access non Windows servers and these Windows machines are slowly being replaced more and more by 'little teeny hand held things' which are not Windows based.
Seems like your two cents isn't worth very much. IMO.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Wilson on -
What about using the muscles and nerves of the hand directly for control of the computer. Rather than a mouse, wear a wrist-sensing strap assembly (or surgically implanted electrodes) to pick up nerve impulses sent to your hand muscles. You could move the mouse pointer around, or "type" click, double click, even triple click or quad-click for more features. May be easier than voice control, because everyone has a different voice, but (to my knowlege) all nerve impulses are pretty much the same, making it possible for a universal, wearable interface.
I guess there are already data gloves on the market - this is along those lines. For clever users, the speed improvements should be dramatic. Just musing today, thank for reading.
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Permalink Reply by Donald J. Nagy on -
Intel has software and hardware in the technology called "Light Peak"
This technology - in the current infancy (over 10 yrs old) - and will provide
capabilities of greater than 1,000 times faster than 2010 computers.
Please enjoy - maybe be ready for 10,000 times faster.
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