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5 Predictions for 2012
Structured Audio writes "Mike Langberg of the Merc put up his 5
technology predictions for 2012. Well
chosen, although of course in 2012 speech
recognition will still be 10 years away :-)."
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All present and accounted for -- always. ...
Family, friends and co-workers will be able to instantly see where you are,
I think this will come much sooner and, by 2012, will be gone again once everyone realises how bloody awful it is.
I had a direct broadcast satellite in '92, so did over a million people in the UK. Predicting the launch in the US is hardly that impressive.
This years predictions include the Tivo like PVR becomming ubiquitous...
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I would guess it is also possible for networks to start doing what they do during soccer games when they can't take breaks -- scroll the add on top of the programming. You could be watching Friends, with a little "Pampers" ad on the bottom. This would allow for even more commercial time, and they could sell the time to sync to various moments in a program. (e.g Rachel is playing with the baby, roll the Pampers ad. They are in the coffeehouse, roll the Starbucks ad)
Another thing that can happen is a'la sports programming. At various times during the program, the picture would shrink, making enough space for an ad to be displayed alongside. Some people will put up with this if it means free, and you can't skip the commercials.
See, aren't ya'll glad I'm not a network exec.
If it goes away, good riddance. They have to be careful with subscription fees.. commercial TV is mostly crap, so it is hard to price it correctly. All my local stations together would probably be worth about $7/mo to me if they were to be commercial free. Can they make money with that?
The Internet is everywhere -- and nowhere.
;-)
This will take at least 15 years. People don't buy new washing machines all that often.
All present and accounted for -- always.
This will be in mobile phones within 5 years.
Walk now, pay later.
Probably unfeasible as described. More likely you will authorize payment for the item before putting it in the bag. The receiver at the entryway will only check that you don't leave with any unpaid items. 10 years is about right, I wager.
Prime time is your time
Not very adventurous there. 5 more years.
Finally, we can talk to our computers
People curse them every day, so this is already reality.
I doubt true voice control will be there in 10 years either, unless there is a major break through in AI technology. Before that, we will be limited to simple voice keyed activation.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
What does speech recognition have to do with the Turing test? I will consider speech recognition to be a solved problem when computers can take dictation with the same error rate as a native speaker. They don't have to be able to understand what is said--that's a different problem altogether.
That would mean that internet connectivity has to be wireless and cheap. It would also require people to WANT their appliances connected to the internet. I'm sorry but my washing machine works really well right now on it's own without it bugging me to take it in or yelling adds at me. If that's why these machines want to connect (to rip me off, advertise to me, tell me i should take it into the dealer and pay more money) then I'm gonna be ready with a nice jamming signal for them.
2. The IM prediction and online presence.
Maybe it will be like somewhat as he says. But I sure as hell am not going to have a damn gps signal telling everyone who wants to talk to me exactly where I am. And I'm not gonna be available all the time either. My settings are gonna default to "leave me a god damn email msg and I'll get back to you when I can". Not 'here's my exact location, what I'm doing and 5 ways to page me right now'. :)
3. Walking out of shops and the rfid tag nonsense.
Riiight. A store with no clerks. Talk about easy to shoplift if you have your own programmable rfids. or just walk out next to someone else and charge your stuff to their card.
4. Tivo in every home, no restrictions.
Let's see if the mpaa + networks will just roll over for that one. My guess is it will be a crippled tivo ripoff with all sorts of DRM and palladium inside if that happens. Anything else will be illegal.
5. Speech recognition.
Don't know about this one. Everyone and their mother has thought this was right around the corner for the past 20 years.
Here's my prediction:
Corporate America will finally dispense with the play acting and be in direct control of the country. Instead of having senators from each constituency, we will have senator Disney, senator Microsoft, senator Tobacco industry, senator chemical industry. And the president will be the CEO of the country.
Liberty.
Leave your phone at home?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
So, let's say:
I live 70 years
I watch 5 movies per week (2 hours each)
one hour of high-definition movie is about 2 GB Then, in my entire life, I will consume something like 70 TB of data. Of course, maybe there will be 3D-surround immersion imaging devices... But eventually, we will be able to store locally all the information we can consume and produce. Storing more will be useless. Eventually, we will reach a point where more and better technology will be useless.
:-)
This reminds me something I read a long time ago: Knowledge Crash. Science progresses. It takes more and more time to reach the bleeding edge of science and improve on it. In the beginning of the century, you could write Nobel-prize class papers at 20. Now, you need to be a little bit older. Eventually, to improve on science, you will need a life-long study. And we will reach a point where human life will not be long enough to improve on humanity's knowledge. I know, teaching techniques improves over time, but even then, there will be a limit. The only way out will be a longer human life... or a limitless human life. But until Kurzweil's dream (read this too) become a reality, both technology and knowledge crashes are part of our future - and more technology will not be usefull anymore...
I wonder what kind of society we will live in then... and what being human will mean.
Here is a hint: just because the phone rings does not mean you have to answer it. In fact if there is someone physically in your presense it is IMPOLITE to answer the phone unless you are expecting an emergency. (Your wife could go into labor at anytime, your parent is going in for heart surgery, your kid is late in bad weather. There are others, but those are the big ones)
If I'm in your cube and you answer the phone I will talk to your boss about that, unless you are in customer service they can get voicemail and you will call back.
Many people are surprized that I, a strong introvert like my cell phone. They don't realise that I'm not a slave to the phone, the phone is my slave. If I'm sitting between two beatiful girls and it rings, I hit cancle without even looking at it. (As a geek I've so far had one such opportunity, I might have blown it, but it wasn't by answering the phone) Manytimes when I could answer it I will just look at callerid and send the caller to voicemail.
Not necessarily... Back at the turn of the century, there were 'doctors', and 'surgeons'. Now, there are hand surgeons, internists, gynacologists, eye/ear/nose guys, etc. Likewise, there used to be 'physicists', and shortly afterward there were 'theoretical physicists'... now there are high energy physicists, quantum physicists, particle physicists, etc.
Take any profession... expand it, through more knowledge and technology... you get to the point where you can have people specialize in barely-overlapping fields within the same industry - computer programmers vs. computer engineers vs. network engineers vs. helpdesk trolls, etc. Can your average programmer design a chip? Can your average chip designer program a GUI?
To view it another way, the age of the Renaissance man is well over... instead, we get the age of the specialized man, with more expertise in a chosen profession than any renasissance man could hope for.
-T