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 :-)."

Comments

Presence

[Trusty Penfold]

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.

Re:Presence

[bmetz]

AT&T's mMode has this -- it's called friend finder. *IF* you want someone to see you, you add them to a list and they can look on their phone and see something to the effect of 'Bob is at the corner of Atlantic and Congress Ave.' I think it's only based on which tower you're closest too, but it's a very good start.

Re:Presence

[archen]

Exactly my thoughts.

My boss offered to give me a cell phone (me being the resident "computer guy"). After watching the head of maitenance for half a day with his cell phone (everyone calling with every problem ever 5 minutes) I said no thanks. Then again I'm biased because I don't like cell phones in the first place. It seems more and more like people are never "alone". I don't want phone calls when I'm driving (when I blast music so loud I doubt I'd hear it ring anyway), I don't want calls when I'm on a walk, I don't want calls when I'm eating, or out doing something. I could turn off the ringer, but then again I'd just never have it on at all if that were the case. Most of the time I'd just like my time to MYSELF.

Re:Presence

[Idarubicin]

Two thoughts about any potential cell phone:

1) You don't have to answer it. (I suppose it's different if it's paid for by the boss, and you're on the clock.) By restricting circulation of the number, I almost always only receive calls that I want to get, anyway. Aside: Please, set it to vibrate so as not to annoy those around you with your cute ring tones.

2) It's handy if you want to place an outgoing call. Late because you're stuck in traffic? Flat tire? Want to invite someone to meet you down at the pub? Going on a road trip with a group split between two cars? A cellular phone is a godsend if someone gets lost. Last night I was with a group of people helping a friend move. Her landline wasn't hooked up at the new location--a cell makes it so convenient to get pizza.

A cellular phone should be a helpful accessory. If it's an annoyance, then it is the fault of its owner, not the phone.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Finally, we can talk to our computers.

[Sophrosyne]

.....what gives? I talk to my computer all the time..I guess I'm ahead of the times.

In the year 2012

[LordOfYourPants]

In the year 2012:

Junis will upgrade to a 386

Jon Katz II begins writing articles for slashdot. His premiere article: What caused Columbine to happen II? A 37-part epic.

Stephen King and Alan Thicke will still be dying on a daily basis, missed by all.

The goatse.cx hole will increase in radius by 3m.

The (meta)-moderation system will still be broken.

E-paper will be coming out "real soon now"

The "How about a beowulf cluster of these?" joke finally gets played out.

Mozilla supports yenc decoding.

Re:Hmm

[Zeinfeld]

From his 1992 'predictions': Direct-broadcast satellite television, which didn't exist in 1992, is now a certified hit,

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...

Speech Recognition

[Raul654]

I can see it happening to some extent - I mean, the algorithms used are really unreliable, but given time, I can see it becoming usable. However, I take issue with the way he think it will be presented. AI will not be advanced enough, IMHO. You won't say "How far to nearest gas station", you will probably be more limited in how you can ask your question. It might be close to "Car, distance to gas station, nearest" or some other limited syntax. I preface it with 'car' because you have to have some way to let the car know the question is directed at it.

2012!!! The Future is here...

[Droz1313]

Unfortunatly, Duke Nukem Forever was cancelled again in 2011....

Other than speech recognition

[redfiche]

what on that list is impressive? He could've at least gone out on a small limb and mentioned fuel-cells.

Here's my predictions for 2012:

[tmark]

(drumroll please)
5. computers will be much faster than they are today
4. computers will be much less expensive than they are now
3. programs will take much more space than they do now
2. hard drive capacities will be much larger than they are now
and finally... (drumroll please)
1. there will be even more duped articles on Slashdot

Hopefully wrong..

[WillRobinson]

The car: You should not have to ask how far it is to the next gas station. The car knows how much gas you have, how many miles to the next station, and your gas millage, maybe even the terrain. It should be more like:
Hal: John, I have determined you should not have passed that last station, maybe you should turn around now.
Hal: John, you have two miles more before the point of no return to that gas station you passed.
Hal: John, are you listening to me?
John: Shut UP! You dont know i have a gas can in the trunk!
Hal: John, yes you do, but its empty! Remember last time?
John: Nag, Nag Nag..

Re:Nonono, he's got it all wrong!

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

And every Slashdotter will have a lady.

Riiiight...whatever.....

TV commercials

[maunleon]

Except for special events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards, no one will watch TV shows at the time they are transmitted, and conventional 30-second commercials will be rare because advertisers won't pay when most viewers can hit the fast-forward button. Major broadcast networks and traditional prime-time programming will be fading, with most entertainment sold
through either a monthly subscription or a pay-per-view fee.

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?

Not quite spot on

[Subcarrier]

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.

Re:Speech Recognition

[digitalsushi]

Nah, when they spoke to the computer, it was always much louder, and if they were alone in the room, always rhetorical.

One Prediction Is Impossible

[the eric conspiracy]

Every cable and satellite television receiver will include a hard disk for recording shows, and those disks will have a minimum capacity of one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, enough to store hundreds of hours of high-definition programming.

Not bloody likely. HD Video is likely to require about 15 GB/hour to store. 1 TB of data does NOT give you 'hundreds of hours', more like 65 hours.

Re:Speech Recognition

[marcsiry]

The characters, in the interest of drama, usually furrowed their brows, looked up at no one in particular, and assumed a deeper, "commanding" tone to their voice when addressing the computer.

Perhaps the computer uses a recognition algorithm based on all these factors to know when someon is talking to "it." My cat apparently has similar algorithms programmed in- I can speak in a conversational tone all day, even to a telephone, and the cat won't respond- but the moment I assume my "talking to kitty" voice, it snaps to attention.

Another interesting question about the ST computer- how did it route the person-to-person commnications before the individual spoke the receipient's name? You'd often here Picard's communicator pipe up: "Riker to Picard- you should come up to the bridge," or some such line.

One presumes that the communication did not go to everyone on the ship, only to be cut off when the word "Picard" was spoken. I always assumed the computer cached the outgoing communication until it was determined whom it was going to, and then retransmitted; the result should be a 1 second lag on the return to represent that, unless the computer subtly timeshifted the entire conversation to pad the lag into the spaces normally between words.

Re:Speech Recognition

[BitHive]

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.

I don't know about these predictions...

[7-Vodka]

1. Every appliance is connected to the internet.

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.

Not with MPEG-4 or equivalent...

[Goonie]

They're talking about squeezing HD-DVD onto the same physical medium, but using MPEG-4 compression rather than the MPEG-2 currently used. Now, assuming that a DVD can hold 9 gigabytes and a necessary minimum capacity of two hours, that's about 4.5 gigabytes per hour. That gives about 220 hours of storage.

Washing machine, quit making long distance calls!

[dagg]

"... You'll no longer be surprised to get a call from the repair center at Sears or Maytag saying your washing machine is using too much hot water and needs adjustment -- information the washing machine has sent through the Net, without any action of your part, back to the factory where it was built."

That sounds kind of silly. Would be kind of like the grocery store calling me up and telling me I was low on milk. Yes... it would be great to know that my washing machine is using too much hot water... but the washing machine should tell me, and not Sears.

--
Fun Sex

Re:Speech Recognition

[ActiveSX]

how did it route the person-to-person commnications before the individual spoke the receipient's name?

Ahh, this is an easy one:
IT WAS WRITTEN THAT WAY IN THE SCRIPT.

of course, we'll have much larger hard drives.....

[autopr0n]

220 gig hard drives are already on store shelves. You can easily build a 1tb raid array today if you want to. Think about the size of hard drives in 1992. What, 120 megs? If the triend continues we'll have half petabyte hard drives by then.

Of course, they will run at 400 degrees and last a week, but tradeoffs always need to be made...

Re:Hmm

[packeteer]

Because in 2012 the mayan calander ends and well all be dead anyway so who cares...

Re:Speech Recognition

[Delphix]

After our semi-intelligent voice recognition car breaks down on the side of the road:

Driver: "This car is a piece of shit!"
Car: "The nearest restroom is 200 miles down route 54."
Driver : "God I hate this car, I want to kick it's ass."
Car: "The nearest brothel is located 4,364 miles away in the state of of Nevada."
Driver: "That's it, I've had enough of this you fucking car. I'm going to kill you!"
Car: "Security system activated. Electrifiying body frame."
Driver: Bzzwaaaarrrrrrzzzwaaaaaaaaaaa

Talk to computers?

[miffo.swe]

Imagine an office landscape of about 100 people. It will sound like a chicken farm on fire.

Isnt handsfree silly enough to watch? Will the computer understand foul language and respond by deleting files (happens anyway if you use Windows).

Re:only 1 terabyte ??

[Orne]

1 terabyte should be enough for anyone...

I agree

[cebe]

I don't have any faith in speech recognition.

I'm already using it, and it drives me nuts. When I add money to my "pay and talk" cell phone account, I am forced to use their new (within the past couple of months) speech recognition menu. I am literally answering a robot's questions, and she makes me want to bang my phone on the closest solid structure near me.

Welcome to Rogers At&T pay as you go service, would you like to add money to your account today? Please say yes, or no.

Yes

I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, would you like to add money to your account today?

Yeeeees.

I'm trying to ask you a question. Please answer with yes or no.

YEEEEEES

this is the part where I wonder if swearing at the system will make it work. Maybe it recognizes "i said yes you piece of shit android" No it doesn't (I tried), but it usually takes about 5 tries, and I get into the "add money to my account menu" where i can then use the keypad (still) to enter in my P.I.N., new card number, etc.

How the car will REALLY answer...

[dpbsmith]

Driver: Car, how far to the next gas station?
Car: Eight miles ahead at exit 37 there is a Chevron station.
Driver: Is there a Mobil station there?
Car: No.
Driver: Are there any closer gas stations?
Car: Yes.
Driver: Where?
Car: Six miles ahead at exit 36 there is a Citgo station.
Driver: Are there any Mobil stations within the next twenty miles?
Car: Yes, there is one four miles ahead at exit 35.
Driver: Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?
Car: To keep the costs of the service low to you, we present you with value-added featured placements first. By the way, wouldn't you like a larger penis?

Plan

[tadas]

1) Make predictions in 1992

2) Have a lot of them turn out right

3) ????

4) PROPHET!!!

Walk now, pay later

[El]

He obviously hasn't thought this one through; he's claiming that in 2012, anybody will be able to steal your credit card and then walk out of stores with anything they want, and there will be no impetus on the store to actually verify that it is you? Doesn't sound like a viable business model to me! Winona would then just claim that somebody stole her RFID and still steal from Saks!

Slightly different view...

[Restil]

All his assumptions are based pretty much on what we TODAY consider to be desired. The fact is, in 10 years, we'll have changed our perspective so that such things, once past the gee-wiz phase, have evolved into more mainstream appliances, that do what we want them to do, and more importantly ONLY what we want them to do.

Everyone doesn't have a cellphone..... yet, but it seems to be getting that way quickly. You can't walk down an asile in the supermarket without seeing someone talking on the phone, usually about some useless, pointless conversation that is only occupying what free brain cells they have left, and leaving very little, if any, available for any other purpose, like not blocking the asile, or applying the brakes in an orderly fashion. More and more places are banning active cellphone use, mostly to appeal to the customers that find others yelling into the cellphone during a movie to be somewhat disruptive. And those of us who value our privacy will venture away from the option to be located anywhere at any time. The feature might exist, but very few people will probably use it, unless its necessary.

RFID tags are great, and it makes sense to simply walk out the door and have your credit card deducted for the right amount as you do. And if you accidently walk out with something you're not supposed to, it will let you know. If it was a simple accident, you have the option to walk back in. If it wasn't, you can still run.. :) But better than the embarrasing situation where you've accidently labeled yourself a criminal because you misplaced that package of bubblegum when you were shopping.

Cable already SHOULD be advertising free. You're paying a monthly fee for the shows, you should get them without advertising. And if not for the advertising, they shouldn't care when, or how many times you watch something. As long as you keep dishing out the monthly fee, and you will, it should make little, if any difference. Its the dependance on advertising that's biting the cable networks in the ass, hence their bitter complaints about Tivo and the like. Rid themselves of the advertising beast, embrace the PVR, restructure their budget, and life will be good.

As for voice recognition, we got that today. Of course, there's an AI element that's lacking, but if the driver is willing to stick to a standard convention for command structure, most of what the author is predicting in 10 years could be done today with little difficulty. The simple fact of the matter is, 99% of the time, I know where the nearest gas station is. Only travellers need this information, and most intellegent travellers will fill up at the most convienent opportunity (i.e., not when they have 10 miles worth of gas left) Better for the car to simply inform me as I'm passing a gas station, knowing my destination and most likely route, that the gas station I'm passing is the least expensive one I will pass before running out of gas and therefore I should stop now to fill up. Screw asking the car about it. :)

-Restil

Wired--when you wanna be

[kitzilla]

You have a great point here.

I'm waiting for Americans to decide which technologies give them more or better personal time, and which technologies invade and destroy it.

Cellphones can be a blessing. They can also be a way for our employers to extend office hours through dinner and bedtime.

Instant messaging has become a burden to me. Being available all the time for any priority of message is like moving your office desk or living room couch to the mall.

I want nothing to do with people-tracking technology. The folks I care to know where I am during my day do. I don't want strangers, the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program, or the Bush Administration tracking my movements as if I'm some sort of migratory animal, thank you.

Let's make toolks for the workers, rather than turning the workers into tools.

Can anyone play?

[mtec]

There will be a pill men (and women) can take to remove the need for shaving. Trade named Depilorex, those that take the pill will lose all bodily hair and be referred to as 'smoothies' leading them to start a cult that worships the head of Steve Balmer.

After years of mis-understanding and accidental death, new Tablet PC's will come out that are chewable, in colorful Flintstone shapes.

Bill Gates will be a distant memory having been killed in 2006 in a bizarre accident when his computerized bidet malfunctions (a brief investigation can find no evidence of tampering and very little evidence of Mr. Gates)

Steve Balmer retires from Microsoft in 2005 to star and produce in a remake of the Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Mr. Balmer also becomes heavily involved with the smoothie cult as it's symbolic leader and introduces ritualistic clapping and hopping to the group before being asked to reduce his role and "just be the head"

Terrorism is a thing of the past when, in a 2003 CIA plot, the leaders of al-Qaida are clandestinely fed Depilorex and cannot look at each other without giggling and are too embarrassed appear in threatening videos.

The new head of Microsoft, an incomplete 6 year old Bill Gates clone hastily harvested from the scene of his death, announces (via a translator 'Mr. Wuzzy his Spokes-Teddy Bear') the switch to a new open source philosophy, introducing the new direction with a new mascot, a fuzzy green reptile called 'Opensaurus' and changing the marketing tagline of the company to "We wanna play too! "

Re:Presence exists... big brother is stalking you?

[Proc6]

if your boss uses it to find out you are not sick and actually going to see Star Wars 3, then you'll hate it.

Leave your phone at home?

Re:Washing machine, quit making long distance call

[JohnFluxx]

Actually it reminds me of cars. They have lots of diagnostics built in, and check the engine etc, and then doesn't tell you about the results. Instead you have to go to the garage, where someone will read what the engine is saying, and repeat it back to you...

Re:Speech Recognition

[HiThere]

Another interesting question about the ST computer- how did it route the person-to-person commnications before the individual spoke the receipient's name? You'd often here Picard's communicator pipe up: "Riker to Picard- you should come up to the bridge," or some such line.

That one's easy. They do it the same way that you do, they have a time delay loop where things that haven't been processed are buffered, and they don't start forwarding the message until enough has been parsed to identify the recipient. They may also compress whitespace during catchup so that it doesn't even add any delay into the process. (Whitespace compression during speech can usually recover over 25% of the used time, so catchup would be trivial on any except the shortest messages [where it wouldn't matter anyway].)

Crashes ahead...

[Mazzaroth]

Movies are, so far, the most data intensive information products we consume. Books, music and images are a tiny fraction of the data bandwidth a movie (or visual experiment) requires.
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. :-)

Re:Speech Recognition

[targo]

What does speech recognition have to do with the Turing test?

Proper speech recognition has been proven to be AI-complete, similar to "The Vision Problem" (building a system that can see as well as a human), and many others. Perhaps not proven as rigorously as mathematical theorems but all data is pointing this way.
Therefore, correctly solving the speech recognition problem is equivalent to solving the Turing test. So if anybody predicts good speech recognition in some near future, it is usually a sign of uninformedness and that person probably shouldn't be taken seriously.

You don't have to answer the phone!

[bluGill]

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.

Specialize! (was Re:Crashes ahead...)

[Theaetetus]

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.

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

Re:Speech Recognition

[jtdubs]

This is wrong, depending on your definition of "proper."

What's AI-complete is /perfect/ speech recognition, as well as speech understanding, which is also known as "The Natural Language Problem," as long as we are both copying and pasting from link you posted.

The reason perfect speech recognition is AI-complete is that it requires perfect speech understanding to choose between homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as to, too and two, or there, their and they're), and that problem is AI-complete.

Of course, most humans don't have perfect speech understanding, and hence also don't have perfect speech recognition.

Satisfactory speech recognition may indeed be as close as 2012. Maybe not, but it is possible. It has come a long way recently.

This has nothing to do with the Turing Test, and many people are of the belief that the Turing Test is a pretty silly milestone in AI anyway as it is a poorly formed, incredibly subjective measure of intelligence.

Passing the Turing Test is a matter of being able to fool a human into thinking you are human via a simple converstion, held with words only, sight-unseen. Some humans fail the Turing Test and some computers can already pass a limited variation of it.

Something that is AI-Complete is believed to require human-level intelligence to solve, and is an entirely different, and likely far more complicated problem.

Justin Dubs