Technology Predictions for 2006?

OffTheLip writes "As 2006 fast approaches it's time for some to gaze into the crystal ball of technology and predict what will be hot, what will make a difference in our lives or make someone rich and famous. The Mercury News takes a shot at predicting the coming year of technology. No great revelations but it nice to see clean technologies make the list. The list is light on pure technology and big on trends. Perhaps killer apps are not as important as they once were thought to be." What would Slashdot users put in their top 10?

Comments

I Want My Personalized Entertainment

[moresheth]

I'm anxious to see dynamic (digital) paper, like with newspapers and junk, but I doubt we'll be seeing them this year.

Most likely the number one spot will be a-la-carte television and music downloading. Not just to compete with piracy, but just because that's what people want.

How about

[BCW2]

Flash drives get priced competitivly with hard drives of the same size?

Re:How about

[EvanED]

It's also that hard drives have a high overhead cost. No matter what size the hard drive, you need some controlling stuff, a motor to drive the head, the head itself, and a hermetically sealed container. Compare that to what has to be a very small amount of electronics and a couple cents worth of plastic that goes with your typical flash drive.

That said, I think it will be a LONG TIME before you see solid state parts be priced competitively with hard drives. Looking at Pricewatch, a 2 gig flash card is a little over $100. From Circuit City, there's a 2 gig one for $99.99 after $30 savings and $70 rebate. I paid only a bit more than that (maybe $120?) for a 250 gig Segate a couple weeks ago when my older hard drive decided to go meet the great head of light entertainment in the sky. That means that even if hard drives make no priceing improvements over the following year, flash would have to drop about 50 times in price. Given that about 14 months ago I got a 120 GB hard drive for about the same price (btw, this isn't the one that went kaput), that means that hard drives are a little less than doubling in size for any given price every year. If this trend continues, that means that flash must drop in price 100 times -- that's two orders of magnitude! Do you *really* think that's going to happen?

Secondly, what would you do if flash DID? You couldn't replace your hard drive with it; flash has a much lower life span for writes. With a typical file system, you'd probably see failures much sooner than a typical hard drive failure. At the very least you'd have to find one that's meant for flash drives so you don't burn out frequently written-to areas. (E.g. inode blocks, journal areas. It seems a log-structured file system might be called for here.)

Predictions...

[Wyatt Earp]

Advancements in artificial limb technology driven by the Iraqi Military Operations
Advancements in stripping the psychotropic effects of drugs like Ketamine and X for use as pain killers, driven by the Iraqi Military Operations
A video card that cracks the $1000 US price point
More hybrid and bio diesel technology from the big Automakers
F/A-22, Eurofighter Typhoon purchases get cut, F/A-22 or the F-35 programs might get totally eliminated by the US DoD
Quad core AMD and Intel server chips
US program to put GPS in all cars becomes a political hot issue
UK program to track all cars does not become a political hot issue

Check out e-ink

[castoridae]

E-ink, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, has been working on this since ~1997. They have products to market, although you can't yet get your local paper on it... :-\

http://www.e-ink.com/products/matrix/imaging_film. html

Fusion!

[headkase]

2006 will be the year we finally achieve a sustained controlled fusion reaction! My 1970 copy of the new book of knowledge annual edition says it's just around the corner! Let's hope its not around the corner for another 35 years as we really do need it....

Re:Fusion!

[DigiShaman]

You are correct in that nothing in regards to a single solution will replace the energy needs that we demand from crude oil. However, I suspect it will be a collection of alternative energies ranging from A to Z that will slowly displace our need for oil. This migration will take place naturally through market forces and mankind's lust to capitalize on such solutions.

For 2006, I see a major national plan to diversify our energy grid so that future technologies can be seamlessly integrated for the cooperation of the entire alternative energy industry and to set into motion a set of standards for electrical grid plug-and-play. So far, it's not very accommodating to the private sector willing to sell unused generated energy such as that of solar and wind.

Show me a boy @ seven and I shall show you the Man

[Leontes]

Wikipedia will continue to grow, and content will continue to become more refined and generally better. Facebook will grow, and options for adding non-school connected individuals will be introduced before the end of the year. Myspace, Friendster and Liverjournal usership will decline. The television shows available on itunes will increase ten fold, some regular free television program downloads will become available by march. Political Speeches will become regularly podcast. A c-span like service will become reasonable popular on itunes podcasting service. Macintosh computers will sell more computers in this year than in the last two, combined.

Number 7

[rolfwind]

7. Even small start-ups go global

Three major forces are driving the rise of the mini-multinational -- start-ups that are launched from the get-go as global operations.

First, there's the promise of lucrative foreign markets, which are growing more quickly than in the United States. Some overseas opportunities are now even bigger than here, such as cell-phone sales in China.

Second, U.S. companies can lower their costs and boost profits more quickly by outsourcing work to places like China and India, where labor is cheaper.

Finally, the Silicon Valley model of nurturing start-ups has spread to other regions around the world. Venture capitalists are opening offices in those countries and are getting more comfortable with helping to nurture companies in those foreign markets.

Many companies, seeded by Silicon Valley venture capital firms, set up headquarters in the valley, where they employ high-end engineers, marketing professionals and senior management.

But they have major operations in Bangalore, India, or Shanghai, China, and increasingly elsewhere.

I thought it was easier - the herds who wants to make a fast buck in the stock market now jump on any tech stock hoping it will be the next eBay or Google. In short, there's a lot of demand for investments, but good ones are in short supply That might explain why so many stocks are so overpriced now (according to Buffett). But it should also be pointed out that most newcomers have a poor business plan and eventually are going to fail.

Re:Predictions

[slashname3]

2. Cell phone batteries will need longer life as people listen to music and watch video on them.

Which will result in cell phones the size they were back in the 80's, satchels weighing about 8 pounds.

This will also result in a record number of car wrecks as more people are found watching their cell phones while driving which leads to several states banning the use of cell phones in cars.

There will be a large number of complaints by cell phone users that even with 200 channels available there is nothing worth watching.

There will also be a project started to port mythtv to these new video capable cell phones.

Painkillers

[TubeSteak]

I agree with the need for more/better pain killers

One of the main problems with the current meds is their massive potential for abuse.

I predict this will take off in 2006

To counter abuse, drug makers are developing ways to reformulate prescription painkillers. Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Conn., which makes OxyContin, is thinking of adding a second drug, called an opiate antagonist, that neutralizes the effects of the opiate.

The antagonist would be walled off using polymers or some other sequestering technique, said Dr. David Haddox, the company's vice president of health policy.

A patient who swallowed the drug would get full pain relief, as intended. But if someone tampered with the pills, the antagonist would be released.
...
A second approach is to mix in a chemical irritant like capsaicin, the main ingredient of hot chili peppers, said Dr. Woolf, who has a patent on the idea.

Because the esophagus and stomach do not have many receptors for hot peppers, patients could take the pills as prescribed and find relief, he said. But the lining of the nose and cheeks are loaded with pepper receptors, and anyone who ground up such a pill would get a burning feeling in the chest, face, rectum and extremities, as well as paroxysmal coughing.

It doesn't really advance the effectiveness of painkillers, but it'll be a very very effective stopgap measure to basically kill the street trade in these meds.

Doctors will also be able to perscribe powerful painkillers to the patients who need them w/out constantly worrying the DEA will investigate them for possibly overperscribing pain meds.

BTW - the second method (with capsaicin) is really fucking evil. The Dr. describes the pain of snorting/injecting it here

The Bad News

[Lucas Membrane]

1. Radar range beam weapons for crowd control. Not lethal but completely inhumane.

2. Lethal drone aircraft the size of insects.

Re:The better battery?

[superpulpsicle]

Speaking of PSP, this is the year sony handheld division must deliver or die. I don't see it sticking around for the sake of playing DVDs if they can't make some great games. FF7 advent children might drive some sales, but ultimately this is where the road split.

Technologies that WONT make it in 2006

[jonwil]

Here are 4 technologies that are always seen as "just around the corner" but which I predict wont make much progress in 2006.
1.Flying cars. Not because the technology isnt up to par but because of the difficulty of dealing with the huge regluatory hurdles.

Right now, there are laws limiting where VTOL vehicles (which would include flying cars and also includes helicoptors) can take off and land. If flying cars were introduced, you would need to completly re-write the rulebook when it comes to aviation, flight paths, places you are allowed to take off and land from etc.

2.Video downloading services offering content you can watch on your TV. (as opposed to content you can watch on a mobile phone or video ipod etc)
Firstly, the TV operators (pay and Free-To-Air) do not want competition from "Internet Television" (be it true IPTV running as an actual stream you download or be it something you buy and watch later) and will pressure the content providers (a number of who have investments in cable/satelite/FTA TV) not to expand in this area (just look at what the TV networks did when ABC offered its shows on the iTunes store). Remember that several cable companies are starting to offer video-on-demand and would see internet downloading as a direct competitor to that.

And secondly, the bandwidth required to download full-size movies and TV shows is huge (especially if compressed at a rate that doesnt sacrifice the quality too much and makes them worth spending the $$$ on vs buying the DVD) so many (normal) people (especially people on ISP plans that limit their monthly transfer allowance) are not going to want to download large files like that.

The other problem is how to get the content from the PC where it was purchased and downloaded into something you can watch on your TV. Burning to DVD is not an option (not everyone has the time, skills or gear to burn a DVD and in any case, there is no copy protection method that can be applied to burnt DVDs AFAIK) and the other option (having your computer send the video to a box connected to your TV) is out too because the boxes just arent available (and there is no standards between boxes that do exist as far as what formats they accept or what, if any, copy protection they support)

3.Stem Cells and related technology. (including such things as cloning body parts) There are too many people opposed to this sort of technology (including, I believe, George W Bush to some extent) and too many people worried about the negative effects (e.g. cloned babies) for this to advance out of the lab anytime soon.

4.Online & home delivered groceries. There is some movement towards this idea but no-one has been able to make it work yet. In the vision of the future, you would just scan the barcode on something you want and it would record the item. Then, this combined with other items (items you dont have to scan or items that dont have barcodes like fruit etc) would be placed online and the items would be delivered directly to you.

I am sure there is a big market out there from people wanting to be able to buy all their food etc online.
Even better would be if the online supermarkets could combine with a store like K-Mart, Target or Big W (here in australia, Coles Myer owns K-Mart, Target and Coles Supermarkets and Woolworths owns Woolworths supermarkets and Big W) so you could have all sorts of variety goods delivered in the same order. Also, combine this with the alcohol sales too and you have a perfect item. (both Coles Myer and Woolworths own bottle shop chains)

But even where you can buy online, the range and price dont compare favorably to the bricks & mortar stores and its only available to a limited area. (I have no idea if other parts of the world like europe and america are any better).

As to why I dont think we will see any forward movement with this in 2006, I think it is because in order for this to really take off, the interface has to be dead simple to use.
And it needs to be accessable where the food is