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The Next 25 Years in Tech
PCWMike writes "PCs may disappear from your desk by 2033. But with digital technology showing up everywhere else — including inside your body — computing will only get more personal, reports Dan Tynan for PC World's 25th Anniversary. While convenience will be increased by leaps and bounds, it will come at a profound loss in our sense of what privacy means. 'Technology will become firmly embedded in advanced devices that deliver information and entertainment to our homes and our hip pockets, in sensors that monitor our environment from within the walls and floors of our homes, and in chips that deliver medicine and augment reality inside our bodies. This shiny happy future world will come at a cost, though: Think security and privacy concerns. So let's hope that our jetpacks come with seat belts, because it's going to be a wild ride.'"
Between this and the previous article, my desk will be clean and I'll have lots of open power and cabling ports.
/. Think of all the page impressions I can bill for!
In other news, I'm going to start a publication whose name ends in "world" so I can get automatic posting on
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
...Yeah, yeah, I just accidentally opened that hello.jpg picture.
Only if it becomes part of the desk...there will always be a place for desks and tables, even if only as a method of organizing things in one place and having a 'base of operations' to work from.
Though I wouldn't mind having a gargoyle rig, a la the gent in Snow Crash. We've almost got the tech for it now, save only that I don't know of a good portable input method that doesn't require poking at a tiny screen or a mini keyboard...
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Heh, just an hour ago we got a Jack PC wall plugin thin client and were playing with it.
...or I'll yank that phone right out of your head!
scientists say the future will be 33% more futuristic
I'm surprised they didn't mention the transition of CPUs into some sort of biological form factor. Speeds at which cells communicate and transfer data can be introduced into a controlled process. The benefts are speed and infinite increase in energy efficiency...
First they took away our lan,
then the internet infrastructure stateside needs $100 million,
now they want to take away my computer.. shit. give it up already.
These guys can barely forecast seasons and they're going to tell us what's going to happen in 25 years? As the tag says, "Where's my flying car?"
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
The immediate future of technology will have a very eco-conscious angle. Some of it will be legitimately good for the earth and society. A lot of it will be merely fashionable. But maybe, just maybe, we can finally dispel the myth that ethanol from corn is good for anyone but ADM.
An article on the next 25 years of tech without a single mention of the singularity. It must be a Skynet plant . . .
I can't wait that long....I'll be 55 by then and I'm not sure if I'll still have the libido to keep up with a fembot.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
I couldn't imagine Microsoft electronics in my body.
Are those real?
This is gonna sound worse than it is, by 2033, I'll be like 75 or something and probably dead from from all the Global Warming. And then there is that thing about December 21st, 2012 that's supposed to kill us all.
Heck, we might all be looking like overly cooked eggs by then anyway.
Or nearly frozen and living underground. My kids already don't know what a rotary phone is, have never seen a record player, and my grandkids probably won't ever have experienced analog TV.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
PCs may disappear from your desk by 2033 when the superintelligent robots vaporize your desk and everything underneath it.
there, fixed that for you.
Nano Technology - we'll probably be assimilated by then - CyBorgs R Us.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Every time some tech site runs out of ideas, they throw up a dumb prediction piece, and it's always the same fucking thing: "the future will be like the present, only more so!" Fail.
25 years from now we will be too busy coping with the lack of cheap food, water, and energy, and the vast population of sick old people, to worry about how fucking long Google retains our search queries.
Did I say "fuck" enough? No? Okay. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
Make sure that when given the opportunity, you take the red pill.
Fat Chance. We'll be well into the Great Depression II before then if not World War III also. We'll be back to living in caves by then, if there is even anybody left.
Cheryl was one of the founding staff for PC World magazine (and PC Magazine before that) and a nice looking gal at the time. Scares me to realize that it has been 25 years since PC World started and even scarier that I bought my first copy of Byte 6 years before that...
Seriously. Think about it. I'm 23 years old. My generation has lived through:
-Multiple, world-influencing major conflicts.
-The introduction, widespread distribution, and near-anywhere access of the Internet (which, in my opinion, is one of our greatest achievements as humans.)
-The rise of wireless mobile devices that have the potential to function anywhere in the world.
-Computers moving from universities and government orgs, taking up entire rooms, to becoming nearly universal in our homes, cars, and pockets.
-The rise of communication to the point where an actor can die in New York, and within ONE HOUR the entire world knowing of it (those parts of the world that has access to the net, radio, and/or TV of course)
-9/11 (one of the most world-changing events in modern history)
And many more. Seriously folks. We are living through one of the most exciting and important parts of history in the entire time-line of our species.
Centuries from now, people will be wondering "Imagine what it was like to live through the era where in roughly one century we went from taking weeks to get a message across a country and taking literally MONTHS to travel across the sea... to the point where you could talk to someone on the other side of the world using a device no bigger than your fist, and could travel from New York to Australia in a matter of hours."
And you know what? We are lucky enough to experience it first hand. Be grateful, folks. Someday, all of us will be the stuff of history and legend.
Living With a Nerd
Mr. Garrison:
Cartman: What, Jew?
Living With a Nerd
I do not foresee the PC going away. The device is just too useful and common sense. Having a monitor on your desk and a keyboard is practical and its not something that is going to become obsolete.
I would be very concerned about the privacy and human rights implications of putting computers or chip implants into peoples bodies. This is the perfect vehicle for total electronic surviellance of a population, and perhaps even more nefarious purposes. For instance it might be possible for a clandestine purpose, or for "law enforcement" purposes to put circuits in these implants that could deliver an electric shock, cause pain or disable a person. The human rights implications and the threats to basic freedom that this would entail would be very dire and serious.
Technology is great on your desk or in your PDA device. It is nice to be able to browse the internet and access and share information through the internet via computer. But this technology should work for our benefit and also be used to promote freedom, not take it away. People must have complete control over their computers, and should be able to put it to use how they see fit. This is the idea of a general purpose computer. DRM indeed is a serious threat to the freedom of the consumer, the freedom to tinker and to utilise technology in new and innovative ways. Closed platforms such as game consoles are designed to limit how they can be used, so that instead of you being able to use your computer as you see fit, some large corporation controls the system and what you can use it for. Putting implants into peoples bodies raises far too much concern for abuse, the the risk or danger to freedom and to control this technology is too great. Once you put electronic devices into the body for these kinds of things, the potential for this to be abused and to be used against you increases exponentially. At least a person should have a choice to refuse this sort of technology. We need to be very wary of schemes to try to forcibly implant people with chips, especially children, and the issues this would create to various bodily integrity and human rights issues, and would also lead us towards a world where no one has any privacy or rights at all, a 1984 like society where everything someone does can be controlled and scrutinised. People should have a basic right to not have their body implanted with electronic devices, tracking devices, etc, which can be used against them. No matter what gaurantee a manufacturer of such technology makes, there is always the opportunity and chance that some technology which you may not be told is there can be embedded into these devices, for tracking or monitoring persons, or as a control measure through some sort of electroshock feature for instance. It is impossible to verify from the consumers end that this technology is not present in such devices. They present a very serious danger and threat to human rights, freedom and privacy.
In the future, ideally I see the desktop computer remaining very commonplace. Computer processing power will continue to increase which will improve game performance, rollout of fiber optic networks will allow for more high bandwidth applications such as instant movie downloading, and so on. Linux will eventually become dominate and totally replace windows, which will give consumers vastly increased freedom and control over their computers than ever before. Just keep the computers on your desk and in your pocket, not in your body and we can use them as a tool of freedom and for our own benefit and to use them as we wish, rather than as a tool of survellience and enslavement.
I don't care what happens as long as I can get a plug in my head an IV in my arm and never come back to a reality where I can't fly at will. Oh yeah, and Unicorns.
Shh.
someone here mentioned and I read it, and I gotta say it is pretty visionistic. I made that word up by the way.
My 1950's World Book Encyclopedia claimed that by the year 2000 robots would be doing all the work and everybody would have complete leisure. They forgot that leisure doesn't come with a paycheck.
So I am skeptical of pie in the sky predictions about technology.
That I can download porn directly into my brain?
I cannot let you do that.
Subj.
Nothing to add.
If desktop computers die then nothing will remain but proprietary devices needing to be hacked. Without build it yourself devices life would really suck.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The Year of Linux on the Desktop!
We'll be oke for food, but busy worrying about and fixing the Year 2038 bug which is due in another 5 years, when old 32-bit unix-family systems will set their clocks back to 1901.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
I feel like theres no technology that can be invented in the next 20 years that can revolutionize our lives. we are so advanced in tech that so far the only thing left is to do small increments to current tech. i dont think that a computer thats 100 times more powerful and smaller than your thumb can change the lives of to many peoples. things like the matrix interface or true ai are the true innovations that i am waiting to come. not a powerful pc or tv with the size of a wall.
Gives a new meaning to getting worms!
or to catching a virus.
and generally seems a little more intrusive than a cochlear implant. None the less, if the pr0n industry can take advantage of this, I'm sure it will be ubiquitous.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Kyle: No, "fuck". You can't say "fuck" in school, you fuckin' fat-ass!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Leonard Nimoy, nude and in character
...but some of us will still find an excuse or three to run it under emulation. :-) :-)
:-)
Or maybe my PPro will still be working in 2033? Who knows?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I'm waiting for all the stupid laws and rules about "no cameras or recording devices (for the mob)" collide with people whose bodies are recording devices due to advances in the use of technology to assist and augment people with sensory handicaps. Why shouldn't I be able to take advantage of modern technology to correct and enhance my vision?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
As wireless networking speeds up it will be possible to carry smaller less powerful devices that merely act as clients for your home and work computer.
This will mean more dedicated hardware which uses less power, you won't need any storage on the move or vast amounts of processing power.
It may also mean that TV, phone and other services you have at home would merely be redirected to your portable viewer.
This is all fairly possible now, the main problem is speed and lack of a dedicated portable terminal.
- Massive fraud & election-system abuse : remember Diebold, and the funny (in a dark-humor way) thing about Southern States' lack of ballot recount ???
- The whole thing about Iraq War : THEY DIDNT HAVE ANY weapons of mass destruction
... but, shortly after the American invasion, they were riddled with fragmentation bombs, Uranium-enriched ammo, scores of Hi-Tech tanks & furtive bombers, and so much more
- Another thing about Iraq : they were armed and financed by the Bush administration (father's), through three-letters agenciesto fight against the Evil(tm) Iranians(R)
- The so-called freedom that was supposed to be brought to those states (Iraq, Afghanistan,
.., ??) is, I think, in a pretty WORSE shape than before Bush's (son) attacks .. but you should ask the Marines that routinely and actively die there for no reason other than those countries's underground, dark, oily substances
- The blazingly fast erosion of civil rights, privacy, and, more generally, of all the freedoms brought by US's constitution : look for privacy international 2007 report
.. covered here in late december ...
- The world-wide spreading of the last point : it began in US, went on in Australia, pursued in United Kingdom, and is now spreading in France
...
- REAL Journalists are an endangered specie : how many independant media do you know of, in your country ?? (hint : look at overall financial ties)
... for exemple, in France, I have to look for unbiased info in UK's news, or fringe newspapers ...
All things considered, I'd rather live in China rather than the US--
Check my other posts
Hopefully, the current economic, politic, social, and religious system is on the brink of collapse
Mayans (you know, one of the civilizations that Christianity stomped upon in the XVIth century) thought a lot about the second half of 12/2012, and modern science points that solar flares will kinda peak at that time, triggering all sorts of funny things, like geomagnetic storms, along with unstoppable gamma particles
The way I see it, and this comes not from a religious viewpoint since I am not religious, but a human rights one, is no one else has a right to impose on another person their wishes about their body, including deciding what kind of body that person will have. Every person should have a right to a body that is uniquely theres and no one elses and no one should have a right to force them into someone else's body. At least nature is random and has no agenda. People have agendas and I do not like the idea of people deciding what kind of body a person will have, their facial features, their eye color, etc. People have a right to eb unique and to have things which are uniquely their own and which no one else has control over and the most basic of this is their body. Perhaps people choose their own DNA before they are born, including their phsyical features and characteristics.
Human cloning has a very concerning and unpleasant 1984ish or Brave New World feel to it, a horrific utopian world where every aspect of peoples lives, right down to that which is most personal and sacred to a person, their body, is controlled by others. It is a frightening vision of conformity, uniformity where people are rather than seen as unique individuals instead as carbon copies. It really needs to be completely banned if we care about freedom, the right of each person to be individual, unique, to self determination, the right to a body that is uniquely theres and controlled and manipulated by no one else. We need to respect each person as a unique and diverse person entirely their own, rather than trying to impose ourselves on them and try to determine and control who they are. We need to respect diversity and individuality and eschew totalitarianism and conformism. So I concur with the pope on cloning, not on religious grounds, but on human rights ones.
Didn't we get the same predicitons in 1990? Wasn't Larry (head honcho of Oracle) spouting the same "network computer" idea back then? Hasn't SciFi been predicting such things for more than 50 years?
Slow news day. For all those 30 or younger: Nothing much as happened in the last decade. No new tech, just small advances in existing tech. There are no ground breaking advances that will be happening in the next decade cause the population is too slow to adopt.
It took 25 years after its invention and promotion for TV to reach acceptance by the public largely because for an entire generation (an a war or two) radio was "good enough and who wants anything else?" Is surround sound really so different from quadraphonic (circa 1978)? Nope.
Most of the good ideas from the 1980s and 1990s won't be accepted by the mainstream until 2010s and 2020s if at all. So the next 25 years, will be the same stuff the tech industry has been pushing for the last, just with fancy new marketing names.
2008 really is the same as 1998, just with more noise, less convenience and more expense. Can't wait for 2018 :-(
We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
Of all places, /. frequenters should know that there is a dramatic difference between the terms PC and Desktop Computer.
I would not be surprised if the personal computer changes dramatically in the next 10 years. Already, we have laptops that are more than powerful enough for all desktop computer needs. I'm foreseeing the desktop market share becoming dismally small within 5 years (for sales, there's still going to be tons of desktops that are still running). Everyone that can't get what they need done on a laptop is going to be using a workstation. Servers and mainframes, well who knows, other than that they're going to perform a role more important than they do now, probably returning to similar importance that they did decades ago.
Where did the year 2033 come from? Just because there are more embedded electronics in devices these days, doesn't mean people are going to give up the power obtained from a big box sitting underneath (or on, or wherever) a desk. Then add the post about no LAN in the future. There will always be a need and application for a LAN.
It feels good when I slip it in.
You do if you want to understand why some innovations see mass adoption and others do not. Your great-grandfather could walk down any middle class suburban street and feel perfectly at home. We do not build like The Jetsons.
"Where's my flying car?"
The flying car is so passe. Jetpacks are where it's at!
Venture capitalists aren't very creative.
When I read the article, I immediately wondered how much all those gadgets were going to cost and who's going to pay for them. Their manufacture depends upon cheap energy, access to silicon and clean water, and because they're all 'personalized', their purchase is going to depend on disposable income or job perks. We may or may not have hit peak oil, but barring miracles or sudden breakthroughs the price of energy and resources will climb; the western economies are looking a touch rocky; and most of us are already carrying enough consumer debt. That leaves aside the question of whether we'll have to start shunting governmental and personal resources into dealing with climate emergencies, and constantly having to pay to replace appliances, vehicles, light bulbs etc with new ones that meet the standards. Maintenance alone is starting to look expensive, never mind progress.
Why do you think that forecasting seasons is easy?
1970
"These guys can barely forecast seasons and they're going to tell us what's going to happen in 25 years?"
The environment is going to be so fucked up and clean water will be the new oil.
Seriously, what bullshit.
Look 25 years into the past. That means 1982. Then look at any "25 years from now" articles from 1982. What's your guess as to their accuracy?
Cell phones? In 1982, we had the "B-Net" here in Germany. It was analog, had about 20,000 users and 75 channels. The devices were huge, very few people carried them around.
Computers? The original IBM PC had just been released (August, 1981). In case you don't remember, it had a 4.77 MHz CPU and 16 or 64 KB of RAM (extendible to the legendary 640 KB). It also had no hard drive. It did come with floppy drives, though - 5 1/4".
Games? I'm too lazy to google up all the details, but Akalabeth, the predecessor of Ultima, was released in 1979.
Internet? Well, TCP/IP was developed in 1982. Two years later, the Internet had about 1000 hosts. Anyone claiming in 1982 that this fragile university-connection thing would have billions of users in 2008 would've been laughed at. BBS was what networking was about, and FidoNet (started in 1983) appeared as a more likely candidate for an international network for the masses into the 90s.
So in other words, any "what's the world going to be like in 25 years" is, to put it bluntly, bullshit pulled out of someone's ass. 25 years from now, we'll look at it and shake our hads in sad admiration of the guy who was daft enough to publish something so obviously wrong and nonsensical.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I am very surprised that no-one has mentioned bio-tech. Computers are *so* 1990's, the future is in bio-tech everyone.
If you don't believe me, watch this video of a lecture titled "Programming DNA" taken from last year's Chaos Congress... We're not talking about doing math with DNA in a test-tube anymore, we have teenage undergraduates producing much more interesting genetic designs already!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6950604815683841321&hl=en
Seems to me like the same hacker community who brought us open source and the internet have all moved on to more interesting pastures. Makes sense though, hackers are always going to be found at the cutting edge, and the cutting edge has already moved on from silicon to nucleic acid.
No, I didn't RTFA.
-M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
The systems I've checked actually did revert to 1901, but there could be other systems reverting to 1970, depending on the internals.
Either way, there would be a problem in 2038, as the 32-bit time_t cannot count past 0x7FFFFFFF without something having to be done about the present-day interpretation of its value.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
I have always been interested in technological "revolutions", and have been asking the following question to anyone older than me for a long time:
What technology did you not have as a child, but now is prevalent in every household? In other words, what was your generational "Next Big Thing"?
Here are the major Previous Big Things:
indoor plumbing
radio
phone
car
tv
personal computer
cell phone
Of course, the obvious rejoinder - what is the Next Big Thing?
For the sake of argument, let's consider web phones, ipods, and all other portable "media spigots", not a true paradigm shift from cell phones, and thus not a next big thing. Don't beat me up on this, just trying to elicit some more imaginative and unconventional ideas!
Awating the next big thing -
jocky
WHAT!!!?
"chips that deliver medicine and augment reality inside our bodies"
Now, what kinds and versions of bots, worms plus trojans were you looking for - sir?
We are Borg. Your unpredictable 'future' just got a lot worse.
RR
"Being young doesn't mean you lack knowledge of recent history."
Unless you're a Slashdot editor.
This is the future corporations want, where people don't just buy products, they BECOME products. This gives new meaning to vendor locking, since your providers will literally be installed in your body. I know I sound paranoid but look a it it this way. Is the oligarchy making responsible use of technology *now*? Uh-uh, so saying that this is has potential for abuse is an under statement.
I'm not saying I'm absolutely against body implants but it seriously, seriously has to be done under a totally different industrial atmosphere or our lives will become hell.
Those who forget history are doomed to run it under emulation!
This is bullshit
The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel.
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides,
and a dark wind blows.
the government is corrupt and we're on so many drugs
with the radio on ad the curtains drawn.
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death.
The sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the gflags are all dead at the top of their poles
it went like this:
the buildings toppled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies
as they pick through the rubble and pull out their hair
the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretched upwards
every washed in a thin orange haze
I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful, these are truly the last days."
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a day dream
or a fever.
We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
for sure this is the valley of death.
I open up my wallet
and it is full of blood.
Those are the opening lines of the song 'The Dead Flag Blues' from the album F#A# by the band Godspeed You Black Emperor. The album was released in 1997. It was their debut album.
Many thanks to Parent for the great quote.
p.s.
I love their music. 'The Dead Flag Blues' is unforgettable.
This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Blue screen of DEATH !'
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
A unix system will roll over from +68.5 years to -68.5 years (roughly) relative to 1970 so will go to 1901.
A Windows system considers negative timestamps invalid, so would more likely crash instead.
The easiest solution is to switch to time_t_64 (or time64_t, I can't remember) which is compatible with the older 32-bit timestamps for any dates in their (32-bit) range, but supports dates well outside that range as well.
Any recent (last 10 years?) release of an operating system should be using 64-bit stamps, but no doubt there's a lot of proprietary software released that doesn't.
While I can see desktops becoming smaller, I can't see a desktop-type setup disappearing completely in favor of laptops or other portables, for one simple reason: Size. Working on a light, portable laptop means making certain sacrifices, such as screen size and in most cases the loss of a full keyboard (that number pad is really handy for a lot of reasons!).
In the short term, desktops will continue to exist because of the ease of use and the ability to more easily perform upgrades. Laptops are still higher cost items than desktops because of the need for reduced size and power consumption of components and the customization necessary to make them fit specific form factors. Desktop parts are not just cheaper because of size, they're also cheaper because they are relatively interchangeable as well. Until you can go to the local computer store and buy boxed retail laptop parts off the shelf for an assemble-it-yourself model, they are not going to be competitive in terms of cost of ownership. I've gone through 3 laptops in the last 5 years, and have been using the same desktop the entire time, only upgrading HDD and memory. If I could have dropped a new motherboard and faster processor into one of those laptops, I could have extended its useful lifespan. However, the continuing ability to package greater power into a smaller component will trickle down to desktops, allowing us to have much smaller setups without sacrificing the features like ease of upgrade that make them popular. Goodbye mini-ATX, hello pico-ATX.
In the long term, I can envision a scenario where your computer is eventually reduced to a fairly small handheld device using a standardized, uniform docking mechanism that could allow you to drop it into a dock/battery charger at work or at home or at a public terminal for access to a full keyboard and monitor, while still allowing you to work using only the handheld when a full setup is unavailable or unnecessary. Imagine an iPhone-sized device with enough storage space and processing power to be your personal computer. The only drawback to this sort of concept is that it would mean computer manufacturers would have to agree on what sort of docking mechanism to use, whenther physical or wireless, what kinds of standards it would take, and so forth.
... we will be safely past peak oil, economies collapsing, famines, desperate war and social desintegration everywhere. So forget new shiny gadgets - it's gonna be stones and sticks... again!
Ok, we get it. The author has overemphasized the importance of the changes that occurred during his life time. I think perhaps he was referring more to the changes that happened in the 20th century as compared to changes that occurred during any other period of similar length in human history. Perhaps the past 25 years haven't been overly exciting (lets face it, the internet and cellular technology has had an impact, but not as earth shattering as flight or discovery of practical applications for electricity), but if you take it in a 100 year context, yeah, human achievements have been more of a mutation than evolution.
However, I would not be so bold to classify it as the "most" exciting or drastic change. I would imagine that the discovery of agriculture was a massive change that shaped the world in ways that few people today would understand. Still, the proliferation of previous changes took generations to make it from one corner of the world to the other (and alot of times, it didnt make it at all). Compared to the changes in the 20th century, which went from horse and buggy, technology that dates back well into Ancient times (think Chariot), to the Automobile, to Flight, in about 20 years, with the technology spreading around the world in roughly 5-10 years. True enough, there was the teletype in the 1800's, the locomotive, and steam boats which are predecessors to some of these marvels. All in all, the adaptation of electricity, the electric light, the power grids, sanitation works, plastic, synthetics, central air... all major advances, nearly all within a single life time. Completely and utterly amazing.
In past history, changes occurred gradually. Take any major revolution, take the Renaissance for example. How much did life change? Compared to the changes that occurred between 500AD and 1200AD, there were many great changes, but these changes were slowly adopted and implemented gradually over the course of several generations. So gradual in fact, that generations still survived off of the same trade skills and techniques used by their great grand parents. Few people today could come close to identifying with the work skills of their great grand parents, but go to any other time in history, and it is almost a fact that the skill sets of great grand parents were almost identical to their great grand children.
Now the real question is: Are we living in an unsustainable anomaly. Its true that the changes occurring today are so fast paced that it is unprecedented in human history. Human beings today enjoy personal mobility while lacking very basic survival skills required by nearly every generation past (hunting, some form of agricultural ability, crafts skills, clothes making, etc..). Is our style of living sustainable? Will there always be a new source of fuel when the current source of fuel runs out? Will children ready history books one day and marvel how people were able to travel, by themselves, in personally owned automobiles, several thousand miles, for under a few hundred dollars? Regardless of conservation, the oil will run out one day. The question is will we be able to replace oil? If not, how will society adjust? Will we be forced to create mass transit systems that are connected to XYZ generated electric grids?
We live in blessed times. Regardless of some peoples nihilistic view of the past or the present, we live in a time where you can ready to eat food in a box in a hallway, all you need to do is insert a metalic coin or piece of synthetic paper, and out comes a piece of meat on a bun. No hunting involved. No skill involved. You dont know where it came from, or how it got there. All you know is that your no longer hungry. Before the 20th century, that was unthinkable.
Amazing times... but can they last?
What about molecular manufacturing (aka MNT)?
If we're lucky, there may be bigger changes coming in the next 20 years than in the previous thousand years combined.
Case 1: People felt that all computers would eventually be networked together. But the sudden rise of the browser-based Internet around 1993 caught a lot of people by surprise. Academics had been using ethernets/Arpanet for years, but with crude data exchange tools. Event head of the MIT Media Lab Nick Negropronte missed the rise of the browser in his monthly column called Being Digital for Wired Magazine those years.
Case 2 is little more current. I frequently mentioned the future or communication was ubquitous video, but I didnt see the cell phone camera/display as a major component.
Missing this stuff isnt new. Randall Stross, author of books on eBay, Jobs, and Thomas Edison, wrote that the original intention of Edisons phonograph was to speed up telegraphy. Messages would be pre-recorded, then played played across valuable telegraph wire 100x speeds, recorded and decoded offline by clerks. When Edison recogonized the voice potential, he mainly pushed the phonograph as secretarial aid. A competitor called Victorola discovered the mass music market (the iPod of the 1890s) and really caused mass use of phonographs.
I agree. Near instantaneous media revolutionaized the last 19th century and early 20th. Using non-human or animal power for transportation, especially personal, was the early 20th century. The computer is a lesser transforming invention.
I'm looking forward to when they can figure out how to smooth out economic cycles and wars. Central planning ans statism hasnt so far. Neither has totally undridled free market. there was some hope in the late 20th century that liberal democracy was the answer, but it has its flaws too. We've had a quarter century of economic expansion, but that may not always continue.
Until they solve that little pesky electro-magnetic radiation problem, you know, the whole inducing of cancerous tumors thing, then these predictions are a waste of bandwidth. My prediction: Maybe one of these predictions, sort of, will come to fruition in the time frame mentioned.
2 autodrive-- just like demolition man.
3.auto kiosks. advanced dumb terminal that use your cell phone as the processor wirelessly and securely. encrypted keyboard and monitor to prevent snooping ala keyboard recorder.
4. rfid microwaves.. pop in the meal you want to cook, let the microwave get the cooking info and wham, cooked to the right settings. (rfid as ubiquitous technology) 5. pervasive enabling devices for the elderly.. Once those numbers boom all sorts of silly gadgets will pop up, and quite a few gems should come to light. So expect automatic dog walking collars, which coax the dog to walk within certain parameters.. larger use of automatic bill pay. and huge amounts of snake oil..
6. mini-cars two seater cars in a tandem configuration possibly back to back, 600 lbs mostly carbon fiber. low standard horsepower 25 ish. with an engagable supercharger for quick acceleration. I'd probably go with a compressed air tank to crank the supercharger, and for the inital dose of extra air into the engine, so that the "turbo lag" doesn't happen. In town the car will rock, highway speed, not so good.
7 cheap oleds everywhere.. your cereal box might have animated advertising on it.. I dont expect till near the end of the 25 years..
8. bloody amazing synthetic textiles.. Glycosolated synthetic fibers will have properties normally associated with natural fibers. but once engineered the range of cloth behavior will be much greater than normal, it'll make the neat fabrics of today seem quaint.
happy future
Storm
> Already, we have laptops that are more than powerful enough for all desktop computer needs.
But your "needs" will expand. Can your laptop keep your entire movie/music collection, now?
> Everyone that can't get what they need done on a laptop is going to be using a workstation.
What is a desktop but a workstation running the wrong operating system?
> Servers and mainframes, well who knows,
Where the I/O intensive stuff runs, as always (for expanding sizes defining what is intensive).
1. Computers won't get much smaller. Just think of it, you can now buy a cheap C64 clone which consists of a single chip, but yet they build a bulky case around it so it will be usefull. Just look at Laptops, they get bigger every year. Today you can buy laptops with 17 inch screens.
2. Computers won't have hundreds of Chips. The number of Chips will most likely decrease with nanotechnology. Even today we see a trent towards as little chips as possible. What the author might have meant is that we might have multi processor systems. Yes, that will probably happen.
Anyhow my guesses are as follows:
There will be a new medium sized breakthrought like the Internet, and Microsoft will again, completely miss it.
Maybe there will be a network access revolution: The Internet has abolished the traditional publisher/consumer relationship as everyone could publish for about the same cost as reading. There are already the first data-networks which try to push that idea down to the network level. In those networks you don't have an ISP anymore, but you just peer with your neighbours (for example over WLAN). Just think about it, if you lay a cable to your neighbour, you would easily get a gigabit of bandwidth. And even with moderately cheap switches you can easily scale that up. There may still be ISPs, but their importance will fade. This is the vital key to having network access everywhere. Without that you just will be carrying around homing devices which you don't dare using because every use costs you a significant amount of money. User generated networks are just far more efficient.
Voice access will come, but mostly to cheap devices. Over the next years the cost of implementing voice recognition might be significantly lower than the one of implementing buttons and displays.
Software might _slowly_ approach the state of the art of the 1970s again. We might get systems the average person can actually use after a day of training or so. Maybe we need to get rid of "I want that feature"-languages like C, C++, C# or Java and get back to the more "scientific" languages like Smalltalk or Lisp. One yet has to show me a system that actually does anything which would be hard to implement in Assembler in one of those "new" languages.
But realistically, I don't see that much change in the future. The computer industry just got to commercial. Back till the mit 90s you were at least able to catch a glimpse of the next 10 years by looking at 'workstations', but today the workstation market has completely died.
Your right, I was wrong.