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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.'"
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
scientists say the future will be 33% more futuristic
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.
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.
What !? Speed is not the benefit, it's the drawback ! CPUs are order of magnitude faster than cellular processes. What you gain from biology is cheap scalability, but certainly not raw speed.
\u262D = \u5350
Gives a new meaning of Blue Screen of Death then, when it crashes you die!
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
PCs may disappear from your desk by 2033 when the superintelligent robots vaporize your desk and everything underneath it.
there, fixed that for you.
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
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.
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.
...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.
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.