TR Picks 10 Emerging Technologies of 08

arktemplar suggests Technology Review for their annual list of 10 emerging technologies that the editors believe will be particularly important over the next few years. Quoting: "This is work ready to emerge from the lab, in a broad range of areas: energy, computer hardware and software, biological imaging, social interactions. Two of the technologies — cellulolytic enzymes and atomic magnetometers — are efforts by leading scientists to solve critical problems, while five — surprise modeling, connectomics, probabilistic CMOS, reality mining, and offline Web applications — represent whole new ways of looking at problems. And three — graphene transistors, nanoradio, and wireless power — are amazing feats of engineering that have created something entirely new."

Comments

What's old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

Nikola Tesla would like to have a word with you about "new" wireless power.

My favorite.

[palegray.net]

Modeling Surprise - Much of modern life depends on forecasts: where the next hurricane will make landfall, how the stock market will react to falling home prices, who will win the next primary. While existing computer models predict many things fairly accurately, surprises still crop up, and we probably can't eliminate them. But Eric Horvitz, head of the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group at Microsoft Research, thinks we can at least minimize them, using a technique he calls "surprise modeling." The rest of the entry is pretty interesting, although Microsoft may be in for more "surprises" in the coming year than many might think...

Re:My favorite.

[Babu 'God' Hoover]

Dude!
You forgot flying car(Henry Ford said it would happen!), personal pneumatic transportation, cure for baldness, miniskirt, and communication with animals.

Encrypted Trunking

[Kinky Bass Junk]

Alex Zettl's tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.
I'm liking where this could take encrypted trunking systems.

Holy Buzzowrds, Batman.

[sugarman]

The summary reads like someone made a side trip through the jargometer.

Surprise modeling?
Connectomics?
Reality mining?
Nanoradio?

You gotta be freakin' kidding me.

Re:Holy Buzzowrds, Batman.

[Kinky Bass Junk]

Surprise modeling?
Look, you may not understand surprise modelling, but there is a whole subculture dedicated to it.
http://www.projectvoyeur.com/
http://www.voyeurweb.com/
Just to name a few!

Re:Holy Buzzowrds, Batman.

[slyn]

Highly NSFW...

Thank god I don't have a job.

Re:Top 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's here.

Reality mining

[Mr2001]

I don't know if you guys have heard about reality mining, but it's some pretty fascinating technology.

Apparently, out there in the so-called "real world" -- you know, the place where the lights are only on for half the day and the heat doesn't work at night -- there's stuff to be found. Valuable stuff like gold, silver, copper, coal, diamonds... and you can just dig a hole to get access to it.

Now you might be wondering why it's called "reality mining" and not "hole digging". Well, it's not quite as easy as I made it sound. You can't just dig any old place, you have to know where to look. And you can't just use a shovel; most of the time you need some heavy duty equipment. You have to sort through all the possible places to dig, filter that information, and somehow figure out which places are more likely to have the stuff you're looking for, and which approaches will work best to get it out. So it's kind of like data mining, but you're using it to get something in the real world.

It's fun, profitable, and best of all: you get to wear a hat with a light on it! Reality mining is the future, folks. Better get on the bandwagon while there's still room.

Re:I agree with your point but

[metamorfoza]

someone apparently got a bobcat instead of office chair.

It seems to be missing something

[Sadsfae]

I do not see Duke Nukem Forever on that list anywhere

Re:It seems to be missing something

[DavidV]

I do not see Duke Nukem Forever on that list anywhere Nah, I hear that's coming out next year.

Re:Cellulolytic Enzymes = Goodbye Corn Ethanol

[Anonymous Coward]

We will be able to ferment books into beer. Hooray !

Obvious new error message

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Probabilistic CMOS? As in...

"NTOSKRNL.EXE might have crashed. Perhaps you might want to reboot?

[Maybe Yes] [Maybe No]"

(Sorry, could not resist...)

Re:OK, let's see what we have here

[HTH NE1]

9. Reality mining Another Big Brother idea motivated by ad revenue. Give credit where credit is due. Candid Microphone (1947) and Candid Camera (1948) both came long before the Big Brother (1999) house.

And George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1948 and first published in 1949, just so you know I'm just joking and not clueless.