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Speculating On the Far Future of Cellphones
Trio writes "What will cellphones look like in in future? silicon.com explores five future characteristics that could shape tomorrow's phones — from a wearable prototype such as MIT's SixthSense device which projects mobile data into the user's world, to a mobile that mixes the real and the virtual by using holographic telepresence. So far, so futuristic, but one question remains: will there be enough spectrum to support all this wireless communication?"
Yeah, a real cellphone that let you dial a number and speak with someone. Not those with tons of addons that you forget you can dial number with !
Never mind that it isn't practical to walk around with a huge projector on your chest, it isn't fashionable. There is certainly utility to a good web-enabled phone with plenty of apps, but I think people get sold initially on the style of an iPhone specifically. If people adopt new technology and new features in their next phone, style has to help sell it.
Otherwise, I think we're hitting a breaking point. What more functionality do we really want from our phone? How much more can you accomplish on a small screen? How much more money are you willing to pay for the device and the data plan? If anything, the pendulum might swing backwards as competitors try to ape 80% of the iPhone's functionality at half the price.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Cell phones will have a subvocal mode so that people won't broadcast their moronic chatterings into others' ears like I'm broadcasting my moronic chatterings into your faces.
-- Ethanol-fueled
What I want is a phone that works telepathically. In fact, screw the phone, I'll take the telepathy. :P
Sent from your iPad.
Duh. All nerds know that holographic telepresence will utilize a rapidly fluctuating portion of the subspace band!
(Not to mention, they're pretty good at hiding the fact they didn't RTFA!)
Given that the most-used features of cellphones are things other than talking on the phone (presumably included in the "Other 9%"), I predict that they will become like this Nintendo controller of the future.
In the U.S., we have the slow, bureaucratic and oligarchic FCC that limits technology from acquiring near limitless spectrum/bandwidth.
We're moving to a truly digital age, but still we have the FCC regulating that we should keep analog/digital spectrum separate for various "needs" such as TV, radio, ham, cordless phones, FRS, etc. It's ridiculous.
We have technology TODAY that allows for frequency hopping, for signal strength negotiation, for handling multiple devices on the same frequencies/channels, etc. Private industries can blossom to utilize the right frequency, the right transceiving power, the right tower hopping mechanisms, etc. But they can't get there because the FCC overregulates and strangulates the future.
On my 3G phone (I'm on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, shared via my lovely Cradlepoint router on-the-go even), I can watch TV on-demand. I can listen to music, on-demand. I can read my websites, send my emails, talk via Google voice/Gizmo5 VoIP, send SMS via Google Voice, etc. But there's a limited run of bandwidth.
I don't have a TV at home, so the TV spectrum is useless. I don't listen to radio in the car, so radio spectrum is useless. So much that we do today would be better suited to a HUGE amount of spectrum divvied up and utilized by every device that could hop frequencies as needed to find a clean channel, that could raise power needs when a tower is far but drop them significantly when towers are near.
The future is nearly endless bandwidth for endless users, but we're throttled because our lovely State decides it wants only the powerful to play ball, with the weak kept out of the game.
But what would happen if the FCC went away, and all of a sudden the power players who control TV, radio and other spectra would need to compete with the YouTube amateurs of the world? The powerful would fall. And the State can't let that happen.
IMO speculation about the future of technology is a waste of time. It always turns out very different from what was predicted, because some technologies that seem easy turn out to be (extreme) difficult, like flat TVs and nuclear fusion, and others turn out to much easier than expected. Besides the technical issues there are often changes in society that make the predictions about the future futile. Look at all the past predictions about the future back then, and what do you see? An extrapolation of the technology and mindset that was available at the time. So, predictions are fun, but please don't put any sort of value in them.
-- Cheers!
I can imagine a similar discussion in 1875: "What will telegraphs look like in the future?"
We're wanted men. I have the death sentence in 12 systems!
Computing capacity is not the issue. With Moore's Law continuing you'll have a tera-op in that form factor by the 2020s. Engineering cleverness is still factor. The video screen cannot get too much larger if its built-in. People have been experimenting with projection TVs in small form factors at SIGGRAPH and the like.
Maybe this will be the impetus to get voice recognition and generation software working well. Typing is always going to be a pain on micro-keyboard or touchscreen, compared to the alternatives.
no bigger than the bluetooth you have stuck in your year, or the thing stuck in your ear is not a bluetooth device but a voice controlled cellphone :D
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What's to speculate about. At some point in time cell phones became good at everything except be good cellphones. My speculation is that some day we will.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I always figured that the future was in phone/PC convergence. Which is to say, rather than syncing your smartphone with your computer, your smartphone would BE your computer.
Coming in to your office, You'd pull your PC out of your pocket, sit it on your desk and plug in a monitor. It would connect to a wireless keyboard and mouse, and away you'd go.
WHen you left to go home or to a meeting, you'd unplug the monitor, stick it in your pocket and off you'd go. The only other thing is you'd pay a cloud service to do incremental backups over wireless or cell service.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
- AJ
Here's what Will Self has to say on the topic of cellphones and the future:
"What they promote is a meaningless level of anonymous chit-chat with people, where you don't have to get down-and-dirty and smell somebody, or see their body-language. They are actually the very very key representation of the anomie and alienation of our culture.
And the idea that there was a cash bonanza from mobile phone licensing, that the (UK) government predicated its entire second term spending plans on, is one of history's most delicious ironies.
And when it all comes down, when it all falls down about us, all that will be left in the wreckage of our civilization is a single tiny little black oblong going 'diddle-dee-dee-diddle-dee-dee-deeeee'. And there'll be nobody to answer it. "
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I listen to the radio.
Why is it that because you don't listen to the radio, it is useless?
Radio is cool. It's completely free and I can find really good music on it. For free. No payments necessary to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint.
So... how much money are you spending then with all those carriers and all those services?
I don't have a TV at home, so the TV spectrum is useless. I don't listen to radio in the car, so radio spectrum is useless.
So by your logic... since you are not a first responder (Fire, EMS, etc..), those frequencies are also useless.. ok, just don't bitch when your house is on fire and no one can communicate and coordinate.
I know this NYU Law grad who has this compelling argument about how we're not a free country. We're ruled indirectly by the corporate structure of this country. He examples that I could never do justice to - basically, we have to live according to their rules and we really don't have a choice. The telcos are making too much money with this current system and moving to another would cost too much. It ain't gonna happen.
Put a Phased array inside, so they can network together with multiple other phones, and form a giant peer-to-peer network mesh.
"will there be enough spectrum to support all this wireless communication?"
Bah, in the future cellphones will have Z-Space Transponders.
I think the real question is not whether there will be spectrum enough for our bandwidth needs, but whether we will be able to afford it! Given that AT&T charges an arm and a leg for data rates/roaming, I can imagine what the charges will be in the future!
I think what he's referring to is the technology that would enable individuals to use the spectrum of frequencies in their tiny, personal area, however they want. I truly don't think he's saying that they should shut down TV and radio and blah blah blah...
Where you are with a small group of humans with no electronics you are talking directly to each other, looking them in the eye, or at their body language. Sometimes you touch too.
Now when you are in a public space like a coffee-house, walking the street, sitting on the train, etc. many people are communicating with those out of sight and completely ignoring those in sight. To me it feels like a zombie movie.
Seriously considering plugging electronics into our brains? coz that'd remove the need for screens/keyboards...
Wait! Whats a sig?
Some smart glasses could give all the niceties of a big screen, augmented reality and so on to cellphones or portable devices in a discrete way. But the main problem is how they get input from us. In air keyboards, speaking, hand gesturing, whatever, would be something very funny and/or ridiculous to see in the streets. What kind of "future inputs" will have those devices?
Cognitive radio Does it really matter if we ever run out of spectrum?
So by your logic... since you are not a first responder (Fire, EMS, etc..), those frequencies are also useless.. ok, just don't bitch when your house is on fire and no one can communicate and coordinate.
Have you seen the specs for p25 trunked radio? The no communication / no co-ordination part is basically in the spec.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
a device similar to the iPhone, but with 2 USB ports and a miniHDMI port. In essence: the smallest computer. keyboard/mouse go in one USB, a hard drive in the other. Hook up your monitor to it, and you will have a computer that will surf the web, do basic word processing and Office-type stuff. It will cost USD$299.
I don't see Apple doing it as it would evacuate the need for MacBooks, but I could see Panasonic or Nokia or Palm pulling it off.
And of course: it would run Linux...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Not to your neighbours, or people in cars around you. I think you'd be hard pressed to show that broadcasting isn't a reasonably efficient use of the spectra in terms of the amount of content delivered to individuals.
That and everyday people would be left without as all existing equipment would be useless. Given the angst over the digital switch over I'd expect there'd be a lot of rather unhappy people were that to happen.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I'm a cheapass. I prefer the situation where my existing TV and radios continue to work to the one where you can blow even more money twiddling your widget.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Stubby human fingers.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The technology for making effective use of spectrum is certainly far better now than it has been; but the notion that we've solved the finitude of spectrum seems fanciful at best(especially if some or all of the devices in question are not attempting to cooperate, either because they aren't sophisticated enough[spark gaps of various flavors] or because they are actively maximizing their throughput at the expense of yours, or just because they are hostile[jammers]).
What I would like to see is more spectrum made freely usable. 24.GHz is pretty lousy spectrum; but free access has made it extremely useful. What would also be nice would be a compromise position: come up with an industry standard spec for a wireless transmitter and reciever(roughly wifi-like in character) with suitable support for channel hopping and negotiation and other necessities of cooperation, and licence a chunk of spectrum such that any device, made by anyone, and owned by anyone, could use that chunk of spectrum if it conformed to the open spec.
Making things work with an arbitrary number of noncooperative devices in place seems like a pipe dream; but that needn't imply the current oligopoly based solution.
No, he is an actual libertarian ideologue.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/eDork/dp/B000H4TM1W
Why does bandwidth seem to be sich a problem. Much of the data can be stored directly in the "phone" and predictive services can off load much of the dynamic data. Example: your phone grabs your calendar and knows that at 10 you have a meeting across town. If you do have a car it snags the GPS nav data for the immediate area as well as predicted traffic patterns, if you do not have a car then it contacts the taxi company and arranges transport. Your meeting is with new clients (ones not in its database) so even though you have it scheduled for 2 hours it knows there is strong flexibility in that time. It has already loaded in the public profiles of the people you will be meeting with as well as your health profile so when you extend the meeting over lunch it takes into need your caloric needs plus communicating with your clients and submits you options for food. GPS and traffic info allow the rest of your schedule to be dynamically changed.
Now most of this data is retrieved via hardline while you are asleep or when you receive the appointment info. Individual personal data overlays are received peer to peer from the public profile on the other person's "phone" and can be used short range. this way only updates need to be sent over the "cell" network. It records and transcribes your daily interaction, overlays your vision with information you are normally interested in and even makes suggestions and helps you manage your time and life. This is part of what I se as the future of "cell phones" and part of me is terrified by it and part of me is fascinated by it,
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Have you seen this anime? I doubt most of slashdot has, but in it, there are augmented reality glasses that are effectively PCs.
To make a phone call, they do that phone sign with their hands, aka the fist with thumb and pinky extended to the side of their head.
In the future, rather then cellphones, we'll have highly compact computers with inbuilt VOIP. Cellphones will die if computers become compact enough.
I'd like future phones to do two things: 1) Not let people mess with their phone at a movie theater. 2) Not let people use the phone while driving.
Breaking point is right. We need to break the concept of online mobile presence being tied only to the phone (personal device) completely. When I get into my car -- hell make that any car -- which has a nice 10" touch display backed by a computer currently used for navigation etc., why not transfer my online presence to that screen? Let me use the web, take a video call, what have you, on that device. Then, when I arrive at the airport (or spaceport if we're lucky) and take my seat on Virgin Galactic, move my session to that display.
Yes I'll still carry a "phone" which will have the capabilities that can be packed into the small form and display, but it's main job will be to carry my mobile presence between other devices which I don't necessarily own.
Bandwidth doesn't have to be tied to the phone either. If I sit down in an airport waiting area and use a seat display, I'm on its fiber. I might be paying to use it according to a data plan tied to my phone. The cost and bandwidth might be different when I get into a car, and it might be different (tiered, etc.) from the guy sitting next to me. But the billing is still tied to the account that my phone presents to the world.
Wifi-enabled phones with a boingo account give some idea of this. At home/office/Starbucks, your iPhone is automatically using wifi instead of 3G. You pay (or not) based on the account in your phone. But in my future scenario the phone just authenticates the local temporary display which then has its own connection to whatever network is appropriate for that particular cafe / airplane / car.
So the phone becomes more like a super bluetooth identity accessory to move your online presence between available displays. And when necessary, it can also be used as a self-contained telecommunications device (mobile phone).
What they are showing in that video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYCycOSoPfQ isn't physically possible - holograms don't work in that way. There is no such thing as an "holographic projector" - roughly put, you need to look at a screen that has interference patterns (sometimes lighted by a laser, sometimes natural light is enough, like on a credit card), and any image you see will be framed by the borders of that screen.
I can think of nothing worse than having a future phone implanted and being stuck with a 2 year AT&T plan in some place like San Francisco!! Heck with an implant you might be stuck with that carrier for life or till you have it surgically removed!!
I need it to be able to run System Shock - I've been trying for a while, and damned if I can get it going any other way.
Or telekick, with auto nut aiming.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
What about foldable screens? Even better - foldable touch screens, not the kind of iPod "touch", which is a lot worse than a normal keyboard, but with real touch feedback. That's what I hope will eventually come out of Nokia's Morph project, in a few decades or so!
If I'm going to have to listen to you yammer how the doctor had to poke and prod and insert a tube in your grandpa's rear end to no avail, I might as well get close captioning to the conversation as well. Why miss the other half of the dialogue?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Google makes Android. Google is making Chrome OS. Google could make it extremely easy for your "desktop", email, voicemail, Waves, IM, etc. is all easily accessed from basically the same interface from multiple devices.
Microsoft is terrified for a reason.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
No. This is by far the most ridiculous notion i've heard in forever. The fact that you want to do away with the FCC is absolute ludicrous. If the FCC went away with no organization of similar nature replacing it then wireless devices would move more towards being useless than being improving like you so claim.
It would be complete anarchy with everyone broadcasting signals left and right, up and down, in and out. Nothing would get through the shit storm of signals. On the wireless front everyone would just be trying to broadcast their signals with more power and it would end up being a wireless pissing contest. Frequency hopping is useless if everyone is spaming every single frequency.
I for one am glad the FCC partitions spaces for things like TV, radio, ham, cordless phones and what have you because I'd much rather have them be put into a limited spectrum than spewing out their signals all over the place. I certainly don't want to be on the plane that gets a broadcast of American idol instead of instructions from ATC.
Oh, and just because YOU don't have a TV at home doesn't mean EVERYONE doesn't have a TV at home. Just because YOU don't listen to the radio in the car doesn't mean EVERYONE doesn't. Stop being so goddamn selfish.
The 1987 anime Daimajuu Gekitou Hagane No Oni clearly shows us what cellphones will be like in the future:
http://i29.tinypic.com/2cfd1f4.jpg
I simply can't wait to get my hands on such a technical marvel. Compact, functional and incredibly stylish - it makes me wish I was born in the future.
To be fair, the device did show similarities to a modern smart phone in terms of functionality, so while the producers were a bit off the mark with the design their vision of a future mobile phone was fairly accurate.
I wrote this blog-post a while ago with the idea that the iPhone could be a potential thin client. Obviously there's no reason to limit it to one hardware manufacturer but I believe that enabling one to carry your personal data with you at all time and interface it through a server when visiting an office, working from home or any other location would be a great thing. http://garnser.blogspot.com/2009/07/iphone-next-potential-thin-client.html
In the far future, we will pick a phone from the phone tree, make a call and eat the phone afterward.
On my 3G phone (I'm on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, shared via my lovely Cradlepoint router on-the-go even), I can watch TV on-demand. I can listen to music, on-demand. I can read my websites, send my emails, talk via Google voice/Gizmo5 VoIP, send SMS via Google Voice, etc
To me this reads like BnL Hell without the hoverchairs.
Borg borg borg borg borg .....
They were connected in the hive via cell-phone technology.
1. Make some lame comparison between cell phones and pocket watches.
2. Wait 20 years.
3. ???
4. Prophet.
Lord, I hate responding to ACs.
You're going to have anarchy (read: lack of a ruler), but you won't have CHAOS. Big difference.
First of all, to transmit on wide ranges of frequencies at high power costs a TON of money in electricity. I've researched what a radio station (5000 watts) alone has to pay for a slim band of frequency, and it's not trivial at all.
The reality is that in the biggest chaos, it isn't the strongest that survive, it's generally the weakest groups that make it. Look at hurricanes (VERY strong, but don't last) versus slightly windy weeks. It's not the strong that maintain for long.
In the airwaves industry, we have so many proofs of things going right. I know people will cry foul if I say "What about WiFi?" but with WiFi, we have a VERY slim band of frequency that is working VERY well except in the most congested areas. What, in those areas, we had tripled the amount of frequency range? What if we quadrupled it? Again, it's the State's regulations, not WiFi, that breaks that most congested area.
All those people who have TV and radio now would still have it, but they'd get it on-demand, a la carte. Broad-casting is efficient only in spectrum, it is terribly inefficient in time scheduling. It's lost completely in terms of data analysis to see who is watching/listening to what and when (Nielsen is a failure, really). Since few people can truly watch TV, listen to the radio, talk on the phone, and browse the web at the same time efficiently, most of the spectrum in their given area set for a given service is WASTED. When you are watching TV in your living room, what is happening to all the AM and FM spectrum? Wasted. Cell phone channels? Wasted. It's endless to think of the spectrum being wasted in your given area right now with useless transmissions that are actually using energy to be transmitted to you and not received.
We won't need 50,000 watt radio stations anymore, when a 2 watt transmitter/receiver in your locale will cover so much more, so much more efficiently. And what if no one is using a given set of frequencies at a given time? We can throttle back the transmitter power -- saving energy, saving money.
I say bring on the anarchy, it'll REDUCE the chaos. Especially in terms of the airwaves.
Unless you're a younger Arthur C. Clarke, your predictions about the future will be mostly wrong.
How about a couple of possible scenarios:
1. Sex-bots and direct stimulation of the brain will become feasible. So people will spend their lives in virtual environments, and human-to-human interaction will become obsolete, so people won't need cellphones. But poorer countries won't be able to afford the technology. So, we'll establish perimeters of military robots around wealthy nations. The people living in these countries will die out. The people in poorer countries will keep breeding, and either continue the human species, or be slaughtered by the wealthy nations' military robots.
2. People will get so sick of virtual realities and annoying electronic gizmos, that we'll revert to a simpler lifestyle focused on good food and human relationships.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I can imagine a similar discussion in 1875: "What will telegraphs look like in the future?"
1876 will see the introduction of the telephone and the modern typewriter. I believe also the modern stock ticker.
The stock ticker requires synchronization across a network. There were a lot of folks - like the railroads - interested in "precision" time and other services.
The basic tech is then in place for a telex service:
Keyboard entry Mechanical printers. Punch tape or ribbon for data storage and transmission.
That brings you pretty close to Hollerith's tabulating machine.
The first class hotel in those days had elaborate electro-mechanical signaling systems for room service orders.
Successful voice transmission implies practical multiplex telegraphy. Facsimile and mechanical television awaits only the invention of the "electric eye."
The theoretical foundation might be a little weaker - but you are probably going to see practical wireless communication pretty quickly.
I think the best outcome would be to have just augmented reality glasses (like in DennÅ Coil (éèãããf)) that can show you content, let you make a phone call with gesture, and keeps all the data in the cloud. :)
Convenient, easy to use, fun
Though I have to admit, some gestures for placing calls could look somewhat dorky. But then, so can be the sight of someone pecking at the virtual keyboard to type a long message...
Hyperom.com
Amy: "I swallowed my phone again!"
But in reality, it seems to be going the other way, towards larger (but thinner) phones. If this trend continues; by 2050 cellphones will twice as powerful, be as big as football fields, but only a few nanometers thick. And only Europe's three richest kings will be able to afford them.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The powerful would win (as always) because they can drown you out!
We have technology TODAY that allows for frequency hopping, for signal strength negotiation, for handling multiple devices on the same frequencies/channels, etc.
None of which will be likely to work in the event of a catastrophe that knocks out power and communications infrastructure. But a simple analog radio transmitter will run on a backup generator, and the signal is easily deciphered by the most simple and common technology, using a wide range of power sources, from a dry cell to a car battery, a hand crank, a potato with a couple of electrodes stuck in it, or even a crystal set with no power source other than the radio transmission itself.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I truly don't think he's saying that they should shut down TV and radio and blah blah blah...
That appears to be exactly what he is saying in his last paragraph - that they should fail. And throughout the rest of the post is a similar flavor of ranting against the evil FCC and the pointlessness of anything except his vision of high-tech digital media.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Maybe it is in there but I missed it, but having an FM receiver would be good as well. I saw the transmitter, presumably to stream tunes to your car radio. Besides that...ultimate portable pocket computer. For around a thousand bucks...guess I'll have to wait a few years before they are on the used market, but still..nice. Thanks for the URL.
One of the obvious extensions is a cell phone that's entirely in a headset. No display at all; everything is voice-operated. Preferably with an interface that's at least as smart as Wildfire, not the voice input crap shipping with current headsets. (Wildfire is ten year old technology. It was in use for a while, but took too much CPU power. Microsoft bought it, did little with it, and sold it off. It needs a redo with current voice recognition technology and lower cost.)
Ideally, this should be shrunk down to earring size and not require recharging.
It should also include audio player capabilities, again with no button-pushing, like an iPod Shuffle, only better.
I'm still waiting for my flying car. This other futuristic stuff can wait until then.
As long as they never go retro, who cares?!?
It may not be such a far future as you imagine.
I recently swapped my trusty old Nokia N95 for a shiny new HTC Magic running Android. Android is closely tied to many of Googles services (mail, calendars, contacts) and within the remit of those I can either edit on the phone screen or login at any convenient computer with a net connection and make use of the bigger screen and keyboard. It's all automatically and pretty much instantly synchronised with the phone through any available pre-configured or open wifi point or 3g/gprs.
As a long time lurker here I know there are mixed feelings about trusting your data to Googles servers but the practical day to day benefits for me are great. As you describe above, the device itself is frankly completely replaceable. If I lose or break it, I can pick up another one (lets imagine away the insurance business for a second), sign in, and I'm back to where I was. Thanks to Android market I can quickly replace all my software too.
I keep fairly up to date on mobile tech and I read a lot of talk about programs to do push email, exchange servers, outlook syncing etc. but I'm not a corporate worker, I don't have the backing of a company IT department, it's just my personal phone and my personal data so having that seamless sync experience and the choice to use any handy browser to interact with the most important stuff on my phone is quite a step up.
The N95 was a brilliant handset and was (potentially) capable of so much, but it suffered from a badly outdated interface and very random and spotty software support. It did raise the bar for hardware specs when it came out, in much the same way that the iphone has raised it for the user interface and overall experience. Both of them forced other manufacturers to respond. I feel that Android/Google is/are raising the stakes for connectedness and taking us a big step closer to the future you describe.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops.
First of all, to transmit on wide ranges of frequencies at high power costs a TON of money in electricity. I've researched what a radio station (5000 watts) alone has to pay for a slim band of frequency, and it's not trivial at all.
They transmit at such a high power so as to achieve good coverage over the entire city they're serving. If the signal only had to be heard over a radius of a few kilometres or less, such as with a cell tower, then the tramsit power could be reduced greatly. Although FM is not a particularly power-efficient or bandwidth-efficient modulation scheme (in fact, considering the large guard bands between FM radio channels, the overall bandwidth efficiency is pretty bad), but 5kW power consumption is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Heck, a typical air conditioning unit consumes about 1kW. I'm pretty sure some FM transmitters use up to 10s or 100s of kW, but that's still probably less than your average office building.
The reality is that in the biggest chaos, it isn't the strongest that survive, it's generally the weakest groups that make it. Look at hurricanes (VERY strong, but don't last) versus slightly windy weeks. It's not the strong that maintain for long.
The analogy flew over my head completely.
In the airwaves industry, we have so many proofs of things going right. I know people will cry foul if I say "What about WiFi?" but with WiFi, we have a VERY slim band of frequency that is working VERY well except in the most congested areas. What, in those areas, we had tripled the amount of frequency range? What if we quadrupled it? Again, it's the State's regulations, not WiFi, that breaks that most congested area.
Eh? The Wifi band (2.4 to ~2.5 GHz) is about 100 MHz in width. By no means is that "very slim" in any sense of the word. By comparison, the FM radio band (88 to 108 MHz) is only 20 MHz in width. Now it's kind of apples and oranges to be comparing a long-range broadcast voice service to a short-range broadband data service, but, by any objective measure, 100MHz is a big chunk of spectrum
All those people who have TV and radio now would still have it, but they'd get it on-demand, a la carte. Broad-casting is efficient only in spectrum, it is terribly inefficient in time scheduling. It's lost completely in terms of data analysis to see who is watching/listening to what and when (Nielsen is a failure, really). Since few people can truly watch TV, listen to the radio, talk on the phone, and browse the web at the same time efficiently, most of the spectrum in their given area set for a given service is WASTED. When you are watching TV in your living room, what is happening to all the AM and FM spectrum? Wasted. Cell phone channels? Wasted. It's endless to think of the spectrum being wasted in your given area right now with useless transmissions that are actually using energy to be transmitted to you and not received.
We won't need 50,000 watt radio stations anymore, when a 2 watt transmitter/receiver in your locale will cover so much more, so much more efficiently. And what if no one is using a given set of frequencies at a given time? We can throttle back the transmitter power -- saving energy, saving money.
I say bring on the anarchy, it'll REDUCE the chaos. Especially in terms of the airwaves.
You should probably confine your arguments to bandwidth efficient spectrum utilization because the "wasted power" is, again, a drop in the bucket. Not to rain on your parade of wireless utopia via shared spectrum anarchy, but it will be a huge technological challenge to equip all wireless devices with the ability to privately negotiate channel allocations with competing devices while ensuring fairness and reliability. For example, let's say demand for cellular channels ramps up around dinner time. The spectrum is already full though, so what do you do? Users of other services will have to be heavi
The future of cellphones is pretty much neural nanionics from Peter F Hamilton's 'Nights Dawn' trilogy.
Remember the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Let the Lord of Chaos Rule
3 guys are out on the golf course, when one of them puts the palm of his hand up to the side of his head and starts talking.
After apparently carrying on a conversation with an invisible person, he puts his hand down and looks at his golf buddies.
"sorry, I got one of those new-fangled cell phones implanted in my hand." he said, "No more lugging around that bag phone for me!
As they walk to the next tee, one of the other guys is now just standing there staring straight ahead and laughing.
"sorry" he says, "I was watching a funny beer commercial on my new TV-eye Implant, am I up?"
Later at the Club House, they notice that the third guy is missing.
Nursing their drinks, they look out the window and see him squatting by a tree with his pants down making a face.
After a minute or so he stands up, pulls up his pants and heads to the Club House.
"sorry I'm late, I was getting a fax"
I like microcars
"Its just like this liquid gets into this egg"
egg explodes
"Except its gamma radiation"
the future of cellphones will be in your head, controlled by thought,as well as contactlenses that display Augmented reality, imagine a hologun to shoot virtual zombies running around your city using gps..just a thought.
Or troll, if you prefer.
I can imagine a similar discussion in 1875: "What will telegraphs look like in the future?"
Actually, the view from 1875 was surprisingly clear. Because, by 1875, telegraphy was a mature technology.
It was generally recognized that a "printing telegraph" was desirable. But it was hard to do. The House Printing Telegraph dated from 1852. Early machines had trouble staying in sync. By 1875, though, there were reasonably good printing telegraphs and stock tickers, using a design by Phelps.
The sending and receiving gear then stagnated for decades. Progress was made in transmission, but the end node technology was relatively static for years. It wasn't until 1921, with the first Teletype machines that worked, that a new technology replaced the old one. The reason was manufacturing technology. The Phelps machines had a relatively low parts count. Teletypes had perhaps 5x as many parts. Until manufacturing techniques improved, page printers were just too much machinery to build and deploy in quantity.
Once Baudot-code teletypes, with associated paper tape punches and readers, were developed, the technology started to move forward again. Messages could at last be forwarded without manual retyping. Forwarding still required people tearing off sections of paper tape from punches and moving them to readers. It wasn't until 1948 that Western Union Plan 55-A produced a fully automatic message switch. (It was entirely electromechanical, with many paper tape readers and punches, and switchgear to interconnect them. Think Sendmail built from moving parts.)
Not until 1977 did Western Union finally get rid of the last of the paper-tape switching centers. By then, telegrams were in decline anyway.
My 10 year vision/non-wagering prediction is that the cell phone becomes an identity provider, your storage device for private data, and even your OS. Monitors and all kinds of projected or OLED touch surfaces act as monitors/interfaces wherever you happen to be, tapping into the phone through something like next-gen Bluetooth. Voice recognition and wireless power transmission (to keep the cell's battery constantly charged) also improve greatly.
Ask me about my sig!
Most likely, there won't be "satellite" devices like smart phones in the future. Instead, your data will simply "follow" you around automatically and independently, allowing you to access it at any time from anywhere that's connected to whatever the internet has become by then. (Probably some elaborate cloud configuration that's built into literally everything at the nanoscopic level via a "smart dust" that acts as both a diagnostic sensory tool for whatever it's applied to and as an always-on communication terminal accessible to anyone.
In short, the world will adapt to you as needed, making the act of owning personal information/communication devices obsolete.
8==8 Bones 8==8
...not necessarily the only outcome. IMHO, I could see a lot of people more technically disinclined sticking with either whatever form a handheld user operated device might still have, or at most an Asimovian personal assistant, predicting the user's needs via advanced biometrics (robot body optional, I guess). More technically savvy might go direct a-la Ghost in the Shell or Lain, but that kind of closely linked hookup obviously has major security issues that would need to be addressed first. I haven't read any other comments, but I'm sure everyone has already dogpiled on about security so I'll leave that to persons more learned than myself...
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
Here's a humble guess, a hope and another guess:
Look at all the past predictions about the future back then, and what do you see? An extrapolation of the technology
Yeah, a 100 years ago everybody wanted what they read about in sci-fi novels: flying horses!
In the U.S., we have the slow, bureaucratic and oligarchic FCC that limits technology from acquiring near limitless spectrum/bandwidth.
I don't listen to radio in the car, so radio spectrum is useless. So much that we do today would be better suited to a HUGE amount of spectrum divvied up and utilized by every device that could hop frequencies as needed to find a clean channel, that could raise power needs when a tower is far but drop them significantly when towers are near.
Yes, if we had a small, agile, more commercial FCC who respected modern technology then they would be immune to the laws of physics and information theory (never mind that they might care about people other than you).
The AM and spans from a few hundred KHz to 1.5 MHz or so. Yuo won't get much bandwdth out of that one. I assume you know why bandwidth is called bandwidth and how it related to frequency bands. Plus have you ever disassembled a radio? The aerials in AM radious are HUGE. If you want to carry one of those around in your cell phone, be my guest...
Sure, you could make better use of the limited spectrum by using long wave digital channels. But frankly, why bother?
The same goes (but a little less so) for FM. It's still low fewquency. By the time you get up to 5GHz, the entire analog radio spectrum fits comfortably within one or two small bands.
There's just not enough space taken by radio to care about.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
As someone who used to work in the telco industry I know where certain carriers would like to see this going. One in particular sees themselves as simply a network provider and that all they want to offer to consumers. They would like to get to a point where they simply offer a small box which clips to your belt and communicates with other devices. This box provides the communication out to the real world and is the connection from your âoelocal networkâ. Think of it as a personal router. If you want to just make calls, you bring a device which looks like a phone. You want to present something, you being a screen / projector device.
> ...will there be enough spectrum to support all this?
Should be. By then all devises should use polarization modulation (google it).
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
Here's a list of capabilities for a future highly portable cell phone / computer:
a) wearable CPU and storage, about the size and weight of a watch
b) earbud for the handset and mic - inside ear and fine for jogging
c) 1-button wireless connect to a keyboard, mouse and video based on proximity
d) Audio-only prompts when not connected to a KVM device. Ask it a question, it finds the answer and reads it back to you.
e) 3 days of battery life, constantly connected
f) built in GPS
g) if you have THE sunglasses, the glasses can wirelessly connect the wearable computer and project information onto the screen.
h) FM Radio
i) Access to all the things you expect a $1500 laptop to have access
j) VPN back to YOUR server without going through a service provider
k) 1TB local disk storage that automatically retains currently worked-on files local for disconnected use.
l) remote wipe if it gets lost
m) encrypted file system
n) It works as a phone too.
Actually what's possible now already is virtual telepathy and telekinesis.
We already have humans and other primates controlling devices with just thought alone. We also have the blind seeing (just not so well), so that proves that the brain can adapt and add "input ports" (google for seeing tongue).
So just implant a brain-interface input/output interface, connect it to a computer that recognizes thought macros, and connect that computer to wireless network interfaces and other I/O devices ( cameras, microphones etc). And voila, virtual telepathy and telekinesis. You can control stuff in a room that supports it, you can instantaneously think of talking to a friend and do it, or think of sending what you see to your friend and do it.
Amongst the problems are safety, reliability, cost and of course acceptance - but kids nowadays don't seem to have any problems implanting nonfunctional crap into their bodies, so future generations might be fine once the technology is more proven.
With good augmented reality they would be an aid to increase saftey. At night the system (which can see infrared) will alert you to that deer about to bolt into the highway. Or the drunk about to run the red light from your left which you can't see but the system picks up on the vehicle transponder. Oh, and sell the foam pad company stock, the glasses just alerted you to the lamp post.
Current phones - yes, the term 'phone' is and will be used to refer to portable computers - are as big as they are because of the screen and required battery. If we could manufacture a display lens that connects to a graphics device through a hair-thin optic fiber, energy consumption goes way down, and the display devices can be mass-produced. I think calibration for individual eyes is possible, as well as backlighting these lenses for when it's dark. Just imagine the possibilities of even a low-resolution B/W overlay of the world as you now see it. Phone sized will not shrink because of this, mind you, since you don't want to lose or break yours too easily.
The other matter is the input device. However, as many of you are capable of outputting hundreds of characters per minute blindfold, I don't think that's going to be a problem in terms of bandwidth, although we would have to let go of the point-and-click interface by hand-gesturing. Perhaps a simple combination of gyroscope and focus sinks?
In terms of functionality, that really doesn't matter. We'll figure that out as we go along. Screen, mouse and keyboard have been around for ages now and we are able to do most things without a problem. When was the last time new revolutionary hardware was invented and caught on?
I see no immediate future for intrusive medical implants for display and input, as opposed to the lenses, which you can simply take out at any time. However, as more and more people are getting their eyes lasered to be done with lenses, I can imaging some people not objecting to getting the best and brightest displays this way. Then again, even today many people don't want to take the risk of something going wrong, when there is a perfectly safe alternative available.
So the mythical "free market" would take care of keeping the wireless spectrum from descending into chaos. Right...
"The commons", those parts of our community that, for a host of practical reasons, are shared by all, should always be regulated by a body that has the community's best interest as it's sole concern. Utilities, roads, navigable waters, etc. Without such regulation there is waste, corruption, and eventually, a monopoly with a stranglehold on a significant portion of the economy. Deregulating the radio spectrum, for reasons that become patently obvious upon adequate reflection (say... 10 seconds or so), is hugely stupid idea.
Spectrum? Bandwidth? Everyone seems to be forgetting the real limiting factor with cell phones... Battery life. All these fanciful ideas on what a cell phone can do or go about doing it will take power. Without a giant leap in in battery technology, you are just wishing in a jar. The amount of energy needed to support all these wonderful ideas has to be portable and last longer than two days between charges before anything can be added to current cell phone technology. How long has the electric car been waiting for battery technology to get up to a point that a car can travel 40 miles on a single charge? We need a breakthrough in battery technology before we need a breakthrough in cell phone technology.
Sig temporarily out of service.
>>I don't have a TV at home, so the TV spectrum is useless. I don't listen to radio in the car, >>so radio spectrum is useless. So much that we do today would be better suited to a HUGE amount >>of spectrum divvied up and utilized by every device that could hop frequencies as needed to >>find a clean channel, that could raise power needs when a tower is far but drop them >>significantly when towers are near.
WTF?? So you think that if you turn of the radio on the car or the TV set in your house the EM spectrum utilized by broadcasters is free until you turn the radio or TV on? Oh boy.
I would simply like a phone which works EVERYWHERE, like the satellite phones - but I hear that those companies are not with us anymore. I would like to be able to turn left or right on the street, to enter a building, or to go outside the city and still have reception. Is this too much to ask ? Whenever I'm at home, if I receive a call on the cell, I need to go on the balcony to be able to talk (but it could be inconvenient, rain, snow, and all, don't you think ?) and the house is not even made of reinforced concrete to form some kind of cage. So then if I receive a call late in the evening, in winter, I don't dress up to be able to go outside and take the call - I just take the number and call back from my landline. And I still have one year of my contract. A phone that simply works well and everywhere on this continent would be the greatest telecomm revolution.
Radio is cool. It's completely free and I can find really good music on it.
Where do you live? We have 4 ClearChannel country, 2 ClearChannel classic rock, and 2 ClearChannel greatest hits of yesterday and today stations. I have a Sirius subscription, but they keep jacking the prices and I'm letting it lapse. Guess I'll be surfing Pandora to find new music from now on.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I listen to the radio.
You sir, a survey of society does not make.
Why is it that because you don't listen to the radio, it is useless?
I suppose if you don't use it then it is useless henceforth the definition, but again its useless to them as the same reason a survey of society a single person does not make for them either.
Radio is cool. It's completely free and I can find really good music on it. For free. No payments necessary to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint.
I'd like to know which radio stations you have access to that have good music on these days? I'm serious... All I get on the dial is Clear Channel crap and radio talk shows. There is NRP and college radio but often hard to get a station to come in if out of the city limits.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Radio is cool. It's completely free and I can find really good music on it.
No such thing as good music on the radio. Seriously.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
IMHO, among the best post-cyberpunk style science fiction series to explore this, among other concepts, in recent years has been the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series. The "cyber brain" conversations combined with "external memory" (think of it like an off site storage, backup and messaging server for your mind) really takes man machine integration to its final logical conclusion: making or receiving voice and video communications remotely is as easy as initiating thoughts to do so. Although, I do think that the series is a bit too optimistic on how soon all of this will actually come about (i.e. by 2030).
Nokia's Morph concept phone provides some interesting insight into the future of phones.
See subject
whats the saying again, its easier to build a jammer then a transmitter?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
young dumb and fullo cum? all that 'useless' spectrum you mention still would not get everyone on the internet; not to mention, who will invest in the infrastructure? you understand neither the tech nor the finance, you are making a complete ass of yourself. the FCC sells the spectrum so that someone has a chance to make a return on the infrastructure. are the utube amatuers going to build 100GbE backhaul? spectrum is not limitless idiot
I mostly listen to classical music. When I try to find contemporary rock-ish style music, you're right... hard to find good stuff. Same with jazz. I found an "oldies" jazz station recently though. Good stuff.
Nope, I don't make a survey of society. Neither does he. So, I responded to his survey of one with my survey of one. I'd say that's a valid response to the original argument.
It's not useless if one person finds it useful. Unless we are taking a postmodernist approach to a public item or service's usefulness, which won't work too well...
NRP or NPR? I'm not sure which you meant. I'm not a huge fan of NPR. Anyways, I typically listen to classical music, and there are two stations near me that play it. I also listen to rock or country occasionally, and I grant that it's hard to find good ones there.... lots of channel surfing. I like talk radio and listen to it occasionally. I also listen to jazz stuff and recently found a good station that plays the more traditional big band stuff that I like, as well as other "old" jazz styles. Not a fan of newer fusion-ish stuff.