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IBM Projects Holographic Phones, Air-Driven Batteries
geek4 writes "In 2015, we will be using mobile phones that will project a 3D holographic image of callers, claims IBM in a list of predictions of future technologies culled from a survey of 3,000 IBM scientists. 3D displays are also the focus of work between Intel and Nokia in the development of a holographic interface. Cities heated by servers and advanced city traffic monitoring are also listed as being among the prevalent technologies of the next five years, according to a Bloomberg article."
Instead of asking 3,000 people, what they should have done is ask the 3,000 people to pick the 10 smartest and THEY should have made some educated guesses.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Everything Must GO!
Get Bebe Neuwirth and Kim Cattral on the phone!
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Flying cars and cities on the moon within 50 years...
Sorry, Ayn Rand was confused about physics, but I thought IBM would be better.
They should survey their patent attorneys. Nothing goes out without their stamp.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I bet in the future there may be a way to make Linux work with drivers my scanner. Just a prediction. I know it's way out there.
Seriously, video calling has been possible for years. But (other than webcam chat) no-one does it.
This is because we don't actually WANT people to see us when we've just got out of bed, or we're doing something on the computer at the same time.
Man these guys have no idea about how people act. That's the problem with getting nerds to guess the future.
THAT I can believe. You should have seen this year's HVAC bill.
Regards;
...that this article is baseless fantasy. Half of it's gibberish: what does "cities heated by servers," even mean? The other half ignores what's known to be possible, with the holographic projections popping out of phones within four years being the most obvious clanger. How's that supposed to work? Like in Star Wars, of course, which is to say only as a special effect in a movie.
Mind the Gap
Most 3D projector cell phones will run on ethanol.
We already have advanced traffic monitoring, at least in my city. As soon as I even think of doing anything not pre-approved with my internet connection, the speed drops to almost zero. Or is this one of those newfangled car analogies?
In 2007, Bloomberg notes, IBM was bullish on online immersive environments like Second Life. Big Blue certainly put its patent efforts where its predictions were - 250+ published IBM patent applications mention 'avatar' or 'avatars'.
If even because privacy problems, holographic display of information (a la star wars, at least) probably won't happen. But not so technologically disruptive glasses where you display to the wearer information, would be able to be 3d, augmented reality or HUD like displays, shouldnt be so far.
Aren't cell phones annoying enough as it is without people projecting the person on the other end in my face?
When you have finished this cup of coffee your adventure will begin again.
I'm still waiting for my flying car and meal as a pill.
You are waiting for meal as a pill? I feel bad for you.
bash$
It's pathetic: we have more and more functionality crammed into so-called "smartphones", but the sound quality (emission & reception) is still crap...
Oops, sorry, I forgot. Phones are made for apps, not longer for conversations. Sorry, my bad.
Sad.
I can get zinc-air hearing aid batteries at my pharmacy!
Screw meal as a pill. I want the opposite.
I want huge whole meals that have the caloric content of something the size of a pill. I love eating, but if I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, I'd be 300lbs. I wanna be able to eat and eat and not gain weight, and so does most of America.
IBM sure did have RFID pegged right......
10 MD
"You are waiting for meal as a pill? I feel bad for you."
If the alternative is Soylent Green, which do you choose?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
These guys are crazy. They live in a ultra-high-tech fantasy bubble world. In the real world, where we all must live, there will be either little difference between 2015 and now (if we're lucky) or things will be a lot worse for some of us and a little worse for most of us.
Technological advancement is peaking. The 20th century, the era-when-everything-happened is over. It was an aberation caused by huge amounts of cheap petroleum energy. With cheap oil depleting, the huge technology positive-feedback loop slows and stops.
Plus there isn't any money. The banking system is fundamentally broken, nobody trusts that due-process rule-of-law applies to the financial sector anymore. And one-by-one all the industries in the USA are going down like the housing industry in a chain reaction. Government will frozen and powerless to do anything to stop it from happening.
The 20th century was the era of focused positive-feedback technological advancement. The 21st century is the era of entropy; things falling apart; the center can not hold.
Forget it
Firstly, the infrastructure to measure traffic flow patterns is being created as we speak. Every smartphone with a GPS can act as a sensor.
The political will is there, largely due to the desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Authorities should try to disincentive drivers to drive when peaks are predicted. It may take the form of toll charges being continually adjusted or it may take the form of free parking. But even without them, a mere warning from their smartphone will lead some drivers to reschedule or reroute.
Are holograms visible outside? Because I'd really appreciate a cell phone that was usable in the sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
I'm sorry to disappoint you but they put the meal-as-a-pill idea on hold.
This is because the fastest, most economical meal turns out to be a rectal bolus.
Analysts saw difficulties in pushing this forward, marketers were constipated
for ideas as well and decision makers thought that the research may have gotten
their results backwards.
Why not try bulimia? It does exactly what you want and it's available right now.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
... is all those holographic phones and air batteries to be powered by WebSphere.
Zinc-air battery
IntelliDrive
BlueTOAD Traffic Flow Sensors
Miami I-95 Managed Express Lanes
I want to ascend beyond eating
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Every advanced Tech will eventually be used as a cat toy. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1828
I am waiting for intersection that do not have traffic lights or signs because every car will know where every other car is that is within a hundred yards of it and will adjust its speed to avoid a collision at the intersection. I waiting for cell phone that once placed in a base will connect all the other cordless phones one has in their home. I can remember when most homes had only one phone and it cost extra to get another one in the house. It seems we have gone back to that era except when the cell phone leaves the house there are now no phones unless everyone in the family has there own cell phone. I am waiting for a cell phone that can easily vnc into any computer in the world. One should be able to control their home computer from anywhere in the world. I am waiting for race track memory. Maybe a trillion bytes of non-volatile ram memory so that hard drives are a thing of the past. Cell phone should need very little memory since they should be able to access all the programs on the home computer and exchange any data that is needed. I think my examples are a lot more useful than those in that article.
Obligatory Flying Cars. (Is IBM still making a "different kind of software"?)
If the current cheap phones had perfect support for 3d-holos of the caller for free already today, I still wouldn't really use it...
Actually, this system is already in place, in Europe. Tomtom has an agreement with a large european mobile phone company, and receives anonymized information about the speed and location of mobile phones of this provider. This enables them to indicate traffic jams even on minor roads.
Their navigation system receives both the official TMC signals, as this data, and uses it to calculate the most efficient route to destination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TomTom#HD_Traffic
"Meal as a pill" almost exists, in the form of nutrition bars. Not the supplemental bars that athletes use but the complete "everything you need except water and most calories" bars that you can quite safely eat exclusively for several weeks in a row. Most commonly used for VLCD diets when you eat only 600-800 kcal/day for 1-2 months. I've tried it and you are actually (very) hungry only the first 3 days or so. Then your stomach gets used to the lack of volume and since you get about all the nutrients you need your body isn't screaming for more.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Got $2000? Then you can buy yourself a terrabyte of non-volatile, flash drives and the high speed controller chips to make them work.
Not pocket change, but I bet you can afford it if you sacrificed elsewhere.
The car thing is physically doable, but thanks to another parasite on society (lawyers/the U.S. legal system) it's unfeasible. (because even if fully automated cars were 10 times safer, plaintiff lawyers would sue the pants off the company that made the cars every time someone DID die)
The phone thing...very doable, using several methods. Just turn the cell phone off when you get to the house (or use an app running on the phone to do this automatically) and forward your calls to a VoIP box in the house.
Remote desktop lets you control a computer remotely for years. It's not anything new.
And the final comment : that is impractical due to software architecture constraints. And it makes for a more reliable phone if the phone can keep functioning the moment it loses link to the computer, because the computer crashed or whatnot. But, come to think of it, it IS possible.
"..mobile phones that will project a 3D holographic image of callers.."
Will this be as huge a success as the videophones? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videophone
...we promise...
Personally, I want the kind of meal in a pill they have in The Fifth Element. Put the pill in a big bowel, stick it in the thing that looks like a microvave, shut the door, two seconds later DING! and there's a turkey dinner. Sure would beat the hell out of cooking!
Free Martian Whores!
Put the pill in a big bowel!
!!!
I don't remember any suppository use in that film..!
The phone thing already exists. Uses household phone wiring and standard wireless pots phones. No one wants them though. Everyone has their own cellphone these days.
My phone runs vnc just fine.
Here. But at least you waited almost a month, rather than a couple days! Maybe Slashdot is getting better...
That is all.
Got $2000? Then you can buy yourself a terrabyte of non-volatile, flash drives and the high speed controller chips to make them work.
Not pocket change, but I bet you can afford it if you sacrificed elsewhere.
He asked for RAM, meaning system memory, not storage. As fast as the SSDs may be they are still orders of magnitude slower than RAM.