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Ask Slashdot: What Is Missing In Tech Today?
dryriver writes: There is so much tech and gadget news pouring out of the internet every day that one might think "everything tech that is needed already exists." But of course, people thought precisely that at various points in human history, and then completely new tools, technologies, processes, designs, devices and innovations came along soon after and changed everything. Sometimes the opposite also happens: tech that was really good for its day and used to exist is suddenly no longer available. For example, many people miss the very usable Psion palmtop computers with their foldout QWERTY keyboards, touchscreens, and styluses; or would have liked the Commodore Amiga with its innovative custom chips and OS to continue existing and evolving; or would have liked to be able to keep using software like Softimage XSI or Adobe Director, which were suddenly discontinued.
So here is the question: what tech, in your particular profession, industry, personal area of interest, or scientific or academic field, is currently "missing?" This can be tech that is needed but does not exist yet, either hardware or software, or some kind of mechanical device or process. It could also be tech that was available in the past, but was EOL'd or "End Of Lifed" and never came back in an updated or evolved form. Bonus question: if what you feel is "missing" could quite feasibly be engineered, produced, and sold today at a profit, what do you think is the reason it isn't available?
So here is the question: what tech, in your particular profession, industry, personal area of interest, or scientific or academic field, is currently "missing?" This can be tech that is needed but does not exist yet, either hardware or software, or some kind of mechanical device or process. It could also be tech that was available in the past, but was EOL'd or "End Of Lifed" and never came back in an updated or evolved form. Bonus question: if what you feel is "missing" could quite feasibly be engineered, produced, and sold today at a profit, what do you think is the reason it isn't available?
Open standards are what we're missing. Things like Apple's AirDrop provide a rich tool for sharing all kinds of content, but only within the Apple ecosystem. Tools like this and others can only truly be useful when they are open and interoperable with the majority of devices on the market. Closed ecosystems are limiting the potential for technology to improve communication across the board and eliminate paper.
The premise of summary is silly. I NEVER think "everything tech that is needed already exists." To the contrary, I am frustrated at how much stuff isn't available yet. WERE IS MY FLYING CAR!?!?! Where is my household robot? It is 2018, and I still need to manually load the dishwasher, and take out the garbage. WTF? How about a voice assistant that actually understands reality? How about really good telepresence so I don't have to go to work? How about a vacation on the moon? I could list a zillion other things.
Privacy.
I can't give you an answer for general tech, but medical tech would be greatly advanced by the ability to put people into suspended animation.
Basically, if the person's body isn't *operating* - needing to breathe, needing to circulate, and so on - then repairs could be done much more effectively and cheaply,
I read where gunshot victims would be suspended temporarily as an experimental method a couple of years back.
Whatever happened to that?
Perhaps a combination of sudden hypoothermia coupled with sulphur dioxide treatment or something.
* Standard form factor for making upgrade-able smartphones-esq devices. (oh capitalism)
* Large MEMS based displays. (Apple bought the patents but who knows if they are developing it)
* Consumer-grade ASIC lithography and chip packaging. (are custom 20um chips too much to ask for?)
* Inexpensive microinverters for solar panels. (price fixing?)
* Solid-state lithium-ion batteries. (in development)
The list goes on and on but those are some big ones.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
All the different architectures and types of computers were fun. There was diversity. Now it's a boring pile of largely the same stuff. Even the internet and computer networking was fun, and now it's just a pile of bullshit group-think, and advertising.
Wanna read something FUN? Look up DTACK-GROUNDED, or early BYTE magazines. That's FUN to read. It's opinionated, slightly crazy, full of technical details and piles of fun.
If anyone knows of similar sorts of stuff being written now, please post a link!
Privacy. Every asshole corp. is trying to bleed you for data they can sell.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
A box I put in my basement with a bunch of hard drives. I turn it on and configure a couple of things via a web UI. I download clients onto all of my devices and aim them at the box, and they all automatically get backed up. I open a port on my router and my phones/laptop/tablets do incremental backups OTA via encrypted tunnel. The box has a couple of removable drives I can swap out and keep off site. There's an option to mirror in the cloud - encrypted on my side, for a nominal fee.
There are things that do some of the above for some devices. There isn't anything that I know of that does them all for every device.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Um, respect for peoples' privacy, maybe? Honesty in advertising? A company that produces products without planned obsolescense? A company just trying to make good products, instead of trying to get the most out of peoples' wallets, like e.g. not selling two versions of a product where the difference is literally $3 worth of components and different firmware, but where the one with all components is then priced at $200 higher?
Oh, I dunno. To condense this, I feel like respectability is one of the things companies and the people running them that is sorely needed -- not that I expect things to change for the better in the future!
Another medical tech that we don't have is quick, multiple diagnosis elimination systems.
For example, suppose you go to the doctor feeling tired. They could draw some blood and test for (or eliminate) the 10 most common problems with that as a symptom. Flu, cold, mono, lyme, infection (other), anemia, vitamin deficiency, thyroid, allergy, and so on.
Rather than rely on reported symptoms and playing odds by trying treatments (".., and see if it goes away") we should have ways to more accurately detect or eliminate the most common conditions.
... I'll list a few things that I think ARE missing in tech. One thing that I would love is a programming language that can automatically compile to multiple OSs - Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS - without any sort of adjustment or porting happening. Hit Compile, and your software runs on a number of supported OSs. I would also love for someone to invent something like GPU BASIC, a programming language that is as easy as BASIC, but can be used to write code that runs fully parallelized on modern GPUs. In the 3D content creation space, the biggest problem right now is that different 3D apps cannot read each other's 3D scene files at all. For example, LibreOffice can read and write Word or Excel files just fine. But 3D software that costs many thousands of Dollars a license cannot pull this feat off. Maya cannot read 3DMax files, Cinema4D cannot read LightWave3D files, Houdini cannot read Blender files and so on. Its a huge pain in the ass. Nothing is compatible with each other in the 3D space. I would like more work done on visual coding interfaces like DataFlow languages, where you basically program using nodes or flowchart-like visual paradigms. DataFlow languages exist. But most are for specialized applications. I would love a DataFlow language that has all of the power and flexibility of something like C or C++. A DataFlow language that could be used to code just about anything, even an Operating System Kernel if you are so inclined. In programming, one of the things I miss is automatic porting/translation to another language and syntax, and multi-syntax programming languages. Imagine writing an algorithm in BASIC, and being able to see that algorithm instantly as C, Python or Rust code. There are a few language-to-language auto translation tools out there. But I'd love to have this built into my programming IDE. In terms of electronics and gadgets, I'd love to have a camera that can capture the world in both Stereo 3D and Volumetric 3D. Companies like Lytro are doing some pioneering work here. But the resulting film camera is huge, heavy and expensive. I'd love to have a camera like that shaped like a handycam or GoPro camera. And to finish on a more domestic note, the number one most requested domestic robot helper is a dishwashing robot. You throw your dirty dishes on a counter. The robot takes care of them. A robot that irons clothes, mops floors and clears crap off your table would be cool as well.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
where's the love?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Discernment. That is, smart people spending their time on trivial products, projects and ideas, citing an increased paycheck while one's life ticks away.
If you're older, you know what I'm talking about. Younger, and you won't understand yet, and proceed to knock me here.
Promised since the 60s!
Durability.
If I spend $1000 on a refrigerator, there may be parts that wear out and need replacement, but with only that proviso I expect it to last 10 years or more under normal conditions. If it doesn't last 8 years, it was defective to begin with.
The same goes for anything that costs $1000. The expected lifespan increases as the price increases; a car, for example, should last 20 years.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Elon Musk sent it into space.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Seriously.
Summarizing my list of unresolved axes to grind:
Netbooks and other GNU/Linux laptops Conspicuous by their absence from electronics stores are laptops certified by the manufacturer as driver-compatible with free operating systems such as GNU/Linux, especially compact laptops with screens 11.6 inch or smaller. This "netbook" segment was formally EOL'd in 2012 in favor of tablets running more limited smartphone operating systems. System76 and Purism laptops are not only larger but also mail order, which means the buyer has no chance to try the screen and keyboard before buying. More widespread support for non-SMS 2-factor authentication Pay-as-you-go cellular plans in the United States still charge for incoming calls, yet 2-factor authentication on Twitter still sends SMS for each login attempt even if the user has set up TOTP. Game mods Video game consoles still don't support community-developed extensions to gameplay, with a few highly circumscribed exceptions. Accidental music plagiarism Copyright law obligates composers to create original music as opposed to music that is too similar to something that someone else wrote. Even accidental plagiarism can lead to infringement judgments with damages on the order of a million dollars (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music), which spells sure financial ruin for small-time composers. But to my knowledge there's no search engine that a composer can put a piece of music into and see if someone else has already written and copyrighted something substantially similar. Cross-site web subscription A user is unlikely to be willing to spend $6 for an entire month's subscription to a website or a 300-pack of article views just to view a single article, putting the other 299 article views or 29.9 days of subscription to waste. It'd be better if a subscription. Google Contributor would be a start toward this, except it probably feeds subscribers' click streams back to the same company's adtech services (AdSense and DoubleClick). Ad serving that respects viewers' privacy Newspaper ads do not surveil each reader to infer a detailed interest profile specific to each reader. So why do web ads have to do so? It should be easier for website operators to sell their own ad space to advertisers, so that no ad network or ad exchange needs to snoop on readers' click streams. Rural broadband A lot of the United States is still outside the footprint of any fiber, cable, or DSL Internet provider. This means home Internet users are stuck on satellite or cellular connections, generally with a restrictive monthly cap that a household with multiple computing devices could trigger just by downloading semiannual operating system updates. Transport Layer Security (TLS) on local area networks (LANs) The Internet of Things (IOT) has no public key infrastructure (PKI). Many devices that connect to a home network expose a web-based configuration interface, such as a router, printer, thermostat, or network attached storage (NAS). But with more and more web platform features becoming available only in secure contexts (meaning HTTPS unless served from 127.0.0.1), operators of home servers will have to change them from cleartext HTTP to HTTPS. And because public certificate authorities (CAs) don't issue in the multicast DNS domain (.local), each head of household would have to buy a fully-qualified domain name for use by these devices' certificate provisioning process and keep this domain renewed. Is there an alternative to this being a huge windfall for domain registrars? Code signing Microsoft requires peripheral manufacturers toThe first thing to consider is a overarching group that supports technical workers rights and can negotiate pay.
No more unpaid interns, no more 100 hour work weeks with vague promises of future profits, companies trying to pay almost slave wages to imported labor.
On the technical side, I'd go with limitless energy. If there was enough (plus more) electrical availability for everyone, most of the worlds problems could be solved pretty quickly.
pfsense?
1> Capability based operating systems - These allow a user to control the risks associated with running a given program in a familiar and transparent manner, thus solving most maladies associated with the use of networked computing.
2> Small scale power sources- The personal kilowatt. It should be feasible to develop a small turbogenerator capable of about 1.4 horsepower, for all manner of uses.
3> Homogeneous non-Von Neuman computation (i.e. FPGA without the pain). A grid of look up tables (LUT) can do Turing complete computation without the need for complex routing decisions to fit into the confines of current FPGA architectures. This homogenity also provides flexibility in fit to any size compute core, and the ability to route-around faults in hardware. It is also possible to guarantee the security relationship of inputs and outputs on shared devices. This chips could easily perform Exaflop scale computation if widely deployed.
4> Cold fusion and/or Wiffleball Fusor - This could go a long way towards solving our dependence on fossil fuels.
5> Mesh networking on a large scale - We need to take the internet back into our hands
Abandoned Systems:
1. Transputer
The Transputer was a computer on a chip with four networking ports. You built clusters by linking one pin on one to one pin on another. That's it. You could have external memory to bring it up to whatever capacity you wanted. It ran a high-level language - Occam - at almost instruction-set level (your compiler was really an assembler). A modern version running at 3 GHz, with FPU, with multiple cores on each chip, would be incredibly powerful. No need for expensive SMP chips to run distinct CPUs, everything's on a local bus, your PC would be a lot cheaper and a lot more compact. Your smartphone would also be running at a decent speed. USB would be running at the same speed as PCI Express.
2. Processor In Memory
This is basically the Transputer turned inside-out. Instead of having your main memory on the CPU, have part of the CPU inside the memory. Reduced latency, increased performance, reduced chip count. Seymour Cray's ambition was to have MPI built into RAM. A glance at CiteseerX shows other efforts have tried to put the BLAST genetic search system into RAM. Not sure on the latter, but there are obvious benefits to putting very standard libraries there. I'd probably look at the Hoard malloc replacement (an obvious thing for RAM to take care of) and maybe something like the Oil library - very common functions that need to be very fast and everyone gets wrong.
3. Content Addressable Memory
There have been attempts to have RAM chips that could act as databases, where instead of giving a location, you gave it a key field and it would retrieve the contents regardless of where in RAM it was. CAM would be incredibly useful as an add-on to modern computers, NoSQL on a chip.
4. Postscript As A GUI
There was an attempt to build an X11 alternative, and then an X11 WM, around Postscript. If you're wanting to do vectors rather than pixels, it is a much better way to go. If you are wanting a WM for wordprocessing rather than web surfing or games, why pay the huge overhead involved in the current approach? Computers should always be about empowering choice.
5. True Mobile IP
When IPv6 was first developed, the early protocol (and so the early stacks) implemented a form of Mobile IP. This form allowed you to move from one network to another and remain connected to things. You temporarily had two IP addresses and upstream routers NATted the old one to the new one. (Which means IPv6 supported NAT, for those curious about such things.)
This was intended for car-to-car networks (which constantly shift topology), networks on trains or aircraft (since the vehicle changes hotspot) and other contexts that we've now had to invent thousands of new wheels to handle (poorly) because the technology was removed. It was removed not out of privacy concerns (we now know we were all being spied on anyway, and this might have actually increased privacy by destroying the associations we now know they were using) but because Microsoft lobbied against anything that might hurt their sales.
6. Wafer-Scale Integratrion
It is possible to place maybe 512 chips on a single wafer and disable the ones that don't work (as per Sir Clive Sinclair's idea for WSI in the 80s). That's a lot of chips. And, now we know how to cheaply make large quantities of ultra-pure Si-28, a lot of chips with a very low failure rate. You don't need to imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these, they ARE a Beowulf Cluster! A supercomputer not much larger than a DVD. Obviously, the Transputer idea would combine well with this. Or you can design it as Flash and put 11.1-channel 24-bit audio, UHDTV video onto it, have half your movie collection at a quality you can barely imagine or use on one cartridge.
7. Big, Properly-Sprung Keyboards
I hate touchscreens, I loathe the cheap plastic toys they use for computers and I totally despise laptop keyboards. Give me a well-spaced, big, keyboard where keys go thunk and Mean It. Something robust. Something that can handle my typing s
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And the means to implement privacy-respecting software: software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software.
You can't have proprietary software protect your privacy because proprietary software is inherently untrustworthy. Users are not allowed to know what it does, fix or improve the software, share copies (either verbatim copies or modified copies) to help their community, and sometimes the software is so restrictive it will refuse to let the user run or access the data the program controls access to (such as DRM schemes are designed to implement). We can have better computing that serves the public's needs but we'll have to fight for it and code for that future. We'll also have to teach people to understand what software freedom is and value software freedom for its own sake. Virtually every story on repeater sites like /. have to do with software freedom, and the shills that frequent sites like this know it. That's why they publish proprietary software-accepting/convenience-prioritizing views masquerading as something the public wants. How do we know the public wants their privacy respected? Take it from Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden in their talk almost exactly one year ago (youtube-dl and avideo can help you download this without subjecting yourself to YouTube's nonfree software)—nobody has taken up Greenwald on his offer to allow Greenwald to become their impostor by sending him the credentials to all of their accounts (no exceptions for bank accounts, social media accounts, dating website accounts, etc.). Privacy is still desired, but people aren't as computer literate as they should be to make wiser choices about electronic goods and services. Ignorance is not rejection of privacy, it's a social need going unfulfilled.
Digital Citizen
M$ MapPoint and Streets & Trips were excellent packages for creating far more detailed, customized maps and travel plans than you can create in Google Maps.
Sure, they had their drawbacks -- chief among them being the static nature of their mapping information -- but they did things that Google never replaced.
Someone should create a front-end like that for Google Maps data, so we could tailor up-to-date mapping data to meet our actual needs.
Single blade razors are not gone. I have been using them for years now. I recommend Merkur and Edwin Jagger handles (as low as $20 when on sale at Amazon). For blades, I like Derby, Shark, Astra, Personna, and Feather (in order of perceived sharpness.) Except for Feather, those are often in the range of $10 to $12 per hundred. Get a shaving bowl and badger brush, and you're ready to go.
A dingo ate my sig...
Cordless power tools typically use interchangeable lithium ion battery packs. There's a few different systems out there from Ryobi, Ridgid, Milwaukee, Makita, etc. It's not just impact hammers and drills; there are fans, radios, lights, hedge trimmers, garage door openers. Some of these companies support dozens of tools. Many of these tools see daily use by professionals, but a lot are sold to home owners and hobbyists where most of their time is spent sitting on a shelf. The battery packs are reasonably big, 70 watt-hours are not uncommon.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't offer a combination charger + uninterruptible power supply as part of their pantheon of tools. That way these battery packs could be doing something useful by providing emergency backup power to an electrical device, when they aren't being actively used in another tool.
We need to stop calling concierge services, entertainment, and financial services "tech." It was fine 20 years ago, but we're past that now.
Outside of pharma, new companies based on actual new science are few and far between. There are measures associated with this: percentage of science phds staying in science (10-15%), research efficiency (inflation adjusted economic output of $1 of "basic research" has been going down for 30 years), market segmentation of new business investment markets (lots of service apps, some bio hardware & wetware, statistically nothing starting from chemistry and physics)...
A lot of the comments here are focused on the negatives of the current label of "tech." Privacy, for example, has little to do with technology, but everything to do with marketing and advertising. Google and Facebook are now marketing and advertising companies, not tech companies. (10-20 years ago they were tech companies, but it's time to update that definition.)
There are plenty of things like solar fuel, advanced nuclear reactors, and brain interfaces that we're good enough at doing in research labs right now to commercialize. For various reasons, the economics don't work to actually invest in commercialization on science based products.
The exception is pharma, and only because the high prices of drugs in the US can sometimes give a return.
Changing the definition of "tech" won't change these economics, but right now big increases in investment in entertainment and advertising are hiding a real economic weakness in science.
Wrong is a woman showing her face in public; right is stoning her to death after she gets raped. Duh. Everyone who was raise right knows these things.
We have too many bad standards as it is.
The Linux Standard Base requires a bunch of useless crap that is applicable to only 1 overly controlling vendor (Debian distros need `rpm` to comply because Redhat) There are plenty more examples: https://refspecs.linuxfoundati...
On the opposite side, you have POSIX, which is held back by another big industry vendor (this time Oracle because Solaris) Most shells have support for a large percentage of "bashisms", yet no useful sh features have been added to the standard.
Then you have pseudo standards that are woefully un-maintained at https://www.freedesktop.org/wi... which by their own admission isn't a standards body. Half the links are either 404 or completely dead URLs
An email system that's impervious to spam.
Or, at least, that doesn't happily send a single spam message to millions of recipients.