Your future Technology/Gadget Hopes.

[QUOTH]

What do you predict/hope will come in the future? At the moment mobile computing, wifi and HD seem to be everywhere, but what will be next? Or do you think the world will crumble due to lack of fossil fuels/WW III and we will revert to preindustrial age?

Personally I'm interested Virtual Reality. There has been experiments where a man has been able to control a robotic hand, and feel when the hand touches something through a wireless connection to the nerves in his arm. I'm curious if this technology can be advanced [with decades of work] to send information through the nerves for all the senses. Basically the matrix. If some one knows what I'm talking about could you give me a link?

I also think that a mobile phone which monitors your health [and sends an email for help in emergencies] should be invented.


So post your ideas/hopes, or discuss the technical details of someone elses.


Spin off threads welcome [post links] as well as detailed webpages on your subject if you want.

Q

 

[rhino56]

AI like in terminator, that would be pretty awesome, skynet ...MMMMMMMMMM

 

[Goosemaster]

for the immediate future I foresee an unabated increase in mind-numbingly-inane content creation for both business and consumer markets, increased storage capacity and storage device speed, and a decrease in the use of mechanical parts, and finally, an increase in the wireless accessibility of this information.

right now the internet seems like it is full of itself. information is being created at such a fantastic and reckless pace, and most everything seems hellbent on facilitating that.

if anything, for me, the most valuable thing the future may hold is something that I already have; a means to find the information I need: a good search engine.
I just hope it can keep up.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: rhino56
AI like in terminator, that would be pretty awesome, skynet ...MMMMMMMMMM

yeah...it would suck for everyone but the terminators though

 

[Snapster]

Originally posted by: QUOTH
What do you predict/hope will come in the future? At the moment mobile computing, wifi and HD seem to be everywhere, but what will be next? Or do you think the world will crumble due to lack of fossil fuels/WW III and we will revert to preindustrial age?

Personally I'm interested Virtual Reality. There has been experiments where a man has been able to control a robotic hand, and feel when the hand touches something through a wireless connection to the nerves in his arm. I'm curious if this technology can be advanced [with decades of work] to send information through the nerves for all the senses. Basically the matrix. If some one knows what I'm talking about could you give me a link?

I also think that a mobile phone which monitors your health [and calls for help in emergencies] should be invented.


So post your ideas/hopes, or discuss someone elses.

I'm not sure I would want a mobile phone to do that. Anyway they have almost similar applications already in development, basically intelligent clothing which measure your body temperature, heart rate etc. The missing link is the automatic dial for help, with your location and medical history. Of course the storage of that information will be a huge bridge to cross.....

I'd love some sort of hud unit or retina projection where I could display various information on, i.e. info on who I?m calling, traffic reports, anything I wanted. Which ties into the following....

Geekwise I'd love more visual/virtual tools to aid database models and programming, efficiency could be massively increased here. Imagine being able to model environments and db models in semi/VR and manipulate them. This could then be translated into the necessary output needed to display the same outcome to the end users of a system, possibilities are endless here.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Snapster

Geekwise I'd love more visual/virtual tools to aid database models and programming, efficiency could be massively increased here. Imagine being able to model environments and db models in semi/VR and manipulate them. This could then be translated into the necessary output needed to display the same outcome to the end users of a system, possibilities are endless here.

:beer:

It's been toyed with in movies for decades, and perhaps it would be impractical for anything but high-level analysis and relationship management, but damn that would be cool.

*grabs a $FOODITEM for lunch *



<---can't wait for his very own weighted companion cube:heart:

 

[Cold Steel]

I want a holodeck.

But seriously........ I want a holodeck.

I think that as computing power increases, virtual reality is more and more a real possibility. Holodeck in my lifetime? Probably not. But I can see things going in that direction.

 

[ktehmok]

All I want is a hologram of me that will go to work so I can go camping all week long.

 

[IronWing]

3D video cameras for the average user. Yes, you can make your own now, but it is a pain. particularly editing. I want to be able to go on a hike with a dorky pair of cameras mounted to my head. When I get home I want to watch a 3D movie of that hike with minimum fuss. Super macro capability is a must for the system.

 

[QUOTH]

Originally posted by: Cold Steel
I want a holodeck.

But seriously........ I want a holodeck.

I think that as computing power increases, virtual reality is more and more a real possibility. Holodeck in my lifetime? Probably not. But I can see things going in that direction.

I never understood the holodeck. OK, you project an image on the walls cieling and floor, and a image around a force field for anything you touch, but what stops you from walking into walls :S is the floor a treadmill? How does it stop you feeling of change in velocity? Inertial dampeners? [and don't even get me started on the next gen mistakes]


VR. Like I said twoway signals between computer and brain. You think about moving a cursor, the cursor moves. You can be sat in a room which is a sphere of screens, and you have no body, or you can call up any picture on demand. Or you can be playing crisis, whatever. I really need to read more on this, see if I'm talking nonsense and where they are upto...

 

[JohnCU]

i want a robot woman that looks/feels/smells like a real one

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: JohnCU
i want a robot woman that looks/feels/smells like a real one

Marry a Lutheran.

 

[sonambulo]

Much better search engines. Bigger, cheaper monitors, bigger cheaper storage space, cheaper tablets. Wireless portable device charging and I'd like the chargers to be able to connect to the network and share information.

 

[Muse]

There's a lot that's going to happen that we can't predict. I think that in 80-120 years the average life expectancy will be 104, at least in developed nations. Of course, that depends on things not going haywire.

I see advances in mass transportation coupled with ultimate restructuring and rethinking of the environment. It will all be very different in 100 years. In 300 years, what we're doing now will for the most part be regarded as very antiquated and quaint.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Within the next few years, hard drives will be completely obsolete except for huge storage banks - all regular computer storage will be flash. Also, the CPU and GPU will be on the same chip and will perform physics processing - that's why AMD bought ATI.

As for gaming, I want genre blending! Give me a gavme where I can go from an RTS Civ perspective to a soldier on the battlefield.

 

[QUOTH]

Originally posted by: sonambulo
Much better search engines. Bigger, cheaper monitors, bigger cheaper storage space, cheaper tablets. Wireless portable device charging and I'd like the chargers to be able to connect to the network and share information.

Heard about wireless chargers? A coil of metal in the device and charger. Place the device on the charger and it charges. The hope is to have 1 universal charger in your home for all your tech.

On the subject of big cheap monitors, look at plasticlogic. Low power images, super thin and light, flexible and super cheap [think video adverts on cereal boxes, bus's, building walls]. ATM they are just low resolution black and white, but they are working on colour and video.

youtube

 

[everman]

The Singularity

 

[altonb1]

Flying cars

 

[Mermaidman]

Cure for Alzheimer's. (I was going to say cure for cancer, but we all know that it'll lead to vampire zombies and the end of the civilization as we know it.)

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

A practical, consumer use for carbon nanotubes/nanowires. It seems every month somebody discovers a potential use for nanotechnology, like higher capacity batteries or more efficient solar panels. But a readily available product is perpetually 5-10 years off.

 

[duragezic]

I think with touch screens that it would be cool to have a new UI on computers and portable electronics. The basic Windows desktop hasn't changed much and probably isn't the most effective way of doing things. As more and more information is available to us and on our computing devices (storage space always increases a ton, probably will continue to as needed for so much information), we'll need better ways to access it.

Hopefully cool stuff with nanotech. We've all heard of how it is so big and granted new tech takes a while to get going... I'd just like to see what exactly it can do for us.

And definitely friggin' faster broadband. All this streaming, video on demand, digital downloads stuff means nothing if we're all stuck paying $60/mo for 3-5mbps down and 256-512kbps up.


edit: Sort of related but not, but anyway I found it funny. A friend of my graduated last month and moved out to his new house where he got a job in Arizona. The place was completely empty and unfurnished, so he had to buy washer, dryer, stove, freezer, everything (although he got a a nice chunk of relocation money). He told me his clothes washer has a multi-color, ~4" LCD display. A FRIGGIN' WASHER? I guess I don't see how tons of technology can really do much with that. The most it could have is two knobs and a couple of buttons, but many just have a single knob. And when stuff like that breaks... well I don't think the old fellow doing appliance repair is going to know how to fix that.

 

[Hyperlite]

i want to see solar paint come to life. flexible solar sheets are now live, and much testing has been done on solar paint. hopefully within the next ten years it will be come a reality. For now, i want a 3.5G or 4G iphone running android or WM7 with a slide out keyboard.

 

[QUOTH]

Aparently in Japan the braodband is much much faster, and much cheaper. Over here in the UK theres alot of controversy over advertising for broadband. Provider says "Upto X" and noone gets nearly that much, no matter what time of day.

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line service was started by a venture company, Tokyo Metallic in 1999. After this NTT started and some other companies followed. In 2001, SoftBank started ADSL (12 Mbit/s) service. It was a shocking event, because the price was around only 3000 yen (30US$), which was half the cost of other companies and aggressive marketing campaigns led to their capturing of large shares of the market. Competitors and Softbank each dropped prices in a price war and repeatedly readied higher speed services to entice customers (12 Mbit/s 24 Mbit/s, 50 Mbit/s). In 2004, Japan had the best cost to performance ADSL service in the world (50 Mbit/s, 35US$) which it held on to in the successive years.

So jelous

 

[ja1484]

Hovertoilets.

Obviously.

 

[MegaVovaN]

Teleporter.