What are some short/long term concepts of computing over say 5-20 years? Universal translaters (ala Startrek) Nanomedicine?
Quantum computers–huge performance increases.
Voice-to-voice translators are not far off now (although the type they have on ST actually learn new languages on the fly - that may still be a little way off).
That said, there was a demonstration of a voice-to-voice translator on BBC’s Tomorrow’s World a couple of years back; they were claiming something like 95% accuracy and very little need for training in most cases, however, in the best traditions of live television, the demonstration did not go smoothly…
[sup](I don’t remember the precise details but it was something like this)[/sup]
**Presenter: ** And now, Monsieur Jacques, the inventor, will speak a few words of French into the microphone…
**Inventor: ** Je suis enchantée de faire enfin votre connaissance!
**P: **(quietly, to camera) Now I don’t speak French and I haven’t been told what that means…Ah! here it comes…
**Machine: **Horse the leather get destination one bread west.
**P: **(blushing deeply) Ummm, well, it’s been working all day in rehearsals, let’s try again…
(Second verse, same as the first)
How about biocomputers (computers made of cells and proteins and the like)?
Um, it is quite impossible to predict what computers will be doing in 20 years. In 1980, NO ONE imagined what computers could be doing today - and we are looking seriously at technologies like quantum computing, biocomputers, moving away from binary, revolutionary storage medium, wireless computing, new materials, production methods… we don’t even know if computers will turn into integrated systems where there isn’t an actual COMPUTER that you sit down at, or if it will stay in the current form, or merge into something else, or if we’ll use keyboards, etc.
Short term, I don’t think that voice-text technology is going to progress much at all, much less real time voice translators, except for highly specialized instances. People have been throwing money at this for a decade with pretty much no result, since voice processing is much tougher than we anticipated and translation tools are sketchy at best. Secondly, it isn’t REALLY that useful, until you get to the point where you can do a real time voice translation. The next 5 years will see computers going into different places… the “wearable” computer, disposable organics computers, perhaps a real cellular internet network…
The problem computer companies have run into is their market. People don’t need to buy their newest, latest products. Your average user doesn’t need a 3 GHz laptop with a 100 mb/s wireless broadband connection, GeForce4 chip, etc… then, what applications do you have? The killer apps for computers have universally been communications tools (Internet, and by extension, E-mail, instant messaging, forums, blogs, etc).
So… the most likely scenario I see is a lot of changes in how computers work, but for consumers, a sort of merger between cell phones and the Internet, until a cell phone becomes a PDA/Laptop/phone with wireless internet and possibly a glasses-mounted display with some voice commands, but users keeping their PCs, but probably more in the form of a TablePC (something that has a slim base you leave sitting in the den/office/whatever but detatch the screen and carry around the house).
Beyond that, computers breaking into smaller pieces and appearing in other areas - continued trends of computers in cars, for instance. Maybe even the much-promised “scan a food item on the fridge and have it be added to a list for ordering or shopping” will come true.
Perhaps we’ll see Microsoft’s “Media Center” concept kick off. The logical step for computers integrating more is to have the communications services - Internet, Telephone, Television - become one in the same. A central computer that manages the TVs and radio and telephones, as well as being the wireless access point for your other devices.
In the end, no one knows. It depends more on what consumers and businesses buy than what people can develop.
One constant is that machine translation has been about ten years away. It has been ten years away for at least 50 years and is likely to remain so for another 50, IMHO. That’s written, voice is probably 20 years away and may remain that way for 100 years.
There is nothing single computers do today that could not have been reasonably predicted 20 years ago. Even local area networked computers. Even email. But the web, ah that was totally unpredicted. And that has changed everything abour computers. Here is one prediction I make: Most of what we now get for free we will have to pay for. Things will get locked up tighter and tighter and the public domain will disappear. It has begun to happen and will happen more. Also the costs of software will skyrocket now that MS has a near monopoly on software. It has already begun with new versions of office costing much more (no “competitive upgrades” any more because no competition) and now firmly copy protexted so that my wife cannot install Office on my laptop for occasional use.
We were just talking about direct Mind-Machine interfaces, and how some people thought they werent as far off as we think. But there are so many philosophical/ethical questions to be considered before we take that leap.
They’ll be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger and so expensive that…
…meh, never mind.
Hari Seldon: Although Microsoft’s stuff has become more locked down and expensive, this has been mirrored in the increasing use of Free Software. I remember when there were websites that used to have a “Linux in the media” page which linked to whenver gasp Linux was mentioned in a magazine!!. Now it’s common.
I think it’s great that we have access to a free Operating System, Office suite, Web Browser, Graphics Package, etc, etc, etc…not least because I suspect that if we didn’t MS stuff would be even more expensive, full of more security holes and probably charging for updates. It keeps them nice and sane!
So I doubt that prices will spiral upwards out of control, simply because it would drive people towards Free Software.
That’s being trialled in Australia at the moment, and will probably be available to the general public some time this year. That particular technology isn’t really new. I guess it could theoretically have been done a decade or so ago. It’s slow development is probably more to do with market forces and the rate of internet penetration into Australian households.
Yep, LoadedDog, all of it has much more to do with market forces. The question remains: how many people will buy a fridge with the scanner, who have a networked home, and meet the other requirements, and are willing to pay the extra expense for the hardware, when they can just go to the store like normal (they’ll probably still either go to the store or shop online for additional products every other week anyway)? And will those proficts overcome the R&D, manufacturing, and distribution costs? Why the hell will people start buying alarm clocks that set the coffee maker when the coffee maker does it anyway? If they would, would they have the house networked properly? Will industry standards conflict? Will people have to know technical things like the type of wireless connection? Will they have to upgrade their alarm clock in 2 years? Does the technology make life easier, or needlessly complex?
Will people buy XM radios, or will they just keep listening to FM during their short drives? Why not just their CDs and MP3 players? Does the profit counter the extreme cost of the entire XM program? Is the benefit to the consumer enough? Would a cellular wireless internet where the user could connect to their computer and play music through the car speakers be better and cheaper?
As for prices, there has been one key principal keeping Microsoft on top: People use Windows because they use Windows at work. Businesses upgrade to a new version of Windows because their employees are more familiar with Windows and don’t require expensive training and specialized programs. Consumers upgrade to Windows because they use them at work and are more familiar with them. Businesses upgrade to…
And so on. Apple played the same game with schools. If Microsoft prices Windows too far out of reach for consumers, they open the door for a competitor to offer their product.
Suuuure, Linux is “free.” But the average consumer knows diddly squat about it, and if they did, getting it to work and finding programs to use for it is harder. They can more easily just buy a new computer with a new version of Windows and Office pre-installed at Christmas and call it a year (much like Macs). Windows isn’t expensive enough to scare off the consumer, but still expensive enough to pull in a profit from bulk business sales. People without enough money for MS products just pirate them, not go to Linux.
A product has to require no knowledge to use, it has to be available, it has to have a brand name taped to it, and it has to work with EVERYTHING. Linux doesn’t meet any one of those requirements, and until it meets all of them, it isn’t competition for the consumer OS market.
Zagadka, we might be thinking of different things. One of the Australian online shopping companies ( I forgot which one ), is running a trial with some of their existing members (all of whom would obviously already own an internet-connected computer) in which the members are sent a small handheld scanner which can be connected to a port on their computer after it has harvested the grocery data. It isn’t part of a high-tech refrigerator, or anything like that. Users just scan whatever is in their rusty '50s fridge, in the cupboards, lying on the floor under the cat…
Probably. Americans aren’t very sensible about things like that. The model I am recalling is one proposed by the big companies in one of them “homes of the future”…
In any case, shopping online suffices for me. Safeway remembers what I’ve ordered before and lets me reorder it all at the click of a button, then adding in the ingredients from an entire recipe is just as easy.
shrugs The effect is the same… are these things something consumers need. That is the only way it will be relevant.
In the future, it will be hard to point to something that’s not a computer.
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- I think we’ll see the different concepts of memory and processing merge completely–one of the problems now is moving data back and forth between the two. In My Humble Opinion that is, which is where this isn’t.
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- I think we’ll see the different concepts of memory and processing merge completely–one of the problems now is moving data back and forth between the two. In My Humble Opinion that is, which is where this isn’t.
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“I’d like to order a Double Quarter Pounder with a 1.5 MBPS Internet hookup, and a large Coke, please.”
Certainly, sir. Would you like to supersize to 640 x 480?
Well, considering that the first email was sent in late 1971 and that Xerox developed Ethernet in the mid-1970s, you’re probably right. 
Why is this? Are our finger tips becoming electromagnetically attracted to the larger harddrives?
No, but pretty much everything you can think of will contain a computer. Do a search on “wearable computing” to see an interesting application.