Computers went from labs to on our desktops, to laptops to smartphones. So what is next? If the trendline aside from computers having more power is also miniaturization and portability, what is smaller and more portable than a smartphone?
I don’t know if I agree with Kurzweil that nanobots are next. Supposedly they are not realistic according to some people.
Will people just wear a ring, watch or bracelet that has all their processing power and memory, and it’ll have multiple wireless display options to choose from for an interface (a rolled up sheet that can be unrolled into a screen, holographic images projected in 3D that can be manipulated, retinal images, etc)?
I know we have smartwatches, but that isn’t the same thing. I was thinking of a watch that could display something in 3D, or display it on your retina, or send it to a sheet you use as an interface.
smartphones will replace latptops, or to state it a better way, smartphones will be the processing power that drives laptops and other PC’s moving forward
So you’re saying that we will have larger displays, but the processors will be tiny?
That is my view, which is what I meant by wearing a ring and having some kind of folded screen in your pocket. Maybe in 20 years people will wear a ring, watch, bracelet, etc. and it’ll have multiple interface options. One of which will be some kind of roll up OLED screen that can be folded in your pocket, and when needed unfolded into a 19" display or something like that. Or an extremely large 3D display, or some kind of retinal display that will look like a large screen TV three feet in front of you that you can interact with.
Science fiction has suggested brain implants that would give us telepathic internet. I don’t like the possibility of malware crashing my brain, though.
Well the google glass wasn’t much of a success. Turns out people are not very happy with the possibility of you recording them at any time without their knowledge.
I don’t think smart phones will get replaced any time soon. What they will soon get is much smarter versions of Siri / Cortana / OK Google via sending your voice to the cloud and getting much better responses. The problem with most other “wearables” or other ideas is screen size and practicality. I don’t think a glass based solution is going to go anywhere, it will take some other method of directly creating an image on peoples retinas before the smart phone is replaced.
I don’t think desktops are going away … whatever innovation that allows us a terabyte of storage in a pinky ring would also allow 100 terabytes on our desktops.
I think the limiting size to these devices will be our 26 letter alphabet, hard to put a full QWERTY keyboard on an earring.
Smartphones will be replaced by really smartphones - devices which know where you are, have learned your habits and wishes, know your schedule, and can monitor your conversations. Make an appointment with someone, by phone or by email, and it will automatically add it to your calendar. Say you want a coffee, and it will, with your permission, send an order to your favorite Starbucks, whose store computer will track your location and have it ready for you when you enter the door.
Eventually it will have an enhanced reality holographic display, but most of what you need can be done verbally. The hardware will fit into your glasses or onto an earbud.
Google Glass was very clunky, like the first cellphones. Sure people don’t like being recorded, but in a generation or so they’ll get over it.
We’ll all go around talking to ourselves, but half the people on the street today would be considered candidates for the looney bin if they had walked around talking to no one back when I was a kid.
Smartphones are basically just adult toys people use to amuse themselves. You can’t do any real work on them. They haven’t replaced laptops/desktops.
What the next toy is, who knows.
Pretty much this, I think, for the foreseeable future. Super miniaturization and “wearable” stuff has to make a quantum leap into solving the interface problem, and I don’t think there’s anything like that even on the horizon. What it would take is something like a watch or even an implant that projects an interactive virtual touch screen.
My other prediction for the future was going to be that whatever happens, I will continue to refuse to own one of the stupid things. Sadly, my small and durable clamshell type traditional cell phone will stop working in January when my carrier phases out CDMA, so I’ll be forced to get something that will be (a) bigger, (b) more fragile, and (c) make me look like another doofus geek with a smartphone. :mad:
My guess is that we’ll go to more of a glasses and glove set up. The glasses will make the screen infinitely large and the gloves will be capable of any interaction with the computer. I don’t like voice commands because people around know what I’m doing or can be bothered by my actions during quite periods.
I think that we will soon be able to walk up to a monitor, keyboard and pointing device and have it connect to our cellphone. No need for a desktop. Data in the cloud, processor in our pocket.
Maybe these monitor stations could be located in little “booths” on street corners, and they could also offer a wired phone in case you wanted to talk to someone at the same time, but you’d have to drop a quarter in a little slot in order to use it.
Well, there are some practical things that smartphones can do, too, but in general this observation correctly underscores two underlying assumptions running through this thread, and generally throughout simplistic ideas toward technology:
that the “next thing” must be smaller than the current thing.
that we have to have only one “next thing” that will completely replace the current thing.
For the same reason we don’t make human shoes smaller and smaller, there are ome electronic devices we don’t necessarily want to make smaller and smaller. Likewise, developed societies haven’t created houses with one single room, used for cooking, eating, sleeping and crapping, though it’s technologically possible.
Am I the only one who finds that incredibly creepy? Why do I need a machine to mark my calendar or order for me, have I lost the ability to speak or move? You can already order things over the phone and have them ready when you arrive, we’ve had that for decades, it’s nothing new.
Great - “enhanced reality” and we’ll see even more crap like with Pokeman Go with people walking into stuff or, worse yet, driving into stuff because they’re not paying attention to actual reality.
Or it will be like Google Glass with a hearty “fuck you” to people who need prescription glasses. Tough shit! You must accommodate to our technology instead of technology accommodating you.
Maybe they shouldn’t “get over it”.
^ This is the biggest problem to moving to all voice command - it’s intrusive and bothersome to others around you. Want to discuss the hot monkey sex orgy you had with your 6 besties last Saturday? Do it in text, the rest of us aren’t interested in your reproduction of squelchy noises.
Data in the cloud means you don’t own it. The cloud goes down or gets hacked you’re screwed. Why do you trust and anonymous corporation that doesn’t give a crap about you personally to hold your stuff?
I don’t see how you put the Google glass concept back in the bottle, though. Google Glass failed for several reasons, not just because of privacy concerns. Google Glass can be prohibited because people can immediately recognize that it’s, well, a Google Glass. But what happens when computer and communications technology becomes so interwoven into the fabric of daily life that it’s practically invisible? We have smart TVs, smart watches, smart phones…eventually it will all be put together in some sort of seamless ecosystem of smart computing, and it’ll be hardly any more noticeable than security cameras and CCTV. I suspect that this is where we’re headed: there won’t be one object that replaces the smartphone but rather multiple devices working together in tandem. We’ll probably use the television or something like it to integrate it all, like an interactive smart monitor with various stations.
Nonsense. No technology we currently have lets you be driving along a freeway in an unfamiliar area, say to your smart car that you’re hungry, have it read back to you several nearby options that it suspects correspond to your tastes (with the ability for you to say “give me all options”), read out the menu for you, let you place an order, then immediately navigate you to the restaurant, while also having the order ready for you just as you arrive, modified for traffic conditions.
Taking bits and pieces of things that could already be done with enough maps and guidebooks and photocopies and access to a land line and a bunch of time, and merging them all together into a simple voice interface, is definitely a major step forward, regardless of how many of the component parts were things that already existed.
And there’s also a lot to be said for convenience. I’m talking to a friend on the phone and we agree to meet for dinner at 5 at (name of restaurant). A little message pops up on my retinal display says “I’ve added to your calendar: dinner at 5 with (name of friend). Is this correct?” that I can confirm or not. Then it’s there in my calendar, ready to remind me, point out that I might want to leave early because of traffic conditions, ready to alert me if the restaurant is closed for some reason, linked to my friend’s phone and his smart car so that I’ll be able to instantly see if he’s running late, etc.
None of which is to say that new technologies won’t bring with them their own sets of problems and horrors, of course.
