UnluckyKate
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Tony Stark's phone :
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Where do you see consumer technology in ten years?
- Thread starter Mineshaft_Gap
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QuickSilverD
Member
smartphones (or multiporpuse handheld devices whatever) will have bateries that last 12 hours on a single charge 
1. Cloud
Enough has been said and shown about this already - various cloud services + services like OnLive, the emerging DIDO wireless will all contribute towards the ubiquity of cloud based services. The implications of this are huge as it relates to new hardware - console (and all other forms of) games on the cloud rather than consoles in the living room, death of the desktop, etc, etc. As bandwidth continues to rise and latency continues to drop - companies will start to offer, and then start to transition software in the cloud - Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc - all these popular creator tools, doubly justified by drops in piracy rates. In due time, the 'Cloud' will be the ubiquitous user based OS - what everything runs on is concealed and hidden to the user, and rightfully so.
2. Kinect
Or rather camera based motion tracking. Its use can and will be supplemented by traditional tactile inputs like the keyboard and mouse and gamepads - but as the technology continues to develop; not just the camera sensitivity, allowing for fast and accurate tracking of fine details; facial expressions and quick finger and hand gestures, but also the API that will reduce the workload of all developers required to utilize powerful gesture based computing.
The use of kinect is kind of gimmicky in the current paradigm of computing, but when the other half of the equation (Head mounted displays) comes to play, it'll be the main game in town. 2D inputs like the keyboard, mouse and touchscreen will be completely outmoded.
3. HMDs
The Sony HMZ-T1 is the first of a new wave of head mounted displays - it's probably the first consumer level HMD that's ticked the right combination of boxes - including providing image quality that is beyond what can be achieved with traditional displays.
While it doesn't come with head tracking tech - either Sony or other companies are sure to follow suit with such devices that can match the quality of the display tech.
The ideal is a headset of reasonable weight and slimness that is able to cover a large field of vision, while allowing camera (or simply light) streams of the outside world through - to create a full field of vision, 3D, virtual/augmented reality display.
With such a device - the functions of all other 2D displays, from flexible OLED papers to E-Ink to Front projectors to LCD screens are superseded. Why do you need them when you're always wearing something superior? Especially when you combine it with a voice and kinect based input setup.
4. Cheap chips
Chips, cheap as piss, embedded into every-fucking-thing, with the HMD that you're now using serving as their display. Embed them into your light switches - lets you control not just on and off, but dimmer, colour, timer, and profiles that adjust based on the time of day, or the mood. Put them into your front door lock; lets you control who it'll let in and when, put them into your exercise chairs - chair adjusts settings based on the user.
Put them into bags of chips - for shop keeping inventory purposes; and to allow recycling centres to sort everything from everything in an automated manner.
5. Conclusion
The real trick to guessing what's coming in the future is figuring out the interactions and crossovers that will occur. Devices don't emerge in a vacuum - they emerge into a technological ecosystem, where the function, utility and costs of software and devices in one area can act synergistically with software and devices in another.
Enough has been said and shown about this already - various cloud services + services like OnLive, the emerging DIDO wireless will all contribute towards the ubiquity of cloud based services. The implications of this are huge as it relates to new hardware - console (and all other forms of) games on the cloud rather than consoles in the living room, death of the desktop, etc, etc. As bandwidth continues to rise and latency continues to drop - companies will start to offer, and then start to transition software in the cloud - Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc - all these popular creator tools, doubly justified by drops in piracy rates. In due time, the 'Cloud' will be the ubiquitous user based OS - what everything runs on is concealed and hidden to the user, and rightfully so.
2. Kinect
Or rather camera based motion tracking. Its use can and will be supplemented by traditional tactile inputs like the keyboard and mouse and gamepads - but as the technology continues to develop; not just the camera sensitivity, allowing for fast and accurate tracking of fine details; facial expressions and quick finger and hand gestures, but also the API that will reduce the workload of all developers required to utilize powerful gesture based computing.
The use of kinect is kind of gimmicky in the current paradigm of computing, but when the other half of the equation (Head mounted displays) comes to play, it'll be the main game in town. 2D inputs like the keyboard, mouse and touchscreen will be completely outmoded.
3. HMDs
The Sony HMZ-T1 is the first of a new wave of head mounted displays - it's probably the first consumer level HMD that's ticked the right combination of boxes - including providing image quality that is beyond what can be achieved with traditional displays.
While it doesn't come with head tracking tech - either Sony or other companies are sure to follow suit with such devices that can match the quality of the display tech.
The ideal is a headset of reasonable weight and slimness that is able to cover a large field of vision, while allowing camera (or simply light) streams of the outside world through - to create a full field of vision, 3D, virtual/augmented reality display.
With such a device - the functions of all other 2D displays, from flexible OLED papers to E-Ink to Front projectors to LCD screens are superseded. Why do you need them when you're always wearing something superior? Especially when you combine it with a voice and kinect based input setup.
4. Cheap chips
Chips, cheap as piss, embedded into every-fucking-thing, with the HMD that you're now using serving as their display. Embed them into your light switches - lets you control not just on and off, but dimmer, colour, timer, and profiles that adjust based on the time of day, or the mood. Put them into your front door lock; lets you control who it'll let in and when, put them into your exercise chairs - chair adjusts settings based on the user.
Put them into bags of chips - for shop keeping inventory purposes; and to allow recycling centres to sort everything from everything in an automated manner.
5. Conclusion
The real trick to guessing what's coming in the future is figuring out the interactions and crossovers that will occur. Devices don't emerge in a vacuum - they emerge into a technological ecosystem, where the function, utility and costs of software and devices in one area can act synergistically with software and devices in another.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Sentry said:
Speech will play a part in the future, but it will not be everything. Voice commands only take less time to perform tasks in some cases, and the sorts of syntax needed to perform complicated, generalized tasks make the action every bit as arbitrary with voice commands as a mouse driven interface.
I think one of the best illustrative examples of this is Tom Clancy's Endwar, on PC specifically. It has basically traditional RTS controls for the mouse and keyboard, but then the voice commands through the Mic operating at the same time. The optimal way to use it turned out to be using voice commands for things you weren't focussed on with the camera, and using mouse / task groups shit to give orders to the guys you were focussed on, or in situations when you had to do complex things quickly.
In the context of a full operating system, using voice commands to bring up something like My Computer or a Web Browser makes sense, but if you want to do something like write a program or edit music or configure a router, voice commands are at worst impossible and at best very slow and clumsy to use. The keyboard and cursor aren't going anywhere, because they have legitimate uses that are not easily replaced.
The future is a combination of converging technologies. iHCI principles will be merged with what we have, and we will use each where it is most appropriate rather than sticking with just Voice Recognition + Touch Screens and forcing many round pegs into the square hole.
TV's should have been PC's a long time ago, but I guess the new OS thanks to the tablets and smartphones have greased their coming.
Personal Computers are going to go down. They will be useful for gaming, work, and maybe study. Basically anything that requires consistently a keyboard, and the need to use advanced software and high hardware specs.
If i didn't do gaming I could do fine now with my smartphone, and if my TV could access to e-mail or websites and had a keyboard, I could still send tons of e-mails - write essays or whatever at home.
Don't expect batteries to be much better though. The key is reducing the power needed by the components (usually reducing their size even further), battery technology won't be improved as easily for the near future.
ThoseDeafMutes said:
What do you think is a suitable replacement for keyboards in a mobile computing, camera based motion capture paradigm like the one I described above?
Are we going to be forced to carry around roll up keyboards when we want to use hardcore text entry programs?
I don't know if virtual keyboards lacking in haptic feedback will cut it... maybe they can if we have haptic feedback gloves of a sufficiently high quality.
Kinitari said:
It is rather dependent on the speed at which they develop. There are some really difficult technical barriers they'd need to overcome for them to be a mobile mass market device - technology that would allow them to be slim enough to take on the form factor of a pair of sunglasses.
But I'm of the view that they provide a set of advantages that are so compelling that once they gain sufficient traction for software to be developed for them - that they'll take off.
You really can't do what they can do with any other display short of full blown holoprojection system. And those things aren't exactly portable.
sixteen-bit
Member
Jetpacks #1 mode of transportation.
-Music/movies/TV/etc. all on the "cloud" and companies moving over to monthly payment plans for access
-Quantum Computing on the commercial level
-Expandable/dynamic displays (phone screens that can expand into the size of a tablet, for instance)
-Haptic technology being (slighty) more commercially viable
-SSDs completely replacing magnetic drives (and with everything on the cloud, much less of a need for gigantic harddrives)
-Faster streaming technology, higher levels of bandwidth
-Mobile tech obviously getting much faster/more powerful... Witcher 2 on full settings will be possible in the palm of your hand, without breaking a sweat
-Quantum Computing on the commercial level
-Expandable/dynamic displays (phone screens that can expand into the size of a tablet, for instance)
-Haptic technology being (slighty) more commercially viable
-SSDs completely replacing magnetic drives (and with everything on the cloud, much less of a need for gigantic harddrives)
-Faster streaming technology, higher levels of bandwidth
-Mobile tech obviously getting much faster/more powerful... Witcher 2 on full settings will be possible in the palm of your hand, without breaking a sweat
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