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[Mineshaft_Gap]

Steve Jobs dying and the 10 year anniversary of the ipod got me thinking. We might not have flying cars or self pumping Nike high tops but fuck if we haven't come a long way in terms of portable electronics.

There was a link to a thread that was made when the ipod was first revealed. It was interesting to read peoples initial impressions considering that Apple was still struggling at that time.

Since then MP3 PLAYERS have gone from being 5GB portable music players into full featured super devices. I'm posting this from my phone. That would have seemed impossible in 2000. We have computers in our pockets capable of emulating all of our favorite consoles as kids. I remember a time when the height of technology would have been to play Doom on a handheld gaming system. When the only innovation happening with cell tech was smaller and smaller phones.

All things considered the IAudio X5 is still the best strictly music player ever released.

 

[Emily Chu]

Tablets and phones are nice on a casual sense

but serious internetting requires a Traditional Laptop IMO with a KB+M

I think the laptop is here to stay for the long haul

sure smaller, lighter, faster, but all the same

Traditional Laptops FTW

 

[CiSTM]

Concept of a mobile phone will be dead and instead we will have portable computuers (you can also call with them ). They are linked to cloud servers all the time, they will interact pretty much with everything (turn on the lights for you in your office when you arrive, turn off your PC when you leave, etc), update your status from where you are and what you are doing. Also e-ink newspapers & magazines.

 

[trinest]

Surface will find its use.

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

Overpriced tiered data plans for ALL ISP's.

Telcoms will expand their monopoly and fuck consumers harder than ever.

Net neutrality ends as we know it.
Direct download future.

 

[Meadows]

None of us have any idea of what will be possible. 10 years is a huge amount of time in technology.

 

[navanman]

Concept of a mobile phone will be dead and instead we will have portable computuers (you can also call with them ). They are linked to cloud servers all the time, they will interact pretty with everything (turn on the lights for you in your office when you arrive, turn off your PC when you leave, etc), update your status from where you are and what you are doing. Also e-ink newspapers & magazines.

Something like that..

Your phone-tablet (say 5" screen) will be the hub of your digital world. You arrive in the office, sit it into a dock and it automatically gives links to your monitor, KB & mouse.

Leave work and its a regular touch phone again. Get home and its automatically links to your monitor device at home wirelessly and you can browse, etc.. in comfort on bigger screen.

Basically something like the Motorola Atrix but further refined and improved.

 

[Polari]

Almost everything will be in the cloud. Operating systems will become more or less obsolete for home users, beyond running a web browser.

Smartphones will become essential. Payments, real time translation, home automation, Siri/AI technology will progress to the point where it will be able to assist you with almost everything. You'll use your smartphone (or whatever we're calling it by that point) thousands of times a day. As an extension of this, electronic body implants will become popular to facilitate use.

 

[Polari]

Something like that..

Your phone-tablet (say 5" screen) will be the hub of your digital world. You arrive in the office, sit it into a dock and it automatically gives links to your monitor, KB & mouse.

Leave work and its a regular touch phone again. Get home and its automatically links to your monitor device at home wirelessly and you can browse, etc.. in comfort on bigger screen.

Basically something like the Motorola Atrix but further refined and improved.

I think your phone interface will exist in the cloud. You won't have to plug it in to anything, it will just be a matter of logging in.

 

[dejay]

Concept of a mobile phone will be dead and instead we will have portable computuers (you can also call with them ). They are linked to cloud servers all the time, they will interact pretty with everything (turn on the lights for you in your office when you arrive, turn off your PC when you leave, etc), update your status from where you are and what you are doing. Also e-ink newspapers & magazines.

All this is happening right now.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

Concept of a mobile phone will be dead and instead we will have portable computuers (you can also call with them ). They are linked to cloud servers all the time, they will interact pretty with everything (turn on the lights for you in your office when you arrive, turn off your PC when you leave, etc), update your status from where you are and what you are doing.

Sounds right.

The internet speed seems fast enough now for VOIP companies to come in on this phone shit. No more ATT, or verizon, just skip all that & have vonage mobile, or some shit.

 

[danwarb]

Smartphones, tablets and big screens, all interchangeable with the same capabilities and networked. Just different windows to your stuff.

Touch, gesture and voice control should work.

 

[Monocle]

Mobile devices will become truly ubiquitous and significantly more powerful and versatile. How's that for a radical prediction?

 

[noah111]

The future is speech, there will be a day where people look back at those who typed on physical keys and used shortcuts similarly to the way lamen today look at programmers/coders.

Laptops will flourish, becoming powerful enough to be a desktop. Touch will be integrated into these devices. And further into the future we will have worldwide free internet which will change everything.

 

[fredrancour]

Despite all the hype, usage of cloud storage and computing will be gimped by telecoms attempting to make people pay dearly for bandwidth.


There will probably be some massively profitable new case of changes in user interface making existing tech more marketable, but if I could figure out what it is I'd be off making it happen instead of posting on gaf. The predictable thing would be smartphones evolving, but I feel like expecting a consumer technology trend to continue for a decade without a significant new factor being invented is a silly thing to expect.

 

[Jedeye Sniv]

Almost everything will be in the cloud. Operating systems will become more or less obsolete for home users, beyond running a web browser.

Smartphones will become essential. Payments, real time translation, home automation, Siri/AI technology will progress to the point where it will be able to assist you with almost everything. You'll use your smartphone (or whatever we're calling it by that point) thousands of times a day. As an extension of this, electronic body implants will become popular to facilitate use.

I don't know about the cloud tbh. I live in a moderately sized town in the south of England (about 50 miles south of london) and commuute to the bigger town next to it every day. I lose my phone signal (not to mention 3G) in between the towns, it's ridiculous. Until you get 4G+ data everywhere, the cloud is worthless as an all-the-time harddrive alternative. Streaming music cuts out when you hit a black spot? yay

 

[Emily Chu]

The future is speech, there will be a day where people look back at those who typed on physical keys and used shortcuts similarly to the way lamen today look at programmers/coders.

Laptops will flourish, becoming powerful enough to be a desktop. Touch will be integrated into these devices. And further into the future we will have worldwide free internet which will change everything.

idk about that I rather just type to be honest then work my mouth all the time...

 

[Polari]

I don't know about the cloud tbh. I live in a moderately sized town in the south of England (about 50 miles south of london) and commuute to the bigger town next to it every day. I lose my phone signal (not to mention 3G) in between the towns, it's ridiculous. Until you get 4G+ data everywhere, the cloud is worthless as an all-the-time harddrive alternative. Streaming music cuts out when you hit a black spot? yay

I think wireless technologies will improve greatly in terms of coverage and reliability, the technology is only going to get cheaper and cheaper, meaning more competition, better coverage and better speeds. Essentially the Internet will be everywhere and fast.

 

[Jedeye Sniv]

idk about that I rather just type to be honest then work my mouth all the time...

Exactly. Plus, what about when you're working or texting in public? Nobody wants to hear that shit. it's keyboards, neural links or bust.

 

[itxaka]

I don't know about the cloud tbh.

The cloud will take a big hit in the next 10 years. And I think it would be a bad hit. Amazon cloud outages was the first sign of it.

I'm guessing a big bug in virtualization soft that would allow an incredibly amount of data stolen or websites wiped out.

It will set back cloud computing for a few years as people will be wary of it. So Im guessing 20 years for the cloud to catch on.

 

[sullytao]

I would love to think that we will have AR glasses in 10 years time. That shit would be awesome .

 

[iidesuyo]

Essentially the Internet will be everywhere and fast.

They said that 10 years ago but it didn't happen. Providers are very stingily with bandwidth.

 

[RobotChant]

The cloud will take a big hit in the next 10 years. And I think it would be a bad hit. Amazon cloud outages was the first sign of it.

I'm guessing a big bug in virtualization soft that would allow an incredibly amount of data stolen or websites wiped out.

It will set back cloud computing for a few years as people will be wary of it. So Im guessing 20 years for the cloud to catch on.

It'll be like natural disasters. We're going to need cloud disaster insurance. That's it, that's what will be the next big thing in computing.

 

[Polari]

I would love to think that we will have AR glasses in 10 years time. That shit would be awesome .

With those transparent AMOLED screens Samsung has, they're technically entirely feasible now. All you would need to do is have a Bluetooth chipset and a battery, and then everything could run off the smartphone in your pocket.

 

[runningjoke]

10 years may be a little short, but I think in the future your phone-like-device will naturally learn and understand what you are saying. If you are talking to someone who doesn't speak your language, their PLD will communicate with yours to translate what you are really saying to something they will understand.

 

[Polari]

They said that 10 years ago but it didn't happen. Providers are very stingily with bandwidth.

OK, so maybe it still won't be quite there ten years from now, but it will be significantly closer than it is today.

 

[Emily Chu]

Exactly. Plus, what about when you're working or texting in public? Nobody wants to hear that shit. it's keyboards, neural links or bust.

id they can synthesize text using brain wave patterns

(look at my AVATAR !!! )it's like I can talk to GAF TELEPATHICALLY!! and the interwebs then yes you can abolish all forms of KBs

but Eye Tracking + Neural link would the bees knees when replacing hell even touch + KB+M

 

[Polari]

10 years may be a little short, but I think in the future your phone-like-device will naturally learn and understand what you are saying. If you are talking to someone who doesn't speak your language, their PLD will communicate with yours to translate what you are really saying to something they will understand.

You can pretty much of this Google Translate at the moment on smartphones (albeit with the usual caveats where voice recognition and translation are concerned). They just need to implement it so it works through Bluetooth between two phones, so you speak into yours and they get the translation spoken through theirs and vice-versa.

 

[Polari]

With those transparent AMOLED screens Samsung has, they're technically entirely feasible now. All you would need to do is have a Bluetooth chipset and a battery, and then everything could run off the smartphone in your pocket.

Shit I just realised - add a camera to the frames and you've got Google Goggles for real... look at a sign in a foreign language and its automatically translated.

 

[clav]

One day your computer will be a big ass table.

 

[derder]

I see a create your own rockband happening.

It will be to the point where consumers can create synthesized music that is imperceptibly different from actual musicians playing... including voices!

 

[derder]

Shit I just realised - add a camera to the frames and you've got Google Goggles for real... look at a sign in a foreign language and its automatically translated.

That already exists...

 

[Kurdel]

They said that 10 years ago but it didn't happen. Providers are very stingily with bandwidth.

Are you kidding?

I have fast Internet anywhere on my iPhone, and I don't even need to connect to the Internet, it's always connected. If 15 year old me knew this was coming, I would have cryogenically frozen myself to get here faster.

As for the immediate future, home based servers will definately be standard. We will be able to stream all of our content via the Internet, but based on local physical hardware. We will only have screens, all computational power will be in the cloud. Basically, screens with batteries and a wifi/3G antenna.

So your conputer is evey device you own, on any screen you own, adapted with a user freindly interface.

 

[VALIS]

Actually, I'm gonna say technology is at a bit of a plateau right now and the next 10 years isn't half as progressive as the previous 10. Now we've got some new bases -- smartphones, tablets, lighter notebooks and netbooks -- and we'll just see refinements on these for a while. And yeah, cloud, cloud, cloud.

I look forward to many dumb posts about the imminent death of the desktop and/or Windows from people who judge entire multi-billion industries based on what they are their friends are into.

 

[Jedeye Sniv]

With those transparent AMOLED screens Samsung has, they're technically entirely feasible now. All you would need to do is have a Bluetooth chipset and a battery, and then everything could run off the smartphone in your pocket.

Oh god I just came in my pants. Give me this now!!

 

[Woorloog]

In ten years, i don't own anything anymore, i merely have a license to use stuff.

 

[Jill Sandwich]

I think the next big thing will be in biotechnology.

 

[RubxQub]

Thinking about where technology needs to go...the only place I can think of at this point is "on or in our bodies to enhance how we think, move and react."

 

[Kinitari]

I don't think you guys are giving 10 years enough credit. My guess is radical new changes to portable tech, augmented reality via whatever device we have, transactions, communication, enterprise, everything on these devices.

Mind you, I got all this from Microsoft's vision of 2019, but still.

 

[Orayn]

No idea. I avoid short-range predictions because they'll usually be too wild, and long-range ones because they usually miss game-changers like the transistor, world wide web, etc.

 

[navanman]

They could do that now, but even Apple would not dare kill off their PC business.
Someone will do it sometime soon, and cash-strapped businesses would be all over that shit, it would fuck Microsoft, and every PC maker, almost overnight.
Scary times to be a tech company, just ask all those who thought netbooks were the hot shit for the next decade.

It will happen and all the 3 big players in the mobile/OS market are all angling to get in on it. That's why the smartphone market competition is so fierce at the moment.

You can bet they are all working on it now. Apple with an iOS, MacOS hyprid that switches to each one when the phone is being used in your hand or in a dock. Google with Android/Chrome hybrid, etc..

 

[zephervack]

There is going to be a huge gap between people that consume content and people that create it.

The consumers will only own devices like the tablets, smartphones and small devices with limited capabilities for creation.

Desktop computer will only be used by people that generate content or need huge processing power.

Thinking of someone like my grandfather, he is very old and he is not your typical elderly person, he is very open minded and i have seen him try to master his windows machine for many years and he still fails to complete very basic tasks.

He really doesnt need the complexity of the file system that a windows or a Mac machine offer for the simple tasks he is trying to accomplish.

And that segment is way bigger than many of you might think, im not talking only about old people, im talking about people that only consume content.

 

[Red Liquorice]

In ten years, i don't own anything anymore, i merely have a license to use stuff.

Ha! Probably true

 

[PaleFolklore]

It's hard for me to say. In 1997 I never would have expected to have something as incredible as an iPhone with me at all times within 10 years. Would love to see a focus on more touch based devices. Surface seems like an absolutely amazing tool but it feels like it's been in development for a while now. Hopefully within 10 years I'll be able to purchase it or a similar device.

 

[Polari]

It will happen and all the 3 big players in the mobile/OS market are all angling to get in on it. That's why the smartphone market competition is so fierce at the moment.

You can bet they are all working on it now. Apple with an iOS, MacOS hyprid that switches to each one when the phone is being used in your hand or in a dock. Google with Android/Chrome hybrid, etc..

This is the whole point of Ice Cream Sandwich, and I'm sure this is why Google have implemented mouse and keyboard support. Within three years I think every Android phone will be capable of this. You'll see a load of docks and laptop docks where you'll slide the phone in landscape below the keyboard and it becomes the touchpad and the software automatically switches to the tablet form. This will be part of why they're rebranding the web browser as Chrome, Ice Cream Sandwich is essentially a trojan horse. It's the Atrix/Webtop idea refined, instead of there essentially being two OSs there will be a single one.

I think ChromeOS will be mostly targeted towards enterprise/educational institutions, where they run Google Apps in the back office with ChromeOS terminals client side.

 

[Zwei]

telegraphs will make a comeback

 

[Harry Dresden]

I would like to see HUD technology make a leap to the consumer market.

There was something I read about last year, a company in Japan showcasing a wearable HUD that created a 30" 'screen' that floated about three feet infront of the user.

Ofcourse the tech is still kind of bulky, but if given enough attention I think they could shrink it to a usable scale in the next ten years.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Thinking about where technology needs to go...the only place I can think of at this point is "on or in our bodies to enhance how we think, move and react."

I didn't ask for this.

 

[LosDaddie]

PCs will become a niche market.

Most people will only need something to browse the web and store photos/vids/music. A tablet and/or netbook to accompany a smart phone will be all most people need.

Thus, PCs, as we think of them now, will mainly be used at your (computer-dependent) job and by students/programmers/artists....and gamers. A (sorta big) niche market. The rest of the market will realize they don't need a powerful PC for their personal/home needs and opt for their smartphones (already happening) and something a little bigger like a tablet/netbook.

Now this is going to take a while, but sure, in 10yrs I can see this scenario being close to reality. It's happening with my family now. My laptop is on its last legs and I'm opting for an iPad 2 instead of a desktop/laptop. That, along with our smartphones, is really all we need at home.


And yes, I'm also saying that consoles will dominate even more than now.

 

[Jenga]

so basically in the shitter