When building sandcastles, you can ignore the waves but should watch the tide, instructs Edsger Dijkstra. Similarly, when making informed predictions of what consumer electronics devices might be like and how we might use them, futurologists concentrate on trends, not so much on individual products, says Jack Challoner in ‘Desirable Future?’ (www.explaining-science.co.uk).
The most important are trends in hardware development, for example improvements in processing speed or memory capacity, he opines. “Then there is design – not only in terms of how devices look, but also how we interact with them: the interface. Finally, there are trends in how we use devices, and for what… this is the most elusive piece of the puzzle.”
The author foresees that in the near future, our gadgets will be better connected to each other – within the home, in our cars and even in our clothes. Within ten years, the Internet will be so integrated into our lives – and will extend into every part of our houses – that we will probably no longer speak of ‘going online,’ he envisages.
“Technology journalist Walt Mossberg has compared the Internet of the future to the electrical supply system: we never say we are ‘going on the electrical grid’ when we plug in a toaster or use a hair dryer.”
A section titled ‘the digital dissolve’ anticipates that most of the hardware will be quite invisible, though we will probably use some kind of input devices to search for information and a variety of output devices to receive or view that information.
Ubiquitous computing, also called ambient computing, is often described as a ‘post-desktop model’ of interaction between humans and digital technology, informs Challoner. “Mobile network infrastructure and wireless computer networks will surely converge at some point; but we may have to tread a tortuous road of expense and incompatibility before we arrive at a workable and robust situation.”
Thankfully, though, a piece of good news is that our future gadgets will be less power-hungry, ‘thanks to displays that require no backlight, lower-power processors and the increasing use of chip-based memory solutions rather than hard disks.’ A photo in the book shows a flexible, paper-thin battery produced at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State, which ‘uses carbon nanotubes to store and conduct electricity. Chemicals in sweat or blood could provide the energy for the battery.’
The concluding chapter looks at the possibility of computers catching up with the brain, which is estimated to compute at around 100 million million calculations per second up to around a million million million. This is only between 1,000 and 100,000 times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputers in existence today, the author notes. “If Moore’s Law continues on course, we will hit that mark within about 20 years: a portable device with the power of our brains by 2030…”
But long before computers can be built with that kind of processing power, Challoner expects artificial intelligence to revolutionise our everyday lives with, say, ‘a computer even as powerful as a dog’s brain running the appropriate software.’ Perhaps these machines could be nurses, cleaners or home helps, he suggests. “All of these applications are already being tested, even with the limited intelligence of today’s robots… Robots will soon be so cheap and versatile and intelligent that they could be as ubiquitous as computers.”
Ideal company for a weekend escape.
