future tech

I just read this article at PC Magazine, and found it interesting enough to jot down some notes. Check it out...

Future Tech: 20 Hot Technologies to Watch

• Materials: Carbon Nanotubes - semiconducting, incredibly strong, incredibly small. Diamond Age, anyone?


• Health Care: Biosensors - the doctor is in... your body.


• Microprocessors: Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography - electricity + xenon + mirrors = faster microchips for ten more years.


• Warfare: E-Bombs - EMPs to knock out electronic components. Keep away from al Qaeda.


• Warfare: Infrared Countermeasures - IR jamming to prevent missile attacks, but do they cost too much $$$ for commercial airlines?


• Mobile: Self-Driving Cars - To be honest, I would trust machine drivers more than humans. RIP Fahrvegnugen?


• Energy: Fuel Cells - I heart fuel cells. At least, until micro-fusion batteries are invented. Whither our hydrogen infrastructure?


• Materials: Plastic Transistors - "Like OLEDs, organic transistors could be used in plastic displays within five years and in electronic paper within a decade. If scientists can make them fast enough, plastic memory and microprocessors could be next." I want to roll up my laptop and shove it in my back pocket.


• Materials: OLED Displays - Within three to five years, I'll at least be able to roll up my monitor. And waste less power, too.


• Broadband: Silicon Photonics - light-based, rather than electronic, traffic on silicon chips. The result? Your DSL connection will look like a 2400 baud modem in comparison.


• Networking: Microsoft SPOT - Networked gadgets, obtained by hijacking existing radio frequencies. But Microsoft and Clear Channel working together? Sets off my Big Brother alarm.


• Wireless: Mesh Networks - adaptive, robust, decentralized sesning and networking. Undoubtedly coming soon to a war near you.


• Networking: Grid Computing - Distrubted processing a la SETI@home, only on an even grander, more general, scale. I wonder how you effectively administrate and regulate communal usage of the world's PCs?


• Security: Quantum Cryptography - Want secure data transfer in the future era of quantum computing? Fight fire with fire. Now I will never know if that damn cat is dead or alive.


• Wireless: Radio-Frequency ID Tags - Never take inventory again, or the end of an era for Wynona Ryder and her klepto comrades.


• Components: Magnetic Memory - Mmmmmm magnetic memory (MRAM). The potential to make long boot times a thing of the past and enable faster long term storage. 10-20 years is too long to wait :(


• Entertainment: Social Gaming - Very interesting... I hope that eventually designers get into augmented reality games. Otherwise our kids will never leave the house.


• Software: Text Mining - Exciting technology... for those with access to the right corpus of documents. Gives me a Stephensonian vision of Google and the CIA merging. (btw, this article mentions PARC!)


• Recycling: Reverse Engineering - Georgia Tech looks for ways to make computer recycling more economically attractive. But what really caught my attention was that 85% of the 63 million computers taken out of service in America ended up in landfills, where as in Europe and Japan companies are reponsible for disposing of systems appropriately. We suck.


• Robotics: Cognitive Machines - AI has a long way to go. But at least robots can vacuum for me today.

Finally, the feature looks at current R&D at prominent research labs, including PARC, with some blurbs on Information Scent from my friend and groupmate Ed Chi.
Intel | PARC | HP Labs | IBM