What's The Next Big Thing in Technology?

Cloud computing has lots of potential.

I'm thinking Home Entertainment Computers.

On the software side, platform independent applications is huge and you are seeing it with the adoption of the Adobe AIR and JAVA IDE. Macs are gaining popularity in the business world and Open Source OS are becoming a cost effective development OS for high power testing and validation activities. Thus, making applications that can be used on multiple platforms with very little or no adjustments to the build is promising technology.

Private and small scale co-generation and interconnection systems for further dispersed power generation.

More privately owned and implemented home owner level stuff. Micro solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and other RE and AE systems doable at the privately owned and maintained cost levels.

I'm banking on the discovery of magic!

Yes, magic would be cool, but I'm rooting for sex-bots.

No.... Fembots!

Bio-Implants...

No longer need to type in words on a keyboard, press buttons on my remotes to control stuff and I can use my mobile without using a tooth pick to press those keys...just think it and it happens

...and also, similar implants into us all as identification cards and bank cards, replacing all those cards in my wallet

I'm ready, I've already got my tin foil hat to protect against hackers.

One innovation that will have tremendous technological impact will come from self repairing intelligent shape memory polymers. The invention holds a huge potential from minimally invasive surgery to self repairing components in automotive design.

Read Shape-Memory Polymers

Andreas Lendlein and Steffen Kelch http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/Courses/ce435/Lendlein02.pdf

Smart clothing, appliances that communicate with each other and appliances that communicate with clothing for maintenance considerations.

Roadway that communicate with smart vehicles.

Physical heath analysis via electrolyte scans performed on the skin surface.

Positive identification systems enabling retinal scans from fifty plus yards in a crowd.

Robotics...

"Smart clothing"...(?) By what-kinda-IQ measure will the sale racks be labeled?

What do you call the suit from "My Favorite Martian" --- or the one Jackie Chan wore in the movie (was it "Tuxedo"?) --- or the accessory-handbag from "My Stepmother Is An Alien"...? ("yeow!"; Kim B at her ooh-la-la-liest!)

I recall reading (GlobalSpec/CR4) about a clothing material that will be "self-cleaning" by virtue of repelling dirt... how about accompanying 'phone booth' modules in airports, train/bus stations etc that automatically de-wrinkle & freshen-up such apparel ... even eliminating sweat accumulation, then adding yer favorite after shave or cologne?!

Dang, I went and got started ~~~ gonna quit before I can't stop!

I think that Nanotechnology area will be developed too: Nanoelectronics and NEMS. At least for medical and scientific purposes (as a first step).

I, also, think that "electronic books" (i.e. "electronic paper" and "electronic ink") deserve our attention and they should be developed too. The content of such a "book" will be changed through a typical connection with a PC. Such a "book" could replace an whole library, saving a lot of trees. (And it's much easier to read from a book than from a PC screen.)

If I'm understanding you correctly regarding the electric book, it already exists and is widely being adopted here in the US:

Amazon Kindle

Roger, this is not what I meant. Craziest Ozzy is right. "Electronic book" (or whatever its name will be) will look like a typical book. Its "paper" consists of thousands of microcells containing a kind of white liquid (if I remember well) and charged, black coloured microspheres. By applying proper voltage on each cell you force these microspheres to move on the top or on the botton side of the cell, making this cell appears, correspondingly, black or white. So this "electronic paper" will be a kind of (probably plastic) paper. Your "electronic book" may have just one page or a lot of pages of such "paper". Its content will be changed according to the file that you load from your PC. And it's more probable that it will look like an "old fashioned" book, giving you the sense and the pleasure of the "traditional" reading of a book.

I would add: Smart Windows or Smart Glass.

You mean software, right? If so, good one! Only respond if I'm wrong.

Even if Apple were to buy Microsoft, they will re-write Windows from scratch...

A technological boom in the revelation in the Hydrogen economy. An AH HAH, accidental discovery of extracting hydrogen from water will emerge. Automobiles will fill up with water instead of gasoline. There will be a substantial world econmic shift on Dec 21, 2012 (122112).

Alright, I've had some time to think about this. Aside from the artificial companions, it occurs to me that if we don't come up with some significant advances in propulsion that we are going to be pretty much stuck in this little corner of the galaxy until we die (as a race- of course).

Screw all the cutsie gadgets, all that is fine and certainly fun, but if we don't make some significant leaps in terms of transportation then this planet is where we'll die. The distances are so vast, that it may just turn out that the limiting factors of physics dictate no alternative. There just may be no way to "get there from here".

However, we have certainly no lack of examples of transcending prior understandings of "how things work" and yielding outstanding developments as a consequence. Much of what we do today is pure magic to those of the past so who knows what might come.

The way I think about this question is "What Transformational Products" are wise to work on, or invest in?

One major transformational product for illustration was the introduction of the automobile which replaced the horse, for personal transportation.

Computers have been another "Transformational" product.

I'm only mentioning here and now the two major Transformational products of the 20th Century, and saying they were major because they were most ubiquitious and purchased by the common man internationally.

Trains, TVs, Radios, and Airplanes have Transformed our world and way of life, but I maintain it is automobiles and computers that have provided the most jobs, and therefore maintain they are the two most important Transformational products of the Post Modern Era.

I believe we have reached a point where due to the nearly completed replication of ourselves in one form or another, there are limits to how much any new technology will be able to be as Transformational in nature, as cars and computers.

However I am of the opinion that Robotics have strong potential for growth.

Robot lawnmowers, Robotic exoskeletons like the HAL, Robot Fighter Bomber Planes, Robot Vacuum cleaners, Robot soldiers, Robot Nurses, Robot Pets even will become more and more common as Transformational Products, though dependent on and enabled by technologies more mature and without which they are not enabled.

We are got to the point where we are far along, and at a point of no return, and in what Jared Diamond called a "Bottleneck".

We have been, and made naturally many, if not too many of ourselves, and now are being pushed to even make ourselves out of stuff that may only remember us.

Actually I think they have been made. Ain't myself seen one. I heard of them though.

I've actually seen the Roomba, that robot vacuum cleaner.

I didn't actually see it do anything, but I saw it in a store for sale.

The HAL exoskeleton I've seen pictures of, but I haven't really actually seen or touched one.

Milo sent me a vid of robot assist machinery that the inventors of the steadicam are putting onto factory floors.

?

And some of their other stuff

So, You guys agree?

Gimme a GA, or say so.

Yes, I agree with you about the robotics evolution in the near future. But for millitary purposes and not much for commercial-domestic purposes. Some simple robots (like the vacuum cleaner) may already exist but I don't think that there'll be sth spectacular in that area. In the millitary area is more probable to have more advanced robotics.

Robotics will get an even bigger evolution and acceptance when they'll be able to be combined with artificial intelligence. Then they'll be able to "converse" with humans and take usefull decisions.

I agree and disagree. Robots are already being created and deployed for military and police applications. Bomb disarming or neutralizing robotics are one example.

However I am of the judgement that human assist exoskeletons will be more and more applied to factory floor operations, and for material handling, and will be Transformational.

(They already have made transformations of Factory Floor operations, I'm just saying more and more, as they get better and better.)

The degree to which they are Transformational is up for some debate. Certainly in the Private sector. As a guess, I'd hazard the guess that they will have impacts comparable to Forklifts at a minimum, though due to mechanisms such as the Robotic Lawnmower, or the Robotic vacuum cleaner their impact will be greater than that of Forklifts.

Robots endowed with Artificial Intelligence will have great potential for human benefit particularly for our needs in Outer Space, which is a place we ourselves are not particularly suited for. In the oceans fishing they may also be of great benefit if made to be more discriminating about the catch.

RobomowRM400 is one Robotic Lawnmower. Looks like Sears sells it for 2,000.00 to 18 hundred. Think Toro makes it. There are some other models.

Adding a standard control interface to most silicon power devices. The extra cost would be negligible in large quantities. For example fluorescent lights and LEDs with electronic ballasts or regulators would have a mains borne or RF remote control interface as standard. A timer or dimmer switch would not control the mains supply but the device itself. Issues of dimmer compatibility would vanish.

The same would apply to motor control electronics or to complete appliances. We would see most device with remote controls, but it could be done in a seamless manner.