What Does the Future Hold for Computers?

None of the above...
People have been rabbiting on about optical computers for decades...they seem to ingnore the fact that we will need to interface to them.. and anyhow, how will they work at night.
Del

Peredo (Sp?) taught us a long ago with the 20/80 rule that we only use 20% of our resources to produce 80% of our results. In my life time I've not seen anything to suggest things have changed, even in the realm of computers.

While CPUs and storage have gotten faster and more reliable, the human interface we are forced to use is still a throwback to a keyboard invented over 100 years ago.

It seems to be a technological absurdity to give us powerful computers when the limiting member of the environment are human hands. The limiting factor in size is still the keyboard.

There is hope however. Voice recognition software is coming on fast. I marvel at how good it's doing. People leave a phone message for me and a few minutes later my phone company sends me a text message by e-mail, a letter perfect transcript of the voice message!

It carries certain risks however. I can see someone from Air Bus sneaking into the engineering bull pen at Boeing and yelling "Erase Everything!"

Del is grinning. . . . . I just know it!

If I thought I could do it in Congress, I'd grin too and leave immediately for Washington!

L.J.

'Wreck a nice beach'... err sorry I mean 'recognise speach'. You're avin' a Steffi !
Most people can barely write a coherent sentence never mind issue unambiguous concise accurate commands.
Move the document into my pictures file...
No, not that document.
No not the holiday snaps file the thingy one, you know, work projects...whatever...oh jeez..stupid bloody computer.
Yeah, sod it 'ERASE EVERYTHING'

The whole logic is floored, oh I mean flawed (or do I?) It's no good complaining that computers are limited by human physiology...we are hardly going to design them for Octopus, Cats or Squirrels (or are we?) <scampers off to KrisDel^TM dev't lab>
Del

HP is currently working on a very important future technology with the "memristor".

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-mysterious-memristor

When this is finally practical and can be produced it will change the way CPUs are built and should shrink things to sizes that can address the "Human-machine" direct interface issues. Just think it - wow! There are already prosthetic devices that use small component processors for controls. I think this will be where we see some really amazing new products and things that help man kind...I hope any way.

Memresistor...wow! How long before the first human walks around hands free with an implanted computer connected to everything? We may not even have to talk or text or blog..just think. Record our dreams (maybe a little self censoring required). What do you mean go to school? With the latest memresistor implant you would know more than Einstein from a very tender age. Then watch Moore's Law take a huge leap again.

I can only really see 5-10 years down the road, but I have a feeling that something vaguely resembling a hive mind is in our future. Billions of humans have cell phones now, and in a few years, a large fraction of those will be "smartphones." Developing countries are skipping wired communications entirely. Kids today are playing with flash mobs and viral marketers I presume rake in big bucks. Language translation is getting better all the time.

I view ubiquitous public wifi as hopefully inevitable. The value added is inconceivable, so if the private sector doesn't do it, the gov't should. (Whether the data is carried over cell signals or ethernet doesn't matter.)

Processing power:size ratios will continue to improve, some (electrical) power innovations are possible, and eventually we're going to be able to have internet access 24/7 without having to get up. When I'm in a wifi zone, I can whip out the iPod and look up washing machine statistics, Tom Hanks' filmography or just about anything, near-instantly.

The human:machine interface is still the biggest bottleneck, but gesture and voice recognition will help. There's a lab working on detecting finger taps via arm vibrations and Microsoft is due to release their Natal system of video tracking this Fall. Combine gesture recognition with tiny projectors (I can't get myself to use "pico-projector"), and you've got a computer anywhere.

Intuitively, I don't see direct brain interfacing or mind reading happening any time soon.

We can do that Avatar image wipe move right now with a touch-screen PC and a tablet PC - I just don't know if anyone's bothered. Minority Report-like recognition of your person and linking to your preferences via AdSense is also possible today - there isn't a persuasive enough business case to install it at the local mall, yet.

And of course we always have the option of disconnecting and getting back to Nature. I for one think now is a terrific time to be alive.

I always find these,"What will it be like in the future?" questions laughable. If we could know how any yet to be built technology could be used, we would or are actually trying to do it now with unsatisfactory results. The problem is we don't know which of the failing attempts we're trying now are on the verge of happening or the approach can never happen. Let alone the complications that nobody will want this clever idea or we cannot conceive the use until the new technology happens.