PCs may disappear from your desk by 2033

[thomasallencummins]

tech.msn.com/news/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=6183619>1=10938

PCs may disappear from your desk by 2033. But with digital technology showing up everywhere else--including inside your body--computing will only get more personal.

The future ain't what it used to be. In the pre-PC era, futurists predicted huge changes in transportation. By 2008 we would be flitting about in personal jetpacks and taking vacations on the moon. But the communications revolution spurred by personal computers and the Internet wasn't on anyone's radar.
Now the technology landscape is on the verge of changes that will transport us to places few people have imagined. We know that computers will be vastly more powerful, mobile, and connected. The question for the next 25 years is whether we'll be able to tell where technology ends and the rest of our life begins.
Technology will become firmly embedded in advanced devices that deliver information and entertainment to our homes and our hip pockets, in sensors that monitor our environment from within the walls and floors of our homes, and in chips that deliver medicine and augment reality inside our bodies.
This shiny, happy, future world will come at a cost, though: Think security and privacy concerns. So let's hope that our jetpacks come with seat belts, because it's going to be a wild ride.

Nano technology? Data transmitted by light at the speed of light?
GIMME SOME NOW!!!!!

[ram]

Very interesting article.

Meanwhile, what you see on screen will look a lot more like real life than in present-day 3D virtual worlds, predicts Halal. "When you want to buy a book, instead of going to Amazon's home page, you'll be greeted by a virtual salesperson," Halal says. "The avatar will find the book you're looking for and conduct the transaction, just as you would with a real person."

I dunno...that could make the process more user-friendly, or just more annoying. Do we really need a virtual middleman?

Body computers will progress from monitoring health to delivering medical care and ultimately to augmenting reality by piping the Internet directly into the brain--if people can overcome their squeamishness about brain implants. "There's a very short leap between implanting a [cochlear] device and one that lets you receive data directly from the Net," Tucker says.

Sounds great...but does this mean we'd also have to put up with spam being fed directly into our brains?

We have met Big Brother, and he is us. Tiny cameras and wireless connections may herald an era of "sous-veillance"--observation from below--says Jamais Cascio, founder of Open the Future and a director at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. Cameras and microphones in your glasses or shirt buttons will record every moment, upload it, and let you replay the good bits.

The ultimate reality show? I'll bet when people do this, they'll just realize how repetitive and banal their daily life is. Thanks, but no thanks.

[baylou]

I guess I'll be using my new technology in heaven in 2033! I'll have to watch my grandchildren put it to good use.

[thomasallencummins]

Well try to imagine what personal computers will be like in say 5 years or maybe 10. We may be laughing about how ridiculously slow and useless todays computers are as we do with the old 386s. I expect that we'll still need a display but it will be monitor less, projected via some kind of holographics or wafer thin LCD that can be resized from 20" to 60". Just about anything is possible.

[prorider514]

and we were sure we'd have those jetpacks by the 90's werent we?

[ram]

Jun 23, 2008 9:16:27 GMT -5 prorider514 said:

and we were sure we'd have those jetpacks by the 90's werent we?

Yeah, that and the robot maid/butler.

Oh, well, there is that iRobot vacuum cleaner...but you're crazy if you think I'd spend $300 on a cute little round vacuum that slowly picks up debris all day, instead of just putting in a few minutes of effort with my $50 Dirt Devil.