Jason Toff

Anyone who knows me knows I love to talk about future technologies. Something gets me really excited at the thought that we are witnessing a technological revolution and that the way the world works will be dramatically different in what will seem like no time.

A lot of people are of the mindset that you can’t predict the future: “Who would have ever thought that the television or Internet would be invented?” While this notion might have been true for the past 130,000 years, I don’t think that it is necessarily true anymore. I think we’ve reached a point where ideas are moving so fast, that it takes longer to execute ideas than it takes to think of them.

Having taken an OPIM class called Enabling Technologies, I saw a brief overview of the development of modern day technology over the past century. From looking at the past 100 years, I think we can predict the future.

So what does the future hold? I have some guesses that would seem pretty obvious to many…but for some reason, don’t exist today:

1. No more data storage devices (aka CDs, DVDs, USB drives, etc.)!

Once high-speed wireless Internet is everywhere (there aren’t any technological roadblocks stopping this… just cost limitations), you will be able to easily access your home computer, TV, movie player, etc. from anywhere. From your [i]phone, you could play songs or videos right off of your home computer. Better yet, you don’t even need a physical computer. Instead, your monitor could be wifi-equipped and could access your dedicated space on a massive data storage system elsewhere (in the process, making your data more secure, cheaper, and more accessible: more secure because there’d be backups of everyone’s data; cheaper because you’d be sharing space with others (so that instead of having a 100 GB hard drive and using 50 GB, you could share a ~800 GB hard drive with 10 other people, for instance); more accessible because these massive data centers could be running the fastest processors and connecting to the Internet through optical fibers. Think about it: we’ve gone from big floppy disks to smaller floppy disks to CDs to USB keys… why have anything at all if it isn’t necessary?

2. Enormous, lightweight monitors

I strongly believe (and it has been shown to be true) that one of the best ways to increase someone’s productivity is to increase the size of their computer monitor. The 17″ monitor I am currently looking at takes up less than a third of my range of sight. Admittedly pseudo-science, the eye has been determined to have an equivalent resolution of 81 megapixels. To couple that with another bit of pseudoscience, I was once told by one of my OPIM professors that the human brain’s memory could be measured in gigabytes. When comparing the ratio of our visual ability to the output of the monitors we regularly look at to the ratio of our memory capacity to the amount of storage space/information we have available, it is clear that we have an excess amount of information available and a limited amount of viewing “capacity.” Hence, there is a lot of room for progress to be made in enhancing the way we view information a computer.

Related to this point, consider the success of Google and the rise of search engine, tagging sites, etc.: they all exist to try to dumb down the massive amount of information we have to something that is digestible. Now consider monitors: have you ever felt like you were being engulfed/lost/overwhelmed by a monitor? I certainly haven’t. The closest I’ve come was staring at a 30″ Apple Cinema Display from 2 feet away in an Apple store (and to be honest, I felt freed more than lost by the experience).

Getting back to my point: the reason the above mentioned ratios are out of whack is because of the costs of these things. Storage space is getting cheaper and cheaper on orders of magnitude, whereas monitors aren’t developing quite as fast.

My guess: extremely lightweight, 60+” monitors as a standard of the future. I envision a desk without a back; instead, an enormous monitor will be attached to the wall behind the desk about 1-2 feet away. Perhaps something similar to this photo I came across on Digg recently:

3. Projectors on your [i]phone/PDA

Why carry an iPod AND a cell phone? You won’t have to starting on June 29. But take that one [admittedly giant] step forward: why have an [i]Phone/PDA AND a computer? I’m sure you’ll agree that eventually you’ll be able to fit more computing power in the palm of your hand than is available on the computer you are reading this off of.

So why not install 2 projectors on your PDA/[i]Phone? One will shine a keyboard that you can type on and one will project a screen onto a table/wall in front of you. Once again, the technology needed for this sort of thing already exists. Cost prohibitiveness will not survive in the long run… eventually this will be affordable and once it is affordable, why not have your computer and PDA all in one?

Bring this all-in-one device close to your monitor (#2 above) and the image will automatically show up there. While you’re at it, why not throw a Mastercard PayPass sort-of device in there? An improved version would connect to the checkout counter at your local grocery store so once the cashier rings you up, your PDA would flash a “Approve $25.10 charge? Press finger down to approve.” In fact, forget that. How about throw RFID compatibility in so you don’t even have to interact with a cashier. Everyone is talking about the convergence of your computer and your TV, but I don’t see that happening too soon– as that doesn’t seem useful (except for a possible cost savings). The above mentioned device does, on the other hand, seem useful– so why not go down that route of convergence?

Obviously I’m getting carried away, as I usually do when talking about these sorts of things. Those are just some of my thoughts. I’m sure everything above was thought of by lots of other people, but for some reason existing technologies have not been put to good use to make the above mentioned items mainstream. I can’t wait to look back at this blog in 25 years. I’d be happy to say “man, I called that!” but I’d also be quite happy with, “Wow, I couldn’t have predicted what actually happened.”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.