All developments in long term context.
A future vision from Microsoft.
Everything will react to everything. Microsoft nicely shows how everything responds to touch.
But in 2020 it’ll go a step further. Screens will react to your position, to what you say, to how you look, how you move and even how you smell. That’s only very limitedly shown in this video and we’ll see from this year that it’ll go in a different direction.
Researchers have developed a variety of chemical sensing technologies, or artificial noses. So far, though, these devices work only for a limited range or a certain class of chemicals, and are typically stymied by mixtures of chemicals.
Artificial noses will be part of our extented sensory system, like contact lenses and hearing aids, like virtual reality glasses and 3D sound ear plugs. We will be able to smell odors better than dogs can, enabling us to smell the presence of others, now or just a few hours ago. It will also enable us to detect illnesses, of ourselves or others. And it will help us to train our olfactory organ, restoring our natural capability to use this sense to make decisions in daily life, for example in communication with others.
Using the so-called BEAM 3D mapping software developed by two students of the Engineering College of Aarhus you can determine your location in a building. The software works together with 3d sensor hung in the building. You also need a 3D map of the building.
Later on, there’ll be sensors – let me call them ‘location-IDs’, everywhere. All electricity, for example a plug connection, broadcasts a location. And you can tape a piece of tape that works on solar energy and broadcasts on location to the wall with the greatest ease. Identifiers will determine their own location based on other IDs in the building. And maps of every building, every house will be standardly available later on. We’ll truly never get lost again.
IBM Research has registered a new patent which makes speech synthesis a little more natural. Listen to a demo. It adds in coughs automatically and there are stops and random pauses. The differences are so small they're barely noticeable. According to IBM the voices are almost impossible to separate from real voices.
Image synthesis and speech synthesis are the easiest parts of building artificial life in a virtual world. Recognising objects, people, animals is a little more complex and there are plenty of meanings in this too. Being able to understand complex human communication and the abstract concepts we talk of, that’s a whole step further. Many steps further. But it’ll come too. Once we understand this properly we can talk automatedly about the most complicated subjects in any language, in any accent. That’s coming. It’s coming.
Arsenal, an English soccer club, is working together with Sony to create an application that'll make it possible for viewers to watch reruns in the stadium via their PlayStation Portable (PSP).
With a PSP and the application developed by Sony, it's possible for visitors to the Emirates Stadium to watch the game as live-stream on their PSP. With the necessary statistics and of course the instant replays shortly after a goal or other highlight.
Physical world and virtual world will blend seamlessly. Later on we’ll be able to ‘zoom’, but not just from where we’re sitting, from every position. We can go back in time, the moment everyone entered if need be. And make contact with others, in the stadium or at home. Or we’ll see extra people walking on the field, or animals, or objects. You name it. But for now this first has to become live.
The University of Ljubljana as developed a system which makes icons appear on objects you see in your environment. This through very clever pattern recognition.
We’ll be able to ask spoken questions with everything we see. In any language. This is another step in that direction.
LG has shown a prototype of the LD GD910 3G HDSPA phone. In layman's terms: a wrist phone watch with a touchscreen that shows multi-media and is constantly connected to the outside world. You can play movies, music, make video calls, send text messages, play games and even see the time. The watch also has speech recognition through a microphone or a bluetooth headset. The watch will appear on the European market this year.
For an evening out, this watch will be enough in time. You can see what there is to do in the evening, see where your friends are, call them, order something in the pub and pay with it. You can check whether someone in the neighbourhood is open for a date. And finally you can call a cab with the press of a button. No mobile phone necessary anymore. A design-hit further and this’ll be the hit of 2010.
In this movie, Tan Le of emotive systems demonstrates how someone, by thinking of something can really move objects (on a screen). She expects the first applications with gamers. I see a radical change of human existence in the long term.
The moment we start to measure our brains, and we bring the subconscious into the conscious mind, we’ll be able to do brilliant things, we’ll be able to train our brain a way that still seems impossible, we’ll be able to do things that are currently considered to be ‘miracles’. Remembering all names of a couple of hundred people at the same time, counting the amount of pins falling to the floor, or knowing the number pi to a few thousand numbers after the comma. It’ll all be in our reach later. Well, for us? Actually for the generations in 2050. The time of Pamper Planet.
Apple has registered a patent for a 3D desktop. On such a desktop a folder has become a folder that falls open and in which documents stand next and behind each other.
The strength isn’t in this one concept. It’s in screen that react your head too. So that you can look ‘a little further’. Then you won’t need a mouse either.
Scientists have discovered that sheets with carbon nanotubes, tubes of carbon atoms rolled up as wire on nanoscale, can make sound. The sheets are so thin that they can be transparent, and in principle very big. When such a sheet is put over a (flexible) screen the sound can literally come from all directions and the screen is made (a lot) lighter.
Eventually screens will be holes in the wall, with a view to whatever world you wish. The sound will come from exactly where you think it’ll come. This discovery brings this situation a little closer.
LG has developed a chip for cell phones, based on the 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. With this it's possible to download with a speed of 100Mbps and to upload with 50Mbps. Currently the highest possible speed for mobile internet is still at 7.6Mbps. So it's going to be 13x as fast.
With the chip we don’t just connect cell phones, but all screens, so that we can use portable screens to game on the camping, listen to all radio stations in the world and call at the same time. It seems like a luxury to us, but the biggest revolution will take place in underdeveloped countries where suddenly remote regions will be connected.
Chip producer NXP has developed a chip for a car key. The chip helps you find your car back in a large parking lot. Holding the key near one's cell phone creates a connection with the car and then you receive the location on your cell which then navigates you neatly to your car. Furthermore the key lets you see which doors are locked and if they roof's closed. Useful for anyone doubting that when there are clouds drifting over when they're walking to the store.
Brands are going to coach us. They know much better than you which choices you can make, where you have to go and where you shouldn’t go. They’ll coach us in real time on the spot. It’s just a piece of technology, but it’ll be the most normal thing in the world.
During the FPD International Show in Japan, Samsung has shown a prototype of a telephone with a fondable OLED colour display. The phone has a display on the front already, as is usual, but on folding it open a second display with a diameter of 6.5 inch and a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels is revealed.
Big mobile screens too are becoming truly useable now. Banking quickly? Sorting some nice music quickly? Make a comparison of the furniture you’ve just viewed? That all becomes possible with this. Brands will have to be at the consumer’s side on every available screen. That’ll be a great challenge. We’ve just got used to the computer and are still excited about the iPhone.
CarCade is a concept game you play on your laptop while in a car. A camera filming the environment is mounted on the wing-mirror and the moving image is used in a space-shooter-like game (think of Space Invaders of yore). The game responds to the behavior of the car.
Virtual and physical world mix. Currently complicatedly through a laptop, soon through special glasses or afterwards in our contact lenses.
Fuji FinePix Real 3D technology makes it possible to create 3D images directly on the camera. They can be watched without the use of special glasses. To do this the camera has two lenses which are combined into one. You can also still make 2D photographs. With the two lenses the quality of the 2D photo can be enhanced or an extremely panoramic picture can be taken. Cameras using the technology will be for sale in 2009.
People think in 3D, think in images, think in the special placement of objects in regard to one another. Like we order nature around us. We’re getting technology that plays on this more and more often. We were used to making a 2D picture and printing it 2D. Now we’re making a 3D picture and can print it in 3D at home (such a printer only costs 5000 euros by now). In the long term, we’ll create 3d video and we let be played by programmable matter. Then we can replay everything completely. The way it was. The nostalgic human in tiptop shape.
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