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Talking Web, Memory Aids, and Solar Phones In 5 Years
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Nov 27, 2008 12:03 AM
from the in-the-year-2000 dept.
from the in-the-year-2000 dept.
jbrodkin writes "A talking Web, solar technology embedded in windows and cell phones, and the end of forgetting will all come in the next five years, IBM predicts in its third annual Next Five in Five list, detailing innovations that could change our lives in the next half-decade. The other predictions: We will all have digital shopping assistants and, separately, 'crystal balls' to predict our future health.
If IBM is right, in five years we'll forget about keyboards and use our voices to surf the Web on solar-powered laptops. DNA profiles will predict our personal health risks, and we'll get automatic reminders to perform daily tasks, generated by digital recording and analysis of our conversations."
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End of Forgetting (Score:5, Funny)
Totally going to happen.
Wait..
Where am I?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do not want! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Wrinkly?
Re: (Score:2)
Opaque.
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Remembering all the little things you forget will become easier because everyday details will be recorded, analyzed and "provided at the appropriate time and place by both portable and stationary smart appliances."
That's not "the end of forgetting" - that sounds like a more annoying version of clippy.
'talking' to the Web is leapfrogging all other interfaces, and the mobile phone is outpacing the PC
That's using voice recognition on devices with substandard interfaces. Keyboards aren't going anywhere.
Re:Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of us who are forgetful and/or prone to procrastination need to be annoyed. It's important to me that the immediate cost of neglecting a task is greater than the cost of getting it done.
Agreed. Only a direct neural interface has the potential to replace my keyboard. Even then, I suspect that it would only be used in times/places in which a physical keyboard and display aren't practical. I'll still be among the first to sign up for a brain implant.
Parent
Re:Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
While I really like the concept of the Neural Interface, execution is going to be most likely screwed up.
For instance, if there is ANY possibility of bi-directional travel on the Neural Bus, If its closed source, I'm not interested. at all. If it is open source... well maybe.
But I can't see plugging anything that has any connection to Apple or Microsoft into my brain.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
So that's why everyone is saying "I'm a PC"?
Re:Misleading (Score:5, Funny)
"It looks like you're trying to make love! Do you need help?"
FUCK OFF CLIPPY
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Misleading (Score:4, Funny)
That's not "the end of forgetting" - that sounds like a more annoying version of clippy.
You mean a wife? Yeah.
I see you're trying to watch Star Trek, would you like to:
- Tell me my ass does not look fat in these pants
- Take out the garbage
- Do the dishes
Parent
Not sure about this one (Score:5, Interesting)
You will talk to the Web
I can't be positive, but I am pretty sure that I can type faster than a speech-recognition algorithm (currently) can convert my speech into text. I am also not sure that surfing the web using speech is such a great idea anyway. I like to think about things. Talking to my computer means (for me) that my thoughts would be less in depth (I think). Also, it might give "not safe for work" a whole new meaning, not to mention the "not safe for home". Anyway, what advantage would web browsing using speech bring us (aside from the obvious tremendous benefits to those who're impared and cannot type)? How would links work? How would firefox's awesome bar work? I am not suggesting that these problems are unsolvable. I am suggesting that it would be like trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Typing works fine. I don't need to talk to my monitor--I talk to myself too much as it is.
Re:Not sure about this one (Score:4, Funny)
Also, it might give "not safe for work" a whole new meaning, not to mention the "not safe for home"
Obviously they don't realize why the net was born [youtube.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well, you said "bar" (in awesome bar)
I know exactly how that works .I walk up .I make eye contract .I verbally describe the beverage I wish to purchase .I hand over too much money
*drink, wash, repeat
Re:Not sure about this one (Score:4, Funny)
I know exactly how that works .I walk up .I make eye contract
Yes. Forming eye contracts always works wonders. The contract is usually: "I wanna get as drunk as possible". The bar tender usually agrees to this contract.
.I verbally describe the beverage I wish to purchase .I hand over too much money
Well, there is where you're getting it wrong. Never EVER verbally describe the beverage. The bar tender will probably not understand your detailed explanation of yeasts and the molecular structure anyway. Just tell them "I wanna drink to get drunk" and they will understand better. Also, don't hand over your money. Place it on the bar and watch it like a hawk. If anyone tries to steal it (including the bar tender) defend yourself. Take a leaf outa Balmer's book and throw a chair (or bar stool, whichever is handy).
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. Do not take this as legal advice. I used to be a lawyer, but I got banned from the bar. (I can't believe I typed that)
Parent
Re:Not sure about this one (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine how fun an office would be with everyone saying HTTP://SLASHDOT.ORG REFRESH all day long.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, finally the name would have some purpose. It would be great to be redirected to HTTP:///..org
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't say you can't still type, does it? You can use speech to augment other input devices.
What I'd like to see... (Score:4, Insightful)
...every time we get one of these "we will have X in Y years" is the track record of whoever is making these predictions. Did they guess correctly in 50% of their past predictions? More? Less? Should I care, then?
(I realize IBM has 2 more years to go before this applies to the "next 5", but I'd bet they were making public predictions, by another name, long ago - just like everybody else)
IBM can shove their voice interactions. (Score:3, Funny)
Insensitive . . . ?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait until you get on a plane full of bow-heads, all *talking* to their laptops. You think cell phones in public were bad? Those were "just the fireflies before the storm" (Lou Gerstner)
Well, if this comes true, the world of the future will definitely be noisier.
In other news, IBM patents new advance ear plug technology.
Parent
I'm skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt any of these are going to happen in the next 5 years, if at all. Here are my thoughts on each of their predictions.
1. Solar power
This sounds a lot like the 50s and 60s sci-fi where every little gadget is nuclear powered. Not going to happen. I can imagine more and more portable devices switching to solar, but I think it will be closer to 10-15 years before it becomes widespread.
2. DNA testing
Could happen, but I don't think it will be a common practice in 5 years time.
3. Voice input
Speech to text is still pretty bad. Some examples of problems it still struggles with are handling different accents, background noise. I think instead of voice input we will see a lot more touch-screen interfaces similar to the Nintendo DS and iPhone. Keyboard + mouse will still rule the desktop.
4. Robot shop assistants
Sounds far too annoying and expensive for the retailers to catch on. Also what's the point of having a robot if a human then has to go and get the item(s) suggested by it? Why not have the human make the suggestions as is currently done?
5. Memory aids
I doubt people's behavior will change so much in 5 years that everything we do will be recorded. I think we are heading that way, but I'd allow longer than 5 years for it to become mainstream. I'd also suggest that a lot of work still needs to be done with how data is stored, organized, searched etc. for this to become useful. There's no point in having everything recorded if you aren't able to find the information you need at a later date.
Re:I'm skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Solar power
This sounds a lot like the 50s and 60s sci-fi where every little gadget is nuclear powered. Not going to happen. I can imagine more and more portable devices switching to solar, but I think it will be closer to 10-15 years before it becomes widespread.
Phones need to much power to run off solar, but could be trickle charged with a solar charger. However that's not ideal for a device that sits in pockets and handbags and office buildings with little natural light.
2. DNA testing
Could happen, but I don't think it will be a common practice in 5 years time.
I hope you're right. I fear it will be misused far more than it will be used for good purpose.
3. Voice input
Speech to text is still pretty bad. Some examples of problems it still struggles with are handling different accents, background noise. I think instead of voice input we will see a lot more touch-screen interfaces similar to the Nintendo DS and iPhone. Keyboard + mouse will still rule the desktop.
URLs in particular are awful. They don't spell the way they sound. Imagine how long it would take to fill out a form with voice compared to typing if you have a decent typing rate.
4. Robot shop assistants
Sounds far too annoying and expensive for the retailers to catch on. Also what's the point of having a robot if a human then has to go and get the item(s) suggested by it? Why not have the human make the suggestions as is currently done?
What is happening is self serve. You scan the items yourself and are monitored. Sales assistants replaced with body guards. The "robots" are nothing more than scanners attached to weighing scales to help ensure you're not stealing product.
5. Memory aids
I doubt people's behavior will change so much in 5 years that everything we do will be recorded. I think we are heading that way, but I'd allow longer than 5 years for it to become mainstream. I'd also suggest that a lot of work still needs to be done with how data is stored, organized, searched etc. for this to become useful. There's no point in having everything recorded if you aren't able to find the information you need at a later date.
The problem isn't recording. (A voice recorder would do that just fine for a lot of tasks). It's recall and providing the information at the appropriate time. Ignoring the privacy implications of having every action recorded this technology is going to require AI to be useful.
Parent
Re:I'm skeptical (Score:5, Funny)
3. Voice input
Speech to text is still pretty bad. Some examples of problems it still struggles with are handling different accents, background noise.
Ack. Imagine trying to tell a computer to go to Slashdot [slashdot.org].
I'd rather just double the killer delete select all...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Solar power: Noone wants to carry around their mobile devices out in the open oriented to catch the most Sun. Solar panels on houses and cars I can understand, but they will never be anything more than a marketing gimmick on mobile devices.
3. Voice input: My first exposure to this was a demo from IBM in the mid 1990's. PCs have increased in power a lot since then and the quality of voice recognition has hardly changed, so I think it's going to take a major new discovery to make significant advances in
And a pony (Score:2)
why the obsession with speech recognition? (Score:5, Insightful)
seriously, every list of things that we can expect to see "real soon now" involves speech recognition.
and all i can say is... why?
who wants to work in an office full of cubes of people talking to their computers?
do you really want to read that confidential memo out loud?
besides, i can't imagine how awful it would be if everyone started speaking their memos and blog posts and comments &c. you think e-mail looks sloppy now... just wait until folks start yakking at their computers and pressing (or, i guess, saying?) "send".
sheesh. the last thing i want to do is "talk" to the web.
Re:why the obsession with speech recognition? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we no longer have to read the information from the internet (which is becoming increasingly visual anyway) then only very few will ever read anything at all. People are already not buying books.
That said, I am going to go listen to the robot overlord read
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Those of us who type and are slowly destroying their wrists and arms welcome the opportunity to stop typing while still getting the job done.
To the commenter above me: it's been shown that the fastest way to get pure text into a computer is to speak it. The fastest way to get text out is to read it. TTS tech has its place, but the internet isn't going to start being exclusively narrated by our robot overlord any time soon.
More like 15 years (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past 15 years, speech recognition has certainly not gotten to the point where you can navigate hands-free except for rudimentary commands like ALT-LEFT or PAGEDOWN. You still need to train speech recognition parsers to your pronunciation, and they still get it wrong some of the time. Like everyone else, I would love for this technology to be perfected but I'm not holding my breath (so to speak). Maybe the author was taking the Iron Man movie a bit too seriously.
As for "perfect memory" I think in fact the opposite has occurred (see the recent Slashdot article [slashdot.org] on improving one's memory). People's attention spans and short term memory are deteriorating because of the information blitz. Although, the damage from passive web surfing is mediated by active participation in forums etc. Carrying around a PDA has been a mixed blessing; you get to the point where you don't bother to memorize anything because it's all in your device. That's OK as far as it goes, but you still need to exercise your memory or risk letting it decline, and PDAs do nothing to alleviate this problem.
Paint-on solar power--that's a great technology that has barely made it out of the lab. If it's implemented in the next 5 years, wonderful, but somehow it seems like a major infrastructure shift is needed to truly take advantage. I'd love to see every new house and commercial building outfitted with solar power, but it's not happening today even in fast-growing and sunny places like southern Arizona so this paint-on thing is probably even farther off. But, who knows what the next five years will bring. Obama may try to push through a mandate and then suddenly we'll see solar everywhere.
Realistically, in five years I would expect to see much smarter phones, like the iPhone 4.0 and gPhone 3.0 running on various networks including wi-fi and wimax as well as traditional cellular grids. Memory will be bigger and cheaper, and these gadgets will essentially be as smart as a present-day laptop. Laptops will be slimmer and smarter, too, and with longer lasting power supplies. Probably cars will be slightly smarter, with built-in GPS screens a common option (Toyota will probably be the first to make GPS a standard feature in all models) and traffic jam avoidance systems increasingly common. Eventually we'll doubtless have buried beacons in the roads that will alert motorists with properly equipped cars to impending collisions or congestion. But this kind of infrastructure will take years if not decades to install.
Socially we'll see more people looking for community online while ignoring their physical neighbors. This will be disruptive to physical neighborhoods as the world becomes increasingly virtual and distances are lessened.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a solved problem, and has been for years.
IBM will move its HQ to India. (Score:5, Funny)
I predict that in 5 years, IBM will finish moving all of its datacenter support to India, will exit the CPU business in the face of withering competition from Intel, and sell its mainframe business from some yet to be identified Chinese company.
Does anyone type to the web now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone type to the web now? It seems to me most people use this thing called a mouse. Replacing a keyboard with voice recognition sucks. Replacing a mouse with voice recognition... let's just say I'm pretty sure that's one of the punishments featured in one of the lower circles of hell.
Re:Does anyone type to the web now? (Score:5, Funny)
Voice recognition mouse in action:
left one pixel!
left one pixel!
left one pixel!
left one pixel!
left one pixel!
left one pixel!
down one pixel!
down one pixel!
down one pixel!
down one pixel!
oops too far
up one pixel!
CLICK!
Parent
Future falshback. (Score:3, Funny)
"DNA profiles will predict our personal health risks..."
You will suffer the risk of constant blows to the head from your annoying personality. Have a nice day.
"...and we'll get automatic reminders to perform daily tasks, generated by digital recording and analysis of our conversations."
We have that already. I call mine, Mom!
They're doin' it again (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate when they do this stuff. People tend to make predictions from the wrong angle. Half of the things they say have everything to do with innovation and nothing to do with adoption. Unfortunately, as these are all technological maturities, they only truly exist as beneficial when they acquire a thershhold-degree of ubiquity.
If something is completely unused today, I promise that it won't be anywhere near widely adopted in five years.
Re:They're doin' it again (Score:4, Interesting)
5 years? Takeup of these things is accelerating.
The very first MP3 player (Eiger Labs MPMan F10) didn't go on sale until June 98, and 3rd Generation iPod was out by April 03. Admittedly it was a couple more years until they reached the 10s of millions of sales per quarter, depends on your definition of 'widely adopted'.
DVD players didn't go on sale until 96, and they were pretty dominant by about '01
Wireless networking was pretty much non-existent before 802.11b in October 99, but extremely popular 5 years later.
5 years is a long time these days.
Online TV-catchup (iplayer, hulu etc) was essentially non-existent 2 years ago - want to bet it will be 3 more years before it's widely adopted? iPlayer's already a sizeable % of all internet traffic in the UK.
Parent
It's a load of crap. (Score:3, Interesting)
We already have some of these things (the talking web for example... even though it's abysmally expensive to do it right), and others of them we probably don't even want.
For example: solar cells on sidewalks will not become commond anytime soon. Why? Not because of solar cell efficiency, which has (finally) been increasing significantly. No, the problems there are interconnection and durability! Interconnection is problematic and expensive, and the thin-film cells are nowhere near durable enough for this kind of application... unless you embedded them in epoxy or something, which is a whole different can of worms.
Solar cells will not be embedded in cell phones! Why? Because even though solar cell efficiency is increasing, cell phones use a LOT of power (which is why they have lithium cells), and they keep getting smaller and smaller, with less room for solar cells. Further, nobody wants to clip their cell phone to their hat so that it absorbs enough sun.
I could go on, but I think I have made my point. IBM should be ashamed of this set of predictions. It was poorly thought out.
Hmmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote /Quote
For example: solar cells on sidewalks will not become commond anytime soon.
Strange this. Just this week, a Solar powered traffic sign was installed on the pavement(uk speak for sidewalk) right outside my house.
Here and in France (from my observations earlier this week) large number of roadside and even railway side equipment are spouting solar panels these days.
It is a pity that the large scale panels needed for domestic use are so expensive.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nanosolar is very close to getting their solarply product down to $1/Kw, which means for your average household needs your one-time outlay is around $4,000USD for the panels + inverter, wiring etc. For a 25+ year warranty, that's not bad. Only problem is that their capacity is sold out for the next year =(
Solar phones? (Score:2)
Solar tech? Seriously? For something that sits in my pocket??? And women tend to keep in handbags. Oh I can imagine it now....a conversation with my wife when I get home will begin with "Sorry honey, I forgot to put my mobile on the window sill at work and it ran out of charge. Actually our area is moving in a couple of years and there won't be as much natural light so even that won't be an option.
I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't April fools.
If the internet talks to me... (Score:2, Funny)
[+5 sarcasm]
STDs? (Score:2, Funny)
Memory AIDS? I better start wearing my brain condom
Flying cars owned by private citizens (Score:2, Funny)
Next five in five my #$% (Score:5, Funny)
Digital Assistants in shops! Cool... (Score:3, Funny)
No need to go shopping with the Mrs any more! Woo hoo!
Here let me give you head start on the code:
onShopperTalk(text) {
if (text == "Does my bum look big in this?") {
output("No, it looks fine");
sleep(2000);
output("What do you mean I wasn't looking? - of course I was");
}
}
Re: (Score:2)
That was absolutely magical.
But you do have to consider that speech-to-text's strength is transcription, not punctuation. For an engine that's probably had next to no training on the user's voice, it did at least a half-decent job getting the correct word. Given that most perl scripters are too busy fighting over vi and emacs, it's probably OK for the Vista team to ignore this one masochist.