10 Tech Concepts You Should Know for 2007

mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new list of wide-ranging technology terms it claims will be big in 2007. From PRAM to BAN and SmartPills to data clouds, it's a pretty nice summary of upcoming and in-the-works trends across the board (with a podcast embedded). Though these aren't technologies they expect to be in everyone's homes next year, they're sure this tech will be in the headlines. How do their predictions from a year ago stack up now?" From the article: "Printed Solar Panels - Tomorrow's solar panels may not need to be produced in high-vacuum conditions in billion-dollar fabrication facilities. If California-based Nanosolar has its way, plants will use a nanostructured "ink" to form semiconductors, which would be printed on flexible sheets. Nanosolar is currently building a plant that will print 430 megawatts' worth of solar cells annually--more than triple the current solar output of the entire country."

Who is your financial advisor?

[Ogemaniac]

A five year payback is great, roughly the equivalent of 15% interest. That's far better than stocks, with far less risk. Ignoring risks and commissions, the stock market can be expected to have a 8-10 "payback time".

You are right, though. The answer is dollars per watt. Solar is still not there yet, though it is getting close to matching peak prices in some markets (California, Japan, Germany). However, the "printed" thin-film versions are still highly inefficient compared to normal silicon-crystal systems. Their cost advantage does not make up for this.

Re:data cloud

[throx]

The problem with the whole "Data Cloud" thing is that the network bandwidth just isn't there yet. I get impatient enough waiting for my files from my LOCAL hard drive (which has a peak transfer of around a gigabit per second) and yet the best broadband access you can get at the moment is lucky to exceed ten megabits peak transfer (and forget sustained). It's the same issue with network backups - you just can't transfer the terabyte of information I have on my home machine to anywhere on the internet fast enough for it to be called anything even approaching useful. I'll just keep the RAID setup for now, thanks.

Sorry, but I've been hearing about the wonders of storing all my data on some network drive for a long time now, but the storage requirements of "all my data" have been growing faster than the network bandwidth has. Until that trend is reversed, local storage is here to stay.

Re:smart pills

[EMeta]

So large of a percentage of medical equipment is disposable (for hygine, of course, but man do they make a whole lot of waste), that I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was the same--at least in mostly developed nations. If you make them disposable you also needn't make them big enough to be recharged (or dissasembled for battery replacement, etc.) or carry any more charge than necessary for one trip.

Combine that with its makers being able to sell more & it still being a cheaper prospect for many HMO's than the invasive surgery--no way these things won't be disposable.

What about 2006?

[DaveWick79]

I didn't see anything on the 2006 list that became a buzzword in 2006 - maybe they will in 2007, who knows. Only two on the list, Fiber to Home and IP Television, have made much news. There's a few obscure technologies that people will never care to know the name of, and the rest simply haven't come about. For 2007, how long will we be waiting for these? And why is Body Area Network on the list, a mere repeat of things that didn't make it to prime time in 2006 and is admittedly something they don't think will become widely manufactured or even accepted. In other words, these lists are a total washout.

Body Area Networks

[VoidEngineer]

I work at a hospital, and I'll vouch that we're already investigating body area networks. Patient monitoring, obviously, is the big one; but we're also very interested in the cost savings of a good RFID sponge count system. After each surgery procedure, some poor shlep has to count through all the sponges and make sure that the count matches up with the number used. And if we're short a sponge or two, then we have to take an x-ray of that patient to see if something was left inside of them. And if something *was*, well, obviously it needs to be removed, necessitating more surgery, and another sponge count.... We're hoping that RFID/wireless chips are going to solve this problem. Also coming down the research pipe, as I understand, are a variety of wireless enabled surgical robots that can crawl the stomach and intestines and do various repair work, and RFID/wireless enabled aneurysm clips and pacemakers to warn against putting patients into MRI fields. Obviously, all vital sign monitoring equipment is getting ready to be put on the networks, which is going to be huge, especially with our associated nursing homes and the aging baby boomer population.

Re:Home owners Associations

[mcrbids]

Even if solar becomes cheap enough, what will prevent me is my home owners association. They don't allow solar panels. Move to a neighborhood that doesn't have that rule? I would have to move to a neighborhood that doesn't have a home owners association. Yeah, good luck in finding one! Folks are so afraid of their property values being hurt, they turn into housing fascists.

Yes, this is a real problem. However, if cells become reasonably priced, and can be "printed", what would it take to "print" them onto an attractive subsurface so that it blends in nicely?

And, lest you think this is a NEW idea, an "I'm feeling lucky" Google search led me to somebody else who already had the same idea. [premierpower.com]

More expensive? Sure! Why else would they go to the extra effort? But it's at least POSSIBLE.

Re:Salor Power is not yet viable

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? What if the $5/watt cells are not powerful enough to power your A/C during peak hours, but the $10/watt cells are? There are a lot of factors here. You've only got so much roof space, and most people won't put them out on the lawn, even if community standards allowed that. For the A/C scenario, the 20 years during which the cells become less powerful is 20 years during which you could be growing trees to shade your house. Deciduous trees will reduce the power from the cells, but they'll reduce your cooling bill and add value to your property (assuming you live in an area where trees can grow). I think there are way too many factors you aren't taking into account. As others have pointed out, what if the cells are more efficient *and* less costly?

FWIW, I think the cells will make more sense on the roofs of low-rise "flex office space" initially. You can't grow trees tall enough to shade a low-rise office, and nobody cares what the roof of a sprawling low-rise looks like anyway.

Re:Salor Power is not yet viable

[rrhal]

If you can make solar panels for $5 per 100 watt panel .. you can bet I'll be off grid. I don't care about efficiency, I only care about cost

You paid ~ $10,000 to have a licenced electrician (time and materials) wire your fuse box to the grid. For that kind of money you could buy a solar system that would keep you in electricity for a long time. There would be thousands of dollars left over. If you invested that along with your monthly electric payments you would have a fund that would replace anything that failed in your home system for much of the rest of your life.

Re:What if the cost is almost nothing?

[h2_plus_O]

Heck, it's hard to argue against buying solar panels now. If they pay for themselves in 5 years, as has been suggested upthread, and they have a functional lifespan of > 25 years, you could buy >25 years' worth of electricity for the price of 5 years' electricity. The only 'risks', really are: a) what if the price of electricity goes down? and b) what if the price of solar panels (cost:watt) goes down?

If solar panels paid for themselves in 6 months, I'd cover my whole roof with them, sell my cars and buy cars that can run on electricity, convert my gas furnace and hot water heater to run on electricity... and I'd give my oil, coal, and gas-burning brethren unending hell until they did the same. If solar panels were cheap enough to pay for themselves in 6 months, it would make sense for everybody to do it- not only for environmental reasons, but also for economical ones.

Bendable concrete isn't new

[Thornae]

My Grandfather [adelaide.edu.au] was an expert on concrete, especially pre-stressed concrete. One of his party tricks was to show off a piece of thin, flat concrete, slightly larger than a standard ruler, then bend it in an arc.

He'd created this by stretching a thin wire with weights along a form, then pouring the concrete. Once the concrete was set, he removed the weights, which caused the wire to shrink, compressing the concrete and rendering it much more flexible.

Admittedly, they're actually talking about a different technology in the article, but they make it sound like no-one's ever made bendable concrete before.