Talking Web, Memory Aids, and Solar Phones In 5 Years 109
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."
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.
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)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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: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
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.
Re:Not sure about this one (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't say you can't still type, does it? You can use speech to augment other input devices.