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Technology

The Future in Gear 55

Posted by michael from the overdrive dept.
devmanager writes "A PC Magazine column takes a quick look at some technologies that are ready to change the world. Ranging from practical improvements on existing concepts (a 100 GB removable disc) to brand new (a DNA detector), these devices are all at least at prototype status. There's also a nod to the standbys: a robot and VR glove are both included. The article is interesting mainly from the standpoint that it shows items that really are getting close to production."
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The Future in Gear More

The Future in Gear

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  • Yes, but where are the flying cars? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jin Wicked ( 317953 ) on Saturday August 10, 2002 @07:07AM (#4045072) Homepage Journal

    I want my flying car.

  • Zuh? Tablet PCs have been around for a quite a while. Fujitsu, IBM, and Compaq have all released pen pcs starting in the early/mid-90s.

    Just because MS is releasing *their* first tablet pc doesn't mean that's it's *the* first tablet pc
  • Devices that makes it hard or slow to switch context between computing and other doings are rarely successfull. I wanna go to my computer, press update on slashdot, go to my stereo and turn it off, then go to the owen and put in a frozen pizza, then read slashdot, then go put on the TV, take out the pizza, eat the pizza, watch TV, decide it sucks, read slashdot, eat pizza, read slashdot, eat pizza...

    If I had to put on and off gloves and glasses 8 times just in the above sequence, they would soon evolve into dust magnets...
  • Articles like this always bring out prostalgia. We all start longing for things that don't exist yet and cursing current technology - I know I do.

    We've been promised so many things by science fiction and very few of them have become a reality. Where are our flying cars, our jetpacks, our teleporters, matter synthesizers, travel to other planets and video telephones? I curse the fact that I have to drive to work every day, sit in traffic, that my dentist still uses a drill, that I can't have my meal from a tube and that holographic 3d tv doesn't exist yet.

    Science fiction spoiled us. It's time we accepted that we won't see the things I mentionned above in our lifetime, and got on with our lives using current technology.
  • The PCMag mentions solar power which I've been looking to add to my new home.

    This website lists rebate options for installed systems per each state.

    http://www.dsireusa.org/

    Pennsylvania will rebate up to $8,000 for a system in PECO territory. Flying car is next on my list....
  • They still havent invented things that *I* really need to change my life... for example :-

    * Bottomless coffee cups

    * A video card that will hug me back.

    * A cigarette that's healthy and takes the place of food and sunlight (and leaves me smelling like a new car).

    Until they're available on thinkgeek.com, I'll continue living with the pain.

  • If Only (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fdiskne1 ( 219834 )
    I'm just wondering how many of these things will end up gathering dust. I've seen too many "real" technologies that corporations buy and intentionally bury because it would destroy their line of business. One perfect example is the Star Trek-style hypospray. The way I understand it, a medical syringe maker bought the patent and isn't doing a thing with it. In short, if half of these things happen, I'll be extatic.
    • There really aught to be a law against doing shit like that, don't you think?
      • I think that given our current economic climate, I would be surprised if any of these technologies were released without some "industrial" rights management. The bottom line is that companies feel like the should be the only one to profit from their inventions. imho the only way that we will have these kinds of niceties are if the big companies start to play nice nice with the consumer, or if this kind of stuff is GPL'ed
        • "The bottom line is that companies feel like the should be the only one to profit from their inventions."


          Oh those damn EVIL Companies!
          After sinking hundreds of Millions into R&D that might or might not produce a viable product, they actually expect a return on the investment!


          Do you really think they would spend one cent on R&D if they couldn't recover the costs?
          Do you think some inventer in a garage will somehow come up with millions to spend on R&D?

          • Not at all, but I think that profiting from an invention, and having a state sanctioned monopoly on that invention are two different things. I agree that it is expensive, but I think that there has to be another way for a company to profit other than strict control of the IP
      • Yes.

        Fo example, one could say that if someone owns a patent, and neither does use if for a certain time, nor does license it to others to use it, then the patent is automatically voided after some time. Either the patent is useless - then nobody is harmed by voiding it - or it is used in an progress-hindering way, which is quite the opposite of the intention of the patent system.

        After all, one has to see that basically, patents are anti-competitive. They are accepted due to the assumption that the good they do (protect the inventors, and therefore stimulate invention) is better than the damage they cause. Therefore if in certain situations the damage they cause is larger than the good, the only logical thing is to void that patent in those situations.

        Once a certain rule is abused too much, the rule must be changed to disallow that abuse.
    • The thing I want to see that has already been invented is cars running on water. It would do so much to save the planet yet it's not being used. From what I heard some guy invented it and a large car company brought it off him years ago. Any more info on this would be nice.
      • [...] has already been invented is cars running on water [...] some guy invented it and a large car company brought it off him years ago

        I'd be less surprised if it was a large oil company that bought it, if the aim was to keep it under wraps.

        That and the fact that this technique requires more energy than you get out of it, unless you believe thos cold fusion experiments a few years ago were true. You don't think it's strange that water is an end product of combustion engines.

      • The thing I want to see that has already been invented is cars running on water.
        This scam has been around since the 1930s and has reappeared whenever a new generation of rubes arise. It's the same scheme as the "300 mpg carburetor".

        Drain your gas tank, fuel line, and carburetor. Fill the carb or valve with acetone (a volatile, water-soluble chemical used in making plastics and explosives). The explosive vapors given off when it's dissolved will run the engine for a few blocks. Of course, after that the engine is a total write-off, but you don't let the mark drive it that long.

        The genius of the plan is that it really does run on water! You can let the mark examine the engine, fuel, even try it out on their own vehicle. You have to be fast though, to get out of town with their money before they check out what's left of their engine after the demonstration.

        The old "the oil companies are trying to shut me down" is the most common excuse used for why the mark hasn't heard of it before, and why you have to conduct the deal quickly, in secret. Though I did hear of it being used in the 1940s where it was supposed to be a government secret to prevent the Nazis, who had limited petroleum reserves, from getting hold of it.

        It hasn't been used much since the advent of modern engines; though there must be some way of doctoring a fuel injector.

    • No, they do make the hypospray-type things, or at least they used to; we used them to administer mass immunizations when I was a medic in the Air Force, because you can inject a lot of people a lot faster with them than you can with a needle. You know why they never caught on for general use? Because one thing Star Trek never showed you is how much the damn things hurt. I mean, a hell of a lot worse than a needle. And they leave nasty welts. And if you twitch, even a bit, while the injection is being given, you'll end up with a deep cut -- again, much worse than what you'd get from a needle. No fun at all.
    • Good thing we'll both probably be alive in 15 years. Really, in the scheme of things burying a patent doesn't hurt anyone but the company that baught it. They spent money on this device, and now when it comes off patent they will still nead to compete against it, but lo and behold, not one manufacturer, but multiple. So as consumers we had to wait, but now when we here about the hypospray, we will simulteaniously be able to afford it. And for christ sake, we have had humanity with technology for at least 2500 years (grecco roman times?) what harm is 15 years of blocked progress?

      It's not like they copyrighted them (that would be a disaster).
  • I wonder how many of these are things that will flop, to the surprise and frustration of everyone tryng to make monoey on it.

    I am thinking of the classicc example of HDTV, for example.

    doubtless there are many that will just be implemented, but those that need wide spread consumer purchase to succeed might not meet expectations.

    • Some of these gadgets do essentially the same task as existing products, but promise to be better and more cost-effective - for instance, the solar cells and the micro-fuel cell. In each case, they are pretty much a direct replacement for existing gadgets for which there is a known demand (existing solar cells and batteries respectively) and, if they work, are virtually guaranteed to at least take over large parts of the existing market if they deliver technically.

      Others, say the robots, are not direct replacements of existing technology, and it's predicting their success or failure is not just a matter of their technical success.

      At least, that's my understanding.

  • At least it seems so, since the articles will be written on September 3, 2002.

    Go figure...
  • The best way to figure it out is to follow the money... At a consumer level, low price, convenience, and (to a lesser degree) "gee-whiz" factor are the major things to consider. (I should probably mention that I'm talking about Joe Sixpack, not the average /. reader.) The fuel-cell battery may have a greater life, but it's not "easy-to-use": you can't just plug it in and forget it, and consumers have years of conditioning to not mix liquids and electronics. The "add-on" screen for the cellphone is also nice, but for most people it's another part to lose.

    At the business level, the question is whether the inventions save money, make money, or enable new strategies. Fuel-cell laptops would make a lot of sense, because users can work a lot longer without being plugged in to AC power. Selling pre-packaged fuel-cells for cellphones would be a major moneymaker (think inkjet cartridges)! Visual text-to-speech could eliminate a lot of Tier 1 phone workers (the receptionists and script readers). The DNA probe would be hard to justify at a physician level in overly-litigious areas.

    Finally there's the military level, where you have to ask yourself if the technology is useful at any price. The DNA probe would definitely be suitable for troops in the field, and the humanoid robot might be useful for information gathering in dangerous and difficult terrain. (Then again, non-humanoid robots seem to do that job well enough.)

    OTOH, there are things that seem destined to remain vaporware. I've heard about 3D/holographic storage, humanoid robots, and smart homes for years now, but they don't seem any closer despite new research. Maybe this time the creators will find a market?

  • The site tells me I'm an early adopter instead of asking me if I am. I guess that makes it easier to sell my cookies to marketeers wanting to reach that highly prized demographic. ("Will pay anything for 15 minutes' egoboo"). Bah. Oh well, all my demographics are countermeasures anyway.
  • 3D lenticular displays without glasses? Wasn't this done last year? [slashdot.org]

    I sure hope cool technology like this doesn't get held up in a struggle over who owns the patent.
  • from the mona-lisa-overdrive dept. ??

  • Fluff (Score:4, Funny)

    by Catskul ( 323619 ) on Saturday August 10, 2002 @10:16AM (#4045531) Homepage
    Wow what a piece of fluff.

    Not only is it fluff, but Im getting really sick of the format:
    "Imagine.. you are--- bla bla bla bla---... all thanks to your hickymadoodle, your DIGITAL hickymadoodle!
  • The depressing thing about this is that the near-term stuff is old vaporware. It's all stuff we've heard about before, often on Slashdot, and has been at Real Soon Now for a while.

    You can categorize vaporware:

    • It's going to be Really Cheap Real Soon.
      Stuff in this category can be prototyped, but expensively, and needs some huge breakthrough in production technology to be economically useful. In this category we have eInk, and polymer photocells.
    • It's going to be Really Kewl, but Not Too Useful.
      Here we have the house with every lightbulb on the Internet, stereoscopic displays, and the pocket sign translator.
    • Batteries.
      Or, in this case, fuel cells. Little fuel cells have been Real Soon Now for a while. Disposable prototypes have been made, but there are production problems. Fuel cells that make commercial sense will probably appear first in larger sizes, where pumps can be used, like the Ballard units. The fact that fuel cells haven't even taken over the electric forklift market yet indicates where we are now. Incidentally, when you see battery capacity specs for disposable fuel cells, remember to compare them with disposable batteries, which have higher capacities than rechargables.
    • AI
      Every time somebody has a halfway decent idea in AI, it seems to get hyped into Strong AI Is Right Around the Corner. Talking to a synthesized face with the smarts of Eliza is not tech support via AI. It's more like Ask Jeeves, or "Claire, your virtual customer representative" used by some cell phone companies.

    None of these are the Next Big Thing. This is unfortunate, because we in Silicon Valley need a Next Big Thing.

    • * It's going to be Really Cheap Real Soon.
      Stuff in this category can be prototyped, but expensively, and needs some huge breakthrough in production technology to be economically useful. In this category we have eInk, and polymer photocells.


      Well, these polymer photocells appear to be cheap already, but not efficient enough. This time it's the other wa around.. :-)


      Cheers, Ulli

  • From the article on security:

    ISS's RealSecure platform will evolve to use software agents that apply patches automatically to both servers and clients as new vulnerabilities appear. Today, administrators need to apply patches manually. ISS plans to manage the platform centrally, drawing on the terabyte of attack data that it gathers every month. It will behave in much the same way as the human immune system: When an attack is sensed, "antibodies" will deploy to meet the threat. Perhaps this cue from nature will work as effectively on network data.

    lets see here....applys patches automatically, located on a central server. Hmm...sounds *Real*Secure. All you'd have to do is hack the central server, and have it apply your patch to 1000's of servers. Duh!

  • I love this sort of gee-whiz Popular Science stuff, but this typical comment about solar [pcmag.com] always irks me:

    Imagine a barren, sunlit chunk of the Sahara the size of Sicily. Now imagine you've covered that area with solar cells. If you used your average off-the-shelf photovoltaic technology, which can convert 10 to 20 percent of the sun's energy into electrical output, you'd be able to supply the entire world's electrical needs.

    If solar cells get cheap, you won't stick them in the middle of the desert, you'll stick them on the roof! Presumably if the sun is beating down enough to power the solar cells, it's frying your building, so you run the air conditioner harder to cool the place, consuming even more electricity, generating even more heat. So turn some of that energy into electricity instead of heat. It's not like there's anything useful on the roof.

    I've heard the USA needs 75 square miles of PV cells for its energy needs. Does anyone know how many square miles of roofs there are on top of Walmarts, Costcos, hospitals, prisons, and other huge flat structures in the USA in the Sun belt?

    I don't have air conditioning and when it's really hot I dream of erecting an external screen or window blind covered in solar cells to kill two birds with one stone.

    • It's all about the wattage. If you take all light from the sun, you get about a kilowatt per square meter (sunny day, equator). Then check that full-spectrum photocells are %12 efficeint at best.

      But, look into a research company named Borealis, they had those Cool Chips mentioned a while back. They are also working on something called a Photon Chip, which promises to be a more efficeint converter of light to power.

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