Five Ideas That Will Reinvent Computing 283
prostoalex writes "PC Magazine looks at 5 ideas that will reinvent computing. IMAX-quality movies at home with new projectors, a mid-air mouse that requires no flat surface, a home quantum computer, a router-based peer-to-peer system, and a man-made brain all made the list."
My Idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mid-air mouse... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take your mouse. Hold it the air for five minutes. For extra effect, wave it about. Now imagine doing this eight hours a day. And being accurate.
Tired arm much? Using a 2D mouse is about accuracy and long-term usage. OK, the mouse isn't perfect, but hanging it in space significantly deteriorates both these properties.
The Wii controller is a whole different ball of wax - it's for using for a couple of hours at most, and you don't try clicking on unfolding menus with it.
.. anyone remeber the flying car (Score:5, Insightful)
The present is never the future you thought it would be.
Everybody predicted talking computers able to predict the future, but nobody predicted YouTube or predictive texting.
Predictions, pipe dreams and crystal spheres (Score:5, Insightful)
Any prediction past 5 years in the future of IT is a pipe dream. Accept that. Think back, say, 10 years. You know, when the Internet was the next hot thing and broadband was the dream. When we sucked our data through 56k modems. When the first FTP servers sharing music appeared. When Napster came to fame. What was the prediction? That Napster is so hot it smokes and that it will soar. That on the internet we'll all make a ton of money with ads on our pages. That in 10 years (i.e. today) the corner store is gone and we'll do all our business on the net. We'll all be having fiber to our homes and watch our movies online, hell, all our data will be online, since loading it from the HD is just as fast as accessing it on the 'net.
Well, some of it came, but compared to the explosions predicted it was at best a greasefire. Yes, you can shop on the net, and Amazon surely dealt a serious blow to book stores, but otherwise, the economy didn't suddenly go full force online. Music sharing is a topic for lawyers rather than technicians, and Napster kinda-sorta folded (yeah, it still exists, somewhere, somehow, but nobody cares anymore). Fiber is a dream for most people, and while the net speed went up, it's a far cry from what was predicted. Services that store data online are currently starting to get started, but they're far from being a HD replacement, at best, they're offsite backups (and even as such they suck, due to space limitations).
Technical issues actually went to the background, replaced by legal problems and privacy concerns. Nobody predicted that, IIRC.
So doing a prediction up to 2020 is kinda pipe dreaming. You have no idea what obstacles will come in our way, you can't even imagine what kind of problem we will have to deal in 2015 already. For all I know, it could happen that Google gets bought out by some megalomanic and insanely rich guy who then starts to milk it for private data. Can it happen? For sure. Will it happen? Who knows.
All I know is that predicting the IT future is a business best left to fortune tellers. At least they don't have to fear for their credibility when their predictions are so way off that it's not even funny anymore.
Re:Reinvent the wheel? (Score:1, Insightful)
a mid-air mouse that requires no flat surface - Been there done that doesn't work (Gorilla Arm)
a home quantum computer - Dreaming (Not possible yet - maybe never)
a router-based peer-to-peer system - HAsn't this been done, it's called the internet?
a man-made brain - Dreaming (Not possible yet - maybe never)
So two bad ideas done and forgotten
Two good ideas that are much more difficult than they appear
and once idea that appears to be a minor change to what we have already
Revolutionary(TM)?
Re:Man-made brain, hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Article Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
If you need to access your computer and can't bear to get your butt off the couch, you've got bigger problems than not having a flat surface handy.
Re:Reinvent the wheel? (Score:4, Insightful)
A little clarity to the concept. (Score:1, Insightful)
Look at today's PC. Where is the bottleneck in 95% of all cases? The hard disk drive.
So, what could be the next killer feature? Non-volatile RAM (PRAM, FRAM, MRAM..). The immediate advantage is speed of course. But there is something much bigger.
Most of the time, loading a file is no longer necessary! Much of the boot time of today's OSes comes from loading stuff into RAM. This can be omitted with P/F/MRAM, reducing booting to device initialization. Also, suspend-to-disk comes for free.
Every single OS is based on the fact that there is a slow, but persistent memory (hard drive) and a fast, volatile one (RAM). They'd need a complete overhaul to fully exploit the new paradigm. Hell, almost all programs too. "Loading file to memory" is not necessary anymore, because the file already IS in memory! Thus, some sort of direct access is needed (unless the file is fragmented).
Re:Missed the real potential breakthroughs (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true. Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 and earlier were designed to be used with battery-backed DRAM as the primary/sole mass storage, probably true for lots of other embedded systems too. WM2003 therefore wouldn't need any changes at all to take advantage of these technologies, and it probably would take much to transfer any relevant features to desktop windows either.
IMAX at home? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've only got a 37" TV and I decided not to replace it with a 50" Plasma because I just didn't have room for a bigger one. There's no way I could possibly put an IMAX-class screen in my house, even if it only meant keeping 1 wall clear to project on.
People go to the theatre for the experience and to get out of the house, and you just can't do that at home.
Re:Article Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mid-air mouse... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mid-air mouse is somewhat of a misnomer...you don't have to hold it in mid air. In fact, it does not require arm motion of any sort.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=243159&cid
Also, I think touch screens kind of suck because you're finger is blocking the view of your hand. >.<
Re:Writing a list (Score:4, Insightful)
A: The multiple projector thing is neat, but who is going to buy 12 projecters to have a higher resolution image? The image quality that can be gotten from a single projector basically maxes out the display quality of the average white wall.
B: Mid-air mice have been around for years as presentation tools and novelties. My company has one that you can use on a tabletop or in the air, as you see fit. The main failing is the nature of the device itself: nobody wants to hold their mouse up in the air for any length of time. It's just not comfortable.
C: Quantum computing is so far away as to be a joke. We don't even have what could be described as Quantum Calculating. When Bell Labs says things are 20 years out, you know it's not going to be ready for a long, long time.
D: Router P2P is neat, but could it be described as revolutionary? As described here, it's basically larger-scale caching, with untrusted sources. Even if it worked, it just speeds up the network a few percent.
E: A man made brain? That's a revolutionary idea! With our deep understanding of the human psyche and physiological complexities, we could whip this problem in no more than 20 years. Why haven't we been working on this since the 60's?
Re:Writing a list (Score:5, Insightful)
A: The multiple projector thing is neat, but who is going to buy 12 projecters to have a higher resolution image? The image quality that can be gotten from a single projector basically maxes out the display quality of the average white wall.
Someone with $12,000 to waste. There are plenty, I'm sure. So long as this is idiot-proof and projector prices drop, I can see this one really taking off. I've seen many a screen where the projected image is made too large and comes out all pixilated. They'd be better suited by four smaller resolution projectors melded into a single screen of 2x2 images. We'll see.
B: Mid-air mice have been around for years as presentation tools and novelties. My company has one that you can use on a tabletop or in the air, as you see fit. The main failing is the nature of the device itself: nobody wants to hold their mouse up in the air for any length of time. It's just not comfortable.
I think this is a little different, though. It's not something you hold up and wave your hand around with. Imagine holding one of those stretchy, squishy balls in your hand. You basically drag that fabric with your thumb over the optical sensor. It'd almost be like holding a little trackball or trackpoint, I guess. I think this would be more comfortable, though. Revolutionary? No really, imo... but a neat idea nontheless.
---John Holmes...
Re:Mid-air mouse... Will it re-invent computing? (Score:3, Insightful)
True speech input with language understanding might bring about a major shift, but I can't see it for just a better mouse.
Re:Reinvent the wheel? (Score:3, Insightful)