Posted on 12/29/2010 1:21:00 PM PST by SonOfDarkSkies
IBM has announced its fifth annual Next Five in Five – a list of five technologies that the company believes “have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years.” While there are no flying cars or robot servants on the list, there are holographic friends, air-powered batteries, personal environmental sensors, customized commutes and building-heating computers.
3D telepresence
It may not be a flying car, but it’s definitely one we’ve seen in sci-fi movies before – the ability to converse with a life-size holographic image of another person in real time. The futurists at IBM point to recent advances in 3D cameras and movies, predicting that holography chat (aka 3D telepresence) can’t be all that far behind. Already, the University of Arizona has unveiled a system that can transmit holographic images in near-real-time.
It is also predicted that 3D visualization could be applied to data, allowing researchers to “step inside” software programs (wasn’t that just in a movie?), computer models, or pretty much anything else that is limited by a simple 2D screen. IBM compares it to the way in which the Earth appears undistorted when we experience it first-hand in three dimensions, yet it appears pinched at the top and bottom when we see it on a two-dimensional world map.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmag.com ...
“IBM is trying to reduce the amount power required for such devices to less than 0.5 volts per transistor.”
Yes, I’m a grunt engineer, but if you don’t even know how power is measured (volts x amps = watts) why would anybody even listen to you?
And, while I was around at the time, I had the good sense to avoid IBM PCs.
I can’t wait for their “smart meters” to fry the gizmos at my house that Gulf Power hasn’t gotten to already /S
I only like the first 2 on the list. I think the holographic telepresence is a good idea and worth persuing. Not so much for phone conversations but for robots. A robot that can project itself holographically to my side without actually following me around would be handy. Then I wouldn’t need a computer or a telephone. I could say “oh robot, come here” and then without more than a split second of waiting, my robot’s hologram appears and says “yes sir, what can I do?”. I can make a phone call, send email, etc, just by telling my robot’s hologram and my robot can do it for me. I suppose I would have to carry around the holographic projector though. But that still beats carrying a computer or a robot.
Color me paranoid, but when I see the words glowbull warming near invasive species, I think they may be thinking of deniers and other logical thinkers.
With that in mind, I read “citizen science” as “tracking people”.
...sensors could be used to create massive data sets used for everything from fighting global warming to tracking invasive species. IBM also sees custom scientific smartphone apps playing a part in “citizen science,” and has already launched an app called Creek Watch, that allows us regular folks to update the local water authority on creek conditions.
This could just as easily allow "us regular folks" to report your next door neighbor for "failure to recycle" or "leaving too many lights on" to the "local authority."
Yes, I’m a grunt engineer, but if you don’t even know how power is measured (volts x amps = watts) why would anybody even listen to you?
(Ahem..) journalists. The sentence could only mean that they were predicting gate-source threshhold voltages below .5 volts, so that circuits could operate on Vdd's down to a volt or a little more. That would certainly qualify as a low power technology.
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