Computers
http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/26/technology/futureoftech_kirkpatrick.fortune/index.htm
"In a short piece I wrote as part of a broader look at the future last September, I speculated..."Any kind of information is available anytime you want it," I wrote. "Simply speak a question, or even think it. You will always be connected wirelessly to the network, and an answer will return from a vast, collectively-produced data matrix. Google queries will seem quaint."
"Less than a year later such talk is almost routine in the futurist camp. Chris Taylor at Business 2.0 this week published "Surfing the Web with Nothing but Brainwaves." Taylor explains that already quadriplegics can play videogames, control robotic arms, and turn a TV on and off, using only their minds. They are connected to a computer with an implant that reads electrical patterns in the brain."
"Sony has already patented a game system that beams data directly into the brain without implants, reports Taylor.
In the future quantum-computing world which Schwartz and Koselka describe, we'd go way further. Computing power would be so great that we could easily have "network-enabled telepathy." We'd wear headbands with unimaginable computing power.
It's fascinating to consider some of the potential social and even political ramifications of such a turn toward ubiquitous information availability. The necessity to learn languages might disappear. If the devices necessary to participate in this information revolution were cheap enough, and the network truly ubiquitous and global, the economic playing field could be leveled. If information is power, everyone would have it. That's the kind of breakthrough the developing world needs.
Even moral codes and behavior might alter, if all that available information led to a profound transparency in human conduct."
"Computing is now so important that to talk of its future is inevitably to consider the future fate of mankind."
"In a short piece I wrote as part of a broader look at the future last September, I speculated..."Any kind of information is available anytime you want it," I wrote. "Simply speak a question, or even think it. You will always be connected wirelessly to the network, and an answer will return from a vast, collectively-produced data matrix. Google queries will seem quaint."
"Less than a year later such talk is almost routine in the futurist camp. Chris Taylor at Business 2.0 this week published "Surfing the Web with Nothing but Brainwaves." Taylor explains that already quadriplegics can play videogames, control robotic arms, and turn a TV on and off, using only their minds. They are connected to a computer with an implant that reads electrical patterns in the brain."
"Sony has already patented a game system that beams data directly into the brain without implants, reports Taylor.
In the future quantum-computing world which Schwartz and Koselka describe, we'd go way further. Computing power would be so great that we could easily have "network-enabled telepathy." We'd wear headbands with unimaginable computing power.
It's fascinating to consider some of the potential social and even political ramifications of such a turn toward ubiquitous information availability. The necessity to learn languages might disappear. If the devices necessary to participate in this information revolution were cheap enough, and the network truly ubiquitous and global, the economic playing field could be leveled. If information is power, everyone would have it. That's the kind of breakthrough the developing world needs.
Even moral codes and behavior might alter, if all that available information led to a profound transparency in human conduct."
"Computing is now so important that to talk of its future is inevitably to consider the future fate of mankind."
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