The Internet In 10 Years

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I was talking to my 22 year step son (geek) and he casually told me that in 10 years the internet will be radically different. OK. That led me to this:

http://www.isoc.org/tools/blogs/scenarios/

Another person puts it this way:

I think it will be like air. It will be so pervasive that it goes unnoticed. Everything will be connected all the time. People will have forgotten what it was like for anything NOT to be connected. Your clothes dryer will be on the Net. It will text you when the clothes are done and email the warranty shop for repairs when it breaks. Your car will do the same even when traveling down the road. Your mailbox will let you know when a catalog arrives and the sender too. It is predicted that in ten years there will be a trillion nodes on the Net and less than 0.01% of them will be people sitting in front of a screen.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Hey! Where'd you get a photo of my stepson?

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Hey! Where'd you get a photo of my stepson?

ABM, he's been peaking in the windows of your house for years.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

ABM, he's been peaking in the windows of your house for years.

As I always suspected.

 

[The_Lillard_King]

I'm excited to see how far and fast the technological age takes us.

Just to watch the progression of cell phones and what they have done with that product over the last 10 years is amazing to me. The micro chip has revolutionized the world.

 

[jlprk]

Won't be any of that new stuff. Japan's going under like Atlantis.

 

[mook]

I'm guessing Google will permeate everything with Adwords. If you drive down the street, you're phone will be assaulted with deals from every store you pass (based on GPS) with special offers. Your phone might be a necklace that projects its screen against any surface in front of you, and automatically scans objects you encounter in the off-chance you might want to know something about it. You'll never lose anything ever because a full-time video recorder built into the "phone necklace" watches and remembers where you place objects. It also has great facial recognition software, and will automatically whisper a reminder of every person's name you encounter, perhaps in a different tone if you've met them before. It might even suggest that you have three friends who know 2 people who are great friends of theirs on Facebook.
Just think about the difference in the internet between 2001 and now. Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter....it's crazy to think that in the next decade we might see even more rapid innovations.

 

[MARIS61]

I was talking to my 22 year step son (geek) and he casually told me that in 10 years the internet will be radically different. OK. That led me to this:

http://www.isoc.org/tools/blogs/scenarios/

Another person puts it this way:

I think it will be like air. It will be so pervasive that it goes unnoticed. Everything will be connected all the time. People will have forgotten what it was like for anything NOT to be connected. Your clothes dryer will be on the Net. It will text you when the clothes are done and email the warranty shop for repairs when it breaks. Your car will do the same even when traveling down the road. Your mailbox will let you know when a catalog arrives and the sender too. It is predicted that in ten years there will be a trillion nodes on the Net and less than 0.01% of them will be people sitting in front of a screen.

My email already tells me when I get a delivery, but my clothes dryer and car will not be texting me nor would anyone want that service.

 

[Minstrel]

I think it's inevitable that everything will be "smart." Not just appliances, but the very fabrics we build with. Literal fabrics for clothes, the pavement for streets and sidewalks, concrete for buildings, etc. As we move further and further toward the nano age, processors and the pixels for displays can be woven into everything and everything can be connected to the Internet. Anything can be a screen, anything can search for information, anything can network with anything else. Streets can register the parking spots in the city and transmit to drivers who are interested what spots are available nearby you. Touching a garment in your closet can toss up a display on the wall of what you'd look like with it on. Looking at the menu posted outside a restaurant, you could immediately see beside it the reviews from an online database. Information will simply be a part of everything we use...it will be woven into living.

That definitely seems not only inevitable to me, but not that far off. This is not to say it will be utopian...that level of information being transferred around will certainly bring a host of new concerns.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

someday the robot overlords will be able to send and recieve cloud based mind clusters via organic laser pulse

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I think it's inevitable that everything will be "smart." Not just appliances, but the very fabrics we build with. Literal fabrics for clothes, the pavement for streets and sidewalks, concrete for buildings, etc. As we move further and further toward the nano age, processors and the pixels for displays can be woven into everything and everything can be connected to the Internet. Anything can be a screen, anything can search for information, anything can network with anything else. Streets can register the parking spots in the city and transmit to drivers who are interested what spots are available nearby you. Touching a garment in your closet can toss up a display on the wall of what you'd look like with it on. Looking at the menu posted outside a restaurant, you could immediately see beside it the reviews from an online database. Information will simply be a part of everything we use...it will be woven into living.

That definitely seems not only inevitable to me, but not that far off. This is not to say it will be utopian...that level of information being transferred around will certainly bring a host of new concerns.

That's not only probably true, but equally disturbing. Very 1984ish.

 

[barfo]

I think it's inevitable that everything will be "smart."

Except, of course, American children.

barfo

 

[Haakzilla]

I am positive that the websites in my sig with still be more than prevalent...

 

[illmatic99]

I think it's inevitable that everything will be "smart."

That's the upcoming trend in biotech as well. Just this academic year, I've been working on a couple projects that have the ultimate goal of reducing user input, and minimizing side/unwanted effects as a result of error.

 

[Minstrel]

That's the upcoming trend in biotech as well. Just this academic year, I've been working on a couple projects that have the ultimate goal of reducing user input, and minimizing side/unwanted effects as a result of error.

Yeah, there are a lot of promising avenues for technology to advance along...nanotech, biotech, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. I think the blend of those four fields is going to lead to a world, in the next half-century or so, unrecognizable to people who lived just 50 years earlier (had they not been around to see the changes happen along the way).

 

[bodyman5001]

Yeah, there are a lot of promising avenues for technology to advance along...nanotech, biotech, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. I think the blend of those four fields is going to lead to a world, in the next half-century or so, unrecognizable to people who lived just 50 years earlier (had they not been around to see the changes happen along the way).

It is plainly obvious that we don't have the ability to control things like that. We will kill ourselves first. We don't have to do things just because we can.

 

[Rodolfo]

Got a droid phone a week ago. I truly feel more connected with all the apps. It was pretty overwhelming when I first got it, too. I'd start fiddling and I couldn't step away from it for 20 minutes.

 

[Rodolfo]

Except, of course, American children and PapaG.

barfo

Fixed it for ya'.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Got a droid phone a week ago. I truly feel more connected with all the apps. It was pretty overwhelming when I first got it, too. I'd start fiddling and I couldn't step away from it for 20 minutes.

Odd you say that as my boss (Mr Anti Techy) was forced to recently use one of those phones by his boss and now he can't put the damn thing down.

 

[jlprk]

no Japan = no new electrical devices

 

[3RA1N1AC]

no japan = fiction

 

[Run BJM]

no Japan = no new electrical devices

We heard you the first time.

 

[OSUBlazerfan]

no Japan = no new electrical devices

Didnt know Intel was centrally located in Japan....

 

[Shapecity]

[video=youtube;SjhB6J23Qjs]

Ray Kurzweil - Transcendent Man

 

[Entity]

Technology is developing so fast that it's getting more and more difficult to predict what's coming. I read most science fiction work and see it as an alternate universe genre rather than possible futures, because who can really say how vastly different the world is going to look in just 30 or 40 years, let alone 200 or 1,000. Will we live in other galaxies in 2050? I'm going with no. Probably still no flying cars. But if I were to jump into that world, I bet it would be so strange to the present-me that I would be completely lost in how they do things and how their culture will be because I think things will change that much faster.

 

[Minstrel]

Yeah, the rate of growth in technology has been speeding up over time. So more will be developed over the next 20 years then was developed over the past 20 years. And that rate of increase has been exponential. So...I feel that it's basically impossible to imagine what things will look like in a century. I think even the next 20 years is dicey. We have a "feeling" for what 20 years of change brings, but that feeling is probably far too conservative.

 

[cmac44111]

Your clothes dryer will be on the Net. It will text you when the clothes are done.

It's already happened.

 

[Run BJM]

Yeah, the rate of growth in technology has been speeding up over time. So more will be developed over the next 20 years then was developed over the past 20 years. And that rate of increase has been exponential. So...I feel that it's basically impossible to imagine what things will look like in a century. I think even the next 20 years is dicey. We have a "feeling" for what 20 years of change brings, but that feeling is probably far too conservative.

You know that feeling you get when your top of the line, shiny new phone/TV/computer/etc. is suddenly inferior to all the new stuff on the market after 6 months? Seems like it'll be just weeks/days in the future.

That said I think there is a trend away from just continually cramming more proverbial horsepower in these devices. Apple comes to mind with virtually all of their products not top of the line as far as raw specs go but the software and infrastructure of the device is very, very good. Nintendo with the DS and Wii decided that adding raw power to video game consoles may not necessarily be the answer in the long run but different dynamics of gameplay using new technologies could be more important than just injecting the same games with better graphics, more processing power, more buttons, etc. At a certain point it seems like we'll reach the limit of how much processing power a device needs, it'll be fascinating to see what happens from there.

 

[Minstrel]

That said I think there is a trend away from just continually cramming more proverbial horsepower in these devices. Apple comes to mind with virtually all of their products not top of the line as far as raw specs go but the software and infrastructure of the device is very, very good. Nintendo with the DS and Wii decided that adding raw power to video game consoles may not necessarily be the answer in the long run but different dynamics of gameplay using new technologies could be more important than just injecting the same games with better graphics, more processing power, more buttons, etc. At a certain point it seems like we'll reach the limit of how much processing power a device needs, it'll be fascinating to see what happens from there.

That is only if you think in terms of conventional appliances. Suppose in the future, you don't have devices, you have something like virtual reality executed by nanobots that can assemble themselves into pretty much anything. Or creating more powerful, digital brains that our personalities and memories can be stored in, essentially making our essential personalities immortal even if physical bodies aren't. I mean, a lot of this has been postulated by science fiction, but more and more futurists with strong scientific backgrounds are saying that these things are imaginable as extensions of what we already know. It will just take unbelievable amounts of computing power.

So, personally, while I have no idea exactly what channel technology will go down in the future, I'm quite sure that more and more processing power will always be usable. Someone looking at a radio a century ago might have wondered what value there would be in making radios more and more powerful...but that's because he had no idea about television and personal computers and iPods that could hold thousands of songs.

I do agree that it this point in time, design and ease of use are the more valuable things to mainstream consumers than raw power. But I'm sure we'll find ways to use more processing power.