The Future of Humankind #3 - Computers Will Be Everywhere and Nowhere

in #science7 years ago (edited)

Welcome back to visions of the future - a series of explorations and hypothesis of where humankind may end up in the next 30,40 or 100 years based on current state of science and technology. In the first part of this series we talked about the concept of augmented reality and the ability of human body to heal and self-reconfigure.

In the second part I wrote about humankind's journey to becoming Planetary One civilization and new breakthroughs in medicine that will allow 'designer babies', possibility for parents and doctors to choose genes and traits for their future offspring.


Computers will be hidden everywhere

In 1965, Gordon Moore, later founder of Intel Corporation wrote an article for Electronics Magazine, in which he tried to predict the future. He made an observation that the number of components in integrated circuits was doubling every 24 months or so. In other words, the number of transistors in a computer chip was doubling every two years. His theory, simplified and with more data, became the bedrock of modern computer science.

It's not any kind of physical law, but technology companies have agreed to follow it thus far as a sort of prescriptive, positive law. But recently, this level of progress in the industry that's constantly evolving have become outdated. Possibilities that came with new techniques of creating smaller transistors and chips are convincing companies to stop following this mapped out path of innovation.

In the near future, computer chips will cost a penny and the computers will be everywhere. And nowhere. Like electricity, they will be hidden and integrated everywhere around us, in walls, cars, clothes.

Offices will have disposable, scrap computers which have no identity, and you can use them for writing, processing or whatever you need. And then you can throw them in the trash because they are so cheap and all the files you need will follow you everywhere you go. So data, which is what's most important, will follow you, while these disposable computers will serve it's short purpose like you use notebooks and pencils today.

When you enter a room, you'll search for an internet portal, like you're searching for a light switch today. You'll assume the room is intelligent just like you assume it has electricity.

Intelligent wallpapers will be contained in every room. You'll be able to control them with gestures and later on with your thoughts. Based on your interests, the wall will be able to suggest music, movies, restaurants, travel destinations.

Let's say you wanna go out on a date in a restaurant, but have no girlfriend. Instead of staying home and getting drunk while playing newest instance of League of Legends, you'll be able to ask your intelligent wall for help. He'll come up with girls available tonight in your area (if you meet each other's conditions) and hook you up. So you come back to your apartment and you wanna see a movie, maybe romantic comedy like Groundhog Day, but instead of Bill Murray, you want your face to appear in the movie. And your lady to take up the role of Andie MacDowell. All you'll have to do is turn to your magic mirror on the wall and he'll make movie stars out of you two.

If you are away from your family, on a trip or something, and it's time for Thanksgiving dinner, you can all connect via this intelligent wall using contact lenses and you'll have a sensation like you're in the same room, chit-chatting or watching the game.

Self-driving cars that navigate using GPS already exist, but will become part of everyday reality, and things like traffic jam and car accidents could disappear.

The future and purpose of technology and internet will be to try and touch people, and communicate with them, moving away from it's original intent of attaining power.


Previous entries: 1, 2


Images: 1, 2


Hope you like this first part! If you do, don't forget to upvote, comment and resteem it. Also make sure to follow @alcibiades to stay updated about future posts.

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There is a huge problem here. Yes, silicon is cheap, however, the interface is still the biggest problem.

A real world example. A dishwasher... now they have touch sensitive buttons and lots of leds. The dishwasher's control board is about half the size of a piece of paper. And the actual brain of that board is one chip, smaller than the size of a dime. While the circuit board has lots of big clunky objects that are used to turn on and off various motors. Great big connectors for sensors, and a ribbon cable that connects to the control panel.

So, although the "brains" of the dishwasher is tiny and costs less than a dollar, the rest of the control is large pieces that cannot be made smaller because of ohms law. They need to be big enough to handle the power throughput.

Similar, a CCD (so the computer can see) is actually very small. But it needs a lens which cannot be made smaller because of light wave-lengths.

A nearby radio wave interface is just 6" to 12" of copper wire. (usually it is a path of copper that spirals around the circuit board. You can see one on the back of many cell-phone batteries) But, you still need that distance of wire somewhere. It can be made really small, but it has to be attached to the chip and it has to be prevented from grounding itself.

And the worst part of computers is the interface. It is in the stone age. Why do we still have viruses? We cannot rely on computers to do what we tell them to, due to pre-existing states that we are unaware of. (just try to tell windows to kill a virus that's running on your computer) This is a problem with interface. The computer does not tell us all we need to know.

As in, a cell phone should be able to show us that the microphone is on and which program is using it. It fails about both of these necessary interface parts.

I could agree with most of what you said. The way these transistors are made today is pretty power-inefficient. It requires a lot of power, hence a relatively big interfaces.

They are working on a lot of potential solutions to approach this problem from a different perspective. So they can separate growth of computer power from need to make these transistors smaller and smaller.

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