5 Predictions for 2012 513
Structured Audio writes "Mike Langberg of the Merc put up his 5
technology predictions for 2012. Well
chosen, although of course in 2012 speech
recognition will still be 10 years away :-)."
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol
only 1 terabyte ?? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Enderle said the new file system will also function efficiently with hard drives holding at least one terabyte of data. That's 1,000 gigabytes, or well over 1,000 compressed movies, or more than 700,000 novels the size of "War and Peace." Such drives are expected to hit the market by 2004."
i hope 8 years more can give a couple more megs to hds
Other than speech recognition (Score:4, Interesting)
Been there, done that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Speech Recognition (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the computer uses a recognition algorithm based on all these factors to know when someon is talking to "it." My cat apparently has similar algorithms programmed in- I can speak in a conversational tone all day, even to a telephone, and the cat won't respond- but the moment I assume my "talking to kitty" voice, it snaps to attention.
Another interesting question about the ST computer- how did it route the person-to-person commnications before the individual spoke the receipient's name? You'd often here Picard's communicator pipe up: "Riker to Picard- you should come up to the bridge," or some such line.
One presumes that the communication did not go to everyone on the ship, only to be cut off when the word "Picard" was spoken. I always assumed the computer cached the outgoing communication until it was determined whom it was going to, and then retransmitted; the result should be a 1 second lag on the return to represent that, unless the computer subtly timeshifted the entire conversation to pad the lag into the spaces normally between words.
Re:One Prediction Is Impossible (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
predictions (Score:2, Interesting)
years. There is no reason to do so. My mothers
machine is now running for 20 years and her old one
did it for a longer time.
Also my computer won't understand me in 10 years.
Because it won't get the contexts. The problem with
context cannot be solved with more memory.
The next predition was a video recorder with
1TByte. Well that sounds reasonable to me, but
without special keys I wouldn't be able to watch
anything on that disc, because it is encrypted.
Well I predict. Less freedom, and more control
over knowlegde, resources by big companies.
Also there is a tendency for more riots, terrorism
and other kinds of disorder.
I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm already using it, and it drives me nuts. When I add money to my "pay and talk" cell phone account, I am forced to use their new (within the past couple of months) speech recognition menu. I am literally answering a robot's questions, and she makes me want to bang my phone on the closest solid structure near me.
Welcome to Rogers At&T pay as you go service, would you like to add money to your account today? Please say yes, or no.
Yes
I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, would you like to add money to your account today?
Yeeeees.
I'm trying to ask you a question. Please answer with yes or no.
YEEEEEES
this is the part where I wonder if swearing at the system will make it work. Maybe it recognizes "i said yes you piece of shit android" No it doesn't (I tried), but it usually takes about 5 tries, and I get into the "add money to my account menu" where i can then use the keypad (still) to enter in my P.I.N., new card number, etc.
Slashdotted... here is the text (Score:2, Interesting)
By Mike Langberg
Mercury News
Smart devices that talk to each other without human intervention, store merchandise that rings itself up for purchase and machines that finally understand the spoken word are just some of the new technologies awaiting us in the year 2012.
On Monday I gave myself a ``B'' for my 1992 predictions of what life would be like in 2002.
Before sticking my neck out another 10 years, I consulted three Silicon Valley futurists: Tim Bajarin, president of technology consulting firm Creative Strategies in Campbell; Tim Brown, president of Palo Alto design firm Ideo; and Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park.
I've borrowed many ideas from these three deep thinkers, but the predictions that follow are mine -- so I deserve all the blame for anything that looks silly 10 years from now.
So here are my five big ideas for how technology will reshape our daily routines in 2012:
The Internet is everywhere -- and nowhere.
Almost every object we own that uses electricity will be connected to the Internet in 2012, yet we will rarely be aware of this near-universal connectivity, because so much of the conversation will be machine-to-machine communication.
You'll no longer be surprised to get a call from the repair center at Sears or Maytag saying your washing machine is using too much hot water and needs adjustment -- information the washing machine has sent through the Net, without any action of your part, back to the factory where it was built.
All present and accounted for -- always.
Instant messaging is popular, in part, because IM software tells you which of your friends are online waiting to chat. This concept, formally known as ``presence,'' will be extended to all forms of electronic communication.
Family, friends and co-workers will be able to instantly see where you are, thanks to wireless phones even tinier than what's available today and other devices with built-in GPS locators. You'll be able to specify how you wish to be reached: by text if you're busy, by voice or video if you're free. Between now and 2012, expect major controversy on whether employers, schools and advertisers should have access to your ``presence.''
Walk now, pay later.
Stores without doors will rely on RFID, or radio-frequency identification, tags to keep track of inventory and payment. These tiny semiconductors communicate a small amount of information, such as a product serial number, when queried by inexpensive transmitter/receivers. Only recently selling for several dollars, RFID chips should cost only a few cents next year and will be smaller than a grain of rice.
In 2012, RFID chips will sell for less than a penny and be printed onto packaging and price tags -- the beginning of the end for cash registers. You walk into a store, put what you want in a bag and walk out the door. An RFID transmitter/receiver in the entryway instantly totals up your purchases and makes a deduction from the RFID credit card in your wallet. If nothing else, RFID could have spared Winona Ryder her recent and very embarrassing shoplifting arrest.
Prime time is your time.
Every cable and satellite television receiver will include a hard disk for recording shows, and those disks will have a minimum capacity of one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, enough to store hundreds of hours of high-definition programming.
Except for special events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards, no one will watch TV shows at the time they are transmitted, and conventional 30-second commercials will be rare because advertisers won't pay when most viewers can hit the fast-forward button. Major broadcast networks and traditional prime-time programming will be fading, with most entertainment sold through either a monthly subscription or a pay-per-view fee.
Finally, we can talk to our computers.
I'm recycling a prediction from 1992 that didn't come true this year but just might happen by 2012: Reliable speech recognition will allow computers, phones and household appliances to understand our spoken commands.
Driving alone down an unfamiliar interstate, it won't seem to odd to say, ``Car, how far to the next gas station?'' and for the car to reply ``Eight miles ahead at exit 37, there is a Chevron and a Union 76.'' You won't need to know or care that your car required GPS navigation, a speech-recognition processor, a text-to-speech synthesizer and a wireless data link to an online Yellow Pages directory to answer what seems like a simple question.
Not everything will change in the next decade. I predict the Mercury News will continue, printed on paper and delivered to doorsteps every morning. The business of putting news and ads together on newsprint has worked for more than a century and probably has at least a few more decades of life. As for me, if I'm still here in 2012, I'll dig out this column and give myself another report card.
Re:1992 - 2002 (Score:2, Interesting)
-Sean
Walk now, pay later (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
I had great difficulty trying to explain to mobile phone companies that the idea of selling data on where their customers were was a non-starter businesswise.
The business problem comes into focus when you consider that politicians tend to be avaracious consumers of wireless technology (both the Bush and Gore campaigns used RIM pagers), they also have serious security concerns. The ones I talked to imediately realized that the technology would be abused by stalkers, nutcases and assasins.
I sure don't want my washing machine reporting back to its manufacturer, but I have no qualms with it determing, for itself, that it is no longer functioning under normal operational parameters.
I don't want my washing machine to call the manufacturer, but loging a problem with the home maintenance center would be OK. This is the sort of thing that Web services will be big for.
I think that devices will talk but they will talk inside the home first and any external communication will be with permission from the owner.
Having the washing machine tell me when it needs repair is not a killer app. A status light on the front panel can achieve the same result. But having the thing tell me when the cycle has completed and the clothes are ready to go into the dryer, that is useful - I am writing this three floors above the washing machine in the basement.
Equally, Negroponte's fridge that orders stuff itself is inescapably clueless. There are in fact 'fridges' of that type, we call them vending machines and lots of them are now wired to report their inventory levels so the guy in the truck knows when to go and fill them up.
However it would be reasonably usefull to be able to check the contents of the fridge from my handheld PC when I am in the store and wondering if I need to buy more OJ, milk, and eggs. I suspect that a usable system would involve weight sensors and perhaps some sort of barcode printer / scanner built onto the side of the fridge for the frozen stuff. Problem with any such system however is that the discipline required to use it tends to be too much for most.
Re:Crashes ahead... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, now, now. Einsteins are born, not made through study. Vannevar Bush shared your concern, though Khun disputes [amazon.com] the very idea that science makes progress. Real advancements - the paradigm shifts - are most often stimulated by the young, because of their youth and naivete, not in spite of it. Knowledge has very little to do with it. In 1905, Universities were full of quite brilliant and far more knowledgeable people than Einstein. Nobody knows what creativity really is and where scientific magicians get their inspiration. It's certainly not mountains of books.
Re:Not with MPEG-4 or equivalent... (Score:3, Interesting)
They're talking about squeezing HD-DVD onto the same physical medium, but using MPEG-4 compression
rather than the MPEG-2 currently used.
Isn't the max res of MPEG-4 short of what real HDTV requires? From what I understand a lot of people think trying to cram HD-TV onto a DVD-9 is going to lead to a lot of compromises in video quality.
From what I understand the majority of equipment manufacturers are pushing HD DVD as something with a blue led and 25 GB per layer.
Re:Crashes ahead... (Score:3, Interesting)
This could be obtained within (10 years anybody?) our own life time artifically. Even if 500+ years from now the limits of science has been reached for natural humans, I'm sure within that time they would have figured out some way to increase the activity, density, and size of the human brain, allowing us to think just a little bit smarter than what we can today...
Even if we do not change the physical aspects of the human brain, I'm sure we would have eventually come to a better understanding as to how our brain functions, allowing us to at least enhance our own thinking process a little.
In the beginning of the century, you could write Nobel-prize class papers at 20.
Who says we can't? It is the upbringing that is limiting us. Having to sit in a public school in mindless classes and PE can really hold a child back from reaching their real potential.
teaching techniques improves over time, but even then, there will be a limit.
There is no limit. No one knows the final outcome of the human brain. With more development of brain-wave (thought pattern) recognition, the possibility of thought induction is there. Who needs a text book when you can download information into your own mind? The only type of teacher you would need would be a mentor of some sort to teach you ethics and how to harness the potential of your brain. We very far away from fully understanding the human brain... throughtout that quest, I'm sure we'll figure out ways of enhancing it.
Yes, in order to reach scientific breakthroughs we need a bit more effort compared to the past, but it does not mean that we will never reach a time when that will change. Let's just hope we don't kill species before we get to that point.
Re:Speech Recognition (Score:4, Interesting)
What's AI-complete is
The reason perfect speech recognition is AI-complete is that it requires perfect speech understanding to choose between homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as to, too and two, or there, their and they're), and that problem is AI-complete.
Of course, most humans don't have perfect speech understanding, and hence also don't have perfect speech recognition.
Satisfactory speech recognition may indeed be as close as 2012. Maybe not, but it is possible. It has come a long way recently.
This has nothing to do with the Turing Test, and many people are of the belief that the Turing Test is a pretty silly milestone in AI anyway as it is a poorly formed, incredibly subjective measure of intelligence.
Passing the Turing Test is a matter of being able to fool a human into thinking you are human via a simple converstion, held with words only, sight-unseen. Some humans fail the Turing Test and some computers can already pass a limited variation of it.
Something that is AI-Complete is believed to require human-level intelligence to solve, and is an entirely different, and likely far more complicated problem.
Justin Dubs
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
I've done lots of different recreational drugs, and they're really fun; and I've had so many incredible philosophical and technical ideas while high that I could write a book.
The problem is that it's all garbage when you wake up the next day and see the useless crap you've written.
Sometimes it's funny though, and some smart people have claimed to come up with ideas while hallucinating. I suspect though, that you'd have to be smart first, and then take the drugs. I just took the drugs. hee hee
Me.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)
Noticing something stinky.