How Will Our Gadgets Evolve?
Here we are, at the beginning of 2010, and we’ve come a long way in the last 15 years. The question is, where do we go next?
This year’s CES was somewhat of a dud, in my opinion. There were feature upgrades to a number of products, but nothing that seemed terribly original. 3D televisions are going to grow in popularity, but it seems as though within a few years, all TVs will have a dual mode setting where you choose whether to watch in 2D or 3D. But, 3D is not a “new” thing.
Tablet PCs are almost exactly where they were 7 years ago. There is a lot of clamoring for Apple’s Tablet/iSlate and Microsoft’s Courier devices to reinvent that tiny market segment. Will they? It remains to be seen.
Connected televisions, set-top boxes, and media streamers are growing as well. But whenever they find the end-game, it won’t be revolutionary. It’ll just be where they should have been all along. It’s not completely their fault; technology and the media studios have crippled innovation in that area, but the public is forcing their hand, and it’s slowly unfolding.
eReaders, laptops, desktops, televisions, mobile phones, computer operating systems, automobiles, and just about everything else has hit a wall. Rather than someone coming up with “the next big thing”, they’re just adding features and widgets to what we’ve already got. That’s not to say that 15 years from now we won’t look back and think, “Man, I can’t believe I got by using an archaic Core i7 processor with only 4GB of RAM. I ran that on my *insert mobile device name here*” three years ago.”
In the past 15 years or so, what devices or technologies have really set the bar for the rest of the industry or changed the way we live/work/play? The iPhone is one obvious answer. Blackberry devices. WiFi is another. TiVo for sure. High Speed Internet could be debated. The internet, though it was around before 1995, it really started to pick up steam in the early 90’s. America Online. Compact Discs. Netflix. Nintendo Wii…? If their next gen offering and Microsoft/Sony’s turn into something more than a gimmick (which they are now), then the Wii could be the one that started the whole thing. MP3 players. I could probably think of more, but you get the idea.
Every few years, sometimes more often, something comes out that turns existing tech on it’s ear and fuels innovation. I’m not sure what we have left. There’s no doubt that there will be SOMETHING, but it’s just beyond me what that thing is. Here are some ideas that I have about where things are going.
Google is all up in our Kool-Aid, and they’re not slowing down. Chrome OS is the first step in what will eventually cause a large portion of the computing industry to run lightweight Operating Systems in a mostly online environment. A number of other factors will play into this to include broadband availability, max speeds, and whoever figures out how to make the whole thing work well. All of our data will be in the cloud. If that were happening today, it would be prudent to work off a local copy that just incrementally backs up online. I already do this with Picasa and my photo collection. Down the road, it will be the other way around, and once we have wireless access everywhere, local storage may go away completely.
All of our media will be a la carte. We’ll consume our movies, TV shows, music, and everything else through our televisions. Most likely, there will be no more set-top boxes, as that will be built directly into our TVs. There will be several leaders in this space, so there will likely be some issues with getting your Zune purchased content onto your Apple handheld device, but if Disney’s new Keychest technology (or something similar) takes off, this may solve those problems.
Our cars will most likely also be linked in with our home media setup. If your Ford Escape has headrest screens for the kids, and is linked up via LTE, then you could conceivably access your online Amazon.com purchases to let them watch Finding Nemo on the way to Aunt Carol’s house. Same with our music, podcast, and audiobook collections.
Other places already do this, but we’re approaching a cashless society. Soon our mobile device will hold all of our credit cards, debit cards, membership ids, and maybe even personal id such as driver’s license and passports.
USB 3.0 (definitely) and LightPeak (maybe) are the next generation of data transmission between locally connected devices. Unfortunately, this is just another step on the way to connecting all devices wirelessly. Not just mobile devices to the PC, but consoles to the TV, and the environmental and lighting settings in our homes. Also, we’ll eliminate most wired ISPs to be replaced with a super WiMax technology. Hopefully it doesn’t cause us all to black out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds.
In time, some new form of input technology will be designed that will begin the demise of the keyboard and mouse. Touchscreen tablets may be the first step in that direction, but if a new method is developed to allow input to a system, our workstations may be 3-D holograms that we interact with somewhat like Minority Report. I don’t foresee keyboards going away completely for a long, long time, but I think there is a better way – I just don’t know what it is yet.
Whatever happens in the coming years, I’m looking forward to it. Unless it sucks.
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