What's in store......

[Akira]

On a recent shopping jaunt to our local supermarket I noticed that members of staff were supporting customers who were trying to use the automated checkout systems.

A couple of days later I was trying to book a train ticket and the automated telephonist managed, albeit in a rather crude fashion, to teach itself where I really wanted to go given that it couldn't understand my scouse accent on the first couple of goes.

Now, I've always been an advocate for the responsible use of technology but I found the sight of humans supporting machines that will undoutedly replace many of them and their staff members in the not too distant future really weird.

Developers have now also introduced a car that will drive you to anywhere you want without having to do anything yourself....

Apparently, the Internet and it's accompanying technologies are creating a new rift in the whole class system (if you believe it exists in the first place of course) with Information have's and have not's...

It all strikes me as stranger still, since I remember reading an essay in the early nineties, by a respected technologist who completely rejected the idea of the 'electronic cottage', the idea that most of our lives could be lived via technology accessible both in or from our homes (a loose interpretation but that was the main idea).

Does anybody fancy a wee stab at cyber-prediction? What do you guys foresee for future uses of technology that will dramatically impact our lives?

I know lots of stuff is available on the net but I thought it'd be interesting for us to use our existing knowledge of technology (and our imaginations) to predict the future....

Thanks be to hexus for allowing the posting of treads to be viewed and fed into by loads of interesting geeky types

[kalniel]

I think at the moment the internet is still too visible. In the future I think it'll be much more transparent, to the point that you don't even worry so much about how to get at the information or where it's coming from.

[Akira]

I think at the moment the internet is still too visible. In the future I think it'll be much more transparent, to the point that you don't even worry so much about how to get at the information or where it's coming from.

I remember, ages ago, seeing an episode of The Outer Limits where people had instantaneous access to the Internet via a Bluetooth stlye ear piece, neurally attached of course...

Although at the time I thought, what a load of guff, MITs work with wearable computing and Prof. Kevin Warwick volunteering to have bio chips fixed under his skin, this kind of more intimate connection to the web might not be so far off... no monitors or other types of VDU, just a direct link to one's brain.

[IBM]

Technological augmentation is inevitable. It's only a matter of time before people figure out a way of pumping information directly into somebody's brain, bypassing the standard senses. Once people overcome the initial scepticism of the concept, around SP1 I expect , they'll jump in.

First it'll be military adoption, followed by corporate, then general public. Who wouldn't want to have all that information at their fingertips. I for one, with my brain badly deteriorated by years of substance abuse, would happily have a memory or processing augmentation, proven it was safe and effective.

You can already see physical augmentation coming through in military research projects, and before long it'll be metal augmentation. And this is as geeky as I get, Resistance is Futile.

But I'm wincing as I say it, so I reckon there's hope for me yet.

[Akira]

around SP1 I expect , they'll jump in

I love the latin saying, Deus Ex Machina as I believe bio augmentation will bring about a new period in human evolution, and a fairly quick one too I expect (once the technology is widely available of course).

I'm not trying to say that we'll all be turning into gods (ala the above latin) but the borders of perception will certainly be blown off their symbolic hinges!!

Interesting point about substance abuse, I have a pal who's Bi-Polar and, not knowing how to deal with it hammered every drug he could get his hands on... if sensory/cognitive augmentations become available, what it'd mean to the seriously mentally ill...

[Kumagoro]

Just think how many jobs will be lost in places like tesco because of RFIDs. All those check out workers will go replaced with just a few people monitoring things. No need for stock controllers. No need for people checking stuff off when stock come in.

what will all the housewives do then.