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Chapter 18

Inventing The Future

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Topics

Tomorrow Never Knows

From Research to Reality: 21st-Century Information Technology

Human Questions for a Computer Age

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Alan Kay

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Tomorrow Never Knows

Technology is hard to foresee, and it is even harder to predict the impact that technology

will have on society.

The 1930 movie Just Imagine presented a bold, if not quite accurate, vision of the future; here Maureen O’Sullivan sits in her personal flying machine.

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Tomorrow Never Knows

We can predict the future by recognizing the four phases of any technology or media business: hardware, software, service, and way of life.

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Tomorrow Never Knows

Hardware--develop new hardware

Software--software such as television programs, web pages and databases give value to hardware products

Service--companies focus on serving their customers

Way of life--product/service becomes so entrenched that it becomes almost invisible

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From Research to Reality

Ideas are sprouting from the minds of engineers and scientists that will collectively shape the future of information technology.

Trends point to those ideas most likely to succeed.

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Tomorrow’s Hardware: Trends and Innovations

Speed: computer speed today typically is measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), where an instruction is the most primitive operation performed by the processor

Size: central components of a modern computer are stored on a handful of tiny chips

Efficiency: desktop & portable computers consume very little electricity

The IBM S/390 G6 server performs up to 1.6 billion instructions per second—almost 1 billion times the performance of the historic Mark I—at a cost that is far less than a mainframe or supercomputer.

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Tomorrow’s Hardware:More Trends and Innovations

Capacity: optical, magnetic, and semiconductor storage devices virtually eliminate storage as an issue

Cost: hardware has dramatically dropped in cost

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Technological Innovations

Alternative chip technologies

Alternative architectures

Alternative storage technologies

Alternative output displays

Alternative input devices: sensors “Smart dust” computers at

the University of California at Berkeley help monitor and control heating and cooling systems using environmental sensors and wireless communication links

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Tomorrow’s Software:Evolving Applications and Interfaces

Computer scientists aren’t even close to developing tools that will allow programmers to produce error-free software quickly. However, software technology is advancing rapidly.

WIMP: (windows, icons, menus, and pointing devices) interface is easier to learn and use than earlier character-based interfaces

SILK: for speech, image, language, and knowledge capabilities.

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Evolving Interfaces

SILK incorporates many important software technologies:

Speech and language: voice recognition systems, natural-language processing

Image: three-dimensional models, animation, and video clips; virtual reality interfaces

Knowledge: self-maintaining systems

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Tomorrow’s Service: Truly Intelligent Agents

Agents are software programs designed to be managed rather than manipulated.

An intelligent software agent: asks questions as well as responds to commands pays attention to its user’s work patterns serves as a guide and a coach takes on its owner’s goals uses reasoning to fabricate goals of its own

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More on Intelligent Agents

Wizards and other agent-like software: guide users through complex tasks and answer questions when problems arise

Bots: software robots that crawl around the Web collecting information, helping consumers make decisions, answering email, and even playing games

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Future Software Agents

A well-trained software agent in the future might accomplish these tasks:

Remind you that it’s time to get the tires rotated on your car

Distribute notes to the other members of your study group

Manage your appointments and keep track of your communications

Defend your system and your home from viruses, intruders, and other security breaches

Detect your emotional state and respond accordingly

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Tomorrow’s Way of Life: Transparent Technology

“This will be the generation where the technology disappears into the tool, serving

valuable functions but keeping out of the way – the generation of the invisible computer.”

Donald A. Norman

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Embedded Intelligence

Computers are disappearing into more of our tools.

Information appliances, including cell phones, fax machines, and GPS devices, perform their specialized functions while hiding the technological details from their users.

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Embedded Intelligence

Wearable computers: strap-on units for active information gatherer

CPUs, keyboards, and touchpads stitched right into the clothes, turning their wearers into wireless Internet nodes

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Ubiquitous Computers

Examples of ubiquitous computers are smart badges and smartboards

While ubiquitous computers offer convenience and efficiency beyond anything that’s come before, they also raise serious questions about personal privacy, intimacy, and independence.

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From Internet to Omninet

Connectivity is a critical part of ubiquitous computing.

As more machines become connected, the Net will evolve from today’s loose digital fishnet into a tightly-woven, seamless fabric that surrounds us.

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The Day after Tomorrow: Information Technology Meets Biology

Bio-economy will replace the information economy sometime around the year 2020.

Biotechnology and microtechnology will become more intertwined with information technology in the coming decades .

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Borrowing from Biology

The network of the future will be more like a biological system.

Neural nets allow individual computers to learn from experience because their design is inspired by biological nervous systems.

Research is being conducted in neurons electronically linked onto chips for communication; this type of research could eventually lead to artificial retinas and prosthetic limbs that are extensions of the human nervous system.

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Microtechnology

Use microtechnology to develop micromachines—machines on the scale of a millionth of a meter.

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS): for example, a motor twice as wide as a human hair that runs on static electricity

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Microtechnology

Microsensors - tiny devices that can detect pressure, temperature, and other environmental qualities

BioMEMS - apply chip technology to biological applications may soon cure many forms of deafness, enable many blind people to see images and navigate, stimulate paralyzed limbs, diagnose bacterial agents, determine drug safety, and deliver drugs precisely where they’re needed.

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Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology - the manufacture of machines on a scale of a few billionths of a meter

Nanomachines would have to be constructed atom by atom using processes drawn from particle physics, biophysics, and molecular biology.

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Nanotechnology

Nanotubes - tiny cylindrical molecules with semiconductor properties similar to those found in silicon chips; could lead to quantum computers—computers based on the properties of atoms and their nuclei and the laws of quantum mechanics

Germ-sized robots

Self-assembling machines

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Artificial Life

Artificial life: synthetic organisms that act like natural living systems

Simple software organisms that exist only in computer memory or…

colonies of tiny insect robots that communicate with each other and respond to changes in their environment.

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Human Questions for a Computer Age

Will Computers Be Democratic?

Will the Global Village Be a Community?

Will We Become Information Slaves?

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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

The computer is a powerful and malleable tool. It can be used to empower or imprison, to explore or exploit, to create or destroy. We can choose. We’ve been given the tools. It’s up to all of us to invent the future.

If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

—Isaac Newton

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