The Future of Computer Technology

The future of computers may not be coming soon, but rather alternatives and fancy new appearances and tricks according to Louis Bedigian. Bedigian published "The Future of Computers: Voice Recognition" on Forbes' website in the Personal Finance section. Computers have been changing so rapidly and improving nearly too quickly to follow so it seems natural that the next enormous thing coming to computer technology that will revolutionize how we think of computers is coming soon, but what if it is all an illusion? Bedigian points out one important thing in the apparent evolution of computers, we are not innovating we are altering and replacing.

"True innovation comes from things that users did not know they needed, thus the birth of the mouse and keyboard." This is the issue with computer evolution today. We are getting almost too good at improving and losing all sense of true innovation. We have speech recognition, touch screens (both of which replace keyboards), touch pads, shortcuts, mouse wheels and a whole slew of other devices which replace the computer mouse. But when was the last time that a truly innovative computer technology emerged? None that I can remember, sure there have been incredibly remarkable leaps that have been made in speed, simplicity, size, appearance, and much else but we still typically use the same things we have been for decades. 

We all see things in movies that seem like the next big thing that make us say things like, "that's it, if they were to ACTUALLY produce that it would make millions!" Things like Iron Man's hollographic computer, the Smithsonian's hollographic animator (as seen in Bones), or even things like Ghostrider (the robot car). But they are still all replacements. I am personally not even innovative enough to think about how any of these possibilities or concepts could make way for a truly innovative technology, but I hope that I will be able to see that next, truly innovative, big thing come along in my life time. But it could truly be decades still till that actually happens. 

Some of the true new tools that will most likely replace typical items we use daily in the near future (3-10 years) are things like true speech recognition that will never stumble over our words, perfectly "thinking" computers to respond and answer our questions, wearable computers that make our daily life even more technologically filled with computers we can wear as glasses that will remember people for us, watches that will remind us of every meeting right when we need to remember or refrigerators that text us the list of everything we need to get when we arrive at the store. All of these ideas, and I am sure many more, are real technologies that we will see before we see our children go to college. 

I think that the other posts, within Group-E, showed other great expectations that are very realistic for the future of computer hardware. I personally think that the ability for us to have 3D displays that do not need special glasses or anything like that is going to be the biggest jump that we will see in the next, maybe, 15-20 years. To be able to have 3D displays that are intuitive and not complicated will take a while to develop, but the other crucial challenge will be to make it affordable for everyday purchases.