PC's in 2020

Found this oldish video, by 2020, monitors and keyboards will not be used any more, they claim that all this can be achieved using lasers and infra red technology projecting the image on a wall and projecting a holographic key board onto a flat surface, with everything fitting into something the size of a pen, capable of carrying terabytes worth of data.

I realize some of the above is current technology, especially with virtual keyboards, but the whole concept is pretty amazing and not long away.

I dont think we will be using Windows XP as shown in the video though.

Video.

We have been SO FAR OFF when it comes to predicting future technology that video's like this are usually worthless. Even the people who have their finger on the pulse of tech can't see more than a few years down the road when it comes to this.

I agree to an extent, Arthur.C.Clarke and other visionarys have been more on the mark, while browsing i found a few technology predictions that were very wrong, but in this case we actually do use these things, see below.



And here's one im very glad they didnt build



Source.

reply to post by Denied

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You mean you don't use a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner? How would someone think that would be a reasonable thing to say?

when it comes to technology, you have to imagine usefullness/comfortability/mass production and cost/replacability/endurance/ ect.
Used to be that products never strayed to far away from their base.
however, computers today are fairly well seperated from computers thirty or so years ago, skills from then are completley obsolete except for some bits of command line. Not so much with vaccuums, most cars, and,most imporant, coffee makers.
Now that computers have become well established though, i'm going to guess we'll have afairly steady rate of change, but keep certin standard components. mouse, keyboard, moniter ect. They may change, but until, or perhaps even after, nearual tech or remakeably advanced optical tech becomes standard, they won't be replaced.
then pen size would be useful and portable, but, like laptops and pcs, I'll bet ther will still be home based versions, a little larger and bulkier.

reply to post by Denied

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Arthur C. Clarke was right about telecommunications satellites, yet he was still at the whim of every scientific discovery to be made after he committed his prophecies to the page. For him it was the transistor replacing the vacuum tube - that one small change meant his initial vision of communication satellites (large, manned space-stations) was so far-out of whack with reality by the time the technology came to fruition.

So, to sum up - don't listen to a word of it. Even Arthur C. Clarke got it wrong, so there's no hope for any of us

reply to post by Karlhungis

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I think the comment about the vacuum cleaner was not to be taken literally. I think it was a hyperbolic way to say that nuclear power would be ubiquitous.

Now we all know that nuclear power plants have not lived up to their purported potential and in some cases have actually increased the price of electricity.

However, we are now witnessing a resurgence of enthusiasm about nuclear energy that might lead to just about everything being powered by nuclear generated energy, in one way or another.

As for the video, although I think some of the cited specifications were a bit much I think it will be possible to build something like that by 2020 or sooner, but the form-factor will probably not be ideal and some other miniaturized PC will be what we actually see.

For one thing, the cell phone industry has introduced a number of phones with non-tactile keypads, which have not been received very well, even if the phones that sport them have been popular--think Razr.

I think that people will for the most part want to be able to input data without having to stare at the keypad. That's why touch-typing was invented for the now-archaic typewriter.

I remember a quote by an electronics engineer back in the seventies who said that even if someone does invent a 100 watt amplifier that will fit in the palm of your hand, you'll still need some place to put the knobs.

Well, for a while it looked like knobs had gone the way of the running board, but now I do think their making a comeback on some electronic devices, because they're easy to find and easy to regulate.

Videos like this are not really meant to give us a picture of the future, but rather to make us hungry for the future.

[edit on 2008/5/5 by GradyPhilpott]