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DEL.ICIO.USMy high-tech predictions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I was 10 or 11 when I noticed my first high-tech prediction. The cover of Popular Science had a picture of a Buick with fold-down wings.
The story had the ring of truth. It predicted that, before I was old, people would drive cars like that, zooming above the earthbound traffic. Commutes would be easy. Vacation trips would take place at 12,000 feet in the family car.
In fact, there have been flying cars. But they’re mostly in museums now. The lesson here is that all sorts of neat and possible things — like that Buick — never get off the ground.
That’s why I limit my annual high-tech predictions to the near future. I’m like a cowardly gambler, only putting my money down when the odds are in my favor.
HDTV sets become affordable
So we’ll start off with a sure bet. 2007 is the year HDTV sets become common and affordable. They’re already cheaper, but this is the year the sets will be the rule at the store, not the exception. You’ll find good sets that cost in the hundreds, not thousands, of dollars. The high-end sets will still be there, but it’ll be no problem finding one you like for less than $1,000.
Despite all the buzz about DLP and LCD sets, plasma HDTV — troubled by high cost and dependability issues early on — will thrive.
The battle of the HD DVDs continues
Another sure bet? The battle between the two competing formats for HDTV DVD players will continue. But by the end of the year, signs of which format will prevail will become clearer — and, eventually, one format will force the other off the map.
The winner is too hard to call right now. Blu-ray holds more data compared to the other format, HD DVD. But that may also be its weakness. The higher-density discs it uses cost more to produce, a factor for movie studios.
A cellular telephone without the flash
Now let’s talk about cellular phones. I’m going out on a limb with this one. And maybe I’m indulging in wishful thinking. You’ll start seeing a backlash against all the multifunction telephones and see the desire for a really nice phone that is just a phone.
I’m not alone in wanting a high-quality telephone that specializes in, well, being a telephone. Every week I get at least one or two e-mails from people looking for a first-class telephone without a camera, an MP3 player or the flash and glitter that adorn so many these days.
These folks want a phone with great battery life, terrific reception and no frills. The market will respond, I’m guessing.
It’s time to come together - especially for gadgets
My next prediction brings to mind a technology buzzword of the early ’90s: convergence. It’s come true to a large degree. You can watch TV on your PC, and connect many of your gadgets so that they work together. But it’s often too complicated and involves wires.
The roadblock to real convergence is easy, built-in wireless connectivity. Connecting your new TV to your PC or your MP3 player shouldn’t involve stringing a bunch of wires, or punching in a lot of code to make a wireless connection.
What the market craves are devices that automatically find other compatible devices and connect with no action on your part. Just turn them on and they would search out other devices.
You’ll see a movement in 2007 — 2008 at the latest — toward the creation of a universal standard for connectivity — some industrywide move to make sure a Philips TV, for instance, will be able to talk to an Apple Mac just as easily as to a Sony MP3 player.
Maybe the universal standard will be one that exists now like BlueTooth or even one of the technologies used for computer routers.
It’ll take a while but it will happen. There’s just too much frustration among consumers as they try to connect gadgets and fail.
I’ll finish with a prediction that is sure to be accurate: At least half of my predictions are wrong — fanciful thinking to be filled away with that back issue of Popular Science.
But that’s OK. The fun of technology is that it will always bring surprises.
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By stan mrak
December 29, 2006 09:35 AM | Link to this
My first prediction for 2007 is that the cellular phone industry will lose at least one of the several lawsuits that have been filed against them claiming that cell phones caused brain tumors. A long range prediction, this one from Dr. George Carlo, the scientist who did the original studies for the cellular industry from 1993-99: in the next 5 years, you will begin to see the beginning of an epidemic of health effects from cell phone use and all of the wireless technology that we are using.
By One Voice
December 29, 2006 09:56 AM | Link to this
Test.
By stan mrak
December 29, 2006 10:32 AM | Link to this
The fun of technology is that it will always bring surprises - The biggest surprise you are going to get is the revelation about how harmful the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted from all these devices is to our health.
By Bill
December 29, 2006 10:42 AM | Link to this
It is an interesting point about the possible harm from EMF and RF - it’s interesting because there is no doubt in any sane person’s mind that it is harmful at some level. (Just stand in front of a huge radar antenna - well please don’t - if you doubt that … in fact, the first microwave cooking ovens were called radar ranges). The haggling has been over what level is safe. I know that - for me - I like the idea of using an external microphone and earpiece for those who spend hours a day on a cellular phone. That way the phone can be kept on the belt - a lot better idea than holding it against your head.
By stan mrak
December 29, 2006 10:52 AM | Link to this
I used the same strategy at one time, but I have sinced learned that hands-free earpieces are not a solution; studies show that they are actually worse! (There is one model that is effective; it uses an airtube section at the very top of the wire to keep the wire away from your ear canal). Also, wearing a cell phone on your hip, as has become very popular, has been suspected as a cause in the rise of testicular cancer among men. I have researched this field thoroughly and have much more information, if you’re interested. Dr. Carlo, by the way, has come to the realization that there is no safe level.
By One Voice
December 29, 2006 11:36 AM | Link to this
x
By stan mrak
December 29, 2006 01:31 PM | Link to this
There is a documentary scheduled to be released to theaters this coming summer, “The Boiling Frog Principle.” This documentary outlines the science behind the fears that cell phone radiation is having a damaging effect on our health. Look for it to have the same consciousness-raising effect that “The Inconvenient Truth” had on global warming.
By GOAT ROPER
December 29, 2006 07:35 PM | Link to this
If it causes you concern don’t use them.
By DonaldJ
December 29, 2006 10:10 PM | Link to this
I caught your “flying cars” post in a “Google Alert” for flying cars…
I’ll tell you where your flying cars are… You already know where they aren’t…
They’re in my 14 cases of 75-thousand pages of notes… That’s where they have always been, since 1978…
Now I’m beginning to understand why my project has and is being so stifled… I read in a blog, that Bush recently legislated “under the counter” that Americans are banned from developing engines and powersources which might obsolete Oil consumption… What’s with that guy? Is he hellbent on tossing all of us back a couple thousand years ago.. or What?..
It’s scary that one guy could stifle humanity that big, and get away with it…
Have you seen the latest “flying car” claim..? It’s a blimp, tied to a something or other.. It looks like a “floating gurney”… Next thing yah know they’ll be driving their cars off’n cliffs, claiming they have flying cars…
I have the technology for flying cars engines… I just can’t find the funding..? And I sure have tried… I’ve been snubbed more times than I can count… Now, being snubbed is just a way of life for me… I expect it…
…1978 late Fall.. on a planned three-week leisurely cruise across Canada, along highway number-one, along as much of the scenic-routes as I could find.. just past the Ontario border into Manitoba.. I saw two large meteorites cross a huge “X” in the sky.. and thought about it with all I had.. “What makes Alien craft’s engines work”, I telepathed from all my Being… …A few minutes later, I had to park, to write the flood of new data, for three hours straight.. resulting in the crude bench manual to build a liquid electricity rocket…
James Watt watched a kettle boil, and invented the steam engine… I saw an X in the sky, and invented the liquid electricity engine…
I attempted to detail the workings of the engine to a visiting European nuclear physicist.. “mindless dolt” would be a better fitting title… 60-seconds into the description, his face when pale, his chin dropped, he struggled to speak, he accused me of “talking in the forth dimension”, barely managed to stand, managed to walk three paces, and fell flat on his face…
Over the years I have contacted pretty-much every major scientific concern in the big business world, and all the powerful politicians, and even a couple of the great religions.. to no avail… All I got was “classy” snubbing and scorn, from the mindless scientific community, governments, and religions… and a lot of “remote viewers” desperately trying to suck technology from my mind, mostly when I slept.. till I figured ways to seriously damage them upon approach… Plus there were a lot of attempts to dig into my computers, them believing I’d put the meat in a computer connected to the Net.. thht on that!.. They destroyed five of my PC’s in their desperate attempts to rob me… Seems this race doesn’t want engines for flying cars, and engines to take us to other solar systems, Unless they can steal it from the inventor… It’s a pity I am being forced to take all this technology to the grave…
All this engine is, is a couple simple modifications to laser… It “cracks” light… Damaged light “particles” self-heal with the nearest molecules.. thus creating raw antimatter-acids, which are saved in exhaust scrubbers, and sold by the public, to power industry… The service station pays the consumer for plugged full exhaust scrubbers.. A complete 180 turn-around for having to pay for gas all these years…
Fragmented light “particles” instantly decay into liquid electricity, which produces tremendous thrust from a tiny 14-inch long by 4-inch diameter engine… Among the 110 new-technologies in this science layer, it replaces combustion as a power source, opens the bonds of the inert elements, establishes plazma-welding of all materials to all materials, is the base to establish disintegrator trash-pails, obsoletes hospitals, gives us planetary defense weaponry and thousands of new toys, and gets us to other habitable-planets before this one shows us we’ve already killed it…
It’s that.. or you’all can go try to find it all by yourselves, by your classic “scientific” trial and error methods…
If anyone has a clue how to get new technology funded, I’d sure appreciate hearing about it.. and I’m sure you would benefit from it greatly when I start marketing flying-cars… Do you prefer two seaters or four seaters?..
Why is it so tough to get new technologies funded?.. Could it be that mankind’s intellect is devolving..? given that cell phones are baking brains.. meth, and coke are dissolving and melting brains, the drug industry’s pain killers evolutions are numbing people to escape reality, dirty smallpox vaccinations are destroying brain file connections, alcohol and the prolific lack of nutrients are literally desiccating brains in their cases… Every day it seems more and more that humans are devolving into Apes… Just look at how they, you, we, treat this planet, like it’s an expendable resource…
Bottom-line is, You get flying cars about five years after I gets a lab and a credit card… Simple as that… if we still have a planet left after the 13-Colonies nuclear world war three game…
I’ve done a life-time of work acquiring this technology.. I’ve taken it as far as I can without funding… If I’m not funded by my 60th birthday (10 months from now), the 75-thousand pages of notes burn in the garden on my 60th, and I’ll send a video clip of the bon-fire, and a cover story, to the mindless scientific community, for their archives… and you all can get your flying cars when the next one like me comes along, in about 500 to a 1000 years…
So.. Now you know why you are not driving your flying-cars today.. and why those alive today won’t be seeing flying-cars in their lifetimes…
This liquid electricity emitter’s raw output is a dirty-pink stationary light-cloud… which evolves into 4-D TV, and into cinema special effects breakthroughs for the next 500-years… Filmable synthetic actors.. restricted only by lack of imagination…
A little further research, this toy evolves into engines that will obsolete Fire as a power source… Fire will become illegal… The atmosphere will have the opportunity to self-heal.. and the air won’t stink so bad…
This plazma engine will power all our vehicles, including moon and mars capable consumer RV’s… and will provide mankind with the basic means to populate other planets in other solar systems…
This engine evolved to tools and weaponry, will do things like, “write a poem on a lunar cliff-face from earth… and drill a meter diameter hole 20-miles into the earth’s crust, for us to plant magma batteries, which crystallize into crystallines, with hardnesses 14 to 28 on the Mho’s scale… Thereby revolutionizing several industries: optics, bearings, abrasives, weaponry, and pretty much evolving every industry and life in many ways…
This is what our Species has been searching for… I found it, but it seems no one can even begin to fathom any of it… I tell them, and they “p**” in my face, and try to damage my life…
The usual reaction I get when mentioning any of this in various Internet forums, is verbal flame, and barrages of mindless insults, and varying religious, pseudo-physiological, and political battles, with aggressive mindless people, all hellbent on defending the insane stagnancy-quo…
I defend myself well against slanderous attacks, which have resulted in me being banned from many forums and scientific communities… I’ve heard it all repeatedly, in various world forums, and from other sources.. and from the mindless scientific community, that can’t even grasp the first minute of any of these technologies… It’s the same “wall of fear” and insanity that all the ancient greats were confronted by… It’s what trashed Tesla’s lab after he plugged a light-bulb into the ground… It’s what ridiculed Flemming for inventing penicillin, for claiming that “tiny invisible bugs were the cause of disease”… Then the medical scientific community tried to destroy Flemming’s life.. and then they returned, content, back to their tapping wounds with filthy turkey-feathers, dipped in alcohol and various bright colored rock-powders, to frighten-away disease and infection… “ookook-eiee! Auk!”..
It’s that dam wall that your devolving superstitious mindless fearful species just can’t see any light nor reality through… Seems there is no secret entry-point through this Race’s mindless blind insanity levels, to permit a true scientist to build new technologies anymore, to give this Race more… Seems you are all content with the fall into Oblivion.. forever numbing the discomforts of the fall, with your latest evolutions of designer drugs, and your silly interactive-cartoons, to keep your minds off your species impending demise… When then near the year 145,730AD, the last human can be viewed cracking the marrow out of the bones of the second last.. and by 155,000AD, the planet can’t even support the life of one single hardy beetle…
So now you really know why you don’t have your 1200mph flying cars today… Or as that gossip-guy Paul Harvey on the radio would say, “And now you know.. The rest of the story”…
By Larry
December 29, 2006 10:25 PM | Link to this
Wow…I predict…Pigs Will Fly! Or maybe monkeys will go into space? Please, why make this a political forum? It’s not. I still think that pigs will fly. Maybe not this coming year, but…what’s that? Humans have been to the moon?
By Jon
December 29, 2006 11:51 PM | Link to this
Boy, Bill. Your blog really draws out the whackos. Poor stan mrak is scared to death over a “health threat” that has zero science to support it and Donald J is just plain nuts or trying to pull our collective leg.
The future of all these techno devices is convergence. We have too many devices. Bill Gates’ predictions in the early 1990s book “The Road Ahead” are proving to be quite accurate.
By Michael
December 30, 2006 07:32 AM | Link to this
For what it’s worth, DonaldJ’s post without citation to authorities may also be found at: http://tinyurl.com/ydxqo4
By David K
December 31, 2006 12:55 AM | Link to this
Convergence has already happened Bill if you’d get off that old PC of yours and get a Mac! Yeah, maybe not everything but Apple is sure moving in the right direction. It’d just to dang simple for most people!
By David K
December 31, 2006 12:55 AM | Link to this
Convergence has already happened Bill if you’d get off that old PC of yours and get a Mac! Yeah, maybe not everything but Apple is sure moving in the right direction. It’s just to dang simple for most people!
By Bill
December 31, 2006 08:15 AM | Link to this
Hi David, I’m not so much talking about simplicity when I mention convergence. Instead, I’m talking about the ability of all gadgets - no matter who makes them - to perform multiple tasks and to be able to automatically connect to each other no matter what the brand. So it’s not a case of Apple here - it’s more like the ability of consumer electronics gizmos, including computers, being able to automatically find each other and connect. But simplicity of use is a great thing - and I’m for it, grin.
By Tom
December 31, 2006 08:13 PM | Link to this
It’s amazing how many NUTS have the ability to utilize computer technology. DavidJ, “W” has ENCOURAGED the development of alternative fuels, including the use of hydrogen. But the the “Big Three” auto makers are reluctant to explore that area. Get a grip, dude, or get back on your meds. Sheesh!
By JoJo
December 31, 2006 09:11 PM | Link to this
From what I have observed in the stores, LCD will outpace plasma technology as the primary screen type. They have a full range of sizes from 26-42+ and are more energy efficient. Due to the gaining popularity prices will decrease at a quicker pace than plasma technology.
By MajickMan
December 31, 2006 11:31 PM | Link to this
Donald J: Have you contacted “Coast to Coast AM”
By Gary, GT '85
January 2, 2007 01:51 PM | Link to this
Tom, you should rent the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car”. You will find that “W” has encouraged alternative fuel technologies with 20 to 30 year horizons for efficacy while all but killing alternatives that are viable right now. You’re probably giving “W” a bit too much credit for the funding he’s provided for hydrogen-fuel cell cars (supported by the auto and petroleum industries’ lobby) and ethanol (supported by the corn lobby, which is one of the biggest). Follow the money and it usually leads to the truth.
I like the prediction about technology convergence via wireless. It’s starting to happen, but there’s plenty of growth opportunity.
Incidentally, there are cheap cell phones available that are pretty much only phones and nothing more. You rarely see tham advertised, though.
By modestd
January 2, 2007 03:35 PM | Link to this
Stan, You really think that this film “The Boiling Frog Principle” will in your words, “consciousness-raising effect that “The Inconvenient Truth” had on global warming.” Yeah every ones conscious was raised with that film, I guess thats why every one rides bikes and takes public transportation to work! Thank God I can use the Perimeter as a short cut now!