Future of homecomputing

[JT64]

What you people think that home computing will look like in 5 years. Right now i am sitting here at my cheap chinese 42 inch LCD tv, using wireless net, keyboard and HDMI.

In my mind i can see computers move on to inside TV running on GPU all external devices DVD, HDD wirelessly attached. The client desktop hypervisor inside tv start up running any OS of your choice.

Maybe the need of of all storage units with mechanical parts is gone. Your SDHC HUB have for slots with 2 terabyte memories. Your SDHC memory cost 100 Euro, they will be as common as USB and SD memories.

Well there will be new type of audio video formats maybe without quantisation only limited, relying on bus speed from datastorage.

The need for a new VIDEO/TV visual medium is emergent it has not kept up with other areas. The CCD quantisation and pixelisation will be replaced with analogue sampling techniques. First there will be one-bit USB samplers with realtime recording dependent on bus and storage device speed. The ADC/DAC never quantise the audiostream the format is not locked a startstring tell the output device how fast the stream should be played over the bus.

It is a bit harder to see cameras working without quantisation only relying on the clock, bus and samplingspeed but they must come i am sure. I think analogue audio and video will come back in 1-bit ADC/DAC sampling streams.

Was there ever analogue monitors without pixels and rasters.

JT

[gerrydoire]

3D Holographic projection using a trillion bit cpu.

[JT64]

3D Holographic projection using a trillion bit cpu.

I am not sure holographic "projection" would rely on a cpu more then a mirror does. You need a rather fast raygun and raysampler to do holographic projection though.

Admitly i have no idea what we speak of, but the first audiorecording and video recording didn't need any cpu at all. I am not sure digital audio/video playback and sampling are in need of any either. Well you could use a clock to set the bus speed and you need the instruction set to read and write from devices over the bus, quantisation is overrated and "de/downgrade techniques from reality" the sampler and busspeed and your storage set the limits on how well you can "afford" to describe reality.

Since i have no idea what i speak about it may be wrong, but it felt good anyway to say it :D

JT

[frozenfire75i]

I think the future of home computing in 5 years will be domination by laptops or something like that, smaller and lighter will be the wave of the future, 5 years is not that far off. The desktop as we know it today is already on the way out. I can't see holographic stuff in 5 years!

[NeXT]

I can see the SSD rising to power. You probably won't see a 120GB SSD for $200 in five years but I expect the smaller sized drives to be much more affordable than they are right now.

[JT64]

I can see the SSD rising to power. You probably won't see a 120GB SSD for $200 in five years but I expect the smaller sized drives to be much more affordable than they are right now.

Five years is quite along time i think you can by 200 terabytes SDXC in a year or two, they wont be cheap.

In five years i basically think that mechanical storage like HDD is replaced in consumer products, it will be to slow is my guess.

JT

[mpickering]

Hmm, what will computing look like in 5 years? I'll play. :)

First, I think we are finally going to see the progress in computing that has been basically a decade or so late in coming. I fully expected to see multiprocessor, parallel programmed systems be commonplace towards the latter half of the 1990s. Given the trends in place when I was in college, the notion of dual-CPU or more systems being typical home computing given the advance in processing power taking place at the time, was not unreasonable.

I was off by about 15 years. Unfortunately, the advances I expected then never happened since Moore's Law was able to keep the issue on the back burner. Parallel software research remained just that...research rather than become mainstream. That is now changing.

I fully expect the next few years to settle on a few established parallel development models/techniques/languages to take advantage of the current (and only) direction to increase computing power.

I expect 16-64 core processor elements to be commonplace.

I don't expect operating systems to disappear. Rather, they will morph. I can't see hypervisors becoming the hardware level interface by then. We need a lot to change in software acceptance/attitudes by consumers before then.

Windows will still be around although likely not quite as dominant. I suspect Linux will continue to evolve and take advantage of software developments.

Mechanical consumer-level storage will largely disappear. As I write this, I have an old Athlon XP which has only two moving parts in it: its cooling fan and its optical drive. I replaced an 80GB mechanical HDD with a 4GB CF internally card as a vintage "helper" workstation as an experiment.

Web-based and automatic software will continue to develop. Perhaps 5 years from now, the "cloud" will be the norm for your average user. Time will tell.

I am 50/50 on the idea that raytraced software will replace the current polygon/textured systems in place today. Assuming a strong framework for distributed programming appears to utilize the numerous cores that will be commonplace, it is possible there will be enough horsepower to do in realtime at high resolutions at decent framerates. I am 50/50 because graphics is one of those things that has shown that throwing more hardware at the problem in the current model does work. Witness the power of SLI and Crossfire with current generation GPU-based cards. A couple more iterations of that technology and Crysis will look like real-life and indistinguisable from a movie. So raytracing/radiosity will have to blow us away for it to replace a decade plus of advances on the graphics front (which was built on a previous decade of work largely by SGI).

Perhaps, finally, the hierarchial filesystem will disappear and be replaced by a database metadata-driven filestore. We're already seeing this happen. Task, temporal and time-based relations between data will be used to help assist and organize information. Identification of data will be automatic and ability to manipulate data will become largely seamless with the OS environment.

Really hard to say what else would happen. Some things I've expected to happen haven't. Like customers waking up to many software development practices and telling companies to start treating software like cars and offer warranties and be held responsible for their failures. This happened to a large extent in the mainframe era due to the high cost of computing. As a result, mainframe software is very stable, reliable and held to high expectations for support and fitness. With the inversion of the cost relationship, it seems sheep continue to put up with being fleeced, if not outright skinned, and pay happily for the privilege. Perhaps we need to evolve as a profession for that to occur.

Matt

[Unknown_K]

Same old stuff maybe 5x the speed of todays stuff probably.

You will see a new expensive display come out because LCD's are getting too cheap to profit from.

We will see faster CPU cores since more then 4 or 8 seems to be useless currently with consumer OS versions. So maybe a 5Ghz+ 4 core.

Solid State OS drives, normal spinning drives for data.

Bandwith metering by everybodies internet provider.

Video chip sockets instead of video cards.

Blueray drives for backup (larger storage multi layer).

Advertisements for holographic storage of petabytes being around the corner. ;)

[Ole Juul]

Home computing? Who's home?
I guarantee you that in my home you will see 16 bit DOS running just the same as it is now. :p

[Chuck(G)]

People will use their home computers (if they're even thought of that way) to watch TV, send email and buy stuff and browse the web. Given what's in a modern TV, I can't see where adding net functionality would be a big thing.

I dropped by a Radio Shack the other day to buy that $7 wirewrap tool. While I was there I asked about a USB extension cable (simple male-female "A"). The clerk showed me the one that they had on the rack and was almost ashamed to tell me that it was $30. I dropped in next door at the OfficeMax where the same cable was $35.

I went home and bought it (from a US seller) for $3.50 shipped. B&M stores are going to continue to hurt until they can figure out how to compete.

[TandyMan100]

I think the future of home computing in 5 years will be domination by laptops or something like that, smaller and lighter will be the wave of the future, 5 years is not that far off. The desktop as we know it today is already on the way out. I can't see holographic stuff in 5 years!
You should put "to the consumer". Desktops won't be dropped, they will still be used by the majority, however, we will have Pentium 16 eight-cores that will run even VISTA at a blazing-fast speed. The desktop will be primarily a small supercomputer, because the more powerful processors and graphics cards, etc. won't be able to realistically be implemented in the laptops of five years from now. Desktops will be used by: scientists, work-at-home people, gamers, us, and anyone else who needs more power than what is in their laptop that they will have.

Just my .2 byte (that's two bits, right?)

[JT64]

A more scary part of future, in 50 years you can attach a device on the optical nerve to measure "and record" the electrical pulse passing the optical nerve by sampling the electric current passed to the brain in an EDC "electric to digital converter".

The sampled event can then be replayed, by first shortcut the optical nerve an DEC "digital to electric" do the bypass on the nerve. And the bitsampled event is transformed to electrical current in the nerve, making a visual reappearance of the recorded event. Everyone will have "TOTAL RECALL" perfect relive of the moment.

Later there also will be people "FIRST PERSON 3D SIMULATIONS/RECORDINGS" upon the optical nerve make you actually get the ability to be inside a game. At least your brain will think you are.
So you actually will run the woods of WoW in real first person, playing the game. You can run around within the 3D simple sprite rendered "OLDSCHOOL" games like doom. A pretty nifty experience.

Later all sort of EDC samplers will be developed to sample sound, scent and last the sampling of the autononous nerve system will be developed it takes a million of EAD samplers to sample all sensor information, later there will sensor feedback system connected to virtual avatars, they will forward the brains sensor response to the avatar.

Of course later 3D simulation of the sensor information develops and you will feel when another avatar shake your hand, and the real big question arise where am i when i am not playing the game.

Reality is just our perception by our sensors.

JT

[JT64]

Probably you will not find blind or deaf people 50 years through now. But you better watch up because there will be abundance of psycotic people running around, having a hard time differ reality from a game "special considerations should be taken who like to play first person wargames".

There probably will be alot of virtual training simulators used to peek your brain to max performance, not *leaving everyone in perfect balance*.

Of course there will be virtual feedback responsed training making though who wants look more or less like Arnold Scwarszneger.

And watch out for those first person "sex games" they will turn out to be real addictive.

:D JT

[JT64]

Maybe you go for that semester on March that Arnold took....

When you come back, from it you will have a hard time to tell if you really come back or if they sold your young body to an old man and left your brain in a can in the lab....

But you will find out the day you suddenly walk through a wall...

JT

[Mad-Mike]

I visualize a 30" Monitor, and a little Box full of USB Ports, and everything being USB based, and more intrusive security features than you can shake a USB stick at. Oh, and a bloated version of windows that takes up a Trigabyte drive, has icons that have personalities of their own (according to the program), and even a friendly little OS/tan to help.

And if you're really sick, you can get the Dr. Norton torture package to keep your desktop amusing and as perverted as you want.

As for me, I'll hold on to my old 486 thankyouverymuch. The day I can't get it on the web will be the day I become a software inventor.

[CP/M User]

Please just don't tell me it'll be Virtual Reality, I can't stand the thought of Virtual Space, Virtual Homes, Virtual Pubs, Virtual Money, Virtual <youknowwhat>, and you have to buy your own Virtual Land & have your very own Virtual Avatar, trying to race off in your Virtual Car, and Committing Virtual Suicide before being saved an committed to a Virtual Nuthouse, then comitting Virtual Murder and Spending time in Virtual Gaol where the prison mates have Virtual Knifes, Virtual Guns, Virtual Drugs & there ain't no Virtual Wardens!! :-o

[Vlad]

We already have that, its called Second Life.

[NeXT]

Please just don't tell me it'll be Virtual Reality, I can't stand the thought of Virtual Space, Virtual Homes, Virtual Pubs, Virtual Money, Virtual <youknowwhat>, and you have to buy your own Virtual Land & have your very own Virtual Avatar, trying to race off in your Virtual Car, and Committing Virtual Suicide before being saved an committed to a Virtual Nuthouse, then comitting Virtual Murder and Spending time in Virtual Gaol where the prison mates have Virtual Knifes, Virtual Guns, Virtual Drugs & there ain't no Virtual Wardens!! :-o

I'm sorry, you said something?
I was busy dating someone online.
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsandy/Computer%20related/VFX1/P2260463.jpg

[barythrin]

^
|
|__Um... virtual Solaris 10?

Is that really yours/you? A friend of mine had a VR helmet (*SPOILED* dude) in '95 that plugged into about every console and the computer at the time. The latest console was the Jaguar .. pretty sure the PS1 hadn't quite come out yet. It was interesting with virtual movies for it and it had sensors to detect head movement for look left/right and up/down. Still I think the resolution was probably 320x240 or something.. *MAYBE* 640x480 but even now most of them are low resolution which baffles me.

Anyway, I guess greater multi-core/cell processors, more resources to eat up by poorly coded software, and hopefully I have a few more vintage machines.

I think the big thing is integrating home appliances still though. Maybe your smartphone now keeps track of your television shows you watch and sends/streams them over a wifi connection to your TV. Wherever you go you could watch your shows via your personal/wearable computer streaming to any tv or radio.

I think actually electronic ink should take off and as I was pointing out to my GF who had never seen Harry Potter until last night that I think animated wall pictures (hell, maybe I'll work on that) as well as animated newspaper/magazine articles will become reality in next 10 years. Replacing pictures with short animated clips in the news papers, etc.. although that's a dying market too so who knows.

- John

[CP/M User]

I said a many a things! :-p And all the virtual crap will only become more and more frequent in the future!

[Terry Yager]

I'm sorry, you said something?
I was busy dating someone online.

Didja remember to let the virtual air out of her afterwards?

--T