What will be the next big new technology advances in 5 years? 20 years?

What do you mean by "all in one electronic devices"? We sort of have that now... a cell phone that is a PDA and also a MP3 player, etc. But many times it doesn't work out... people simply don't want their TV to also be a DVD player (or computer) because they want to pick-and-choose the best parts. So there will always be dedicated audio devices like stereos/home threatre, even 50 years from now, I think. There will also always be dedicated media devices like TV's.

I am not sure the storage issue is as much of an issue as it was... used to be that storage was a big deal. Now we have 1.5TB hard drives for $150. The rate of growth of drive space has far outpaced the need. Right now the bottlenecks with computer technology is communications bandwidth and power. Bandwidth because there is nowhere near enough for a large number of people to watch streaming content even at 640x480, forget about "high definition". So there will be a major movement towards greatly increased bandwidth, most likely through optical (i.e. fiberoptic) connections. As for power, that's another major problem... power technology hasn't changed all that much in 20 years. I am not sure it will, either... there is tons spend on R&D and we just can't come up with much that's better than chemical reaction batteries. Rechargeable batteries ain't much better than they were 20 years ago. More strides have been made in power management which gives us better battery times. But the ideal would be to have something like a laptop that never needed charged because it had a batter powerful enough to last for it's entire life.

I don't think we will have the computing power or know-how to create AI (or a thinking machine) this century, or possibly even next century. We're very very far away from being able to come close to mimicking the power of the human brain. It also raises a lot of other issues... if we create an artificial entity that can think, does it have rights? What if some day we create a machine that has a higher capacity for thought than we have? If we keep such a machine at a lower state of intelligence so that it can serve us, isn't that like enslaving monkeys or children and still wrong? And most of all, what benefits would there be in creating a machine that can think? If the idea is not to have it do things we don't want to do, then why do it? And if it is to do things we don't want to do, how is it different than slavery?

Food for thought.

 

I think you are right on the jet thing... I think the future of travel is likely ballistic trajectories where you go very high into the atmosphere (maybe even into space) and then down to your destination. I've heard that a flight from New York to Japan could be achieved in something like 3 hours this way. Being a ballistic trajectory, you really only have to use fuel to get you going, up to the midway point (at most) of the flight, then you can coast down to your destination. I'd guess that's the 50-years-away type of thing. We have a long way to go in terms of materials that can reliably handle multiple atmospheric re-entries for a reasonable (comparable to jet plane) price.

On the heel/toe thing - funny you mention that. My work developed an aftermarket unit that did that several years ago. It was never commercialized due to liability concerns (the device had to have the ability to increase the gas during shifts). If it ever failed and someone was killed... lawsuit! I think power management like we have on laptops will be coming to cars... I think power management will be a trend over the next 20 years. If you added up the wasted energy for the average person, I bet it's a vast majority of the energy actually used. Think how much we spend heating a house when we only occupy a few rooms (or less) at a time. Or think how much we spend lighting such a little-used house with incandescent lights. Or the $$$ spent keeping a huge pot of water at the boil in case we take a shower. Same with cars... I think smaller, lighter and more efficint will be the name of the game. Power management in all areas of life will become a huge big deal.

 

Unfortunately, I agree with you on this 100%

 

I predict that someone will make a device that "adds that V8 growl" to your electric car. It will be used by ricers and sold on eBay for $29.99

 

I think a few generations of "car computer assistance" in the future, there will not really be accidents like we have now. Back in the 50's there was pretty much no help. Now we have ABS, traction control, and in modern cars we have "active handling" that can dynamically brake the wheels to make the car do what you're inputs are telling it to do.

I bet in 30 years (possibly less) cars will be much more advanced, electronically. If you aren't braking and are approaching a stopped car, the car will brake for you. If you are trying to pull out of a side street and don't see a car approaching from the side at speed, your car will prevent you from pulling out. If you are going too fast for a turn in the road, the car will slow down to make the turn. There will be huge debates over what the limits on such cars should be... on some derivation of f-chat, our grandkids will argue this one until they are blue in the face, with some people preferring to driver their "antique" 2015 Ferrari F580 that doesn't have all the electronic sensors

 

At least you're an optimist!

 

That won't happen... there will always be a cost associated with production and costs are always lower when something is done in volume, because you can take advantage of efficiencies of scale. Also, 3D printing only works when you are talking relatively homologous materials (like all plastic). When you look around your house, only the most basic of items is all made of one thing, and even if we were able to utilize some sort of nano-robots to build stuff, again it will always be cheaper to make it in bulk vs. in small quantity.

With all due respect to the ideas posted, I think there is often a big difference between what we think will happen vs. just saying things that would be cool if they existed. For example, we could have tunnels connecting points of the planet through the crust, for faster travel (straight line), but it just won't happen. On the other hand, ultra high speed communications anywhere, anytime most definitely will happen. IMO a big difference in what will happen vs. what sounds cool

 

Only reason I think it will be optical is that you run into the limitations of physics with radiocommunications. As frequency goes up, range tends to go down, and as data transfer speeds go up, error rates go up hugely. The only solution is spreading out the spectrum, but when you are talking about the bandwidths you and I both think will be necessary, there is only so much frequency space you can use.

I agree wireless would be the ideal, but I tend to think it won't work for the level of bandwidth we need. But we shall see

 

No way in 20 years... figure we went to the moon in 1969 and 40 years later we are not that much further ahead in space technology... we still use chemical fuel rockets and have massive expenditures to get there. Energy costs money, so any trip to the moon would still cost millions per head. I think space tourism will follow business interests to space and business interests to space will be for resources, but we are many decades away from it being beneficial to look to space for resources. I'd say maybe in 200 years we will have regular flights to the moon and will have real business interests there, but I bet it won't happen in any of our lifetimes

 

OLED is very cool...it's definitely a coming big thing. There are significant bugs that need to be worked out and it's not something that is owned by Eastman Kodak as a whole... they hold some patents on some aspects of OLEDs (they were the first to develop an OLED diode in the 80's) but there are more than 10 flavors of OLED now and they are all slightly different... some use phospohors to light, some have actual PN diodes at each 'pixel', some use other methods. The flexible variety are a bit different IIRC from what Kodak has patents on - there are huge IP wars going on right now over it all.

The other thing that is being done now by Mitsubishi is laser TV's... just went on sale a couple weeks ago.

In several years they may be the big thing, and in a couple decades more, they may have a tiny device you can take with you that will project a huge picture on any wall. How cool is that?

(there's already one they are trying to put into cell phones but it's not laser and not quite the same thing)