Thought Gadgets

228470 Resource 187691 21 21 1236802779822 1238887555296 Controlled Changing the Internet (and Human Capability) as we Know It

TED shocker: See the internet in the air, with no geeky glasses required

<p>I've been a computer geek since the 1970's when I soldered together my first transistors to make a flip-flop circuit that could count to eight.  The first computer I made had 256 bytes (not Kbytes, bytes).  Today, the desktop computer I'm using to write this has roughly 16,000 times more memory than the University of Michigan mainframe system that ran the entire place when I was in school.  The iPhone in my pocket has twice that and the iPod I taking running has 7.5 times more than my iPhone.  I've see the evolution of storage devices, processing devices, pointing devices, motion sensors, image processing, speech recognition, graphical UIs, bionics, and more software and information science that I could begin to list.  But these have just been stepping stones.</p> <p>Today I saw a demonstration of a coming technology that promises to change the way we think about the Internet, about the way we think about our own capabilities, indeed, the way we think about everything.</p> <div style="margin: 10px 0px; text-align: center"><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" width="446" height="326" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/embed/PattieMaes_2009-embed_high.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/PattieMaes-2009.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=481" allowfullscreen="true" bgcolor="#ffffff" wmode="transparent" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed /></div> <p>As you watch this short video, keep in mind that twenty years ago the Internet did not exists; ten years very few people had cell phones, laptops, or digital cameras.</p> <p>In a few years, devices like the prototype in this video will be widely available.  Ten years from now, devices like this will not only be ubiquitous, they will be orders of magnitude more capable and dirt cheap.  Twenty years from now, well, its hard to imagine.</p> 9 application/xml false disruptive technology innovation technology news TED Thought Gadgets TED shocker: See the internet in the air, with no geeky glasses required http://www.thoughtgadgets.com/2009/03/ted-shocker-see-internet-in-air-with-no.html Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB5; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web