The direction of mobile wireless technology

I pose a question to get you all thinking a little this evening!

It came about after mooching around the treocenteral forums, and thinking about the amazing piece of technolgy I've got sitting on my desk.

How do you think mobile technology will develop in the future? What directions do you think it will go in, and what directions would you LIKE it to go in? We have a lot of technology at our disposal : compact colour screens, easy to use key interfaces, voice recognition technology (well, its getting there), GSM mobile phone technology, email, the Internet, compact cameras, Bluetooth, wifi...

Do you think that devices would be intergrated into clothing even more? Do you think they would become more modular and universal? (i.e. you would have one centeral unit with many periphrials, like screens, keyboards... ). Would we become always connected? If so, what kind of a social issue might this raise?

Lots of questions there! It would be interesting what people think about this particular area of consumer electronics in general, and how people would find a use for it all

That is all, I'll be back in the morning and check out if anyones said anything

 

ok. . .

I have noticed that technology is getting smaller, 'specially with the phones
I have seen a cell phone that could be used as a fish hook its so small
things will be so small that implants will let you call home and surf the net
all you'll have to do is think "hey,I should call home" and boom dialing and in a little eyepiece see your better half on a small monitor

I really don't understand the small phone thing. . I had a hard enough time finding it when they where attached to a big box

 

mobile technology on a set of eyeglasses with the ability to view the virtual world of that time on the inner lense.

Your phone, your PDA, your extension of your personal computer. All wired up to any device including home appliances with the ability to interact with those peripheral devices from hundreds of miles away.

 

Presently it's moving away from me in a Northeasterly direction. I'd like it to slow down a bit so I can catch up.

Interesting question, Goldy. My finite mind only sees the obvious online movie and music market, which of course is already happening. I think all music and TV will be controlled from one "mainframe" in each household, with a keyboard and monitor in Dad's study, the kids rooms, etc.

I think cell phones, digital cameras, and PDAs will be one unit.

Photo developing will not be done at the store anymore.

Landlines (the telephone) will become obsolete, as we will all pretend to be The Jettsons.

But none of this is very imaginative, since we will see some of these things far sooner than some of the developments you were talking about, and indeed are seeing already.

I wonder how much a single computer SHOULD be allowed to control the house though. For example, if the computer controls the hot water, the electrical, and the furnace, and the computer crashes, you're messed over. I think there may be SEVERAL computers to control several things, but it would be scary to have EVERYTHING depend solely on one computer.

Just my .01.

 

i just wish the things they've already invented would work. the more complicated the machinery, the harder it is to keep running. and its such a giant con. take the digital camera. the software corrupts itself, the drivers don't play nicely together. and although it cannot be any harder or more complicated to include a large memory in it, does it?...no..you have to buy memory cards, special batteries, download machine thingys, and a host of other accessories. i foresee a future where firstly the gap between the haves and the have nots widens considerably, and then i forsee a backlash against the ridiculous spending of vast amount of money on useless toys.

 

Ultimately?

 

Nice pic, I'd look good in those duds!

I like your sig, too!

Eric

 

seriously, this is what i'm thinking about:

current technology:
full-length movies on phones, console emulation on phones, java on phones, etc. on symbian OS
very fast and overclockable pda's using palm OS and windows mobile
extremely powerful PDA phones using Symbian OS, etc.
very limited interopability with phones, pda's, and notebooks
cameras on cameraphones still suck
digital SLR's are expensive... as if that's got to do with anything right now

Later on using that information...
TV on phones
phones and PDA's synonymous
camera phones dying (as SLR becomes cheaper)
Palm OS dying (either symbian or microsoft takes over... hopefully symbian)
GPS and biosecurity on phonepda's (well... more prominent than now)
next gen after bluetooth (which should be vastly improved)
full wireless-networking capable
easily syncable with laptops (which, btw, will be dominated by subnotebooks)
prices of each component goes up, but overall price falls.

hehe. well, it may not turn out this way, but it's a realistic dream of mine

 

All interesting replies

I recon that wired/wireless networking standards are going to be improved, so that you don't need specific drivers for any one device, you simply use one generic driver which can work on acamera, on a phone, on anything you like. A bit like Ultimate PnP. Its already going that way with the Mass Storage device driver in Windows XP. You don't even need to know who made your camera, just plug it in and copy the files over. People could still write optimisations and additions to this "all-in-one" driver, so their camera would be able to transfer pictures faster, but this wouldnt conflict with any other device.

Also, what with bluetooth getting older and being improved upon, you can expect proximity triggered events. e.g. if you come home with your cellphone/pda, it will automatically sync with the home PC.

At the moment I store all my music on my centeral server. That means I can listen to my music on any computer in the house connected to the network. Its like having multi-room music, only cheaper!