Tech Trends

Y'all know of any good sites to monitor tech trends?

Care to speculate on what the future holds?

For example, I read an article last night about wireless internet via cell phone PC cards; they've been around for a while, but haven't made much progress due to slow up/down speeds. However, releases later this year and into 2007 will vastly improve those connection speeds. The potential for doing away with your cable modem in favor of your existing cell phone contract, allowing you to connect with your laptop anywhere at any time...well, I see a huge potential there.

 

www.gcn.com
www.computerworld.com
www.zdnet.com
www.slashdot.com
www.toptechnews.com
www.cnet.com
www.informationweek.com
www.infoworld.com

I like PC Mag.

Care to speculate on technology six months from now? A year?

Have y'all checked out flexible LCD screens?

 

One example: http://images.techtree.com/ttimages/story/69420_matter.jpg

I'm also curious why this one never caught on: http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ages?q=keyboard+laser&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&sa=G

 

I saw one for sale in a Radio Shack once; I think it was considered more of a fad than looked at as having a practical use....

 

Wow.

So I've been doing my research, and reading up, and analyzing trends.

The growing "trend" for the last couple of years has been "social networking," the ability to have a ring of friends on the net. Around 2000-2002, it was match.com; since then, the concept has truly grown beyond a "dating service" scheme.

Google has its version at orkut.com; there's also friendster.com, and linkedin.com. More mature versions exist at MySpace.com and YouTube.com.

One of the most mature, innovative and adventurous offerings is dodgeball.com. Strange name, because it sounds like something you're trying to avoid; yet setting up your contacts and "friends" allows you to submit a notification that you're at such-and-such a location, say, the Starbuck's on 5th and main. If your listed friends are keeping their locations updated, Dodgeball then notifies you which of your friends are nearby so you can send them an invite to join you. It even does this via cell phone.

Initially, it sounds pretty stupid and useless. But say you're at the Republican or Democratic convention, knowing that a couple of your friends are somewhere in the crowd of 50,000 people. Letting Dodgeball know where you are, lets your friends know where you are.

And then you look at how popular MySpace and YouTube are, and you have to think, people are going to get into this.

It's not a far stretch past that to think about how your computer is going to be able to incorporate telephony (like Skype) to become your all-in-one social networking device. Instant Messenger programs already allow us to do this in one sense, with many of them allowing voice transmissions.

Or, perhaps, as cell phones become "smarter," our cell phones incorporate such features.

I realize I'm probably not communicating that vision properly. I don't quite know how to express it in words. The one fear I have from it is more and more de-personalization. While Myspace and especially YouTube encourage creativity, it's at the expense of actual interaction.

Just think: Capt Kirk's communicator that allows us to upload our location, see who on our "personal network" is nearby and available for a quick get-together, the opportunity to create our MySpace and YouTube-type material and upload it immediately, check our personal and work e-mail, call relatives and business associates, record visual/vocal messages for later transmission, and more that I can't even imagine (especially at 2:00am).

Or perhaps it's simply the Percoset (however you spell that) that's messing with my head (had surgery last week, and I'm still on painkillers).