(While these trends are United States-centric, most of them also apply to other developed countries, and will soon apply to developing countries as well.)
Internet
A significant fraction of households now have 100-200 mbps broadband connections, with pockets of 400 mpbs connections spreading to some cities, and more, but still rare, 1 gbps connections. The arrival of 4K video online and the rapid refashioning of the web into an interactive multi-medium will increase the consumer and business demand for 1 gbps.
The rollout of LTE-Advanced, with average speeds in excess of 100 mbps will begin. There will be few devices that support this speed.
The Internet of Things and Sensor Web are much more commonly discussed. There are truly more sensors and tracking of objects using the internet, but these are just the early days of a revolution in what the internet is capable of becoming. Our environment will be more aware due to a push by marketers, but AR, lifelogging and ads will be the only beneficiaries at this stage.
Digital Media
In 2014, the Cloud is the primary platform for all digital media, with 1080p, 5.1 surround sound being the standard. 4K video will arrive, with affordable TVs and other displays providing QFHD (3840 x 2160 pixels) or 4K (4096 x 2160 pixels) resolution. Television stations and cable companies will have been testing 4K and the first 4K channels will likely be offered by the end of the year. The first 4K digital downloads will arrive to begin filling up the resolution real estate of 4KTVs and other displays. Consumer electronics companies will be talking about their new 4K physical disk formats, but it is likely these will never catch on as streaming and downloads will become overwhelmingly more popular.
Metaverse
Intelligent Agents will pass Social Networks as the most commented upon, reported, hyped, and business-oriented and consumer-facing trend. When merged with Augmented Reality, we will begin to see the spread of cartoon critters that leap around our devices and displays to serve as assistants and entertainment.
Lifelogging continues to improve with the arrival of the Internet of Things and Sensor Web. Activities like waking and falling asleep, health metrics, and activities are commonly collected by consumer electronics and these data have become the foundation for the transformation of Social Networks into Lifelogging Platforms.
Hardware
In 2014, the 4K Video Era will arrive, with affordable TVs and other displays providing QFHD (3840 x 2160 pixels) or 4K (4096 x 2160 pixels) resolution. A 42-inch 4KTV will have similar resolutions to desktop computer monitors several years earlier: 105+ pixels per inch. Tablets will be at over 300 ppi (iPhone 4 and 4S are at 326 ppi today) for near-magazine-level crispness in text, and smartphones will be over 600 ppi. Displays will integrate multitouch and haptics for virtual textures and buttons you can “touch”, leading to tablets that can truly compete at the level of productivity currently offered by computers with keyboards. In fact, the tablet could replace the keyboard for our TVs and desktop computers.
Semiconductor manufacturing processes reaches the 14 nanometer node, helping consumer electronics to reach incredibly thinness and flexibility. This will allow for the beginning of a proliferation of form factors for computers, including those that can bend, roll up, and fold. Desktops and laptops come standard with 4 to 6 TB of storage capacity, but SSDs in the TB range are even more popular and quickly become the standard. Smartphones and tablets reach 256 GB of flash RAM, which allows for storage of several HD movies or a tens of television shows.
Memristors and ReRAM arrive in consumer electronics, helping to shrink these devices even further, while using less energy than their ancestor devices of 2012. 3D transistors are all the rage, and strontium germanide MISFET transistors arrive.
USB 3.0 and Light Peak are common in devices. Tablets are the new laptop and outsell them now that they are haptic-enabled. TVs are the new desktop and all-in-one.
Sunglasses-style heads-up displays arrive with 1080p resolution and 3D support. They are not widely popular at first as the details are worked out, but their eventual thinness and power will soon make them the new smartphone (probably by 2016).
Robotics
Torsobots are working side-by-side with humans and other robots for consumers are rapidly improving in capabilities, including doing things like washing dishes and windows, folding clothing, and holding and using tools. These are still mostly be in the lab, but some consumer-directed offerings arrive. While robots are primarily still single duty, there is a trend already beginning toward general-purpose robots.
Robots begin to migrate out to take care of tedious tasks like maintaining and inspecting high voltage transmission lines, water mains, and sewers. There is a revolution in “hidden” robotics, but we are just a few years away from them taking a more active and public role in labor.
Medicine
Genome sequencing now costs well under $1000 for the individual and can be purchased in doctor’s offices. Many new companies arrive offering this service to individuals, and many more are offering lifelogging platform-oriented analysis of individual genomes.
Very expensive 3-D printing of complex organs arrives. Stem-cell research after languishing for a few years is back in the news with new successes, new methods for obtaining and generating them, and more widespread use despite the lack of FDA approval. In fact, plastic surgeons will begin to make use of these cells more often, including breast reconstruction that avoids the need for implants.
Advanced prostheses that are mind-controlled are in human trials by the end of 2014. The results of suspended animation experiments are published and FDA approval is likely.
(While these trends are United States-centric, most of them also apply to other developed countries, and will soon apply to developing countries as well.)
In 2012, nearly everyone will benefit from faster internet speeds, 1080p video will be everywhere, vast and flexible LCD displays will cover more marketing space, hardware will arrive to support the next step up in resolution and graphics (4K), and a new generation of robots will work side-by-side with human laborers.
Internet
Wider rollout of 50 to 100 mbps broadband, 200 mbps in some locations, 1 gbps in rare locations.
LTE 4G rollout accelerates, providing an average of 10 mpbs via smartphones and other cellular-connected devices.
Digital Media
Massive 1080p (8 to 12 mbps bit rates) digital downloads and streaming video rollout, with 720p downloads and streams being upgraded to 1080p. The first 3D digital download attempts. “HD” music formats as online music retailers seek to differentiate themselves. New gaming consoles will try to stave off the competition from smartphone platforms. The web is shaping up to become the primary TV, movie, music, games, and news platform. Cloud storage capacities (amount of room given to consumers to store their digital media) will increase rapidly.
Metaverse
Licensing of content for augmented reality applications (Disney, etc.) OTOY and OnLive branch out into virtual world hosting. Virtual worlds return to the news with new offerings from competitors to Second Life. Lifelogging popularized and mainstreamed by Facebook. Apple joins the mirror world fray with the first major competitor to Google Earth via iOS.
Hardware
Finally we will see the first 4 TB hard drives widely available for sale to consumers, but SSD prices have been falling quickly and by the end of the year a 1 TB SSD should be around $800. Laptop SSDs will increasingly be 512 GB in size, with very expensive 1 TB options late in the year.
Intel’s Ivy Bridge arrives at the 22 nanometer node with tri-gate 3D transistors, lower power needs, and graphics support for 4K (4096 by 4096 pixels) display resolution. The first 4K computer and TV monitors for consumers will arrive, with a resolutions between 3840 x 2160 pixels and 4096 x 2304 and 105 and higher pixels per inch for displays up to 42-inches.
Dedicated graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD will also support 4K resolution as they switch to the 28 nanometer node.
Super computers will reach 20 Petaflops as the race to exoflop-class super computers heats up.
Apple’s iPad will continue to sell well, especially with a much higher-resolution display on the way in the spring. Amazon will see success with Kindle Fire and an in-house designed successor. Andoid tablet sales should also tick up, though Apple (at near 70%) and Amazon (most of the rest) will remain successful.
Laptops are getting much thinner and should see improved sales with the introduction of Apple Macbook Air competitors. These ultrabooks will define the industry going forward. All-in-ones like the Apple iMac will continue to be popular but the desktop is slowly dying out, replaced by tablets and ultrabooks on one end, and smart TVs at the other end. In fact, Apple’s anticipated iTV could very well be a 4KTV with Siri, gesture, and multi-touch interfaces.
Digital cameras have been in need of a shakeup and with Lytro and QuantumFilm, 2012 could finally be the year that this happens. Cameras in smartphones will benefit the most as they encroach on the 8 to 12 MegaPixel dedicated cameras.
Quad-core smartphones and tablets will be all the rage. Screen resolutions will rapidly transition to native support of 720p and 1080p video and pixels per inch exceeding 300.
Glasses will be in the news more often, but we are still a few years away from sunglasses-style heads up displays. The components are rapidly evolving though, and demonstrations of what is coming will become more frequent. The heavier form factors that exist today will gain support for 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) input resolution this year.
As for interfaces, multitouch remains in the lead, but voice, gesture, and Intelligent Agents are all rapidly improving and coming together in multimodal packages. An Apple iTV will likely demonstrate how these come together, while Microsoft will continue to improve Kinect, and bring the technology to desktops and laptops. The web itself is overdue for a face lift: watch as it becomes more dynamic and animated, especially as the ways we interact with it - multitouch, gestures, voice, and IA - improve and merge. Google will likely introduce a true Siri-competitor this year. If they don’t, then it will be clear that they completely missed this rather obvious trend, and will be hard at work on getting caught up.
Retail and marketers will rapidly deploy vast LCD screens in stores, on buildings, and as billboards during this year. Many of these will be multiple feet in reach, flexible and wrapping around various shapes and structures.
Robotics
The first “torsobots” should arrive: robots that work side-by-side with humans in factories. The form factor is a platform for arms that can do many of the same tasks as humans, yet do so safely, without putting their human co-workers in physical danger. Robots are still very slowly making their way into homes and businesses, and we are still several years away from a mass consumer-level general robotics platform. Robots will continue to be single function.
Medicine
The first $1000 genome sequencing machines will arrive, but the price will apply only when bought in bulk. Sequencing for individual genomes will still be around $5000 and not very popular with consumers, who will increasingly use SNP sequencing services like 23andMe. Next generation technologies to radically reduce the price will be in the works, but it is unlikely we will see much from them in 2012 as they finish up their development and testing.
Medical breakthroughs will continue, but so far the impact on individuals remains minimal. The media (and the mainstream consumer) will become more aware of the deficiency of our current processes as these breakthroughs languish while waiting for funding and government regulatory approvals.
Suspended animation technology is in human trials.
[Reposting from Frontier Channel.]
The following emerging technology organizations are raising money for 2012. Over the past few years the amount of money being donated to these types of causes has grown exponentially, but that was starting from about zero. Now that ideas like healthy life extension, accelerating technology, Friendly AGI and the Technological Singularity have gone mainstream, there is no better time to get involved, donate, learn about, and influence the technologies set to change you and your family forever.
Kickstarter also hosts any number of interesting fundraisers for emerging technology projects like the successfully-funded BioCurious hackerspace and “The Human Project” app, hardware like the wildly successful (and still a few days left to donate!) Twine, and documentaries like the successfully-funded “The Methuselah Generation: The Science of Living Forever” and “The Synthetic Bio Documentary“.
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"Visions of the Future" YouTube Playlist
Google took Google Music, previously a cloud storage solution for music files, out of beta today and added Google+ integration and music purchases from three of the four major labels as well as many independent labels. The result? An iTunes competitor and most of the pieces for a digital media platform to rival the platforms developed by Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Almost all of these platforms now offer apps, games, ebooks, music, TV shows and movies (rental and/or purchase) on the web, in the cloud, and on a variety of consumer electronics. So what comes next for these platforms? The filling out of these offerings and general improvements in quality. Just to name a few, here are some of the announcements I expect to hear over the next year or two:
With DRM-free music standardizing at a bit rate of 320 kbps in MP3 format (or similar quality AAC), look for the platforms to attempt to differentiate themselves by offering more expensive and higher bit rate “high definition” music soon.
Amazon and Apple offer some video content in 720p HD; expect the dam to break for 1080p HD early in 2012. 3D video will arrive somewhat later and will probable arrive around the same time Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft begin to offer 3D-capable screens on their consumer electronics. As for DRM, the first DRM-free video announcements probably won’t occur until the end of 2013, and only if the movie studios become convinced that removing this draconian measure will benefit them, like the music studios did a few years ago. Look for it soon after UltraViolet fails.
Over the next few years, 1080p will quickly become the standard video format across devices, the web, and the Cloud, enabled by fast broadband pipelines to the home and office, and the transition of pseudo 4G LTE cellular to true 4G LTE-Advanced cellular.
By 2014, with DRM-free media easily transmitted between platforms or accessible via apps available across platforms, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft will be poised to make the leap to 4K video, while also increasing their battle for the living room, via integrated services in 4K televisions, and the automobile. Unfortunately, these companies will be hard-pressed to distinguish themselves from one another using digital media at the pace they are competing with each other.
The increase in bit rate and addition of 3D or removal of DRM are just minor improvements in a battle that has been hard fought in the Platform Wars. That battle, however, is for the most part over, and it appears four or five platforms can co-exist successfully. To separate themselves from the crowd, the platform will need to do more than provide easy access to high-quality digital media. Thus, the platforms will soon have to compete based on interface and the addition of technologies heralded by developers of the Metaverse.
Siri thus becomes an important distinguishing capability of Apple’s platform. This AI provides a context-sensitive conversational interface. For Microsoft, gesture and voice recognition via its Kinect technology has helped it differentiate itself from Sony and Nintendo in gaming, and will likely help it do so against other consumer electronics companies. For its part, Amazon integrates well with a complete - digital and real items - ecommerce platform.
What then does Google have to distinguish itself from the pack? So far, nothing. However, it is likely that they are also working on an AI platform that can compete with Siri. They are also attacking the problem by integrating with their social networking platform, Google+.
I have not yet mentioned Facebook. Based on recent remarks by CEO, President and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook hopes to become a partner platform to all the other platforms. Yet they too have integrated apps, games, music, video and other digital media into their platform, and could easily launch competitive digital media offerings. Furthermore, they could eventually transform into a consumer electronics company with their social network platform more deeply integrated into their own devices than competitor devices.
Is a social network enough to compete in the Platform Wars, though? Is a social network an interface like an Intelligent Agent (Siri) or sensory array (Kinect)? Facebook is about to launch their new profiles platform: Timeline. This is a partially-automated framing of a person’s events and activities into a lifelog, one of the four major technologies that make up the Metaverse. As data is gathered about a person through their own reporting and increasingly sophisticated sensors, and then presented in a variety of useful ways via Timeline, a digital reflection of the person becomes apparent. A person can begin to interact with their own Timeline, perhaps eventually in a similar manner to how they interact with Siri.
Meanwhile, Apple and Google are laying the groundwork for their own individual take on another component of the Metaverse: Mirror Worlds. Google Earth is a 3D representation of the Earth, with layers adding additional data to the lay of the land. Already Google Earth has become an important component of the Maps app on iPhones and in Android smartphones. Apple is rumored to be building their own competitive mirror world, which would allow them to strip out Google Maps from iPhone. In time, these mirror worlds will serve as the basis for rich GPS-enabled devices with real-time traffic updates, offered for free as just one feature of smartphones and tablets.
Dreamworks, the movie studio well known for several 3D animated features, is working with Intel to add a layer of animation and interactivity to the web next year to make the web less text-centric and much more dynamic. Microsoft would seem to be especially well equipped to interface with this third component of the Metaverse: Virtual Worlds. Through voice and gesture recognition via Kinect, users could begin to move well beyond the typing and mouse gestures that are still the primary way for interacting with the web, and offer the means to leap frog over the intuitive multi-touch interface popularized by Apple iOS and Google Android. Even more than they are now, consumer electronics will become windows into other worlds, where information is presented in much more dynamic, colorful, and potentially extremely useful ways. Instead of scrolling through status updates like we do today in Facebook, Google+, Ping, LinkedIn, and Twitter, each post will become an object that can be manipulated alone or in mass in a variety of ways through the flourish of motion and voice prompting.
Finally, third-party developers of augmented reality - the fourth major component of the Metaverse - have begun to demonstrate how useful metadata added on top of a video stream of reality can be in mobile devices. The Android and iOS platforms lead the charge here, but Microsoft’s Kinect and Windows Phone 7 platform will likely serve as an ideal platform for augmented reality. Each of these platforms will spread to windshields, glasses, contact lenses and other devices where it makes even more sense to augment the reality we see.
For the time being, each of the major consumer-facing digital media platforms from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate themselves, and all of them are seeking new capabilities based on their individual company’s strengths. The best way to sell their platforms to consumers and developers appears to do be by adopting components of the Metaverse. Apple, Google, and Microsoft appear to have the lead here, though Facebook through lifelogging may be a surprise entrant to the list very soon. Amazon appears to be the least equipped to compete, despite their foray into consumer electronics like the Kindle Fire tablet and their deep digital media offerings. What they do not appear to have, even in rumor, are any components that would lead to lifelogging, mirror worlds, virtual worlds, or augmented reality.
It remains unclear if any of these major platform companies even understand that the Platform Wars have already moved beyond digital media and into the very technological components that will lead eventually to the Metaverse. Furthermore, the combination of lifelogging, mirror worlds, virtual worlds, and augmented reality does not by itself result in the Metaverse. The Metaverse will be a Web of webs, a mass medium built on a next-generation internet that will adapt in real time to your needs, creating the right medium at the right moment.
The company that understands this will have the advantage and will likely win the Platform War. Once the Metaverse arrives (perhaps in the 2020s?), the digital media battles through now will be long forgotten, replaced by a medium that will dwarf in extend and capability all the services that were built on top of the Internet before it arrived. And digital media, today exemplified by individual consumables like ebook, music, and video files, will give way to information and entertainment provided in game- and life-like, “You are there!” sensory overloads of unimaginable complexity.
Kickstarter - Hypothes.is - Taking peer review to the Internet.
When Google Wave was announced, I immediately took to a platform that seemed to combine all of the productivity tools I used. It was an exciting time and my brain was full of ideas about how Wave would fit into work and the other projects I was interested in starting. When Wave was cancelled, I was disappointed, but I had not been using it much. The reason? No one else was using it either.
In the past few weeks Google has been steadily releasing components of the Google+ Project, a ground-up reimagining of everything they do infused with an individual’s social and interest graphs.
Image credit: 06/29/2011 screenshot of Google+ overview page.
The overview videos depict your exciting life with friends, whether you are categorizing them into groups, making arrangements for lunch, or getting together for a shared video chat. With Google+, the world’s knowledge, the people you know, and your interests all come together into an uncertain whole. Google stated that the project will continue to expand over the coming months, with new tools and relationships being added over time, until Google+ becomes a true competitor to Facebook that takes advantage of Google’s strengths in search and advertising.
This is the latest in a long line of developments in the social networking revolution. Proponents argue that as social animals humans, online or off, are looking for new ways to interact. For some of us, however, this focus on human-to-human interactions, while often useful, was never the point of the Information Age. While Web 2.0 and social networking has taken the web by storm, the promise of human-to-machine interactions has taken a backseat. These interactions are there, but they are not the source of excitement, not the center of hype. The animal masses decided that this technology would be an extension of their social lives, rather than the addition of a new relationship between humanity and its technological creations.
I am not criticizing this direction. In retrospect, it now appears obvious that social networking would be the logical outcome of a public web. People are indeed social animals, and the most introverted of people have found a measure of social interaction online. For some introverts, the net has allowed them to take on extraverted personas, with ramifications for their offline personas.
For me personally, the result was complex. Textual updates (say through Twitter, Facebook, or blogging) became one of my most frequent activities. This was probably to be expected; pre-Internet, I was always writing and was active in the school paper. With the arrival of the web, I almost immediately began keeping a public online diary and jumped into blogging soon after its arrival.
When it comes to real-time chatting, VoIP, and video conferencing, however, I am as reticent as I am offline. I feel exactly the same social anxiety when talking to people in real time as I do when meeting with (new) people face-to-face. A call on Skype from an acquaintance is nerve-wracking. An unexpected Google or Facebook chat fills me with dread. Even a friend request can give me the jitters. As a carefully planned, business transaction, none of these phase me. As tools for engaging other people and making friends, I’m at a loss.
That is why Google+ suggests to me a godsend to extraverts and a horror to introverts. Introverts are not people who lack social interactions; they are just people who find solitude comforting and productive. They interact, but require some alone time to recover. Introverts embrace the web, but the social networking aspects are often sources of dismay.
Is being introverted a disease? There are drugs on the market that ease social anxiety, therapies to help overcome these fears. However, being introverted is the result of a complex biology modulated by experience. And so is being extraverted. Rather than thinking of personalities as diseases, I prefer to think of them as aspects of the self that can be ignored or changed, depending on the desires of the individual. We have the technology (and are rapidly gaining even better technologies) to allow us to modulate ourselves.
When thinking about Google+ and the online social interactions that are the focus of development, I wonder if we are actually seeing the beginning of the end for this focus. The easiest thing to do to improve the web was to hook humans into the Machine, generating, collating, analyzing data and finding relationships because the Machine was not intelligent enough to do so itself. As machine technology improved, however, some of this could be automated. Google+ represents the coming together of algorithms and human activity to churn through information and create something much more complex and nuanced, something that is, potentially, useful.
A turn of events will occur, however, when the Machine begins to take on more and more capabilities currently handled by humans. IBM’s Watson in supercomputer size already rivals humans in determining the question to trivia answers, and it is quickly making a name for itself in the medical community by making diagnoses based on information from multiple sources, at a speed to rival the best doctors. We do not need truly thinking machines of human-level intelligence to replace humans in online social activity. We just need machines of particular capabilities, working at a speed well beyond that of humans, to begin creating new knowledge from the vast store of data on the Web.
In Google+, Google has retained its algorithmic roots while embracing the social graph of Faceback and the interest graph of Twitter. Social networking will continue to shape the web, but it will soon be dwarfed by human-to-machine interactions (both of which will remain dwarfed by machine-to-machine interactions.) For those of us who were less than happy by the 2.0 turn of the web toward social earlier this century, the mid-2010s will be a return to form after a long detour. The interactions with machines we have longed for will finally arrive in the form of increasingly sophisticated intelligent agents, beginning with the integration of Siri into Apple’s consumer electronics that began this year. Google will also embrace intelligent agents, and will push it out, through Google+ and through mobile. The human-to-human interactions will remain, but our conversations with machines will soon become the center of development, fundraising, news, and hype.