For its third prediction IBM said, “Mind reading is closer to reality than you might think.”
IBM scientists are researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone. If you just need to think about calling someone, it happens. Or you can control the cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about where you want to move it, IBM said.
Scientists in the field of bioinformatics have designed headsets with advanced sensors to read electrical brain activity that can recognise facial expressions, excitement and concentration levels, and thoughts of a person without them physically taking any actions.
Life-changing innovation No. 4 is that “the digital divide will cease to exist”. Indeed, IBM says in five years, the gap between information haves and have-nots will narrow considerably due to advances in mobile technology.
There are seven billion people inhabiting the world today. In five years, there will be 5.6 billion mobile devices sold – which ostensibly means 80 percent of the current global population would each have a mobile device.
As it becomes cheaper to own a mobile phone, people without a lot of spending power will be able to do much more than they can today. For example, in India, using speech technology and mobile devices, IBM enabled rural villagers who were illiterate to pass along information through recorded messages on their phones. With access to information that was not there before, villagers could check weather reports to help them decide when to fertilise crops, know when doctors were coming into town, and find the best prices for their crops or merchandise.
Growing communities will be able to use mobile technology to provide access to essential information and better serve people with new products and business models such as mobile commerce and remote health care. In our global society, the level of access to information increasingly decides the growth and wealth of economies.
In an interview in Hamm’s post, IBM fellow Bernard Meyerson, who is also the company’s vice president of innovation for the Systems and Technology group, said, “Today, through telemedicine, patients can connect with physicians or specialists from just about anywhere via inexpensive computers and broadband networks. Doctors can view X-rays and other diagnostic imagery from thousands of miles away.”
Meyerson added: “Thanks to advances in genetic research and high-performance computing, it is now possible to affordably decipher an individual’s entire genome. This makes it possible for physicians to alert people to medical conditions they might fall prey to, and it clears the pathway, eventually, to truly personal medicine.”
The final prediction in the IBM list is that “junk mail will become priority mail”. The company said that in five years, unsolicited advertisements may feel so personalised and relevant it may seem spam is dead. At the same time, spam filters will be so precise that you will never be bothered by unwanted sales pitches again, IBM said.
Describing potential scenarios, IBM said: “Imagine if tickets to your favourite band are put on hold for you the moment they became available, and for the one night of the week that is free on your calendar. Through alerts direct to you, you will be able to purchase tickets instantly from your mobile device. Or imagine being notified that a snowstorm is about to affect your travel plans and you might want to re-route your flight?”
IBM is developing technology that uses real-time analytics to make sense and integrate data from across all the facets of your life, such as your social networks and online preferences to present and recommend information that is only useful to you, IBM said. From news, to sports, to politics, you will trust the technology will know what you want, so you can decide what to do with it.
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Ridiculously optimistic, especially the prediction that mobile tech will become more accessible. In fact, if the tech goes on getting cheaper, you do have to sell more and more of them. So far, so OK. But what exactly is going to enable people to spend more on these things? In fact, we're all cutting back on our 'needs', not adding to them. And the idea that the whole world is going to go on getting wealthier and more 'connected', despite the increasing pressures on resources is so la-la land it isn't funny.
Quite right, Anon anon. What will happen as the Information Age gets caught by the undertow of the Abundant Energy Age?
So far electronic processing has given us the fragility of the global economy, the banking crisis and a proliferation of wishful fantasies about benign technology.
OK, I'm being negative, and I do believe the problem is not new technologies themselves but the false hopes we invest in them. It's unrealistic to imagine that new tech is going to reform human behaviour on a scale big enough to meet the challenges of the near future. More or better information can help us be more efficient, but how do we judge "better"?
That takes WISDOM, something we all, leaders and led, seem short of.
I believe the idea and concept is to stop draining capital from the masses just to access "the highway". Innovation should mean at some point said access is an enabler to new services that allow all to create/spend in the infrastructure enmasse. New services for or innovations from the top down, including the providers. Think of it like an amusement park, if you charge so much only a few can get it, even those few will be very conservative once inside because of such a way one drain. The problem at the moment is that access generates enough revenue in the current setup for the gatekeepers that they can be quite content in keeping the infrasture from evolving and limiting the economic butterfly effect which could be greatly amplified.
This world network has more potential in terms of creative systems than anything to date simply because it connects the world in real time. If we encourage growth to foster that creativity or choose a stagnant route - is entirely up to "us", the connected.
Not much innovation, just about all of these things have been innovated and exist. Some will come to market.
Mobile phone technology cannot work without an extensive network of transmitter towers and all that goes with them.
Most likely innovation is that each individual will achieve absolute anonymity. No one will be able to contact a person (even on a computer) or use any of their data without a persons personal permission. This includes all medical records etc. Possibly through an implanted chip holding personal data. Bio-metric data etc. cannot be held on any computer as it is then available to anyone. Also voice recognition, and subsequent required actions, will come of age.