Around Christmastime every year, IBM rolls around computer labs around the country, surveying 3,000 researchers to ask them what big technological advance will be de rigeur in the future. It’s hardly a scientific bit of soothsaying, and tech researchers are as prone to becoming enamored with tech fads as anyone else, so a lot of the survey is wishful thinking. Still, it’s always fun to see what those in the know want to be big five years from now.
This year, the big fad was Apple’s Facetime, and so many of the researchers now think that video chat will go 3D by 2015 in the way of Star Wars style hologram video calls.
According to the survey, these holographic video calls will be projected from smartphones using pico-projector technology. That’s plausible, I guess, but it doesn’t really answer the question how the video caller will be captured as a 360 degree hologram. My best guess: Kinect technology becomes miniature sized, giving the illusion of depth.
Other technologies IBM’s surveyed researchers think we can expect to see in the next half decade? Batteries powered by air that have ten times the capacity, and heat generation for homes beamed from data centers instead of gas mains. Right, guys.
Original post here: http://www.geek.com/articles/news/survey-says-3d-holographic-facetime-and-air-powered-batteries-by-2015-20101223/