What is the future of technology to you?

Technology changes very fast, and I have what I think will happen in the future below. Post what you think as a response.

Technology grows rapidly, according to Moore's Law the amount of transistors that can be placed on a circuit doubles every two years. It is very easy to tell that technology becomes outdated very quickly. Because technology grows so quickly it is hard to predict what is going to happen next. Bill Gates wrote a book named The Road Ahead in 1995 about what he thought technology will end up like. He was very close in some areas, and very far away in other areas. I'm going to write this blog post about what I think will happen to technology in the future. I have this old computer from 2000, then a computer from 2003, and then one that is from 2009. It is amazing just looking at those machines and seeing the changes. The one from 2000 has only two USB ports. People must have thought USB ports were not going to be important back then. The one from 2003 has eight USB ports, USB must be important. Now fifteen USB ports on a computer is not uncommon. USB has become very important.

USB is not the only area things have changed. One of the other things I have noticed is that things have become more integrated into the motherboard. The computer from 2000 has a parallel port, a serial port, the PS/2 ports, and those two USB ports. Then the expansion slots are filled up with a video card, an Ethernet card, a phone modem, and an audio card. It is amazing to see that simple things like audio are not integrated into the motherboard. The computer from 2003 has a parallel port, serial port, VGA port, PS/2 ports, some USB ports, an Ethernet port, and audio jacks all integrated into the motherboard. That computer has nothing in the expansion slots. You can see how everything is becoming integrated. Right now you can get a computer with most things integrated, but you can get things like a discrete graphics card to put in one of your expansion slots. I don't think this is very good, but I think that eventually there will be no expansion slots on motherboards. I think that will happen to only the consumer market, I think that enthusiast motherboards will still have plenty of expansion slots.

In 1995 an Internet browser was not yet included in the latest version of Windows. Internet Explorer was not even available yet. If you wanted a browser you had to get Netscape from some sort of external media which at that time was probably a floppy disk. Cable and DSL didn't even really exist in 1995, dial-up was all that was available. Most people did not really think the Internet was important. Later in 1995, and in 1996 the Internet started to become noticed. Things like Google started up, and lots of people got domain names and started websites. Later on Web 2.0 became popular. Blogger allowed people to create their own blogs. Wikipedia allowed people to learn and write articles. Tons of online forums were created. Yahoo made GeoCities where people could make their own websites. Social networks started like Myspace, Facebook, and Bebo. You could create your own social network with Ning. YouTube allowed people to publish videos on the Internet. Tons of other applications were created on the Internet. I'm actually using Google Docs to write this right now. More and more things became web applications. Netbooks were created and became popular in late 2007. Mobile Phones have gained popularity very quickly. And now tablets are gaining popularity. All of this stuff has happened approximately in the last decade. What will happen next is what I'm going to talk about. I think the Internet is what the future of technology will be. I think there will be a way to connect to the Internet at a fast speed anywhere. Right now the computers have the power and become outdated quickly. You need to get a new computer every couple of years and people don't really like doing that. As I see the rise of small portable devices I think, and I notice all of the user's data is scattered across all the devices they own. People think "Where is that document?", "Is it on the laptop, netbook, tablet, smartphone, or desktop?". I think people should not have to worry about that. I think there will be big servers all around the world with an a virtual machine for every person in the world. I think computers for consumers will be designed very differently. I think the computers will have hardware designed to have the best Internet speeds, the rest will be low performance hardware. I think this because all the consumer will do is connect their computer to their virtual machine on one of the servers. The consumer will pay for things like it is a subscription. The subscription will allow people to use the Internet connection that is available everywhere to connect their computer to their virtual machine on one of the servers. Computer hardware changes over time, and so does the latest version of an operating system. The server will be upgraded at regular cycles to keep the hardware up to date. The operating system will just be part of the automatic updates on your computer. You are already paying for the subscription so you won't have to pay anything extra to upgrade the server, or operating system.

Once you have that one virtual machine you can connect as many of your devices to it as you want. Each device will have a different session, but they all will have access to the same data. There will be a special session for your smartphone, a special session for your desktop, a special session for your laptop, and so on. If you want to have another virtual machine you can just pay for another subscription. Having your computer in the cloud will allow you to keep the hardware for a very long time. The hardware will also be very cheap. The subscription will be priced well, but probably won't be cheap at first. Having everything stored in the cloud will be very good for consumers. It will simplify things because pretty much everything is included, so the consumer will not have to wonder if this has what it needs.

I don't think the computer as it is now will ever go away entirely. I think there will always be an option to buy a computer, and buy parts to build a computer. I think having the subscription to the virtual machine is what most people will do, and some other people will buy an actual computer. Some people think the keyboard and mouse will go away, I don't think that will ever happen. The keyboard and mouse is a great way to interact with a computer. Typing on a keyboard, and typing on a touch screen are very different. Controlling the computer's cursor with a finger on a touch screen is a lot different than using a mouse. I think there will always be keyboard and mouse option for computers, at least for the laptop and desktop.

I mentioned that computers are having more and more USB ports. Right now lots of devices use USB to connect to the computer. With that subscription to the virtual machine you will just type in some information into your USB device, and it will connect to that virtual machine automatically. The device will stay connected unless you click eject on the device or computer. Right now lots of devices are wireless, and I think devices will become more wireless then they are now. I mentioned an Internet connection that is accessible everywhere earlier. I think that the cell phone companies will end up having towers all over the place, I think the wireless connections will exceed any wired connection right now. That is part of why I think everything will be based in the cloud. Network speeds are growing, and they eventually will be faster than the connections inside computers now.

Right now you can get things that can charge without wires, but it requires a special base and cover, and you have to have it sitting down in a certain spot. I think eventually there will be a way to charge devices without wires.

That is just some of what I think will be in the future relating to technology. If you have thoughts about what will happen please comment.