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Growing old on esato? |
axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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From: Londinium
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I feel that we will be sitting here in 50 years time in our wheelchairs.  being fed by a tube with a intravenous drip hanging next to us.  ...........This may sound grim but or on our deathbeds typing away!  ......God I can only imagine the mobile technology by then. 
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Sammy_boy
Joined: Mar 31, 2004
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From: Staffordshire, United Kingdom
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Now there's a thought!!
And we'll all be saying 'when i was young, phones had KEYPADS!, none of this thought controlled mularkey, back then phones were phones!!!'
"All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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From: Londinium
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God i so don't want to be in that situation! 
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bart
Joined: Feb 03, 2002
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From: Flanders
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i think when most of us look bad at the really old phones and then look at our Pxx or K700 phones, we'll say, wow those were the days 
With Ericsson and Nokia gone: we must keep their spirits alive and buy JOLLA or YOTA |
whizkidd
Joined: May 14, 2004
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From: India
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I would say to my grandchildren "Long ago, there was a company called Nokia which bla bla bla.....! ;-)
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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From: Londinium
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I can imgine the P900 or the K700 on the antiques roadshow or in antique shops selling for 1000's!! 
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shyam335
Joined: May 25, 2004
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From: 127.0.0.1
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Then im keeping my phones for that time ;-)
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Sammy_boy
Joined: Mar 31, 2004
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From: Staffordshire, United Kingdom
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We'll be looking at them in museums whilst listening to kids saying 'wow, did people REALLY have to carry those bits of plastic around with them to make phone calls - didn't they have their phones implanted into them like us, mum?'
Sounds outlandish? If you look at how far technology has evolved - especially computers and communications tech has evolved over the last 50 years, the next 50 I suspect will be just as mind-blowing!
"All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke
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BobaFett
Joined: Jan 06, 2004
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From: Kamino (wish it would be Lund)
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And the /// thread will be presented as a pre-historical exhibition next tn the dinosaur section.
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bico
Joined: May 19, 2003
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From: Stockholm, Sweden.
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@axxxr: About "Growing old on esato?": Well, why not? There are worse things to see forward to than that, that's for sure.
50 years from now? 50 years of (even) fast(er) technological development?
Personally I don't think that anyone can imagine the mobile (phone) technology that will be present at that time, not even in the wildest of fantasies.
@bobafett: But at least there will be one very big difference between the /// phones and the pre-historical dinosaurs, except for the enormous difference in age: The /// phones will still be alive and kicking !
_________________
/bico
[ This Message was edited by: bico on 2004-08-23 01:02 ] |
maki101
Joined: Feb 12, 2004
Posts: 207
From: SErbia
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And every second phohe will be with SE sign, and we be saying "when i was speaking, nobody listen" :-)
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methylated_spirit
Joined: Jul 07, 2004
Posts: > 500
From: Bonnie Scotland
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I feel old already. I can see phones like the ones in minority reprt, just little earpieces, cant see implants though, people would complain about mind control issues and conspiracies would be rife. By god, just now CCTV is bad enough!
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axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
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From: Londinium
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The Scotsman has written a wistfull article on mobile phones, describing how years from now, our grandchildren will hardly believe they were once used for making phone calls.Very interesting Read!
ONE day in the future, the parents of today will sit their wide-eyed grandchildren on their knee and tell them a story they will hardly believe.
It will be a tale of how people once carried mobiles only to make phone calls. They will marvel at how these primitive objects did nothing other than occasionally ring, enabling their red-faced users to shout down the handset: "I’m on the train!"
They will barely understand how conversation could sometimes be virtually impossible because the signal was so poor.
They will think these are simply the old folks’ far-fetched tales because for them, the mobile phone in their pocket will be an indispensable, multi-functional piece of equipment, built to entertain with music, video, games and television, to inform through internet and e-mail and organise everything from their summer holidays, to shopping and paying the bills.
Some might even use them to make a phone call. Of course, even now some lives revolve around their mobiles - 70 per cent of the population own one - but it’s nothing compared to how we will use them in the near future.
From planning our love lives to lying for us, from predicting how we spend our leisure time to spying on the kids, phones are about to enter a whole new era. Soon our mobile will be everything from a portable television set with instant access to our favourite soap, to personal, electronic wallets.
David Cowan, technology specialist at the New Scientist magazine, predicts the future lies in m-commerce, with our mobile replacing our purse and wallet at the train station, shops and theatres.
"The Japanese are already rolling out this idea, and what they do often filters through to the rest of the world a few years later.
"The idea is that you would touch the phone to a screen and it will automatically recognise that phone. It could add money to a bill to charge for a service you have used, or taken some money off. Your phone would become a kind of electronic purse."
With security protected by fingerprint technology or pin numbers, the technology could translate to many areas, he adds. "It could be whatever the user wants to subscribe to: maybe a local newspaper stand to enable them to buy a paper without using money; it could be any shop prepared to install the technology, or it could be at the train station to save waiting for a ticket."
Further technology will enable them to check the train timetable by swiping their phone over a bar code, linking them to the relevant website - a function that could be further adapted to purchase, say, theatre tickets by swiping their phone over an advert or poster for a show they want to go to.
Japanese mobile phone firms have taken it a stage further. Recently they tested a system in which smart cards were embedded within phones, enabling them to buy items with the swipe of their phone- with no need for printed tickets or passes.
The smart cards also store masses of information, enabling the phone to serve as an ID card, travel pass, airport check-in or even a computer network login at the same time.
It’s hard to say how much these phones will cost when they come to Britain, but experts believe the handsets will cost around £300-400, with additional charges for each transaction, just as users are now charged for each call or text.
There is no end of possibilities. From online mobile phone banking to the idea of a "taxi" key which will automatically contact the three closest taxi companies with the user’s details. The one that responds quickest, gets the fare.
According to William Mackaness, of Edinburgh University’s geography department, anything is possible. "The only thing that really constrains you is your imagination," he says.
He is working on a "petrol finder" application for handsets which will enable users to instantly track down the nearest petrol station - before their car runs out. It works on the basis that the approximate location of phones can be deduced from where it obtains its signal. It is then possible to do a geographical radial search of listed petrol stations to find the nearest.
THE only possible drawback to some of the technology is the design of the handsets - for a map to be readable, it has to be larger than a 10p piece.
"The customer using the mobile phone wants information that is both handy and usable," Mr Mackaness says. "If, for example, someone is visiting Edinburgh for the first time and they want a map then they’ll go to a bookshop or a newsagent and buy a printed map. It folds out, it covers the whole city and it’s very user-friendly.
"If we are really hoping to persuade them to use their mobile phone to get that same information, then we have to make sure that the information we supply surpasses what they can already get in terms of usability and deliverability."
The mobile phone giants are responding, by producing bigger screens, voice recognition systems and touch sensitive screens to avoid endless key punching. And the m-commerce idea is closer than you may think: the new wave of "smart" phones - tipped to be top of many of our Christmas lists - combines the phone with PDA, a video camera and web browser. An "always on" GPRS - in other words, a satellite signal - or 3G connections means they are continuously linked to the internet, enabling users to scroll through websites, check e-mail and keep in touch with Instant Messaging.
Making a phone call is well down the list of its functions: the processor and memory allows it to run programs, it doubles up as an MP3 music player, can take digital photographs, play high-tech games and download and read electronic books.
Little wonder sales of smart phones are expected to hit 100 million a year by 2008.
But a fancy handset might count for nothing unless it occasionally rings. And one mobile operator has just announced plans to for a service which promises to ring just when you need it most.
Virgin Mobile is to offer customers the option of setting up their own "rescue call", a pre-arranged call offering the perfect excuse to bail out of, say, the misery of a disastrous date, without hurting anyone’s feelings.
"If you suspect you are going to have a miserable date or just a bad night out and you need to be interrupted, you simply program it to call you at a pre-arranged time and the service will provide a tailor-made excuse to get out of it," explains a Virgin Mobile spokesperson.
FOR those who want to get into a relationship, bluetooth technology - which wirelessly unites mobiles or computers over short distances - may be the solution. A trend is emerging among Londoners known as "toothing", where bluetooth users automatically detect and connect with other bluetooth users in pubs and clubs - often sending flirtatious messages to and fro.
For those who would rather not be tracked down, software developers Simeda’s phone accessory provides background noise ranging from a traffic jam to a dentist’s drill to help fool the person on the other end of the line into believing the caller is somewhere else.
But while technology may enable users to cheat their way out of situations, others will ensure there is no hiding place. In South Korea, children are being given brightly coloured phones with satellite tracking technology which connects a child to home, revealing their precise location even when the phone is switched off.
Yet while there seems no end to the possibilities, how many of us would trust our handset to spend our money?
At Southampton University researchers are developing a cell phone program that will do just that by watching their users and anticipating their moves. Eventually, they will offer what they think their owner needs - whether its cinema tickets for a regular weekly trip to the pictures, restaurant bookings or even booking an entire holiday.
"I see the agent as more like a butler-type character," says software engineer Nick Jennings. "They start monitoring what you do and gradually look for ways to increase their role. Over time they get to know your preferences."
While researchers at Cambridge University are perfecting a system which will help people who find themselves lost in a strange town to take a photograph of a nearby building, press send and the wait for photo recognition software to analyse where they are. Seconds later they will receive details of how to get to their destination.
In Belgium, the finishing touches are being put to E-merge, an in-car system which automatically sends a text message to alert emergency services should the car crash. The text will be complete with vehicle’s make, model, colour and licence number as well as the crash site.
But perhaps the function most users will actually want is the one being developed at London’s Brunel University, where researchers are fine tuning programs which will enable TV broadcast signals to be sent to mobiles.
It’s expected mobile phone television will be a reality in just six years, with around 50 channels, with information on hotels, restaurants and cultural events beamed to our handsets.
But do we really need - or want - the technology we are being given?
"The developments have been amazing," agrees the New Scientist’s David Cowan. "But a lot of people won’t want all these things together, it looks to geeky or they are worried that there are more things that can go wrong.
"Others are concerned about their privacy - they don’t want it logged somewhere every time they buy something like on a supermarket loyalty card. In the end it will be the consumer who decides."
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methylated_spirit
Joined: Jul 07, 2004
Posts: > 500
From: Bonnie Scotland
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A very interesting (and long!) read, must have taken some digging to find that one, axxr!
Hello, Scroto!
U.G.L.Y. You ain't got no alibi, you ugly! |
axxxr
Joined: Mar 21, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Londinium
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Interesting read indeed...article was only published today.
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Posted: 2004-08-22 15:01
