The Invisible Computer: The Future at Port 80: Charthouse

Computers will be in your shoes and will be powered by your walking. Computers will be in your collar, so you can whisper when you talk with them and hear without bothering others. Computers may well be surgically implanted under your skin so you don't lose them or exchange them. The main computer in your house will be your "information furnace".

An article (vol. 43, no. 9, September 2000, p. 17; not available online) in Communications of the ACM by Meg McGinity is titled "Body of Technology: It's just a matter of time before a chip gets under your skin."

Take a look at grocery shopping in the near future. Your milk bottle will tell your refrigerator that it's almost empty. Your fridge will tell your message center. Your message center will tell your shirt collar. Your shirt collar will keep quiet about it. The first you'll hear is when you're passing the grocery store that has the lowest price of all the stores you pass on your way home.

the invisible computer

MIT researchers are searching for ways to replace the desktop computer, keyboard, and mouse with out-of-sight units and handheld devices. The system will depend on cameras, microphones, and speech recognition to create an invisible computer network linked throughout every possible place we work and live, not just our desks.

Computing is About to Enter a Hardware Revolution That Will Change the World as We Know It

The result, five minutes after the start of printing, is a notebook computer that is a quarter inch thick, completely silent, runs for days, and is shipped fully charged and ready to go. The first computer costs $500 million to make, but the second costs 15 bucks.

We are five years from that $15 computer.

IT'S one of the marks of a classy restaurant that the waiter turns up and discreetly refills your glass the moment you empty it. Now a Japanese electronics company has found a way to guarantee that kind of service-and you don't have to catch anyone's eye.

PARK RIDGE, Ill. — Personal identification took on a new twist Friday (Feb. 15) as four individuals who lined up to "get chipped" became what are believed to be the world's first consumers to ask for implantable IDs.

A Florida family said Wednesday (Feb. 13) they want to be the first to have radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips placed in their bodies, mostly as a means of dealing with medical issues. Also, a Brazilian official will travel to the United States Friday (Feb. 15) to announce that he, too, wants to be fitted with a personal RFID chip, mainly as a deterrent against kidnapping.

Embedded.com - Thinking Inside the Box - part of EDTN: The Electronics Design, Technology & News Network

British engineers say they have invented a revolutionary tooth implant that works like a mobile phone and would not be out of place in a James Bond spy movie.

The "tooth phone" consists of a tiny vibrator and a radio wave receiver implanted into a tooth during routine dental surgery. The phone was designed by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau.

The implant does not yet have its own microchip installed, but Auger says the technology is tried and tested, and a fully functional phone could be put together in no time at all.

Wearable Computers

Next generation technology for portable displays. Our unique optical systems represent an ergonomic breakthrough over conventional head-mounted display technology.

Levi-Strauss and Philips Electronics wearable tech - ICD+ line of jackets: MP3 player, cell phone (earphones and microphone are built into the collar) and a unified "remote" control

These innovations take personal computing and wireless communication technology to another level of mobility and convenience.

John Santini is building implantable microchips that he hopes someday will replace needles and complicated drug regimens.

He isn't there yet, but three years after attracting attention by demonstrating an early version of the device in a laboratory beaker, he insists that his company, MicroCHIPS, is making progress and will have a product out in five years.

"This stuff ... has to be the wave of the future because of the control that may be required for future high-tech drugs may exceed what you can achieve by giving these orally and having them chopped up in the GI [gastro-intestinal] tract.'' ...

"The holy grail of drug delivery has been to integrate biosensors with drug delivery systems so they can respond automatically to changes in the body. We will be definitely be heading that way."

smart fabrics

We weave intelligence into garments.

Our SmarTextile Technology may be incorporated into any fabric or blend of fabrics without effecting the look, feel or integrity of the fabric we are enlightening. ...

Our SmartShirt System, a wearable solution for moving a wide range of information on and off an active person, integrates advances in textile engineering, wearable computing, and wireless data transfer to permit the collection, transmission, and analysis of personal health and lifestyle data.

The SmartShirt allows the comfortable measuring and/or monitoring of individual biometric data, such as heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, caloric burn, body fat, and UV exposure.

"Digital Skin" ... control and input surface components for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s) in the Music, Animation, Healthcare, and Security industries. ...

Tactex's Kinotex™ technology enables the manufacture of both expressive and rugged control and input components, which can be specified in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and surface finishes.

Tactex's principal business focuses on custom-designed OEM components manufactured in volume for clients who are incorporating them in end products. As an enabling technology, Kinotex™ finds application as a fundamental component in a wide variety of markets.

MIT's Project Oxygen

For over forty years, computation has centered about machines, not people. We have catered to expensive computers, pampering them in air-conditioned rooms or carrying them around with us. Purporting to serve us, they have actually forced us to serve them. They have been difficult to use. They have required us to interact with them on their terms, speaking their languages and manipulating their keyboards or mice. They have not been aware of our needs or even of whether we were in the room with them. Virtual reality only makes matters worse: with it, we do not simply serve computers, but also live in a reality they create.

In the future, computation will be human-centered. It will be freely available everywhere, like batteries and power sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe. It will enter the human world, handling our goals and needs and helping us to do more while doing less. We will not need to carry our own devices around with us. Instead, configurable generic devices, either handheld or embedded in the environment, will bring computation to us, whenever we need it and wherever we might be. As we interact with these "anonymous" devices, they will adopt our information personalities. They will respect our desires for privacy and security. We won't have to type, click, or learn new computer jargon. Instead, we'll communicate naturally, using speech and gestures that describe our intent ("send this to Hari" or "print that picture on the nearest color printer"), and leave it to the computer to carry out our will.

New systems will boost our productivity. They will help us automate repetitive human tasks, control a wealth of physical devices in the environment, find the information we need (when we need it, without forcing our eyes to examine thousands of search-engine hits), and enable us to work together with other people through space and time.


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modified: June 8, 2002 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/port80/charthouse/future/invisible.htm