The Future of Search - The Ultimate in Portable Computing
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Stu Wolf, one of the top scientists at the Pentagon's scientific research agency DARPA, which is credited with giving birth to the Internet, seriously believes we'll all be wearing computers in headbands within 20 years. Wolf believes that by that time we'll all be wearing tiny, lightning fast computers, and they will render the desktop a dinosaur.
"We already know we can trigger neurons mechanically," he says. "You can interact directly with the brain without implanted electrodes. Then the next step is being able to think something and have it happen: Flying a plane, driving a car, operating household machinery." Controlling devices with the mind is just the beginning. Next, Wolf believes, is what he calls "network-enabled telepathy" - instant thought transfer. In other words, your thoughts will flow from your brain over the network right into someone else's brain. The only issue, he says, is making sure it's consensual, which is a problem likely to tax the minds of security experts, probably literally.
There is certainly no shortage of creative inventions, especially in Silicon Valley. All one must do to be convinced is visit the annual Invention Convention Trade Show in Pasadena, California, which presents about 300 exhibits each year, and attracts about 10,000 visitors. With the development of the Internet as a worldwide communications vehicle, the physical trade show evolved into the cyber-show.
One company in San Jose is currently experimenting with other technology that could easily advance into the Internet world. It is also attempting to patent technology that allows tracking of thoughts in a video game, which is similar in fashion to the type of brain wave tracking devices currently in use to monitor coma patients. Time Magazine selected Dr. Lawrence Farwell as one of the TIME 100: The Next Wave, the 100 innovators who may be "the Picassos or Einsteins of the 21st century."
Next: Shades of the Minority Report? >>
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