From PC Magazine - Interesting prediction of five future trendsetters. These include -
IMAX at Home
HP Labs is developing Pluribus, a cineplex-quality image using a handful of ordinary, USD1,000 PC projectors—in less time than it takes to pop the popcorn. For a mere USD12,000, you could c a home theater that stands up to the USD100,000 image at local movie houses. And this mega-display is good for more than just movies. It might be even better for 3D games.
The Midair Mouse
Soap goes one step further than the current state-of-the-art wireless mouse: It works in midair. With this new-age pointing device, now under development at Microsoft Research, you can navigate your PC using nothing but a bare hand. You can lose the end table and the lap desk. You can even lose the couch and the bed, driving your machine while walking across the room. It's a bit like the Wii remote—only more accurate and far easier to use. In fact, Soap is so accurate that you can use it to play a high-speed first-person shooter.
But at Bell Labs, they are working on a new quantum computer, a machine which uses a quantum bit, or qubit, instead of the basic bit for storing and processing information. A qubit is not stored not in a transistor but in a quantum system, such as the spin of an atom's nucleus. An "up" spin might indicate a 1, and a "down" spin might indicate a 0.
But thanks to the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, a quantum system can exist in multiple states simultaneously. At any given moment, the spin of a nucleus can be both up and down, holding values of both a 1 and a 0. Put two qubits together and they can hold four values simultaneously (00, 01, 10, and 11). That makes a quantum computer exponentially faster.
But when a quantum system interacts with the classical world, it decoheres: It loses its ability to exist simultaneously in multiple states, collapsing into a single state capable of holding only a single value.
Researchers have long been working on this problem but no major breakthrough has been achieved. Now Bell researchers are working on a new method called "topological quantum computing," which involves tying quantum systems into knots. By tying them into the right knot, they are able to do the right quantum computation. In short, these knots are a great way of solving the decoherence problem - the first to do so.
The classic point-to-point networking model is fundamentally flawed. If you want a piece of data from the network, you almost always need a direct connection to the data's original source—the server. That's true even if the data has already been downloaded to a device that's much closer. So often, tapping into a distant server wastes time. And if the server is unavailable, you're out of luck entirely.
With a project called Content-Centric Networking, PARC networking gurus are turning this model on its head. They're building a networking system that revolves around the data itself. Under the CCN model, you tell the server you want a particular piece of data. You broadcast a request to all the machines on the network, and if one of them has what you're looking for, it responds. It's a bit like BitTorrent, but on a grander scale. CCN can improve everything from the public Internet to your private LAN.
At IBM's Almaden Research Center, a team are chasing the holy grail of artificial intelligence.- they're looking to build one—neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.
The project is particularly daunting when you consider that modern neurology has yet to explain how the brain actually works. Yes, we know the fundamentals. But we can't be sure of every biological transaction, all the way down to the cellular level. Three years into this Cognitive Computing project, Modha's team isn't just building a brain from an existing blueprint. They're helping to create the blueprint as they build. It's reverse engineering of the highest order.
What's that good for? Anything and everything.
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