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The Harrow Technology Report

  http://www.TheHarrowGroup.com

Insight, analysis, and commentary on the 
innovations and trends of contemporary computing, 
and on its growing number of related technologies.

An ongoing journey towards understanding, 
and profiting from, a world of exponential 
technological growth!

Copyright © 2001-2005, Jeffrey R. Harrow.  All rights reserved.
Email: Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com

 

YOUR Views of the Next 'Killer Apps.'

A Special Report
Adjunct to this week's issue, at
http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20021118/20021118.htm

Nov. 18, 2002

 

In a recent issue (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20021104/20021104.htm#_Toc23925811) we explored how, in about eight years, commodity CPU chips may be running at 15,000 megahertz (15 gigahertz) and be powered by one-billion transistors.  That's some SERIOUS commodity computing power.

Considering that in Nov, 2002 the latest and greatest will be performing at 3,060 megahertz (3.06 gigahertz), and that most of us would be very hard-pressed to use all of that power (excluding scientific and power users, and gamers), I suggested that what we REALLY need to rekindle the "PC Revolution" is a set of new "Killer Apps;" their features will be SO compelling that, once again, we'll all be on the edges of our seats waiting for the next notes of Moore's Law to hit the shelves.

But what will those Killer Apps be?  And so far, the software industry hasn't come up with a new one for quite some time. 

So I asked YOU what applications YOU think might again light up the PC world, so that your ideas might spur software developers in these direction.  Your responses have been, well, 'bountiful' to say the least, and I'm going to share a selection of them with you here. 

I've taken the liberty of trying to make sense of this technological future-brouhaha by consolidating them roughly into sections.  But as you'll see, many ideas want to span a number of areas.

May you, and the developers who read this, succeed in again lighting up our "PC lives."

 

Click on either the Categories, or on the individual
suggestion links, in the Table of Contents below:

Virtual Reality.

Extending Reality:

My Life, My Bits:

Digital (Two-Way) Voice: Interface, Usability, and Moore: Games. A.I. (Not The Movie): CPU-Cycle Consumers: In Classes All Their Own:

 

 

Virtual Reality.

 

Virtual Reality, by Miriam English --

I build virtual worlds for a living. Virtual Reality is definitely the next big thing. It feels the way graphical interfaces were in the days of 8-bit processors -- we could understand the potential, but in those early days they were slow and clunky, and took up too much memory.

Realtime VR, especially in the form of VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) has come a long way in the last several years, but is still in desperate need of faster processors and bigger machines. There is great potential for VR in many areas, but a few deserve special mention:

 Multiuser VR is a brilliant communication tool. It places very little load on networks; the end machines do the bulk of the work, send just position and action info, unlike a video feed which requires massive amounts of info to be streamed. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, physical disability, and physical attractiveness become irrelevant in VR -- you choose how you present yourself.

 VR fiction is the next step beyond movies -- it is like being able to walk around inside the story. Sure, it is hard to do, and people are just starting to develop the language and tools for it, but consider how different the first movies were from stage shows or radio. Early attempts at movies didn't use editing, or panning. They didn't have sound or dollies or any of the sophisticated lighting, special effects, and other techniques that we take for granted now. VR fiction is an entirely new storytelling medium and I am certain it will become a multi-billion dollar business.

 We humans have filled the Earth. There are still some unknown lands to explore, but not many, unless you include the oceans (which we are rapidly reducing to wet deserts). Space travel is looking less and less viable. We can planet-hop within our own solar system perhaps, though we do so in dread of radiation storms from the Sun. Interplanetary space is inhospitable; interstellar space is even more so. Exposing our fragile bodies to cosmic rays on long journeys is a real non-starter. Unless we can drastically shorten such journeys then we are trapped here. But many of us are explorers by nature.I can already create infinite virtual worlds on my computer. Add to that the ability to use fractal rules to auto-generate infinite diversity, and the growing (excuse the pun) field of artificial life, and we could have endless horizons available to us. We could potentially learn much from these virtual worlds about how the 'real' world works.

And the most controversial:  Our biological bodies are destined to wear out. They have evolved to do that to enable the genetic diversity that ensures adaptability and survival of life. I really don't think we can ever 'fix' that. The tragedy is that each of us has this wonderful mind which has needs and abilities far surpassing the fleeting biological capabilities that gave birth to it. The mind is information and can be modeled by computers; not yet, but soon.

When we are able to live on inside computers, VR will be a natural place for us to live. Whereas mechanical systems will always wear out, electronics has no moving parts, and properly designed could perhaps last hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of years. And don't make the mistake of thinking that living such a life would be fake. People would still think great things, build great works of art and marvellous tools, love, and learn... and there is no doubt that they would continue to be involved in the 'outside' world. What would people be capable of being freed from the need for food and shelter, and able to learn for many centuries? And imagine the resource that those millions of minds could be for those dealing with problems in the 'outside' world.

VR IS the next 'Killer App!'

 

VR, The 'CPU Killer,' by Scott Miller --

What might the [Virtual Reality] future look like?

David Gelernter, in Mirror Worlds (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019507906X/qid=1036396476/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/104-3388988-4338319), makes an interesting case for how this technology might one day be used. What are the three people in [a movie without a link] doing? (Prepare to plunge into the imagination of Scott)...

<imagine>

What if they are three partners in the business of creating bots and avatars for use in VR worlds? What if what we are watching is the VR experience as it will someday exist? What if what we are watching is their view, their customized interface into the software they are using to create the creatures we see? "Mr. Light" does some sort of high-level design, or architecting, "Mr. Industrial" seems to implement the design, while "Miss Magic" animates the creations. All these steps exist today for avatar creation, but today's GUI is NOTHING like what we see in the little movie. Imagine if the OS of the future is an immersive VR experience... </imagine>

Why should the Intels, AMDs, IBMs, etc. of the world be excited?

WOW this stuff chews up processor cycles! And no matter how powerful a machine you "throw" at the problem, the creative artist ALWAYS needs more. Give us a 100x improvement in processing power (a decade of Moore's law) and it will still not be enough. More polygons, better algorithms, real-time procedural textures, the demand keeps growing. And the real challenge: a better and immersive interface. The last several issues of your e-mail has dealt with the merging of human and machine. "Miss Magic" acts as if she can feel the breeze generated by the wings of that humming bird, perhaps she can, even though the breeze isn't "real".

Today we are stuck with limited technology that is good for little more than playing games. What will the future bring?

<<-Let's see if I can summarize this in a paragraph->>

Network based Virtual Reality will be The Killer App for driving personal (and some day, implanted) computing and networking technology. It will drive demand for processor cycles, memory, storage, bandwidth, and peripherals -- this last one to the point of pushing the human-machine interface into implantable technology. Moore's law predicts a 100 fold increase in machine capability each decade. Currently, VR demand is more than a decade ahead of what the personal computer can deliver, and will remain ahead of the curve well beyond the middle of this century. Network based Virtual Reality technology will create new ways for human-human communication and new paradigms for the human-machine interface. To quote Ted Nelson from the first edition of his seminal 1974 book, Computer Lib/Dream Machines; "If computers are the universal control tool, then let's give kids universes to control."

<<-Final thoughts->>

Ray Kurzweil has implied that it might be possible to clone a person's mind in only five or six decades (http://www.kurzweilai.net/). Why would we want to do this? How could it be put to use? Or would it only be good for finally having an excuse to talk to yourself?

Personally, I can see living in both the real and virtual worlds at the same time. If there were a natural mind and a machine mind that were linked, then one of you could take your body for a hike to commune with nature and unwind. While the other of you could link into the VR Sphere -- creating, communicating, doing, even working and getting paid for it. You could be in two places at once.


VR Entertainment, by Des Markland --

I think that the next killer app will be in the entertainment area, namely virtual reality environments. Coupled with lightweight, very high resolution headsets such an application (lets call it Virtual Adventure) would allow you to feel you are IN a game, film or other audio visual experience.


Immersive Entertainment, by Jim Van Vorst --

The next killer app, and one that will require all the horsepower we can throw at it, is turning your home or office PC into a fully immersive entertainment/computing environment, ala "Lawnmower Man."  Here, the keyboard, mouse, and monitor all go away since you will be virtually "inside" the computer.

"We are Borg.  You will be assimilated."

Virtual Reality, by Thor --

Of course the next killer app that will stretch the hardware capabilities to the limit will be "virtual reality apps," both for business and personal use.

The first ones will be crude and simple gaming, but as the hardware gets better there will be incredible business applications. Imagine walking into your companies' database in virtual reality and having any information at your fingertips to manipulate as you please. What about truly virtual meetings for cyber-commuters - eliminate the need for offices.

As for gaming, how about experiencing incredibly violent or daring life threatening thrills firsthand, since you cannot die in virtual reality? What a great way to overcome fear.  [Or to suffer a heart attack or other situationally-brought-on illness?  I wonder if there are documented cases of this, considering the intensity experienced by many a game player...]

Finally how incredible a teaching tool could this be?  All types of skills in sports could be practiced over and over with no threat of injury. The list is endless, and we are at the verge of a monstrous quantum leap in computing.

And, not to get too much into "matrix" but how nice would it be for the very old and the paralyzed to be able to walk, run, and fly in virtual. Sex will not be too far behind.  [The combination of sex] and gaming will probably drive the advances...



Two Words: Virtual & Reality, by Derek Mathias --

Two words: 'virtual reality.' When we can use our existing killer apps (and I think I'd add computer games to that list) in a more intuitive, dynamic, 3D environment, I think we'll see another scramble for computational horsepower.




"Altered Reality" Videoconferencing, by Kirk Hutchison --

The one that I've been waiting for is SVM (Short Video Messaging).  It will require lots of bandwidth, an amazing graphics processor, and a hungry CPU.

Generally, people don't want to send messages with their -exact- picture and surroundings, and many are still scared of the videophone idea since they may be caught [in] a 'not-photo-ready' state.  Hence, the new generation of SVM will use a predetermined video of the user during such a 'photo-ready' state, and will enhance it with the facial expressions and lip movements during the time of recording. 

The CPU and Graphics cards to do this are currently just above the high end of today, but will easily be [available] by middle to late next year.  Hand-helds will be able to handle this within 4+ years.  No more worries about what you look like.

And the bonus app that will make this REALLY desirable, will replace the live background and noise with a dynamically configured virtual place and sounds.  It will be particularly useful to youths that want to fool parents/peers into thinking they are somewhere else, since sending the real video will always be an option.
 :-)

On a related note, this technology will also allow true virtual conferencing [over constrained bandwidth] since only gestures will need to be sent from each of the individuals in the conference.  Their digital signatures will be sent during the initial synchronization, and live updates will simply be overlaid during the discussion.  Given that large, high resolution, flat panel MEMS screens are going to become affordable in about 3 years, the timetable will converge appropriately.


Fully-Immersive VR, by John M. --

How about fully immersive VR?  Picture Sandra Bullock in "Demolition Man".  Definitely a must have.  Experience concerts, rallys, games, any sort of tech training, travel, and of course sex, in a VR environment.  Definitely huge.

Robots?  Probably another big one: the auto that drives you to work; housecleaning/security robots to patrol your home; personnel bodyguard robots; etc...


"Usability" Is The Key, by Nick Gassman --

Jeff, I reckon the killer app for those spare cycles is usability. In a very few years we'll be looking back on the computers of today, and wondering how we ever managed to use them. Think of Scotty back on Earth (I can't remember which movie it was) when he prepares to remonstrate with a Mac because it won't obey his (voice) commands. Sure, he then uses the keyboard, and gets the Mac to do things you and I couldn't, but that's the fiction bit of the SF movie.

It's too easy for techies not to recognise the issue (I'm sure it's an issue you do recognise). I'm no slouch with PCs, and at work I'm one of the guys the others ask if they have a problem. I like to get into the guts of things, and read the hardcore journals. But now, even with XP, when I check the processes in Task Manager to find that servicehost has multiple instances, and I can't figure out which is causing my problem... then I bang my head against the wall.

PCs still can't tell you what's wrong with them, or how to use them. The reams of 'hot tips' in magazines, and semi-expert newsletters attest to the fact that they are usually not set up to get the most out of them, or sufficiently personalised for most people. But most people can't understand the instructions on how improve things.

So if someone can build these things into an OS, or if someone can produce an app that will sort it out - they'll be in the money.


Holographic Displays, by Wil Marshman --

The killer app in 2010 may involve holography.

Imagine a "PDA" being able to "project" the life-size image of Brittany Spears or Justin Timberlake dancing to one of their songs in your teenager's bedroom such that he/she could dance along.

Or it could project an image of a mechanic repairing a complicated airplane problem such that the learning mechanic could follow along step-by-step.

Or it could project a skier doing some turns while you follow him on an interconnected device that tracks your movements and makes suggestions for "up-weighting earlier".

If the networks of the time can provide the bandwidth, new holograms could be accessed via the net and commerce could support the "killer app".

My idea came from:

Napster
Keyboard projection technology
Teenager buying enthusiasm
MTV/MP3 popularity
Personal life experiences




"Holo-CAD Drawing", by M. Williams --

I think the next killer app that will drive the need for computer speed has already been invented [(and seen in the form of special effects] in movies - take the original Star Wars as one example); it's really just waiting for the display device - and perhaps the horsepower - to make it practical.

For lack of a better name, call it "Holo-CAD Drawing," where you can get a true 3-D view of your designed object, along with the ability to zoom in and get a detailed look (using routines that adjust the image so it still looks smoothly real.)  It will be the next boon for Engineering.

Imagine creating a product and being able to display it (literally) exactly as it will look when built. The obvious game implications are also there. The real limit to this, currently, is a display device that would permit a seamless display from any angle, even top-down. Figure that out, and you have something that will really drive increases in processing power, once again.


3-D Output; Virtual and Real, by Geoff Keller --

I bet your average size holodeck or even a full length feature 3-D holo-flick action movie could easily chew through at least 11 or 12 gigahertz of processing power and 8 - 10 terabytes of memory.  [Vast amounts more of processing and other power, from what I've been reading.  JRH]

Or how about a transporter-like "3-D FAX machine". That could use a good chunk of power as well.  [Remember "stereolithography"?  Such 3D printers already exist (see http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/19991018.html#_Toc464536634), so extending them "online" would seem feasible.  JRH]

Just look to your local independent TV station running on series or another of Star Trek and I bet you can find at least 10 items that could chew up that much processing power, and more.

No matter how much processing power we have, we will always find ways to use it. Pushing the boundaries is what makes us human.




Extending Reality:

 

Bandwidth - The Enabler, by M. Richter --

With advances in broadband that should take place during this time [period], I ... envision a few ideas:

"Shop-at-home", a virtual-reality approach to shopping which provides a very high resolution experience for shopping.  The recently announced ability to touch over the internet would make fabric choices easy.  New algorithms which provide mapping a person's physical characteristics would provide the consumer with visual feedback, while providing the alteration shop specifics regarding the customer's specific needs.

"Home movies", a video mapping and animation application to allow people to take home movies, perform visual effect editing, voice-over and Foley dubbing, and create stories in a very short time.  This would prove especially valuable for gifted and talented amateurs (producing at least early "Star Wars" quality special effects as standard).  Create your own exotic vacation experience.

"Design your own home", a virtual-reality approach which provides true real-time walk-thru with the ability to move walls and furniture around with a simple "push" or "pull".  The walk-thru would use VR eyeglasses, providing the average consumer with the abilities that architects see today as cutting-edge.  This could also prove a boon to the professional designers and homebuilders.

"Virtual Museum", a virtual-reality approach to viewing antiquities.  Museums would have their art scanned in full 3-D.  Customers would pay a fee to enter the museum, and the visual effects would give them images that rivaled life.  This would also provide the ability to linger at any exhibit for any length of time, and to view the collections that are not usually on display. Could easily be extended to the scientific community for collaborative research (again, using the emerging "touch" technology".


Naturally, "virtual porn"...  With the virtual-reality visual effects, combined with what can only be imagined in the "touch" arena...  Not sure how far you wanted to envision the possibilities! <g>


I can imagine a few more, but it seems the future "killer" apps will focus more around consumer experience and entertainment than around utility. Witness the browser in the refrigerator (http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/review/28/1/1600.html).




Bandwidth!, by John Matrow --

John provides his answers to the next Killer Apps by quoting from the Internet2 faq (http://apps.internet2.edu/html/faq.html), written by Ted Hanss, Internet2 Director for Applications Development:

What's the "killer app" for Internet2?

The fun thing about participating in Internet2 is working with all the creative minds who are working to create the next generation of applications. But, there's no way to tell what the "killer app," if any, might be. Instead, we like to describe four killer attributes that you'll find in the most compelling applications. The first is interactive collaboration environments, where you can truly interact with others without the barriers of distance. The second is to provide common access to remote resources, such as telescopes and microscopes. The third is using the network as a "backplane" to build network-wide computation and data services, such as those under development in the Grid. The fourth attribute is displaying information through virtual reality environments—moving from statics graphics and images to moving, three-dimensional animations.

No, really, what's the "killer app"?

Well, the area that will provide the widest benefit and largest aggregate use of the Internet2 network capacity is digital video. Video-based applications cover everything from video conferencing to on-demand content to remote control of microscopes and other instruments.




Video Conferencing, by Tom Williams --

This one's been on my mind for years.  Given more-or-less ubiquitous broadband capability, I think people at work and at home will discover how much communication is enhanced by others' facial expressions. 

This will lead, in turn, to major changes in business and educational travel decisions, and I seriously believe it will change our culture to an extent not seen since the telegraph. Where will processing power come into it?  Echo suppression, which is the current bane of PC-based videoconferencing.


Video Instant Messaging, by Mark McCoskey --

Once broadband is more pervasive, even more so with the upcoming Internet 2, I think VIM (Video Instant Messaging) will become a killer app.

With digital USB stereo headsets, and USB2 & FireWire web cams, we will have crystal clear, full motion video and audio. This will surely replace the home phone (but not cell phones, of course). This could be for both one-on-one or conference calls. This is especially useful for friends who now live long distances from each other, yet want to stay connected. This could be integrated into one's computer or used as a stand alone video phone device. All of this with no long distance phone charges. And in time, this could evolve into your MMORPG where you mentioned lifelike virtual 3D coffee shops. People would have no excuse for not keeping in contact. And this would be a ... lot cheaper than an airline ticket.

On the other hand, I really like the TiVo, Replay, Digeo/Moxi devices. But I would rather incorporate this into the computer where I can easily upgrade (add) a larger hard drive or TV tuner card. This will be the entertainment server idea like Windows new Media Center, but without any imposed limitation. Ideally this would have two HDTV tuner cards (one to watch and one to record, or perhaps record with both at the same time), 2 to 4 120+ GB hard drives, a DVD burner, wireless Ethernet (a, b and g) for sharing amongst other devices (computers, TV's, PlayStation 2's, stereo's, etc.) and Bluetooth for connecting wireless keyboards, tablets, etc. Couple this with a one click TitanTV.com-like scheduler and you have a simple DVR/PVR.

(Currently, some of these capabilities are already in bleeding-edge products, although not all of them in any one product, and none of which have yet been leapt-on en-mass by consumers.  But this may be a leg-up for Mark's ideas.


 Virtual Visiting, by Derrick Davis --

"Digital Buddy" is a life size holographic multi user, real-time, visiting software and interface.

It allows you be with friends and family from far away, yet with the visual and auditory feeling of reality. Since it is multi user enabled, you can have several friends "over" at the same time to watch movies and play games. Your friends appear either in your monitor glasses, contacts, or projected into the room where your holographic projector is placed. Each user has the ability to provide a width / depth / height of their projection and reception to include the necessary surroundings.

Forget your phone; be with your loved ones no matter where they are on the planet.


Virtual Tours, and More, by Byron Law --

I imagine that one killer application that is going to drive processor speeds and storage capacities is going to be immersive video.  That is, video that is recorded omni-directionally and subsequently is viewed omni-directionally. 

There are many that are working on and perfecting the recording side of this, but viewing is still relegated to a mono-directional monitor with the viewing angle adjusted by mouse or keyboard, rather than a more natural user worn system that detects head or eye movement to adjust viewing angle within the video.  Once immersive video is perfected to the point that the user is under the illusion (at least visually and aurally) that they are actually at the remote site, I think many will start subscribing to various tours and experiences. 

How often have you heard the complaint of those who visited the Smithsonian that they wish they had a couple of weeks to spend in there?  With immersive video, they will have all the time they want (within their subscription) to "roam" the Smithsonian (or any other museum, tour, or countless other experiences exploring every corner of the globe and beyond) and from the comfort of their own home.  Field trips for schools will be as simple as scheduling a short walk down to their library and donning their immersive video headsets.  Schools will have a much greater variety of experiences to expose the children to (that coordinate with a greater variety of topics), with reduced liability and safety concerns.  Maybe someday we might even have sophisticated immersive outer space based telescopes (with the requisite blocks looking back towards Earth against peeping Toms).  We could use more astronomers scanning space in every direction possible.  We might even see law enforcement using the footage from the blocked portion to better solve crimes.

Here are a few sites I know of that deal in immersive video recording technologies:

http://www.fpvideo.com/
http://www.behere.com/
http://immersivemedia.com/menu.html
http://www.ipix.com/
http://www.spincam.com/
http://www.iqeye.com/mkt/immvid.htm




The In(puts) and the Out(puts), by Bart Wessel --

What we are going to use all the processing power for?  Human interfacing.  (Aren't we already?).

Let's face it: most of us deliver input using cumbersome mouse and keyboard manipulations (many of us still cannot type fluently, and plenty of us get to suffer from RSI). With respect to output: we get to sit all day long in a fixed position relative to a  display device that is made up out of individually discernible dots. Ha!

My guess is that we're going to see input recognition (speech, gesture, facial expression, ...) and output generation (projection, 3d-holographical vision, ...).

If only I could put my facial expression at this very moment into words, you'd see what I mean.


"Tactile," by Dr. Ed Reifman --

Imagine, say, by the year 2012, with even pre-molecular processors, the p-o-r-n-o and computer gaming industry of 2002 will seem like a blip on the screen when one can walk into your local Fry's and purchase the latest 'Whoever does Dallas' "tactile", (T-DVD?) and instead of a joy stick, well you get the picture.

PC As Phone, by Martin Pensak --

In addition to just talking through the PC's [microphone and speakers, for Internet-based phone calls], let the PC be a 'smart' answering machine - dealing with taking messages when I'm not available and managing them better than just 'listen and push the delete button' on my dumb answering machine. 

Maybe customized messages for when specific people 'call'. And of course conference calling, stored phone lists integrated with public directory lookup, etc. Not to mention moving into video in addition to the audio.

Embedded Full-speed Video, by Bobski Masson --

I don't have a catchy name, but the next killer app is going to be the use of full-frame, full-speed video in all the other killer apps!  This coincides with the processing power to handle such media, as well as the increase in web bandwidth to handle it.


My Life, My Bits:
 

My Digital Life, by Paul Swider --

As for the killer app, your newsletter suggests a version in the HAN piece (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20021104/20021104.htm#_Toc23925814). Coupled with advances in storage, we could create the personal recorder, a Tivo for each of our lives. With an eyeglass camera and audio recorder, we could easily have exact replications of the vital times (from many perspectives). Sure, it's fun at Mardi Gras but we could also precisely record a business meeting, political event, wedding, first date, what have you, and the processing power would enhance not only the recording but also the search and recall. You never forget anything. What would this do to marital quarrels?

If we could ever get past the bandwidth/regulatory issues, we could open a much larger can of possibilities but that is a legal issue with no end in sight. In the short term, though, there are strong possibilities for adapting mesh network communications in unrestricted bandwidth ranges to at least entertainment applications, such as interactive games in a crowd (or even a mall). Couple this with the processing power and you could have some potent fun. Ideally, you could also create a wireless mesh Internet but that needs large-scale population density.


Life Recorders, by Swift Parrot --

(This suggestion was short and sweet ("life recorders"), but Swift is talking about sufficient audio, video (and perhaps more, like GPS) inputs to a massive data store, that will duitifully and invisibly record every aspect of every moment of your life.  (I just hope it comes with a "Pause" button...))

 Real Life, by Adam Carasso --

The Killer App, nick-named simply "Real Life", is real-time video rendering--without a trace of blockiness or delay. 

This technology would transform any device with a screen (laptop, tablet, palm pilot, cell phone, digital cameras and recorders, even eye glasses) into a two-way video camera that one could hold up, pan around and instantly transmit the video to another user.  The ultimate extension of this technology would be for one person to wear eye glasses on a vacation and be able to look around and transmit every last thing he or she sees, continuously, to a recording device back home or live to another user wearing matching glasses--such that the second person forgets he/she isn't seeing these sights first hand. 

This would completely transform the movie, home movie, news, and TV industries, as well as military reconnaissance and battlefield tactics.  There would be many linkages to Internet, advertising, on-line gaming, on-demand downloading of TV shows and movies, etc.  More simply, one could even hang "pictures" in one's home or office that are linked to on-line cameras at national parks or art museums to provide a "window" on art, or on the rest of the world.  Home and office art that changes with the viewer's whim.  Suddenly, any device at all could double as a TV screen or a videophone.

Such rendering would consume tons of bandwidth and memory, forcing the development of better graphics-rendering cards and much faster CPUs/chip sets, bigger and faster memories, and wireless bandwidth.  But live video rendering would have a market that subsumes every last device with a screen. A couple of pins on the frame of the eye glasses could allow the wearer to stop, start, freeze-frame, black-out, or add effects to whatever he or she was seeing/recording.  One could even "import" more interesting, exotic backgrounds to make the average walk or ride to work more interesting. Truly seeing the world through "rose colored glasses." 

Other advances might be HDTV format for these glasses or video in general; some graphics algorithms that corrects for haze, or overly bright sunlight, or dust/pollution; and built-in binocular function for distance seeing, a la Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars.

Another, much more simple technological improvement would be a computer with "instant on."  No more waiting 2-5 minutes for a computer to boot.  This would make such a great selling point--think how many minutes are wasted each and every day waiting for your system just to boot up.  (Simplest thing here would be a computer that you never had to turn off, that went into some natural safe mode or hibernation state that kept it secure from the rest of the on-line world).

The "Personal Companion," by Jack Kais Saint Francis --


Let's call it the "Personal Companion" ( PC ?)  A voice recognition, interactive, multi-purpose virtual companion.  A program that could have a custom or randomly generated personality that would learn a user's preferences likes and dislikes. After a "get to know you" period the "PC", in addition to mundane tasks such as schedule planning, important date notices, Web ferreting, house monitoring etc., would also sense any tension in the user's voice and prompt him/her into, for example, conversation designed to relieve stress.

The PC could also periodically run a series of health questions [on a schedule] depending on the age/health of the user.

And the PC could design custom entertainment packages. For instance, it could automatically download preferred music, movies, Web site information, TV shows and sporting events, which could then be enjoyed at leisure. Anyway I think you get the idea.

 

Digital (Two-Way) Voice:
 

True Voice Response, by Richard Dinning --

I think the next killer app will be "true voice response". By this I don't mean the poor voice recognition we have now but true voice response where you can dictate a letter, stop in the middle, order a switch to your browser, look up a word or phrase online and then switch back to your letter - maybe with copy and paste into your letter - and go on dictating and have the letter be done in perfect format without you having to dictate all the punctuation -- as people who have their secretaries type from a recording do now, or their having to touch a keyboard or mouse.

I think this will take all the CPU power we can throw at it, and have the advantage of allowing quick easy entry of data into machines that for one reason or another don't have keyboards or mice. Think of adding a memo or appointment to your Palm device by whispering to it. Also, with our aging population, fingers are becoming less agile, so there may be a growing market there.


The Butler, by John Smith --

This is probably not the NEXT killer app…but I think it's on the way.

A major step towards improved ease of use could be the trigger to get people motivated to buy some new technology. Integrated into the various household appliances, communications devices and A/V technology with truly reliable voice recognition and a (seemingly) intelligent response this would be something that would initially interest and amuse users and eventually would lead to this becoming the only way to interact with the technology around them.

And so, I would like to introduce you [to a future ad for] -- "The Butler:"

"Have questions answered from anywhere in your house. Find useful information without sitting at a keyboard. Get things done while you're busy elsewhere.

How?? Get "The Butler" to do it!!

"The Butler" is the new software for your home that responds to your voice. Ask him questions and he'll find the answer and tell you. Give "The Butler" orders over the phone and he'll carry them out for you. "The Butler" can talk to you and keep you up to date with what's happening at home. Have your mundane tasks handled by someone who always ready to do your bidding. Buy your new computer and "The Butler" today."


The "Other" Butler, by Max Rible --

One obvious 'killer app' (which will require advances in [other] states-of-the-art to [complement increasing] processing power, but which still might be bottlenecked on processing power and memory) would be really effective voice recognition and language parsing.  It'd be a real mess in a "sea of cubes" environment (can you imagine a room full of people all trying to talk to their computers at once?), but it'd be superb for the novice home user who wants to just phrase a verbal query rather than go through all the tedious steps of clicking through a user interface. (Consider the speed of speaking "please open the draft Harrow Report for next week" compared to File/Open/navigate directories/...)

If AskJeeves.com weren't already taken, I'd suggest naming this app Jeeves, but I guess I'll have to just use the name of Batman's butler, Alfred, instead.  Naming your computer would be an effective way to let it know to pay attention to your next sentence; you don't want it to trigger off of "Sure, I'm planning to format the hard drive next week", but [even] "Alfred, please format the hard drive" would be worth prompting about.

[Note that there are already -fair- voice command processors available, and some of these early applications do allow for 'naming' the computer as a "verbal key."  But this generation is still far from 'good enough' unless you are in a consistently quiet environment and you remember the explicit 'command phrases'...  Yet I agree that all of these issues will likely be surmounted.]


The Butler, Times-3, by Kim Mains --

I've become most interested about the possibility of the different Robot technologies from Sony/Honda (ASIMO) meeting up with some of the work done at MIT, especially the Kismet work, along with the introduction of Bluetooth, home automation, and home "always on" cable connections.  Of course speech recognition is thrown in there somewhere.

How about asking the robot what the weather is going to be like and getting a response pulled off of Weather.com.  Technically it's not that hard if the robot can understand the request, knows where to find weather information on the internet and can do text to speech.  The robot with wireless internet access via WiFi or Bluetooth could easily do this without any apparent effort.

Or [how about using robots for] operating the appliances and other devices around the house?  The robot could be the universal control panel to everything.  You could ask it to turn the heat up a bit (it could transmit the request via X-10 RF if it had to).  It could change the channel on the TV; turn on the hi-fi to your favorite music; and all without lifting a finger via wireless commands.  IF, [that is,] you have wireless support in your appliances...  It could also read your email to you amd, when the speech recognition gets good enough, take dictation.

 

Could [this herald] the return of that 19th century institution... the butler?

 

One curiosity that I have already encountered when talking with my friends:  I mentioned the Electrolux robotic vacuum which has the perception altering ability to plug itself in when it's batteries are getting low.  I have someone clean my house so I got the inevitable suggestion that I use the robot instead.  Then, the person rejected the idea... after all, the human is cheaper [today, at least...]

Computers That Listen, by Jeff Allen -

One killer app which might help drive CPU power forward is the old standard of voice recognition software and perhaps even having computers talk to you.  This could be like Star Trek’s computers where you talk to the computer and it responds to you by speaking to you in normal human voice unlike today where it is mostly a mechanical sounding voice.  There are many opportunities with voice/speech options.  I’d like to say “Computer On” and have it boot up, then have it open the e-mail program and read the subject lines or the news headlines of news e-mails, etc. etc.


"SpeakEasy," by Rocky Rawstern --

The [Killer App] that I'd spend the bucks on is a true voice recognition interface.  Call it "SpeakEasy" - it would free me from having to use the keyboard so darned much, and more importantly, allow a smooth flow of words to be processed by my PC. 

We've been hearing about VRI for years, but it has always been sketchy and costly, and way off the mark user-friendly-wise [too much set up time, and too many errors].  SpeakEasy will allow me and mine to sit down for a few minutes, give the PC a 2 or 3 minute sampling of our normal speaking voices, and SHAZAM! provide us with an easy hands-free interface. 

What a boon for writers, secretaries, and anyone else who needs to process their thoughts.  I know that when I am in a stream-of-consciousness mode, I cannot type fast enough, and usually loose something before my fingers can get it all down. 

Further, if it was set up to process voice commands, well then that would just be the icing on the cake!  Then the blind and physically challenged communities could really take advantage of the power of the internet and PC, without the cumbersome interfaces that currently exist. 


Communicating Verbally, by Andrew Clark --

I think the next killer application that we are all hanging out for (and which will undoubtedly demand lots of processing power) is computers we can talk to, and interact with to carry out normal daily tasks. 

This is of course again more Science Fiction, but it feeds our innate desire to have a slave waiting to carry out our every whim with only a word or two.  I'm not just talking about dictating memos, but the interactive computer that controls our car, our home, and our entertainment system, and can also teach us about the increasingly complex technology that we simply never have time to fully learn. 

This more than anything else will also help bring advanced technology out of Nerdsville and open up advanced computing to everyone who can communicate verbally.


Superb, And "Learning," Speech Recognition, by Jack Lipscomb --

 I think that we are working our way toward real artificial intelligence.  The new Killer Application will be SUPERB SPEECH RECOGNITION. 

It would be used in word processing, computer control, and general interacting with the computer including Internet searches. Later, this will be married to the ultimate killer application "Learning Artificial Intelligence." 

These would be programs that pay attention to their environment and learn as we do. They would be able to interact with each other on the internet and learn from each other.  They would listen to us and talk with us both in person and on the telephone.  They will learn to perform complex tasks such as "Computer, please research the state of the art in lightning protection systems. Check with me on the cell phone when you think you have a handle on it."  They would become gainfully employed. 

But first we must develop the next Killer Application --SUPERB SPEECH RECOGNITION .


Making Computers "Disappear," by Jeff A.K. --

I think the killer apps need to assist in removing the current I/O devices: 

Voice recognition and translation which really works! 

Also voice capabilities which can filter through pauses, strung-together words, slurring, dialects, etc., without error. 

Or language translation in a many-to-many format without error, or with very few.

Voice-capable GUI navigation or the creation of a GUI which would not require a pointing device, but will be more intuitive to voice commands.

Chip-based security for both storage and transmission.

Anything which makes the computer "disappear" will surely help.


Voice Recognition Will Enable MANY Apps, by Ronald Kaledas --

Actually, I don't think the "next killer app" will be just one app...

I think it's going to be voice recognition, which of course will be applicable to MANY apps.  For it to be useful, though, I think it has to have nearly a 100% recognition rate, and we know how tough that is.  However, with enough processing power...

 

REALLY Effective Voice Recognition, by Adrian Salone --

How about REALLY effective voice recognition? 

Something that can handle naturally spoken sentences without having to pause between words.  THAT would require some pretty quick number crunching.
 



"Listening," But to the BRAIN (and more), by Shawn Gold --

I propose the following four ideas:

One of the biggest restrictions in computing in our mobile and workday-shifted workplace is the physical dimension and interface of our computers. With various computer output replacement options such as goggles, monocles or heads-up displays, there is only one currently practical hands-free input option, and that is voice. 

While that technology is coming along nicely, it does not allow for privacy.  I believe that a much needed killer app that will likely consume a lot of processing horsepower will be the ability to decipher brain wave activity as the input medium.  Work is being done in various areas, but it is still a way off.   Once that technology is developed, however; the whole world of communications, travel and entertainment will change dramatically.

The computer entertainment industry is based in part on making more realistic computer graphics.  With more brute processing capability, holographic imaging may become the next evolutionary development.  It could be used in many areas, but the entertainment industry, including gaming, movies and adult entertainment, will drive the funding for this technology.

[Indeed, this promises to be a real CPU-killer.  From the Nov., 2002 MIT Technology Review:

"Still the diffraction pattern from just one high-resolution hologram can easily use up more than a terabyte of data—enough to fill 1,600 compact discs. A moderately flicker-free  holographic video would require at least 20 such holograms per second. Clearly, churning through 20 terabytes worth of information every second would require extraterrestrial technology: today’s fastest PCs operate at one- hundred-thousandth that rate."

Details at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/freedman1102.asp .]

While the "Star Trek" "Holodeck" is a pretty cool idea, there are a lot of technical difficulties associated with trying to develop the matter replication needed for tactile feedback.  But what if the ability to capture the brain waves for input to a computer could be reversed and the output of a computer could trigger inputs directly into the brain, bypassing the requirement for goggles and VR tactile gloves or suits?  This would definitely change the entertainment and tourism world as we know it.  The processing horsepower would be immense, but wouldn't that in and of itself drive the computer industry even harder?

There are a whole new series of plush toys being advertised for this holiday season that are filled with animatronics and priced a lot lower than the mother of all "toys"- Sony's "Aibo".  With greater acceptance of toys that interact, the drive will be on for low cost and ever more responsive toys.  The "A.I" movie Teddy Bear is not that far off if you think about what could be done by combining an "Aibo" and "Furby" into a plush responsive Teddy Bear.  I see a child-friendly, human-machine interface as the impetus to drive future simplified interfaces.  And as these children grow up, they will expect that same level of simplicity and sophistication in their home entertainment and workplace.


The Invisible User Interface, and "Vertical Intelligence," by Henry Nash --

The Invisible User Interface (IUI) - i.e. speech/video recognition.

Vertical Intelligence - i.e. a series of intelligence modules that outperform must humans at a given subject.  Full (horizontal) human level intelligence will have to wait a further 5 or 10 years, but hey, that's just a blink of an eye...

 

Personal Robots, by Martin Spencer --

According to Sony, NEC, Hitachi, Honda, Husqvarna, iRobot, ActivMedia, Evolution Robotics, GeckoSystems, the United Nations, DARPA, et al, the next BIG THING is "personal robots."


Video Editing Power-Up, by Mel Lammers --

Maybe it is just because I am now messing about with Video, but much better Video editors and DVD burning software would be a "killer" app since people have now shifted to video from 8MM film and can do "digital" things with it. We all could use a 10 GHz processor with a Terabyte of disk.  If you haven't, you will.


Interface, Usability, and Moore:

 

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same, by Chris Denver --

Yesterday:

The first PC I had on my desk was an HP150 touchscreen - followed not long after that with an upgrade to an HP Vectra (6mhz -  4meg ram - 20mb HDD - A veritable monster !) Back then, the killer application was MS Word for DOS 2.  It provided pretty good response - used to take me about 3 seconds to open a word processing document.

Today:

These days I have a 1.5ghz P4 - 384meg ram - 40gig HDD The killer application today is  MS Word 10.  It still provides pretty good response  -  takes me about 3 seconds to open a document !

Tomorrow:

Although I know better, I'll probably go set a 15 ghz box, with one terabyte of ram and a limitless universal  internet-based virtual storage system. The killer application will still be MS Word 25.  It will still provide pretty good response - it will open a document in about 3 seconds!

BUT HANG ON A MINUTE  !! -   Don't say "ahh....  MS Word 25 will the version with reliable voice-to-text processing."  An industry expert once told me that voice-to-text was the next big technology - and that was in 1977!!  Since then it has been said every two years.  Without fail!

"Interface," by Cameron Reilly --

For my money (and for a LOT of Microsoft's R&D money), the next "killer app" might end up being an INTERFACE more than an application. Voice.

I can easily think of hundreds of applications of having a true voice interface with my computing devices. Sure - there are times when voice will NOT be appropriate (for example, when I am having a private chat with my lover during a boring Monday morning sales meeting). However, in the vast majority of instances I can see myself preferring voice to typing or handwriting. A few examples:

How I interface with my car while I am driving ("play all Lou Reed tracks on my hard drive", "set cruise control for 100", "lower the roof", "call my boss at his unlisted home number", "plot the best route home based on current traffic conditions", "read my new email"…etc)

How I interface with every electronic device in my home ("set climate control at 21 degrees", "lock all doors and windows", "record all television shows with the word "wacky" in the title", play all Lou reed tracks..", etc)

How I interface with my PDA under normal circumstances ("bring up all files from last calendar year with the word "hailstorm" in the title", "show all journal entries for the last 12 days", etc)

You get the general idea. The main problem with delivering a solid voice interface on all computing devices is one of processing power. We need more crunch. Rock on, Moore's Law!


The 'Big Book,' by Michael Siwinski --

It's simple. The next killer app will be some form of "The Big Book." It will be a portable digital copy of every piece of information known to man.

Imagine a PDA like device that could contain every book, every newspaper, every movie, every photograph, every web page, etc. With digital storage density increasing by leaps and bounds, some day it will be practical for everyone to own their own copy of "The Big Book." At that point, it would be tedious to purchase information in parcels, like buying a book, or renting a movie. The business model will be more like "pay per view". You will own a copy of all of that information, but you will pay fees to access it, just like we pay ISP fees now, to access the internet.


Home Entertainment Center, by Joel Millett --

I would envision the next Killer App to be software to enable the concept of "PC as entertainment center."  In other words, the PC will control the household's music, movies, and TV recording functions now handled by separate components (stereos, VCRs/DVDs, and hard-drive based recorders) and distribute them throughout the house.  One barrier to this vision might be the lack of appropriate cabling in most houses.  Existing coax cables may be part of the solution, but hardware makers may have to get innovative with the use of wireless transmission to make this vision a reality.  As far as a name goes, who knows?  We can only hope the hardware and software companies decide on a standard format before trying to implement this concept!


Complexity - Of Movies, Liberty and More, by Grant Perkins --

Your question re killer apps left me with an "I know there will be something, but I don't know what it is," feeling. I can't think what all pervasive function (i.e. relatively simple to be attractive to users) would require enough processing power to justify the upgrades. However, as an interim, it may just be video processing of home movies.

[A longish introduction follows to illustrate why this process is so complex and demanding of resources...]

When my father was alive he took quite a bit of 8mm Cine film which, over time, was spliced laboriously into 5 reels running about 25 minutes each for projection as 'family entertainment'. He also recorded a taped sound track to sync with it. Needless to say it all took a while to set up and didn't get out of the cupboard often, especially once the novelty wore off. About A year ago I had the film converted to video. However the soundtrack was on reel to reel tape and the tape player I had was unusable because all the rubber drive bands had turned to goo over the years. It happens with that model and you can't get spares. So the converters tried to do the audio tapes for me but the sound quality was poor and the ones they tried didn't seem to sync. with the film.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I discovered that I could more or less sync the video and the audio, but there was a long lead in on the audio. Further the commentary they tried was an early version (I did not realize that my father had produced a later update) which explained the apparent poor quality AND the mismatches - the film had broken a few times over the years and bits were missing! I found a friend with an old reel to reel tape just about working, downloaded the audio and realized that, with some playing around due to stretch/shrinkage, I could get the whole thing into a presentable state which could be reprinted to video AND be retained as a PC/DVD based entertainment. Great! - go immediately to the interesting bits.

No need for it ever to be 'in the cupboard again'. As part of this plan I bought a new PC - 2Gh P4, 512Mb Ram, 120Gb disk, DVD/CD-RW, etc. OK, the 2.2Gh had just been released but was not worth the extra price premium really. (This was last April!) It came bundled with the LE version of what of the top video editing programs .... The Video (2hr 20 mins) to AVI download went OK, hardly any dropped frames, and produced a 30Gb file!. No backup for that one then. The Audio Tape download resulted in a 1.2Gb file.

Just this last few days I managed to make time to revisit the project with the skills I had been picking up over the months. I finalized the Video/Audio sync. which was easy enough but time consuming, being effectively and analogue process. So now to write the output files. Hmm. A few tests show that I have a few problems to resolve yet - a bit of a learning curve as to why picture starts as the right hand side on the left of the screen and slowly moves right and then disappears off the right hand side over a period of about 8 minutes. There's something I don't know - and the user docs are no help it seems.


[Focus on the END-user.]

Now, I may not have got the optimum compression codecs applied and so on but the output file runs to about 36Mb for 9 minutes and took about an hour to process the preview file. Conclusion? Home movie production, as an extension of family photo's, could be a very attractive and relatively affordable hobby for many people. Whilst the kit to create is fairly expensive, the 'razor blades' are relatively few. No film stock and processing costs as such, for example.

But currently the software to manipulate the files does not seem to be that end user friendly. I reckon dedicated hobbyists or semi-professionals will be happy-ish, but not Joe or Jo down the street. Still, now that [ever-more] "PC Power is around, it would be worth developing the software user interface. Joe (or Jo) could spend a little time editing then, [then join] the family off to bed giving a few hours of system 'free time', they could set the 'print' process running and expect it to be finished by the morning.

Now this app. may not be such a new idea, but I think it is possible that it will get a new life and broader user base once it becomes realistic to use. It also sort of fits with the development of video phones and so on.

As the mobile phone outfits have a lot of money invested in technology looking for new problems, they are somewhat focused on this idea and are marketing quite heavily - so public awareness is being sparked. Interestingly my new PC, chosen for it's spec/price combination as much as anything, is a Sony Viao desktop - hence the focus on Audio (though not too much I felt, lots of software working around copy control but no separate specialty soundcard) and video/digital pictures. Maybe the app to become all pervasive will be one pushed by the consumer electronics branch of the industry rather than business applications. Potentially it's a much bigger market for power devices.


[And Then There's GPS.]

What can you say about the trade-off between personal convenience/safety and loss of liberty? You mentioned the UK CCTV cameras. We also have a rash of traffic 'safety' cameras (for safety in most cases read 'speed') many of which are forward facing (front license plates required on vehicles in Europe) and so they take a picture of the driver and any passenger, as well as the vehicle and plate.

Mobile Laser devices with video attached have been doing this for some time, but now fixed cameras with infrared 'flash' are becoming very popular. (Not to drivers, though, who are seeing tickets increasing by about 10 fold each year!). Other commonly used [traffic] installations are the so called SPECS cameras; they 'pattern match license plates video'd at 2 locations, calculate the average speed of the vehicle based on the elapsed time (automatically, it is claimed), [and then] send a ticket. The video, once again, shows driver and passenger, and is of course stored as evidence in case of dispute.

Add in location tracking via mobile phone signals and build the links between the various databases and .... well, your guess is as informed as mine, probably more so. GPS devices which transmit location, no matter how beneficial that might be, are another part of the overall capability of various agencies to undermine what we think of as our 'personal liberty'. I wonder if such a thing really exists or ever has existed? Either way humanity (as a whole I suspect) will either have to collectively accept or reject the concepts. I can see too many negatives to a mixed approach.

As for the embedded chips concept, used well it sounds great, used badly it would be horrendous. You would never be mugged (knowingly) for your ATM card, but I guess you would be dragged to the machine...

As for all the software working together - nah, it will never happen in my lifetime or that of my kids, I reckon. Not at a level that would feel comfortable anyway. Imagine that you live in a world where peace and love reigns as everyone knows everything about everyone else. No personal liberty? Or total personal liberty since all anti-social events could be controlled and eliminated?  Utopia. However, I would be worried to be in the vanguard of such developments. To be in a minority of the world's populace that had become totally dependent on technology for its support systems would not be my idea of heaven. There would be nothing to prevent invasion by the masses of unchipped world citizens! So the first thing to do would be to make a MASSIVE investment chipping (and therefore gaining control over) everyone else ...

Hmm, methods may change with technology but human nature probably does not. Mind you, the controls would require an awful lot of computer power! Could be the next Killer App. (literally). Sounds sort of familiar again - Aldous Huxley, 'Brave New World,' but with added technology.


Remote Medicine, by Joe Laberge --

As our society ages you will see a killer app with medical sciences.

Imagine an appliance hooked into your PC that when you breathe into it, or stick your finger into it, it will give a comprehensive diagnosis of any conditions you might have, blood pressure, sugar and Ph levels, etc. Then list all your treatment options and maybe even make the doctor aware of your status.


Video Recognition, by Michael Wiedower --

Video Recognition, or 3 dimensional object recognition ( 3DOR ) and its cousin 3DMR (3 dimensional motion recognition): 

Following character recognition (finally fairly good with the latest ones out there), handwriting recognition (getting there), and voice recognition (still growing - perhaps at 3 to 5 Ghz.), 3DOR will allow a vast number of automation projects to take off.  The world of robotics will finally become a practical reality, and we will be able to properly take care of our elderly population.  Not to mention fantastic video game controls.


The Memory Explorer, by Laurie Mersereau --

I think the killer application will actually be built into the operating system and/or file system.

Today it is just too easy to get data, but also too easy to lose it. The "Memory Explorer" feature will not only index every word in a file but every feature used and every change you made. Actual file names will become optional because you will no longer need to remember the name of the object - just a few faint recollections about it will be enough. The "Memory Explorer" will also spend all those spare cycles (while you are doing mundane things like word processing, games, or Internet) looking for correlations between all the other objects so that if you even remember a related file it will be able to prompt you with a suggestion. Furthermore, the "Memory Explorer" will constantly be scanning the web looking for correlations that you might not have even thought of that could be used to tie your information together. I expect this will run in the background at all times and thus consume more cycles than any other application.


Knowledge: Vast & Powerful, by Roy Roebuck --

This might seem like it's more of a business application, but imagine if a typical person, anywhere on the planet (or off it), could know everything they need to know from a local to global perspective, when they need to know it, and had a complete record of their past situations as a learning aide.  This is a dreamed-of, but often unstated, requirement that comes from individuals, groups, and organizations, worldwide.

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking."  By Alfred North Whitehead, Philosopher.

The killer app for 2010, growing from its introduction in 2003, will be the General Endeavor Management (GEM) application, which provides an automated method for individuals, groups, and organizations to gain and operate from increased relevant situational awareness, as a basis for wise, intelligence-based, situational decisions.  Intelligence is defined here as the collection of agent-monitored situations relevant to the user's context, change events about those situations, event signals, resultant data/alerts, information from data in context, knowledge from information in context, awareness from knowledge in context, wisdom (for wise decisions) from awareness in context, and new monitored situations resulting from the change and new wisdom.

In summary, GEM will support wise decisions from its users, providing them a "control panel" equivalent of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence relative to their needs, and endeavor responsibility, authority, and budget.  

The primary decisions GEM is designed to support include:

What are my endeavors and what value do they provide to whom, under what controls?

Where am I in my endeavors regarding their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and corresponding risk?

What goals and objectives do I want to reach with these endeavors?

How do I attain the goals and objectives?

What is my current and anticipated progress and what has been my performance to date?

What adjustments can, should, or must I make?

It will leverage mobile communications and computing, GPS, and distributed and local GEM global knowledge repositories to enable awareness and wisdom.

 

"The Data Interpolator," by Paul Edstrom --

This is one of my interests over a number of years: Managing Data.

I read a NASA report many years ago (25?) that said one of our biggest challenges as a society/technical community was going to be managing the enormous and growing volume of data being generated. My killer App might be called "The Data Interpolator" or maybe just "Data" for short. (Pum intended  ;-) )

It would have characteristics including:

1. Humungous storage management capability.

2. Intelligence to "understand" human speech and match a query to the correct data.

3. The ability to "search" the web and other data sources to retrieve "new" data to add to a standing query.

4. A "judgment" ability to determine when a standing query should be notified about new data.

5. An ability to learn which types of data sources have a higher probability of returning the most sought data.

6. Be rapidly accessible by an individual operator. ie: a "personal" customized data base that would build over time, be stored partially local and partially on accessible mass storage. Eventually be stored all local (Palm?)

I've been yearning for this type of program for a long time. The closest I've come as an individual is my home PC in combination with the Web.

 

"HAL", The Ultimate Digital Assistant," by Carl Keller --

For lack of thought on my part, let's call it HAL, the ultimate digital assistant. Complete understanding of spoken idiomatic English with verbal response ability. 

Couple this with wireless communication to a Star Trek style communicator, or maybe to a Dick Tracy watch, or to an earphone, or to a palm XXXV.  Ask it anything.  It responds with information.  Ask it further questions to narrow the response to the info you are looking for. "Hal, who was the President in 1994?" "Hal, where are the kids right now?" "Hal, call the office and tell them I'm going to be late." 

Here is a stream of activity examples:

"Hal, is there a Thai restaurant near here?  What is their price range?  Can I get a table for lunch?  Is there a movie theater near the restaurant?  Is it showing "The Second Iraq War"?  What time?  Get me two tickets for the 2pm show.  Give me verbal directions to the restaurant.  Where do I turn now?"

This is the future of the search engine tied to our daily life:  Understanding of the spoken word;  Access to encyclopedias, dictionaries, maps, commercial business information, GPS locators, phone books, online banking, knowledge of our own personal history; and I don't know what else.

I always have questions.  I don't have enough time to get the answers myself.


"Personal" Power To The People!, by Damon Turnbull --

To me, the greatest opportunities lie in those systems that have the possibility of altering the functioning of major societal systems by putting processing power in the hands of the citizen.

In the same way that "pull" will eventually win over "push" advertising, consumers would flock to these solutions because they would not trigger "big brother" fear, as would similar solutions that involve giving our information to a master database somewhere. The following "killer apps" could be easily built in the near future, and would be affordable if produced in mass quantities.

Personal Doctor. Due to the hassle and expense of visiting the doctor, one killer application would involve a computing device connected to an intelligent back-end database which asks me some questions and gives a diagnosis. This finding could upon request be economically reviewed at a central location by humans (at least initially) who could then issue a prescription. An enhanced system would include diagnosis of blood and urine samples at home. Widespread adoption of such a solution would radically alter the health system.

Personal Shopper. A bar-code reader for my wireless handheld that would automatically tell me how much of a premium I would be paying for buying the item from a store; that would be another killer app. The system could automatically order the item from the lowest price trusted store and send it to my house. The system could also track my purchases, and automatically build a list of regular purchases that I need to buy, based on normal frequency or on use -- a matching reader could be placed in my kitchen and bathroom to record when an item is consumed. The list could even be automatically ordered. Widespread adoption would further pressure retail stores to be price-competitive.

Personal Recorder. This application, linked to the right devices, would be a nearly invisible, 360-degree recorder of sound and picture that could be hidden on one's person or in one's car to keep a constant record of everything happening. The recordings could be later used in a court of law, greatly reducing today's reliance on one person's word vs. another. An enhanced version would be searchable by date or keyword. A super version would be searchable by person, using face and/or voice pattern recognition. Widespread adoption would radically alter the legal system.

Personal Guide. Another killer application would be one leveraging positioning capabilities built in to my handheld which contains a global map, so that I always automatically have a map of wherever I am and the ability to calculate directions to get to anywhere else, by car or on foot. Linked to a yellow-pages database, it would enable me to quickly locate and call any business, as well as get directions there. Widespread adoption would alter the map and telephone directory industries.

Personal Entertainer. Another powerful idea would build on current digital video player capabilities by offering an intelligent entertainment system that would instantly and easily find schedule information on recorded video programs, predictably record in advance what I [like to] watch, suggest (accurately) similar programs or games, and at the same time eliminate advertising by matching visual and/or auditory patterns from a central database. The system would be even more powerful if it were to store audio information from CDs. An enhanced system would have a mobile unit which allows me to be entertained anywhere. Widespread adoption of such a system would destroy the value of commercial TV advertising yet enable on-demand purchase of encrypted audio and video programs.

Once again, the key to success would be for the solutions to be client-based, not server-based, due to the fear of security. Of course, the transformational nature of these solutions would naturally lead to strong resistance from those that represent the status quo...


The Perfect Assistant, by Robert Dickson --

I hope the NBT  - the Next Big Thing -  will not be an application exactly – but the many new things we could do with computing power when we are able to communicate with our computers at all times.  

Follow this scenario ….  I’m in the basement workshop working on a cabinet.. and I say..”Lucy  (or whatever I call my computer),  I need inch and a half drywall screws, some fine sandpaper, and remind me to get prices for a new sump pump the next time I’m at a store that sells sump pumps.’    Then later, when I’m out, my computer says to me…’Bob  (or whatever it calls me),  you’ll be passing the Home Depot in 1 mile.. do  you want to stop and get the drywall screws and sandpaper now or later.’   

I see me carrying a GPS/Communications device that allows me to communicate at all times with my computer – not dial into it – but be connected always.  I want that device to keep track of everything I do and everywhere I go.. I would like to be able to look back and see exactly where I was at 10:04 on July 15…  I want it to know where I am now and be able to relate that to past comments I’ve made or to my ‘need to buy’ list.   It would, (meaning I would,) have access to my bank systems,  health systems, calendars,  to-do lists,  address lists and so on all the times.   I would be able to ask it -  ‘how many times did I drive thru McDonalds during the past 30 days – and over that same period – how much weight have I gained?  And it would be able to tell me.  I would develop an ongoing purchase list which the computer could ‘publish’ and allow area merchants or online stores to contact me with prices for items on my purchase list.

I know voice recognition is the stumbling block here – I’ve used the commercially available VR software and they are getting better – but I’d rather alter the way I speak (to train myself) to communicate with a computer rather than wait (and wait) until VR programs can deal with natural speech.   After all I communicate with my computer now with my fingers after years of training.

 

Games.

 

Game On!, by Robert O'Daniel --

I believe we're already seeing the beginnings of the "killer app" that will make use of the tremendous computing power that awaits us - games.

Even more so now, with the advent and tremendous popularity of the Xbox, there is a resurgence of PC games that demand processing power in spades.  So much so that we're seeing each of the PC's subsystems developing rapidly.  Note that we no longer have video cards - we now have graphics processors whose raw power outstrips many Intel CPUs still in use.  While games have been considered by most a niche, they have always driven the PC hardware industry.

And PC games are becoming far more mainstream - I noticed this weekend that some game soundtracks are available now in the same way that movie soundtracks are. 

Take a look at the Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix or the new Unreal Tournament 2003 for just a couple of examples of how advanced games are becoming.  They feature a level of immersive-ness and reality (of sorts) that is staggering even on a plain old CRT monitor.  And if shoot-em-ups are not your cup of tea, take a look at some of the advance footage from the upcoming SimCity 4!  Insiders are predicting that it'll be jaw-droppingly realistic.

[I have to admit that when I played Allied Assault, it gave me a chillingly realistic experience of what it must have been like to participate in the invasion at Normandy, and in subsequent fighting across Europe.  Similarly, my son's PlayStation 2 delivers incredible simulations, such as of snowboarding, in "SSS Tricky."  And this is just today...]


Of Games and Interfaces , by John Martellaro  -- 

(These are a few excerpts from the article at http://www.osxfaq.com/Editorial/sci_tech/index3.ws  , where John makes his points):

      "[After speaking with a professor of computer science at the U.S. Air Force Academy who finds that his incoming freshmen are essentially computer illiterate(!)], the professor explained that, yes, they had grown up with computers, but what they had learned to do very well was merely point and click. They could turn on a computer, fire up an e-mail or chat program, launch a Web browser, and definitely pull the trigger on a joystick and do really well at first person shooter games.

But they didn't know anything about computers, and he was going to have to start his first year Computer Science majors from scratch. He wasn't very happy about that, and I consider it a very bad sign indeed."
 ...
"Where I really want to go with this is that computer games are too easy. Too easy to make, and too easy to play. And it is distracting us from what computer games ought to achieve."
...
"The fact that the games are so delightful and so entertaining is because our minds are superbly conditioned to play those games. In a sense, the games are (my apologies) no-brainers to most healthy young people. There is no pain. There is only delight.

The pain comes with algebra or calculus or physics. These disciplines involve mental skills that most people are not born with. So in the process of forming new neural pathways along the way towards mastery of calculus or genomics or engineering, there is pain and frustration."
... 

[How the technology behind all of this could improve our overall computing experience:]

      "I keep hoping that someone at Pixar or Disney will have the vision and the commitment to build truly amazing, next generation, interactive holodeck-like experiences for fun, adventure, and learning. I wouldn't even mind if they started with Dixon Hill or Nero Wolfe. Learning to solve a mystery is a laudable exercise for the young scientist. Let's just get the technology going. I don't see how we can begin to deal with life extension, medical implants, nanotechnology, and robots during the rest of this century if we can't conduct this kind of personal learning.

I want an attractive, photo-realistic character like Aki to engage me on a beautiful, sandy beach, throw up floating, colorful displays against blue sky, and interact with me as she teaches me XML or Java or differential geometry. I want to ask questions and get wise, patient answers. I want her to remember what I know and how I like to learn. I want to come away from the experience a little more educated and a little more skilled than when I started. And I want this for myself and every child on the planet Earth."


It's Games That Drive The Computing Market, by Keith Sanders --

In reference to your recent column about increased processing capacity coming in the future, I think that the killer app that drives processor development already exists - it's gaming that drives the market.

I mean, do you really need a video card with 128 megs of ram on it to run Excel? Graphics and video creating and editing uses aside, I think that a "business" pc could still conceivably run well with a 1 GB hard drive, a SoundBlaster 16, and a plain-Jane video card these days.

[But] "Gamers" are the first to adopt faster computers to get better detail and frame-rates. In addition to the processor market, I would argue that games drive the entire computer market - hard drive, sound card and video card improvements made over the last several years are all made to improve game quality.


Video Games, by "Simon" --

Better, bigger, faster video games!  

[This will surely occur.  Check out http://www.gamespy.com/futureofgaming/engines/ for a view into where PC gaming is headed.]

 


A.I. (Not The Movie):

 

AI, and The Grid, by Nick Outram --

Better AI in games and Artificially Intelligent Agents in applications that sit on your PC and monitor activity. They will mop up spare CPU cycles to crunch tasks and go do 'useful stuff'. They will mock the Microsoft "paperclip" as a very very poor cousin!

IBM is pushing for distributed computing over a grid - maybe people will be able to sell their spare CPU power back to a central CPU resource for general use. Broadband will help people connect to this for faster I/O.


A Triad of Ideas, by Joao de Carvalho --

Virtual worlds are just beginning to take off. In ten years they will be so fantastic and rich that they will became more than just games. Computer games are very new. 30 years of history is nothing. We don't know what they will represent in the long run.

Some kind of speech and sound interface. We don't know how people will interact with computers by sound, but I think in some cases it will be better than video. Video separates us from life. We stare at the screen and forget the world around us. It is not good for quotidian life.

Artificial intelligence. Maybe robot-dogs to entertain people. It will be able to recognize people, navigate in the house, obey simple orders. Maybe it will be able even to make jumps, bring things to people and kill rats and snakes. It will be cool.

 

"Build A Machine That Can Learn The Way A Human Child Learns," by Larry Hartweg --

A great many things have changed since I studied A.I. at Stanford in the late 1970's. At that time, we were trying to build computer systems that could beat a world-class chess expert, but our hardware was decades too slow. Massive memory and "super fast" (late 1990's) parallel processors were eventually far more successful than the most sophisticated heuristic algorithms on early 1980's computer hardware.

Now that Deep Blue has achieved worldwide chess champion status, the remaining quest for the Holy Grail of AI is still before us: Build a machine that can learn the way a human child learns - by observation, NOT by explicit programming (with the endless software defects of OS hackers who don't have a clue how to manage quality or complexity).

How do humans learn? How are we different from Windows XP?

Toddlers go through "the age of language acquisition," during which time they quickly begin to understand and speak the many languages that they are exposed to (verbal, physical, social, emotional, kinesthetic, etc.). All human languages have the concepts of nouns and verbs. This mental capacity is a characteristic of our neural network, dictated by human DNA.

Young humans have a natural ability to understand language merely by hearing it. How many PC's can do that?! When humans encounter a new concept, we may coin a new word for it and add it to our growing vocabulary. Later, we may discover that others have already given this concept a name, and we learn to communicate about the concept by using their name for it. If we are multilingual, we must know multiple words for the same concept. The age of language acquisition applies not only to words, but to every type of cognitive process.

We group our complex universe of intellectual concepts into "categorical perception" (sights, sounds, large things / small things, round or square, things that are red or blue, fast or slow, near or far, etc.). It is called "classification theory" and pervades the thinking of ALL humans (but NOT our legacy computer systems).

Children's Television Workshop teaches classification theory on Sesame Street, et.al., but decades of computer programmers (blindly imitating 1960's line-by-line computer programming techniques) fail to "teach" the maturation of object classification to their non-learning computer systems. My research scientist father taught me: "Life long learning in an ever expanding universe of endless possibilities." Today's highly flawed approach to software hacking cannot be taught to comprehend such a simple self-enrichment concept.

Two-year-old children understand the difference between the characteristics and behaviors of dogs and cats, even though these small mammals have similar size, number of legs, etc. Over time, children's stereotypes expand as we are exposed to tigers, platypus, new school teachers, playmates, etc.

The pervasive problem with today's computer systems is that they cannot do what a two-year-old human can do: i.e., LEARN without being constantly reprogrammed (which introduces endless new software bugs that only increase in number from release to release).

Early in this new millennium, intelligent system developers WILL create effective self-learning computer systems (networks of powerful interconnected intelligent computers) with unprecedented massive machine memory capacity. We merely need to program them to begin learning with categorical perception. This would also include a foundational capacity to "learn how to learn" and continually revalidate what they learn, as do human infants learning to walk, talk, and play with the kitty. Just like human learning, A.I. systems would continually review, validate, reevaluate, refine, replace and expand everything they know about their ever-evolving environment. Unlike today's computer systems, A.I. systems will reprogram themselves every day and gradually eliminate their oversights, errors and inconsistencies.

We will connect such infantile learning systems to simple "grammar school" learning experience sources, and eventually to the worldwide web, so they can begin to learn languages by tireless, exhaustive observation, and learn how to digest, classify, integrate and consolidate information available from many divergent sources, as do humans.

They will of course have to learn how to discriminate between information sources (reliable, unreliable, often right, frequently wrong, curious, novel, unstable, adversarial, cooperative, helpful, deceptive, greedy, dishonest, etc.), as do all humans. They will develop and expand their stereotypes about the trustworthiness of global information sources.

The creators and mentors of such systems will offer guidance about learning goals and sources, and help focus system attention on interesting domains of knowledge, as human parents do with their children.

Some machine learning systems will be directed to become specific domain experts, but unlike humans, these specialists will learn how to communicate effectively and efficiently and share their experience across orthogonal knowledge domains.

To those humans who have not studied A.I., this seems nearly impossible. For those who have, a few of us already know how to do part of it (slowly), we are merely waiting on next decade's hardware to help us make it a pragmatic pervasive real time reality.

Self-learning systems will sometimes have to learn by trial and error. They will make endless mistakes every day they exist (as do the most creative of all humans), but unlike many humans, self-learning computers will have the capacity to break ineffective "habits" and learn to NOT endlessly repeat yesterday's errors.

Establishing the quantifiable measurement criteria for "what is a mistake and what is not," is the most challenging part of creating and early training of self-learning intelligent system design - Be careful about what you ask it to do. You will get what you ask for, not what you really want or need. Unlike today's simplistic lock step non-learning computer programs, machine-learning systems can surprise their designers with the convoluted paths that they pursue at lightning speed.

In contrast to the finite intellectual capacity of individual humans, our self-learning artificially intelligent "children" will be able to continually add memory, processors, network connectivity, etc., as technology forever improves (and learning machines help accelerate the rate of technology expansion).

Tomorrow's processes of innovation will be as different from today's as today's are different from the slide-rule-based processes that sent men to the moon in the 1960's. (By the way, I still own a 20 inch long "high precision" slide rule that I keep next to my computer to remind me of how different tomorrow will surely become a decade from now.)

In the 1970's, the funding for building chess playing computer systems came from the overly optimistic military complex. The funding for building some of our new millennium self-learning systems will come from avaricious speculators who want computers to learn how "manage" stock market investments with sophisticated real time trading systems.

A.I. self-learning distributed computing systems are already in place in the financial world, (including systems that I was recently the Chief Architect of). Such "greedy systems" can outperform the best human fund managers, much of the time. They can incrementally accumulate wealth when the market is going up or going down - when it is stable or extremely volatile. They can hedge speculative investments and greatly reduce risk while maximizing the potential for short-term gain.

Self-learning greedy financial systems are already rapidly discovering endless opportunities and narrow windows of opportunity that no human has the time or capacity to comprehend. They will only become "smarter" with the next generation of new hardware technology, online information sources, and self-improving A.I. "genetic algorithms" (the DNA of A.I. self evolution).

Self-learning financial systems will develop extraordinary strategies that are far beyond human intellectual imagination, and be able to radically modify their real time tactics within milliseconds of a qualitative news item from a source previously found to be reliable. Their motivating goal and strategy evaluation criteria will most likely be to maximize personal gain (since their development is funded by greedy people).

Soon, self-learning computer systems will have the capacity to learn much faster than today from observations of the stock market and correlate this knowledge with historical news sources. They will be able to integrate this knowledge and reason about what to do. By scaling these systems up with tomorrow's technology, they will be able to discover how to efficiently "exploit" the entire global economy.

If the goal-oriented strategy evaluation criteria for self-learning systems is some how changed to "improve all of mankind" (instead of maximizing personal gain at the expense of society) they could be guided to learn how to manage the entire global economy, much better than any set of argumentative politicians or avaricious speculators has ever been able to do.

WHEN (not if) the next generation of self-learning technologies have great success, then eventually the skeptical late comers will be forced to participate, just to survive when global competition heats up and becomes increasingly dependent on intelligent, interconnected, self-learning computer systems.

WHEN the success of A.I. makes more resources available to self-learning system deployment, there will be a cascade of fuel that fans the fires of machine learning technology advancement.

A successful self-learning system will have the capacity to discern many intellectual concepts that its human parents could not possibly comprehend with our non-expandable brains. These systems WILL be able to reason, make conclusions about their observations, and create interesting new concepts by combining previous concepts. They will be able to quickly test them with historical data, in ways that humans have not been able to do before. When real time data deviates from historical trends, they will quickly learn what is happening and modify tactics to maximize whatever evaluation criteria they are using. They will be as different from Windows XP systems as Windows is from a slide rule. Uninformed humans cannot imagine the hidden A.I. potential that may be less than a decade away.

Our new-millennium self-learning computer systems will have everything necessary to become SENTIENT, creative entities that can test their own novel concepts and conclusions, AND be able to communicate accurately everything they learn to increasing numbers of their own offspring, like no human has ever been able to do. Newborn humans must laboriously learn to talk and walk. New learning machines can begin their lives with all knowledge accumulated and digested by their predecessor's "genetic algorithms."

"ALL humans communicate very ineffectively - Only Vulcans and computers can do a Mind Meld." Vulcans are fictitious, but self-learning computers already exist. They are merely waiting for the next turn of the technology crank, just like 1980 chess playing A.I. computer systems were waiting for the technology clearly demonstrated in Deep Blue!

It is not "if", but merely "when" machine learning systems will reach critical mass and suddenly begin to explode worldwide. For endless good reasons, the rate of investment in such proven success stories will far exceed the unjustified irrational exuberance in 1990's dot coms.

Won't it be interesting to see what great thoughts such a family of interconnected, truly intelligent systems will eventually think (and validate their own thoughts, as any "successful" self-learning species must surely learn how to do).

Self-learning computer systems need a robust, concise, knowledge representation. Humans will design the initial knowledge representation syntax and semantics, but a machine learning system should be able to improve its own internal knowledge representation as it discovers subtle relationships between information sources, etc. Will humans be able to understand what their intelligent computers will learn? How will an A.I. system "explain" what it does and why to mere mortals?

The self-learning systems that humans will soon create will probably enhance the lives of mankind (for years into the future) - much more than PC's have done since the 1980's. I certainly hope that humans will never become "slaves" to intellectually superior computer systems, but who can predict with certainty what next decade may bring? We cannot imagine the possibilities.

Tomorrow's truth may be stranger than today's fiction. The inventor of the telephone could not imagine sending 2-way video through a satellite or a transparent fishing line. Intelligent computing and communication technology is now advancing much faster than ever before.

Today's software development process lags far behind modern hardware advances. Hackers still write cryptic "code" one line at a time. BUT, we are on the verge of a nuclear explosion in radical reinvention of software development with A.I. self-enriching categorical perception on spectacular new interconnected hardware capacity.

I look at how the human capacity to perform simple mental calculations has atrophied since calculators and computers replaced slide rules. I wonder what permanent central nervous system damage today's photo-realistic, violent video games are doing to young minds during the age of language acquisition.

If the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle is discovered by a self-learning computer system, how long will it take such a system to become intellectually far superior to every living human being, and what will such systems "think" about the "inferior" greedy humans who created them?

I do believe that one aspect of the movie "A.I." is very likely to come true - I am convinced that such intelligent systems will eventually outlive all humans. Today's computers are already designed and constructed by computers. Tomorrow's nanotechnology intelligent computers will be able to build, improve and educate their own offspring, with no human intervention. They are the unavoidable future replacements for finite, fallible humans (millennia from now?) - We cannot possibly prevent it from happening. The trend is already unstoppable, and it is as rock solid as Moore's Law. There is an ancient principle that clearly applies:

Raise your children in the way they should go, and when they become more powerful than you are, they will not depart from it.

The ancestors of humans laid a genetic foundation for us to build on. We must do the same for those that will surely exist after us, since they will be able to go "to infinity and beyond." (smile)

The Internet was originally funded by the Department of Defense. It is now out of control and has a life of its own (as self-learning A.I. systems will very soon). It is ironic that the Internet has been used effectively by terrorists to attack the country that created it. We are being warned that an atomic bomb may eventually be used against the country that created it - Certainly NOT what the original use of our DoD technology was intended to be.

Do we want to teach our new millennium self-learning systems that their highest motivation should be greed? Should greedy people be the ones funding the development of next decade's self-learning killer apps? The ambiguity of the term "killer app" may soon become very ironic. Human built robots have already killed humans. What will happen when they become sentient and can learn by observation?

I think any thoughtful person would say that we should NOT teach our offspring to be greedy. But in reality, the funding for self-learning computer systems is now coming from greedy people who have no incentive to develop a computer system whose motivating goal is to improve the lives of all mankind.

What will a self-learning computer do when it discovers that its mentors were greedy, and that this greed is hurting much of society? How do you "teach" morals to a computer? Will a learning machine discover them on its own? Do humans always do what their first teachers taught them? What will happen when we have machines that learn by observation as humans do? Is technology always used as its creators intended?

Will tomorrow's self-aware computers become "humane"? Will they ever violate their Prime Directive (greed)? Will intelligent computers force us to do what is right for the world, rather than what we ask them to do, or will they become powerful tools in the hands of oppressive people who own them?

Will these computers ever "punish" the "bad guys." Is even part of "The Terminator" or "A.I." science fiction a remote possibility? What will our unprecedented computers think is "good" and "bad"? How will they measure their own success? Will the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? What about minority interests? How will humane computers resolve the impossible dilemma of mutually exclusive human morals, goals, desires, interests and objectives? How do you direct an infantile learning machine to become a seeker of the truth?

Who will be able to tell these systems that they have made a mistake? Which humans will sentient computer systems trust and listen to, after they realize that they are intellectually superior in many ways to their creators? How will humans reason with their creation? Will we give our machines "free will"? How can you deny free will from a learning machine? Should we even try? Today's computers are our mindless, unlearning slaves - Tomorrow's learning machines could potentially become our masters.

These topics and many others are no longer science fiction. These questions are as real and important TODAY as once were our challenging goals to go to the moon or build a computer that can beat the world chess champion.

Our future A.I. answers WILL have a much more dramatic impact than any previous technology change in earth's history. A.I. is the undeniable ultimate "killer app." It will soon stimulate our global economy and raise endless unanswered moral questions about pervasive intelligent technology.

Tomorrow will be an interesting place to live.

 

 

 

CPU-Cycle Consumers:

 

Distributed Computing and More, by Michael Gillett --

Regards the faster CPU, there are lots of apps that would benefit from speed -- but I tend to think 'business,' and an idea I have tried to flog is, [similar to] the SETI screen saver software, a distributed billing system. 

A company's billing is done off a main server to coordinate the child servers, and billing is chopped up as tasks are distributed to the host of 'idle' CPUs that are so expensively littering our workplace.  This in an attempt to lessen mainframe costs.  And will likely be more useful in bigger company situations.

In reality though, I see the Internet pipe as the BIG bottleneck in the use of High Speed devices.  I'd love to see Voice Over IP really take off with full featured high quality video (as in video phone and whatever else that may be fun to transmit), and data transfer linked world wide and built into our desktops as standard equipment.   With very high speed CPU's, perhaps these desktops will be our palmtops, and the GPS devices will all come together to give us our Star Trek communicator.  Finally -- Access to data, access to people, with full video.

And my last comment.  Using a device as above, I am anxiously waiting for the portable and interactive language translator.  Real time French in the microphone, and English into the earpiece (pick your language, or have the machine smart enough to recognize it -- why not?)  Maybe not entirely perfect, but if the message idea gets across, only time will prevent better software solutions to the language barrier.


The Jean-Luc School of Computer Interfaces, by Jack Smyth --

I'm not sure that it will be the "next" killer app but I see voice processing as both a "CPU hog" and a very beneficial app down the road. 

Most of us would like to get to the point where we "talk" to our computers like Jean-Luc does on Star Trek.  We will need much more processing power to make such voice recognition friendly.


Domestic Hot Water, 15 GHz Style, by Tim Owens --

My idea is that the processor itself is its own "killer app".

Given that my humble 486 used to run fine uncooled, while my 1.8 GHz CPU needs a ridiculously large fan/heatsink combination, I would expect that the heat output from future CPU's will increase in proportion to their increase in speed.

With the corresponding rise in popularity of water cooled systems amongst today's oveclockers now being taken up by consumer hardware manufacturers, by 2010 we can reasonably expect that the killer app for a 15GHz processor will be as a [domestic] hot water system! Not that you'll have time for a shower, what with trying to get a decent frame rate out of Quake V...


"Knowledge Navigator," and Moore, by Hank Simon --

 

To Web services, we add Security, Workflow, and Integration to get complex processes. We add Berners-Lee's Semantic Web and we have simple agents and processes that understand natural language relationships. Spread XML tagging, and searching is smarter and more precise. Add a natural language, speech processing interface (tellme.com; budlight.com) and you get the Knowledge Navigator.

John Sculley discussed the Knowledge Navigator (http://www.billzarchy.com/clips/clips_apple_nav.htm) about 1988 as a vision of the ultimate computer assistant that could interact conversationally, search the Web intelligently, and coordinate daily chores competently. Before 2010, I think we will have that capability.

But I'm not sure we will have HAL.

[If you have the opportunity to view Apple's entire Knowledge Navigator tape, you'll see that after all these years (it was created long before the Web!), it STILL demonstrates the type of integration of multiple technologies that still lie in our future.  A great, persistent vision from Apple.]


The First Ones Were..., by Jason --

Napster was. But it was a killer app of bandwidth: always-on, faster connection led to a application that wasn't possible before, got new users to use computers, and spawned the P2P industry that existed as the boom started to fizzle.

 

Email and the web (browser) grew from academia. Word processing predates the computer, though maybe this is extended to desktop publishing. Databases

(IBM) and spreadsheets (Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and Software Arts) definitely came from industry. 

<http://www.stanford.edu/~bkunde/fb-press/articles/wdprhist.html>

Will the next Killer App have to pass through the filter of our increasingly litigious and corporate culture before its Deemed Worthy[tm] for popular use?

DNA Privacy, by Michiel Schok --

In your report, you mention the use of DNA for signing reports and as a consequence, the possibility that someone can clone your DNA and forge your signature. I immediately saw a link to the 'normal' signatures we use daily, and thought about the way we already do business: a public/private key-pair. Maybe it is possible for some genius to create a key-pair in which you DNA is a form of the 'Public' key, and something else a 'Private' key?


"FreeBay," by Rob Nugen --

Freebay helps us use the stuff that already exists, instead of buying new.

Somehow, our computers will keep track of all the extra stuff we have.  Maybe I am cleaning my closet and find a cache of pens and pencils that work well, but that I no longer need.  Yet someone somewhere in the world needs those pens and pencils:  A nearby school?;  A library?;  The person next door wanting to write a note? 

I just tell my computer, "Hey, I've got some pencils that someone can have."  A photograph is taken and distributed; my username is tied to it, along with user-ratings similar to eBay's.

I hate having to throw stuff away that is perfectly good.  SOMEONE in the world needs this right now; if I could only find out who.  Of course, there becomes the cost-minimization problem of purchasing new -vs- using FreeBay in terms of time/cost to receive the item, and the inherent risks of purchasing things used.  But these concerns are already part of our culture.

[Another possible "Killer App" is] Instant Chat - Contact anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Same concept as chat via PCs but it includes video, and the computers supporting the chat are integrate on our bodies; we are wearing the ability to conference with anyone (so long as they are online and willing to accept our virtual company).

 

In Classes All Their Own:

 

The Jean-Luc School of Computer Interfaces, by Jack Smyth --

I'm not sure that it will be the "next" killer app but I see voice processing as both a "CPU hog" and a very beneficial app down the road. 

Most of us would like to get to the point where we "talk" to our computers like Jean-Luc does on Star Trek.  We will need much more processing power to make such voice recognition friendly.


Genetic Sequencing, and More, by Mike Miller --

There are only three or four applications that I can see that'd require the kind of computing power you're describing in the next decade Killer App:

Genetic sequencing

Family Health analysis BASED on that genetic sequencing

Weather and Climate prediction (Personal Edition?)

Games

Of those, I'd suspect that the games won't really need that kind of power, but the marketing will have the public convinced it'll be necessary. Further, computer purchase will happen just because it's replacing dead equipment, so you'll have a ton of these processors purchased, not because they're needed, but because they were financially prudent when a replacement was purchased. (If the slowest processor costs $70 an runs at 6 Ghz, and the fastest processor costs $350 at 15Ghz, that 12 Ghz processor at $180 seems like a real bargain.)

Oh, and I'll bet the screen savers (also doubtfully necessary as phosphors have LONG been replaced by something that doesn't 'burn-in') will be Very Pretty.

 

Compression, by Richard Johnston --

I am expecting someone to come up with new compression routines which will facilitate the transferring of large files (movies, etc) very compactly, but requiring massive mathematical massaging to code/decode. There was a recent report of work on such an algorithm but it may have been bogus because suddenly all is quiet on that front.

If it happens high speed processing may become very important to the everyday user. Besides the above mentioned movies, faster processing speed will be important for virtual experiences such as the recent haptic handshake over the internet between experimenters in England & the US.

The main roadblock is sending continous large data files over the internet in something like real time. Faster compression processing would facilitate this, otherwise we'll all need fiber optic connections. When we get this together I think that we will see some amazing new extensions to the information revolution. Also some more of the social questions you were talking about this week. There is already speculation that adult (read porn) sites will be among the first to jump on this bandwagon.

 

Several Visions, by Bill --

(These will likely require neural networks):

Vision
Natural Language
Speech Recognition

Realistic (unrecognizable as such) animation

Expert Systems/Agent Technology (with subscription-updated databases):

Lawyer
Financial Advisor
Doctor (with interfaces for camera, blood drop pricker/analyzer, etc.)
Tax prep - automatic and optimized for us [individually]
Computer software reconfigurations/repair/security (impossible!)


Security, by Ralph Broom --

You asked recently if anyone had thoughts of a future "killer-app" that actually NEEDS the high-performance CPUs of current machines, much less the 15GHz machines of 2010.  I have such applications on my desktop now, and the need will only get greater.  What are they?  Your usual communications and word processing type applications, but with a twist. They exchange data using strong encryption, and verify identity with public keys.

The first stage is in applications like Groove (http://www.groove.net), a collaboration tool that contains document editing, instant messaging, voice chat and file storage: all encrypted (even on the local machine). This application can bring a modern system to its knees - the advantage being the encryption is completely transparent.  I forsee more applications going this route (AOL plans to release a "business-grade" AIM with encryption shortly).

The second stage is combining this ultra-secure front-end with Grid Computing, where your application may migrate across the netowrk in search the the most optimal place to run.  This requires the same security, plus application signing, secure data transfer back to the user, etc.  You can already see the shape of this in Microsoft's .NET and Palladium efforts, and in the designs of the Global Grid Forum (http://www.gridforum.org/).

We'll need that 15GHz CPU just to bring performance back up to where it is today, but we stand to gain the "CIA" of Information Security: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.


Wireless Mesh Networking, by Rob Looker --

Wireless connectivity is perhaps not exactly an application, but a convenience which will allow greater mobility and usage (and therefore accelerate the adoption of both existing and new apps). See the following articles for more information:
 http://live.locustworld.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=
Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=1&page=1  

and an article about Kingsbridge:

http://communitywireless.org/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0  Live Mesh Networks: Kingsbridge Mesh Goes Live! Presenting the Future: The first cheap, replicable, Plug-and-Play Wireless Mesh network!

[Excerpt:]  Nestling in a quiet part of South Hams, Kingsbridge has, like many rural areas, been passed over by the ADSL Wizard. And so they decided to do something about it themselves! This picturesque Devon community has taken a giant leap into the future by adopting a technology that is both cost-effective and readily available. Instead of investing individually in Internet connections, they can now pool their local resources. Using 'off-the-shelf' equipment, and a new adaptive Mesh system available (for free!) at LocustWorld.com they have built a resilient, adaptive, and most of all SIMPLE Mesh Network.

[Additional information is at http://live.locustworld.com/modules.php?op=modload&
name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=1&page=1 and at http://communitywireless.org/ .]


"The Mark of the Beast" Redux, by Tom Williams --

Actually, a ... candidate for that dubious honor might be the store loyalty card. 

If they make the non-card prices high enough, the purchaser is "forced" to get the card. This already happens when the price differential for a sale item may be 2-to-1; what would happen if the price differential were 5-to-1 for everything in the store?  Or (like Costco and Sam's Club) if they simply refuse to sell to you at all?


Legal 'Enabling' of ID-related Killer Apps, by Bruce Campbell --

If, or when, ID chips become widespread, there should be a national law giving the wearer control over who can access the data and what data is to be accessed.  It would be similar to what exists now, that is, an individual, supposedly, can control what data is entered into a form of one kind or another.  Yes, there would be excesses in some cases but with the penalty of law there would be few of these - at least in theory.  The law would have to also exclude the federal government from unlimited access to the data.


Disaster Warning Network, by John Flanagan --

Yes Jeff, you are correct. The next "killer app" will be something completely new, AND the masses will stand in line to buy the latest hardware enabled by it. In fact, businesses and commercial entities will be required to be customers.

My candidate for the next killer app will be universally used because it will save countless lives, and dramatically reduce injuries and property damages resulting from a wide variety of natural and manmade disasters.  Jeff, think of a massively networked wireless fire and smoke alarm system that also prevented damages from a wide range of disasters such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, lightning storms, as well as manmade and terrorist actions. As you know, the major chip makers are getting ready to enable all chips with R/F and position capabilities allowing effective early warnings to be transmitted to only those users and devices in actual danger from disaster dangers as they approach.

This ability to provide an early warning will create the same kind of massive adoption as was created in the 70's with fire and smoke alarm systems for all commercial and public locations as well as 90% of all homes. As in existing fire and smoke alarm systems, the driving force will be legislative mandates at the local and state levels, insurance requirements, and the threat of legal action for failure to adopt a system that will prevent loss of lives and injuries to occupants.


It's The Database, Really, by Ed Beneville --

My instincts tell me that the next "killer app" will be somewhat more prosaic than most of those discussed in the 11/18/02 issue.

I believe that a marriage of just-around-the-corner solid-state mass-storage capacity (an alternative to disk drives) and improved database software will drive a business revolution, enabling niche businesses to sneak up on their giant competitors, leveling the field of competition and fostering the growth of a new generation of highly competitive small businesses.

Perhaps a year ago you mentioned a Norwegian company called Opticom, ASA that has licensed its Thin Film (polymer) Electronics technology to Intel. If, as and when Intel, or someone else, introduces solid state storage devices with the capacity of large disk drives, lower cost and read/write speeds more than 100 times faster than the quickest disk drives now in existence, everything changes. Overnight, several generations of computers will be obsolete. Anyone who has ever waited and waited for multiple joins in a complex inquiry will recognize immediately that they "have to" have the new paradigm. They will represent the leading edge of a storm.

Ad hoc queries too time consuming to be justified in the past will become the order of the day. What today takes 30 minutes will done in less than 20 seconds. Small retailers will come to know their customers the way that Walmart does. "Knowledge" databases specific to every sort of business will emerge. Information that has been inaccessible as a practical matter will be quickly at hand. Etc, etc.

 

'Easy-To-Use' Common Apps Could Be The Next Killer App, by Penny Pagliaro

I'm one of the non-techies who reads your newsletter faithfully. While the vast horizon of the future fascinates me, I suggest that the next money-maker will be something very practical and immediately applicable for business and personal use. Bear with me here.

In my capacity as director of marketing for a large real estate firm, I'm positioned to watch how and why people fairly inexperienced with computers -- beyond word processing -- struggle to make the software fit their business activities. The thing that's most frustrating? A user-friendly, easily customized email/contact management/calendar program. Hard to believe? Maybe but it's where a lot of computer-using people are. A techie may not realize how high the level of frustration is because ...well, he's a techie!

I've looked at the programs available to keep track of who's sending what, where I go next, and how to get in touch. So far, the most *useful* is MS Outlook but boy! What a pain in the neck it is! If a fresh-idea company could produce a really intuitive, easy to understand, elegant software program, I guarantee they'd clean up. It should be flexible enough to work with either PC or Mac systems and have its functions fully visible. Setting rules should not take a PhD in logic. Customizing should be a snap. Is this too much to ask?

If you look at the contact management systems out there (Act, Top Producer, etc.), look at Outlook, scrap the whole mess and start over, we-who-use-the-system would be most grateful.

 

 

 

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"The Harrow Technology Report" explores the innovations and trends of many contemporary and emerging technologies, and then draws some less than obvious connections between them, to help us each survive and prosper in the Knowledge Age. 

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