IBM Predictions for next five years

This is a video from IBM predicting their top 5 predictions in 5 years. It is an interesting variation of choices that span through different industries.  I dont completely agree with the predictions and think IBM could have came up with a better list.

The first prediction, solar technology using thin film solar cells such as the technology by First Solar will definitely advance in 5 years and hopefully we will see more of it being used as costs continue to come down. 

A crystal ball for your health would be nice. Currently, Sergie Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki’s startup company 23andme, can provide you with your DNA and genetic background given your saliva sample and $399. It is not perfect but we can hope to see vast improvements in the next five years from this technology.

Being able to use the web by using your voice, I can’t say I will be doing that in five years. Voice recognition has been around for quite some time now and it still seems like there are a lot of improvements that can be done in that field. We may see some advancements of integrating voice into the computer but I dont see any dramatic changes to how we surf the web.

A digital shopping assistant in the dressing room seems like it is a little unnecessary. I can’t picture retail stores investing their money into something like that when it does not really provide that much increase in profitability.

The last prediction, saying that memory will improve sounds like a joke to me. As technology improves, we use less and less of our brain because we rely on technology to do everything for us. We don’t need to memorize phone numbers because we have it all programmed into our cell phones and we don’t need to remember addresses and directions because the GPS can guide us. Shopping lists can be jotted down on Iphones and you don’t need to remember what you need because you can simply look up the list when you go to the grocery store. Refrigerators even have the technology of scanning bar codes on your groceries so that it can automatically generate the list when you are low on supply.

I think this is a horrible list and would actually be disappointed if these predictions are the type of advacnements that we see in five years. I surely hope that we will have cooler and more efficient technology than this in five years.

via Treehugger

Add comment December 5th, 2008 Alex