5 years time.. the most popular internet "pastimes"?

Trotter

Im curious.. Years ago when I was in school, the concept of email was the big new thing. Then came MSN and ICQ and the MP3.. and so on to Napster and on to Bebo and Skype.

From what I can gather, Bebo and Skype are the two most talked about internet technologies of the day.. so to speak.

Is there anything thats in its infancy now that will be the Bebo or Skype of 5 years time?

311

Video calls and televisions with built in cameras ,using tv cable as free communication:)

Offalycool

Telly’s that look back.. the ultimate paranoia in surveillance society.

I bet the internet will split into two, or more. One commercial official internet will exist for your online civilian life. In order to be a member of society you must complete all transactions through this net. All is accounted for and nobody can survive or prosper without official status in this matrix. Borders will exist merely on maps, the reins of power reach further than ever imagined. Government will be consolidated into one superpower; with televised crisis justifying its existence.

The authoritarian nature of this system will promote development of undernets, or darknets, peer to peer internet for the people, by the people. Here resistance to the blind stupidity of greed will grow strong. Knowledge will be freely exchanged and the global community will continue to develop. It may take a little longer than five years but we will probably have lots of ropey software to keep us busy while it does.

Khannie

Hard to predict. To my mind, the really big things now are google, youtube, bebo / myspace, skype, torrents and facebook / social networking seems to be taking off. With the possible exception of torrents, I see all of them being around in 5 years time.

Cabaal

Torrents or something similar will exist in 5 years, from the illegal side of things torrents are popular because there hard to shut down.
So either it'll continue as is or change to avoid throttling from ISP's.

From the legal side of things torrents are great for shaving out large files on the net, be it legal movies, linux ISO's or in the case of WoW...updates

imho social networking won't be around in this form in a few years, things don't stay popular for ever (ICQ is one example of this )

AlmightyCushion

As long as there are still people on here I'll be happy.

trout

VR headsets and VR gloves ... touchy-feely self-tailored pr0n, with customised avatars/actors ... :rolleyes: huge market to be tapped here. pr0n all the way.

Second Life traders and information brokers will become a realistic interface to the Internet. Purpose built Second Life devices will be available for non-geeks.

The profile of internet users will slide completely towards consumers, and away from geeks or tech-savvy people. There will be fewer developers. Advances in hardware will compensate for poorer and poorer development skills, apps and operating systems.

The latest Windows OS will consist of over 10 billion lines of code.

My fervent wish is for battery technology to improve to the point where mobile devices become real alternatives to desktop machines.

*turns off crystal ball*

Anti

2 words. Quantum computing...

dulpit

AlmightyCushion wrote:

As long as there are still people on here I'll be happy.

Aww, isn't that lovely? I reckon boards will still be flying high in 5 years...

trout wrote:

VR headsets and VR gloves ... touchy-feely self-tailored pr0n, with customised avatars/actors ... :rolleyes: huge market to be tapped here. pr0n all the way.

In 5 years?!? That'd be great? i'm assuming you're taking the piss, right?



I honestly couldn't predict the way things will be in 5 years, will it be hugely different? Probably not...

GrumPy

mp3 players that are so fúcking small, you get them installed under your skin, and it wirelessly transmits audio directly into your brain.

RoyalMarine

keyboards wont exist.
and people will have to talk ( predicition text )
yes, i know its already around. but it will be the only way.


and this will stop people talking like this.
h3y d1d y0u s33 th3 g4m3 l45t n1t3

****.

Trotter

We wont see huge jumps to technology thats unavailable now.. just a gradual move from the presently obscure to mainstream for new technologies now.

Social networking will still exist.. ie ICQ and Bebo / Skype.. the general idea is to stay in touch in a virtual room full of your friends. That wont change.. but concepts may be built on that social "need". More people will be drawn into it.

In terms of music.. it will be free to download but you'll have to watch ads and suchlike while it happens.

Naikon

I reckon distributed computing will become common in 5 years outside scientific and industrial uses.
The days of user application software residing on your home system will become less profound, what with the likes of Google spreadsheets and other "utilities" such as email services residing on remote servers and becoming "Web based".

I imagine that Most computers in the next 5-10 years will be small devices with no optical devices such as dvd drives etc, and these machines will boot over a network connection from a central server to bootstrap the OS and provide a shell or X terminal-like system for Microsoft users alongside applications for the user to use.
A bit like "dumb terminals" of early Unix systems, but more usefull.
Network connections will provide enough bandwidth to make the system virtually no less responsive than a local machine(10-50gb anyone?)

Want more processing power or other resources?, "rent" or "buy" these commodities from a central server or peers much like Electricity to get your work done, and be more productive.
These resources would be tracked and monitored to ensure availability etc.
Games and movies/music content will be bought and stored on a company server for use, much in the same way as a steam account from Valve.
CD's and DVD's will be a thing of the past if network capacity and bandwidth scales properly for both Business and home use.


*I also think Telnet and FTP will be phased out for good, in favor for more "secure" protocols*

AlmightyCushion

Naikon wrote:

Network connections will provide enough bandwidth to make the system virtually no less responsive than a local machine(10-50gb anyone?)

Eircom anyone?

Naikon

Hopefully they wont exist:D
I believe Digiweb has their own network separate to Eircom and with VOIP, the days of the traditional phone providers will become a thing of the past.
Only problem is that leaves us to the hands of a Business which might care more for investors if they ever hold that kind of position in the market.
Again, I might be a little too optimistic tbh.

Khannie

I think Naikon's vision sounds likely. Maybe a few years out, but likely. Sun were gambling on this with their sunray systems back in 2000. It was actually a really decent vision, just a bit too early (like a lot of things).

RoyalMarineComm wrote:

keyboards wont exist.
and people will have to talk ( predicition text )
yes, i know its already around. but it will be the only way.

I can type much faster than I can talk. Keyboards do suck, but I'm not seeing a better alternative coming down the pipe tbh.

edit: They also offer quietness and privacy by comparison to talking.

Neural interface ftw! I'm guessing 30 years for proper ones.

Blowfish

Khannie wrote:

I can type much faster than I can talk. Keyboards do suck, but I'm not seeing a better alternative coming down the pipe tbh.

edit: They also offer quietness and privacy by comparison to talking.

Neural interface ftw! I'm guessing 30 years for proper ones.

I definitely agree. I actually think it's interesting though, as i've found that if you ask someone who doesn't work on PC's they quite often say that keyboards will go. I could see voice activation working for some things (e.g. media stuff, using voice instead of a remote control), but I can only imagine how annoying programming would be, imagine saying:

"hash include space open pointy bracket iostream dot h close pointy bracket return, return, main open bracket close bracket return, open curly bracket return, cout space open pointy bracket open pointy bracket space open double quote hello world exclamation mark close double quote semicolon return, word return space zero semicolon return, close curly bracket return"

I probably missed something but you get the point

AlmightyCushion

Blowfish wrote:

I definitely agree. I actually think it's interesting though, as i've found that if you ask someone who doesn't work on PC's they quite often say that keyboards will go. I could see voice activation working for some things (e.g. media stuff, using voice instead of a remote control), but I can only imagine how annoying programming would be, imagine saying:

"hash include space open pointy bracket iostream dot h close pointy bracket return, return, main open bracket close bracket return, open curly bracket return, cout space open pointy bracket open pointy bracket space open double quote hello world exclamation mark close double quote semicolon return, word return space zero semicolon return, close curly bracket return"

I probably missed something but you get the point

Man would that suck. What about keyboard shortcuts?!?!?!?

RoyalMarine

ah it would still be better than trying to read....

wh4t th3 f00|< 4r3 y00 0/|/ 4b0ut

Khannie

Blowfish wrote:

I probably missed something but you get the point

Yup.

Programming would be a total total disaster. Way way way too many symbols. I think shows like star trek give the impression that a universal method of input (like the keyboard) can give way to voice activation + some keys.

"computer, access all files relating to the klingon homeworld"
"accessing"
"WHAT? Pipe down! You're doin' my head in!"

311

It's not the keyboard that needs to change ,it's the interface.

motion sensor ,like sign language .

Naikon

Khannie wrote:

I think Naikon's vision sounds likely. Maybe a few years out, but likely. Sun were gambling on this with their sunray systems back in 2000. It was actually a really decent vision, just a bit too early (like a lot of things).
I can type much faster than I can talk. Keyboards do suck, but I'm not seeing a better alternative coming down the pipe tbh.

edit: They also offer quietness and privacy by comparison to talking.

Neural interface ftw! I'm guessing 30 years for proper ones.

Yeah, I think I might be a bit too optimistic with that vision happening in the next 5 years.
While I can't type as fast as I talk, I can bet keyboards will be around for some time at least.
Gotta learn to touch type though, 40 WPM wont cut it anymore:(.

A Neural interface does sound interesting though, I will have to look into that.
I really hope those nasty projector keyboards don't become too popular.

http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/projector-keyboard/index.html

Unless they improve the ergonomics, and the sensor tech/Algorithms, I wont be seen with one of those pieces of crap:)
I was so disappointed when I actually got to use one despite the hype.

Naikon

Blowfish wrote:

I can only imagine how annoying programming would be, imagine saying:

"hash include space open pointy bracket iostream dot h close pointy bracket return, return, main open bracket close bracket return, open curly bracket return, cout space open pointy bracket open pointy bracket space open double quote hello world exclamation mark close double quote semicolon return, word return space zero semicolon return, close curly bracket return"

I probably missed something but you get the point

Capt'n Midnight

dildonics