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| Practical innovations will mount in the next few years around INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY .
Massive computers of astounding power will be coming into service, partly as a result of the U S department of Energy's $940 million Accelerated Stategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). In December of 1996, for example, Intel Corporation inaugerated a $46 million machine at Sandia National Laboratory , the first computer capable of calculation at 1 "teraflops" - a trillion calculations a second. By 2001, a 10 terflops machine; by 02 or 03, 100 teraflops And by 2005 a computer capable of 500 trillion calculations per second.
Several developments promise to revolutionize "Information Technology" which will create a "Pervasive Knowledge Network:" anytime/anywhere access to Voice or Video communications. The marriage of televisions, computers and telephones is a phenomenon that will do more to formalize the Knowledge Era than any other single technological leap. INFORMATION Channels we now think of as separate and distinct will merge , creating powerful and pervasive new networks OF knowledge and entertainment.
The revolution is just around the corner. When it hits it will revolutionize the nature of multimedia knowledge manipulation. Customers will sit at home and shop. Education will never be the same as lectures, multimedia presentations and data will be broadcast through a single video screen. The emergence of such technologies have put television on a collision course with the personal computer , with companies on both sides of the application jumping into the convergence game.
The infrastructure for a Pervasive Knowledge Network will be provided in part by the proliferation of new global satallite networks. Telecommunications Backbone giants are pouring $50 billion into the hardware and software of these networks.
In the next decade these networks will throw up 1,700 new "communications"satallites into orbit , more than 10 times the number that currently orbit the earth. Included are Satallite Television, high-end cell phones with worldwide access, cheap wireless phones for underserved areas of China, India & Russia AND cheap global Internet access via satallite.
Miniturization and emerging nanotechnology interest has arrived partly in the form of "microelectromechanical systems" (MEMS), tiny machines with sensors, electronic brains and motors all on a chip sized piece of silicon.
Nanotechnology will revolutionize manufacturing, medicine and a host of other fields.
Note: Such Wizardry Technology Will be UpDated And Described In Detail On This Page.
MEMS will spur wireless communications. Wireless communictions can handle more AND more data. Today the best the best wireless systems are about equal to the high-speed ISDN installed in many homes and businesse. One estimate shows that within a few years wireless systems will have 40 times the transmission rates of todays fastest land lines.
Tiny chips capable of wireless communications will join with miniature video transmitters to make possible ANOTHER revolution - a thoroughly sensoring environment. Cars could recognize when the front seat passenger is a child and adjust air-bag accordingly. Airplanes could have an army of chips stnding watch over mechanical systems ....AND heart surgeons could leave tiny silicon eyes in a patients chest to monitor post operative health. Other applications include videophones, visually based security systems, rear - and side viewing cameras in cars and the end of film based cameras.
Virtual reality also will begin to come into its own over the next decade in applications such as telemedicine networks, which link distant medical facilities to a central medical center through computers, cameras, video monitors which allow doctors to examine patients remotely as intimately as they otherwise would. Virtual reality equipment is used to treat abused children, people who fear hieghts and patients who suffeer from muscular distrophy.
The result of "intersecting" INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY developments will be a "pervasive and instant access to data. Our current level of access to Internet and Entertainment via satallite OR cable represent just the first hints of what will become a much more profound trend, completely transforming the context for a dozen social activities and institutions from education to publishing, to all sorts and forms of electronic services for delivery to manufacturers and even to politicians. The ramifications of the "Pervasive Knowledge Network run out in a dozen directions such like; the tendency to undermine social authorities; the requirement for new models of business management AND the growing danger of psychological overload for the citizens of our pervasively networked knowledge society.
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