Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
When I first saw this line, I thought you were talking about a single type of device replacing all of those devices, and I was going to argue that that will never happen. The devices still need to interact with humans, and the human factor will always call for a variety of physical arrangements of electronics even if the working guts all have the same basic abilities.
However, from electronics companies working toward a more unified, seamless electronics experience, I do expect one or all of the following to happen:
- Tablets a few inches larger than the largest ones available now, more like a big laptop screen; their optional detachable or slide-out keyboards with trackpads will be hinged so you can set them at an angle and treat the tablet & keyboard as a single unit you can set anywhere, like with current laptop computers. Or, another way to look at the same product is that they'll be touchscreen laptops on which the keyboard & trackpad part can be removed or folded/slid out of the way. The keyboard thing might be in the form of a "carrying case" you slide the tablet into.
- Bundle/package deals where you get not one device but a family of 2-4 devices that are all essentially the same thing but in different shapes & sizes for use in different settings; for example, a set might include a smartphone and a large tablet, or another set might include one of those or a regular laptop, plus a "medium" tablet like what we've got today, plus a phone or two, or another set might skip the phone and go with a tablet or two and a pair of glasses with tiny HUDs that takes user input vocally and from a 3" hand-held trackpad. Devices in such a set will all constantly "synchronize" to each other any chance they get, so any updates you make in one are reflected in the others, and one service contract will cover all uploads and downloads to/from all of the devices in the group (not separate services for separate devices), including that they can all use the same email address and the same phone number. Smartphones might not even be called phones anymore, but instead just be treated as a small size of tablet ("pocket tablet"?).
- Variable screen sizes; not as drastic as what we've seen in some sci-fi, which would require projecting holograms into empty air, but I can see somebody creating a flexible screen that rolls up like a scroll. Imagine a phone with a screen 4.5" long and 2"-3" wide, that you can pull out one side of to make it 4.5" wide and more like 8"-9" long, then collapse it back down when you're done. The technology's name will probably be "scrollscreen".
- Software companies will merge software development efforts for computers and portable devices, so one set of software will be able to run on either. To run on portable devices, it will have to not be as bloated with junk as computer software is, but, to functionally replace established computer software, it will need to be able to run productive "apps" equivalent to the word processors, databases, spreadsheets, and media editors running on computers in offices right now. This will streamline things for users, but the incentive for software developers will be that it means they no longer have to invest in developing two sets of software plus a third separate effort to try to get the two to interact in certain ways.
Being connected to data services all the time is one thing, but having it enhance reality is another that I don't see happening.
Never. You wouldn't be able to use it anymore when there was any kind of service interruption for any reason, you'd lose access to it as soon as the host did anything to it, you wouldn't be able to edit and keep your own version of it for yourself, you'd still be paying for the service to access it (which doesn't go down with technological improvements like self-storage costs do), and the low storage costs you're talking about remove the only possible incentive to put up with the above.
Not until the fossil fuels get closer to running out. Until then, any related crisis will simply be the side effects of the fact that we're avoiding the energy crisis by drilling for energy.
Air quality I can understand if our fuels still have pollutants in them other than C02 and H2O, or if you're talking about accidentally burning oil & grease along with the fuel, but how do our engines affect water quality?
I gotta give that one at least 20 years if it ever happens at all. The next big change in our automotive infrastructure is more likely to involve switching to natural gas first. For electric cars, the best I can say is that this might be true in the biggest, densest population centers, which is the first/only place where those cars will really take off. But they just don't have the range to be useful elsewhere, and gas stations elsewhere will have no incentive to offer anything for vehicles that don't ever show up there.
However, if/when we do quit burning gasoline in our vehicles (more than 10 years from now), whatever else we do use instead, we'll probably still call the stores where we buy it/them "gas stations".
And more of it will be monorails.
I think not. Moving things that kind of distance & speed can only get so much cheaper, and the idea has rather limited appeal that would probably get even more limited if it seemed more within reach.
What exactly happened to MySpace, anyway?
No chance of that at all due to lack of anything there of value to get
So not even around 20000 worldwide, with sales hardly over 2000 per year (roughly Lamborghini's total sales in history and peak sales in its biggest few years)? I agree they'll be uncommon, but I find that rather exaggerated. Lamborghinis are very expensive and produced at a place that isn't suited for mass production, neither of which must be the case for cars that drive themselves. A classic example of a car with new technology being famous for not competing very well in the market, Chevrolet Volt, sold more in 2012 alone than Lamborghini has in its history.
I predict not only that computer-driven cars will sell better than that, but also that there will already be a political movement to ban any further production of human-driven ones. And we'll have much better terms for the two types than Demolition Man's confuzzling "auto-drive" and "self-drive".
I read recently that Amazon already does sell more e-books than p-books.
What will cause this?
There will also have been another major new health care law making changes as big or bigger, bringing us significantly closer to universal government-guaranteed health coverage.
