The future...............................
techweb.com
June 30, 1997, Issue: 960
Section: Midyear Forecast -- The Analysts
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes Are Expected, But Not Everywhere
By Richard Doherty
Envisioneering analysts- Dan Sokol, Michael Geier, Michael Pierry and I-predict the following over the next five years (a Delphi-style mutual consensus)
- Most if not all digital media decoders will be able to decompress MPEG-2 streams-but by mid-decade (2005), there may be more exciting alternatives to MPEG-2 from fractal, wavelet, vector quantization, differencing or combinations of these, which will make MPEG-2 look dated and quaint.
- Analog television will still be around with no clear sunset period in sight. The digital-TV spectrum auctions now planned to help balance the federal budget by 2002 may be at risk.
- Most new video and multimedia titles will be DVD, and easier to manufacture, ship and display at retail.
- 3-D will start to settle down as just one or two standards replace the dozens of 1997.
- Smart cards will become common and standardized.
-The cost per byte of transmission will be cheaper.
- Most of us will think nothing of placing a hand onto a scanner or looking into a retinal/iris checking window.
- Digital piracy will be a major problem in the U.S.
- People will continually resist entering more and more ID codes, turning instead to smart-card and optical-disk cues that tell the cyber world who they are and what they want.
- Low-earth-orbiting satellites will deliver data bandwidth on demand to anyone, anywhere on earth.
- Packet transceivers will support paging, two-way telephony and data services to anyone, anywhere on earth-for a price.
- PCs will finally have multiple user interfaces, selectable for socio-geographic profiles. Family members will have their individual services presented on demand.
- Tax agencies will have discovered the milli-cent tax, with taxes costing 10 percent or more of all commerce, the same rate air travelers pay for their freedom.
- Following Moore's Law, there will be tremendous decreases in power requirements for many devices, increasing the dreaded wall-mounted power supply clutter in our homes and offices.
- Schools will turn to community centers for Internet and government-services access.
- Research into the fabrication of reasonably priced room-temperature blue semiconductor lasers should hit pay dirt by 2002, enabling a new generation of optical communications.
Richard Doherty heads technology and testing market research at Envisioneering (rdoherty@aol.com)
Copyright r 1997 CMP Media Inc. |
