One of the things that I was pretty disappointed with at CES this year was Microsoft’s “future” segment. It’s where they often give us a glimpse of what to expect 10 or 15 years from now, and when watching it I normally find myself giggling like a little kid in a candy store. This year they really didn’t put much thought into it.
In the comments yesterday Bill pointed out a video that is brought to you by the same people that created the “what’s it like to work at Microsoft” video, who happen to be Microsoft employees themselves. The video I’m about to show you is more like what I expected to see come out of Gates’ CES presentation this year. It focuses on how everything will be seamlessly integrated in the future, and really sparked some excitement in the technology side of my brain (which occupies 95% of my brain).
Watch the three-minute video and let me know what you think:
@Ryan:
I think I saw this video a couple of days ago. It was suggested to me by one of your readers through a comment. “Software and Services Integration” is a great concept.
Slowly the future is creeping into our present via the mobile phone. Maybe Microsoft won’t give us these goodies anytime soon, but I’m positive there are quite a few whiz kids working on this technology, even as we speak.
Great video!
Regards,
Omar.-
Nice video, “Wow this is fast” – Must not be running Windows Vista
i think that’s pretty cool, though i don’t think that will be happening anytime soon, definitely not 10-15 years from now.
Considering where we were 15 years ago I think this should be easy to accomplish in the next 10 to 15 years. If we can’t get at least that far by 2023 I’ll be really disappointed. (If we are still around in 2023)
@James: I disagree. Just take a look at how far technology has gone in the last 10 years. In 1998, not everyone had a computer, and the big hype was all about Windows 98. Now look at where we are. We’ve done so much in 10 years, and I think we can do just as well in the following years. We’ll probably do much better.
If anyone is interested in knowing that is to come in the future, I suggest that you read the book ‘The Singularity is Near’ by Ray Kurzweil. His predictions about the future make the things shown in that video seem like child’s play. The future of technology has endless possibilities. Read the book. I really recommend it.
This is really cool but I’m afraid you’ll have to have software from the same maker (in this case: Microsoft) in all of those devices for it to work properly
Once that is not necessary anymore, I believe it’s gonna be in everyone’s life.
@Verdican: The problem here though with this marketing video is it’s fiction – in real life things don’t work so perfectly, whether it’s 1998, 2008 or 2018. In the video, things are working seamlessly. Microsoft wants to believe that’s how their technology works. But in the real world, drivers can be missing, DLLs corrupted, registry’s flaky, hardware incompatible, firmware buggy, and so on. Sorry, but it’s just pure fantasy that video. Yes, there may be that type of tech in 10 years, but I think the world needs to focus on making the things we have now ‘work’, before inventing new stuff and more problems.
@Dobrofsky: Life if not perfect, just take a look around. Everything has some kind of flaw, yet it works. If we wait until everything is 100 percent perfect, we would never invent anything. When Thomas Edison was working on the incandescent bulb, he blew it many times yet he kept on working on it until he got it right.
I’m positive ten years from now we’re going to be in a completely different technological world. For example, the leap forward created by Apple’s iPhone is very promising.
Flying an object heavier than air was pure fantasy in 1903, yet the Wright Brothers made an airplane fly at Kitty Hawk and now we’re getting ready to to Mars. Inventiveness is part of human nature.
Regards,
Omar.-
That’s what so much of the modern day internet services we use are doing correctly – API access, universal logins, all these things move us away from required operating systems, hardware specs and such and to a much more free technology generation.
I think we can have something like this in 10 years. Many cars are starting to get equipped with GPS, and already have wireless capabilities such as Bluetooth. I think the mobile world is really going to breakthrough in the next 10 years, and so I would definitely think this is possible. Really the video doesn’t do much other than cloud computing (which we already know is heavily in the works) and recognizing when devices are near each other. I think mobile phones and computers will be working together in the future together, and then we’re just waiting for the in-vehicle interaction to catchup.
I would actually have to disagree with that. Really the only time that I run into serious issues is when I try to do something on a system that it isn’t meant to do. Maybe it is tweaking files that I’m not familiar with, or adding incompatible hardware. There might be issues getting everything setup initially, but once you get it going it normally works pretty good.
As Inferno_str1ke pointed out, things like API access and such could really make systems like this usable by any device. I’m sure companies like Microsoft will be forced to make a system like this open if they want it to be successful.
@Ryan:
I think Microsoft is already touching the technology of the future with its Microsoft Surface. Take a look at this site:
[microsoft.com]
Regards,
Omar.-