I'm not sure about Vocally activated commands - these can also be a real nuisance in public places or even in an office.
For example those Horrible Telephone menu systems -- just when you thought the whole experience couldn't get any worse when calling a help / call centre they've found yet another level of excruciating torture to add to the whole sorry mess.
Some of them now ASK you to SPEAK your account number into the system plus other info -- just the right idea for a quiet office . A wretched experience all round -- thank god I can speak some Dutch as I will go through a Dutch centre where they don't use overseas call centres (who in India can speak Dutch) and they are polite enough to tell you how many people are waiting in the queue and count you down with a time estimate.
I don't like touch screens either -- but that's personal choice.
I see more "Turnkey" (not I hope "Turkey") systems - where the computer just sits in the corner and you use more multimedia streaming such as SQUEEZEBOX and SLINGBOX systems.
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The whole "Holodeck" and "Virtual Reality" stuff also requires HUGE amounts of RAW CPU power. Great idea even if the technology is a bit immature at the moment. Wii systems are pointing the way but for me these are still way too primitive and uncomfortable to use
I love the idea of having a full 18 hole Ryder Cup golf course in my living room however. I'd never leave it. !!
In the UK we are lucky enough to be just testing the first generation of 3-D TV's with proper colour etc -- not with those old fashioned blue and red plastic glasses.
I went to a demo last week -- ABSOLUTELY AWESOME AND HIGHLY ADDICTIVE - ESPECIALLY ON A HUGE SCREEN IN FULL HD.
Bet you're jealous now.
For High level computing -- may take longer than my lifetime to build real productive machines but I'm very interested in the whole aspect of Quantum Computing -- this is where you can run all possible states AT ONCE. -- This FOREVER nullifies ANY encryption in the known universe since execution of ALL possible states execute AT ONCE. Currently we can only build very small Quantum computers with 2 - 4 "Qubits" (analogus to bits and bytes in classical computers) and the qubits decay after microseconds -- still long enough however to prove the mathematics / physics is correct.
If you are interested here's an introductory reference. (There's plenty more around but it gets very technical).
HowStuffWorks "How Quantum Computers Work"
Cheers
jimbo
. (hoping that it exist)
