Technology Rules...

Today at lunch we got to talking about the current and coming advances in technology. I thought I would list a couple of the most exciting updates to our lives...

Life 2.0?

Augmented Reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Think Terminator. We are literally a year or two from having mass produced retinal projection devices so we can have information pumped into our field of view at all times allowing us to gain deeper insight into the world around us. What's it good for in a practical sense? Imagine you lost your keys. No worries, just ask your augmented reality virtual assistant to show you what direction they are in and how far away they are...




Robots
Guess what...when you were not looking robots became a reality. And I'm not just talking about those giant arms that took all the jobs welding cars...I am talking about C3PO and R3D2 level technology. Walking, bipeds and artificial intelligence with the conversational ability of, well...a mentally handicapped toddler...But still! It can talk to you!

Don't believe it? You better look here: http://robots.net/ and then start making sure you say nothing but nice things about robots because when they figure out they exist you want to be their friend. Most of the advanced technology in development today is designed with one purpose in mind: exterminating people. Granted, we like to think they will only exterminate evil doers in third world countries but...

Swarm Intelligence
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0910/0910.4116.pdf

...or the the emergent collective intelligence of groups of simple autonomous agents. I'm not really qualified to comment on this very much but believe me when I tell you it matters.