A month ago Engadget reported on a bit of future-come-to-the-present technology called the g-speak. For anyone who saw Minority Report (or even more topical, the MI6 computers in Quantum of Solace) it probably looks rather familiar.
It’s a cool bit of technology outright and I can almost see myself walking along virtual aisles almost-literally placing things on my shopping cart. You figure 10 years ago in a world of dial-up modems and beige computer cases something like that would be unthinkable, and yet here it is maybe only years or at most decades from production.
And that’s only looking at the small bit of time. On a wider scaller technology is progressing at an unheard of rate. Moore’s law, abstracted to ‘technology’ as a whole, predicts that technology progresses exponentially, doubling roughly every 2 years. It seems pretty true to me.
The consequences of all this technology deferred to another article, I’d like to suggest a new law. The amount of cleverness it takes to write good futuristic science-fiction increases exponentially, doubling roughly every 2 years. Between the advances coming out every day in every field, it’s hardly any surprise that steam-punk decided to take the future into the past. It’s just getting harder and harder to keep that future more than a few years out. We sure do live in exciting times, eh?
[...] a few days ago I wrote an article on the g-speak, a computer that responds to hand motions. It seemed like a bit of science fiction come [...]