Two leading futurists in their field, try to predict what the world of communication will look like in twenty years * Second article in the series - Is technological telepathy possible? Will we be able to simultaneously translate a phone call or even road signs in the future? And how fast will the high-speed internet be? All these and more in the article in front of you.
Dr. Aharon Hauptman:
By: Dr. Aharon Hauptman: senior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Analysis and Technological Forecasting near Tel Aviv University; haupt@post.tau.ac.il.
For Dr. Asher Idan's article - the semantic revolution, from the same booklet.
The article is taken from the booklet "Twenty Years of Bezeq". The article appears on the Hidan website courtesy of Bezeq spokesperson Yotam Yakir, and Miri Friel-Green - responsible for internal spokespeople at Bezeq.
The expected changes in the next 20 years will almost certainly be similar in strength and scope to those that were not in the previous 20 years, but in the 40.
Ideas have been put forward on how to implant such "nano-processors" in the human brain, which will integrate with the biological neurons and upgrade the mental capacity. Put all of the above together, and maybe the telepathic inter-brain communication will no longer be seen as a far-fetched imagination.
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Scientists claim that in 20 years people will communicate with each other routinely in "technological telepathy", in direct communication between brain and brain. Wild imagination? It may not be as it seems at first glance, if you look at some of the technological developments that are emerging today, and also adopt a little imagination. The progress in researching the mechanisms of action in the brain is impressive, scientists were able to make it so that a transparent person could move, from a distance and "with the power of thought" only, a mechanical robot arm. In the field of molecular electronics, we are witnessing the first successes in building electronic circuits based on molecules of the hereditary material DNA, or on "carbon nanotubes", or on a combination of the two - a path leading towards tiny computer chips that "build themselves" or "grow by themselves" . Ideas have been put forward on how to implant such "nano-processors" in the human brain, which will integrate with the biological neurons and upgrade the mental capacity. Put all of the above together, and perhaps the telepathic inter-brain communication will no longer be seen as a far-fetched imagination.
But, as far as can be estimated today, the chance that such a far-reaching development will be realized in 20 or even 40 years is quite low - even if the technological obstacles that still exist are overcome. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would have liked having an array of nanoprocessors implanted in my brain and turning me into a human-computer hybrid. The people of the 22nd century may think otherwise, but in 20 years telepathic communication will probably remain in the realm of the impossible. But, as the science fiction writer Arthur Clarke wrote, in order to see what the limits of the possible things are, you should sail your imagination a little further, beyond them, to what is (seemingly) impossible.
The rate of change is increasing
Trying to describe the "possible things" in a time horizon of 20 years or more is not a simple matter either, and it is enough to remember how difficult it was to predict today's reality in 1984. Since the pace of changes (technological and social, affecting each other) is constantly increasing, the expected changes in the next 20 years will almost certainly be similar in intensity and scope to those that were not in the previous 20 years, but in the 40. Was it easy to foresee in 1964 the cell phone, the personal computer, the optical disc or the Internet with all their applications and effects? ("There's no reason why anyone would want a computer at home," declared Ken Olson, president of DEC, in 1977.)
Still, we'll risk it. Which of the "possible things" could be realized in the media world in 20 years? Here, for example, are descriptions of situations that will probably be a daily routine, maybe even in 10 years:
You call the sales manager of your company's branch in China, and within seconds a conversation flows between you in fluent Hebrew (in your ears) and fluent Chinese (in his ears). You're driving through the concourses of Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, wondering where the hell to return the rental car. All signage is in French, of course. Pressing a button projects in front of your eyes (with the help of a smart system integrated into your glasses or contact lenses) everything that is said on the signs (connected to the Internet), and here "voiture location" miraculously becomes "car return".
Simultaneous computerized translation from any language to any language is an age-old dream since the dawn of the computer's youth. In science fiction, the "universal translator" is a routine means by which members of different cultures scattered throughout the universe can easily communicate. Such a "universal translator" will remain a dream for many years to come, but it is likely that means for computerized simultaneous (or near-simultaneous) translation, with a vocabulary adapted to practical needs, will gradually come into widespread practical use within the next 10-20 years. According to the collective assessment of the experts, already at the beginning of the second decade of the 2000s, Hebrew-English computer translation systems integrated into the telephone networks are expected to be built, at a level similar to that of human simultaneous translation (although Chinese may be more difficult, there is no fundamental difference in the translation technology).
Research in automatic translation, speech recognition and speech-to-text conversion (and vice versa) has advanced greatly in recent years. IBM, for example, recently demonstrated a prototype English-to-Chinese speech translation system that works with the help of a laptop. The system allows an English speaker and a Chinese speaker to have a free conversation in their languages - although at this stage the system's vocabulary is limited to specific conversation topics (for example, medical assistance or orientation within a city). Another 20 years of research and development in this type of systems, together with the unprecedented computing power that future nanoelectronics will enable, may do wonders. In the long term, the mass use of integrated automatic translation in communication networks may have an important social and cultural impact (the meanings of which can of course be debated): no longer the takeover of English over the "global village", but the preservation of linguistic diversity. One can of course debate the meanings: some will say that this is not necessarily positive - differences in language and culture have been the source of countless conflicts and wars. But here we are talking about a new phenomenon (in a longer range than 20 years) - convenient, immediate and natural communication between people around the world, while preserving cultural diversity and with the potential of increasing the mutual understanding of members of different cultures.
Convenient and immediate personal communication on a global scale
But let's leave the translation for a moment. Have the communication companies already achieved the expected goal of providing access to convenient and immediate communication all over the world, even without automatic translation? Are we really satisfied with the existing communication services? Far from it, I think. The mobile phone and the internet in their current form have only awakened dormant needs, and with food comes appetite. Here are some things, completely unimaginative, that at least I personally expect in the coming years (even before 2024), and which the existing and developing technologies may make possible with a high probability:
I expect to be able to contact any person I want to talk to, anywhere on the planet, using a personal phone number (or just their name), and it doesn't matter if they (or I) are at home, in the office, in the middle of the sea or in the desert. I don't care if our voice, converted to digital signals, reaches its destination through a copper wire, cable, optical fiber, cellular antenna, satellite or all together. The main thing is that it arrives in high quality, without interruptions and disconnections, and at an affordable price. I want to be able to use the same device that will serve me anywhere - whether in wired or wireless communication - but that I can also find a suitable replacement when needed (if I forget or lose my personal caller) on any street corner, which will recognize me immediately and allow me access to the global network . I want to use it without fear of radiation risk and also without being listened to, followed, or broadcast to me without my consent. I want to get all of this from one reliable supplier, which I can easily replace with a competitor whenever I feel like it. Are these excessive expectations?
Next: I want the same level of accessibility not only for voice but for all forms of information that can be digitally encoded: from text, image and video to 12D "virtual reality". I have no particular interest in low-quality images flickering on a tiny phone screen like today's mobiles. I am looking forward to a thin folding pocket screen that I can spread out to the size of a sheet of paper, and "download" to it, anytime and anywhere, all the above-mentioned visual or textual information, including the video image of my interlocutor, if it comes to us. As an alternative to that paper-like screen (and as cheap as paper), I would also like to consider light glasses that would project a 40D image directly onto my retinas (without any health risk, of course). I expect the information to reach me not at the speed of today's "fast internet", but much faster. This is not an excessive expectation, if you look at what is already available today to about 30,000 million South Korean residents (XNUMX megabits per second, two-way, with equal subscription fees for each person). And I expect that the "smart agent" who will represent me in the virtual world of the future Internet network will communicate with me in writing or in speech, according to my convenience, and will efficiently and accurately locate the item of information I need (XNUMX "vulnerabilities" on "Google" is nice, but not good enough for me), even if I have to part with a few tenths of a penny for that.
Now I've gone too far, you say? I don't think so. I have not mentioned anything that is not possible or that is not in one or another stage of research and development. "Bubble" or no bubble, the real future of the world of information and communication is still ahead of us.
