If someone thinks that they are already connected and connected all the time to the office, friends and the Internet - you have no idea what it is about, and you haven't seen anything yet, so says the international research company Forrester Research in a recently published special study, in which the image of the future employee, in about a decade, is presented. Not science fiction
Forrester offers us to travel 10 years into the future, and see how the breakthroughs that are constantly occurring in the fields of technology and communication will change our lives in every sense - both in terms of work, and in terms of everyday life. But even before we get to the specific changes that are likely to occur, Eliba D'Forrester, and before we see how this will affect both our lives and the technology manufacturers themselves, let's see what the average executive's agenda will look like in 2015, and see how technology naturally integrates into her life.
Forrester's vision of mobile workers also includes many workers who in practice sit most of the day at their desks, and do not go out to the customers. The reason for this is that these workers will carry with them portable data processing units the size of a small pocket wallet, which they will plug into docking stations wherever they are - conference rooms, the dining room, a car, a home, and in fact anywhere else they spend their lives.
A typical day in the life of Limor Berkovich - a predictable script
Limor is a senior vice president of a company dealing in the field of industry and production. Because of her senior and binding position, Limor lives in a world where fast and immediate communication is the standard way of life. She is always connected to databases covering almost every possible subject, including ones that allow for a quick diagnosis of the mental state of those around her. Over the years, she has gotten used to relying on automated administrative help that she receives for dozens of tasks that she needs to perform during her work every day.
7:00 am: Limor gets dressed for work, and also puts on the computer
Limor is constantly connected to the Internet with instant access to all the phone calls, e-mail, information and video she needs, but she has long since stopped using a conventional cell phone or computer. Her wardrobe now also includes a sophisticated computer system, which Limor wears. Limor's earrings are used as tiny and sophisticated headphones, which receive the transmissions from the transmitter hidden inside her clothes. Inside Limor's necklace is hidden a tiny microphone, and inside the ring that Limor wears is hidden a tiny light bulb, which flashes every time she receives a call.
Limor wears a pair of fashionable glasses, which also serve as a screen for viewing all the computerized data she needs, and inside the glasses is also a sophisticated digital camera. Inside Limor's elegant pair of shoes is a tiny and powerful processing unit, which can connect to various docking stations located in Limor's environment - depending on where it is and what kind of computing and processing capacity it needs. Limor has long since stopped using a keyboard, as she can see and type on a virtual keyboard, anywhere and anytime.
8:00: Limor's computer understands her
A lemur has a variety of ways in which it can communicate with its computer system. As she drives to her first meeting of the day, which includes breakfast with a business partner at an upscale coffee shop, her processing unit is connected to the existing docking station in her car. She gives the computer various commands, using normal spoken language, and the system reads for her the email that arrived in the last few hours. When she arrives at the cafe and meets with the business partner for breakfast, the partner asks her if the person sitting at the next table is not a suspect related to their business, with whom they met a few months ago.
Limor turns her head to the nearby table, and uses the digital camera hidden inside her glasses to scan the person, and then performs a quick search in the database of the organization she works for - a database that contains video clips of all the meetings she has held since she got the new glasses. The system uses facial recognition technology, and recognizes in a few seconds that the person at the next table is indeed a vendor she met a few months ago, and that Limor and the business partner she is meeting with should be invited to join them for breakfast.
10:00: Limor's computer reads her thoughts
There are times when Limor doesn't want to speak voice commands, or even use the virtual keyboard to type commands, so she uses a tiny chip implanted behind her ear to give the computer commands through her thoughts. As part of a senior management meeting held this morning, when Limor feels trapped from time to time and wants to reflect without being alert, she gives the computer a mental command to follow the words of the CEO of the organization, when he speaks.
Limor also uses this method in crowded and noisy areas, where she has no privacy, and she wants to protect the organization's secrets. In one of the factories belonging to the organization, one of the senior employees was implanted with an even more advanced system, which transmits a series of mental commands to a miniature mechanical arm, which is used to assemble nanotechnological components into a state-of-the-art system produced by the factory.
12:00: The expanded Internet and wireless networks make life easier for Limor
Limor's office is in the organization's headquarters, on the site where the organization's main production plant is also located, and this is a world where she is surrounded by communication objects and sensors. It is an environment loaded with advanced computing equipment, and almost the entire organization can enter into it easily and intuitively. If she needs to meet one of her co-workers, the EGPS system (advanced GPS, for locating people or objects) is so sophisticated today that it can locate the person's exact location, even if he is traveling in his car.
Limor holds a meeting regarding the products produced by her organization that were sold for production, and that in some way returned to the country through a third party, and are currently being resold in the local market, despite explicit contracts prohibiting such sales. Limor's team read the RFID tags from some of these products, which were confiscated by court order, and he identified two large European distributors, which are the source of the illegal distribution of these products (RFID tags are tiny tags attached to each product, and include a wealth of data about the product, its production, the various stations he passed through during his life and their status, price and more).
In the fast wireless world of 2015, all the complexity of the subject of communication is hidden and hidden beneath the surface. Limor can receive immediate information from any specific truck dealing with the distribution or transfer of the products produced by the organization, and even track each and every product, starting from the moment it left the loading dock at the factory, until the end of the marketing chain when the product reached the shelf in one of the stores that sell the products, and all this in real time.
Limor's employee tag transmits her exact location, as well as other important information to the organization's central information system, and only the senior managers of the organization can receive various details about Limor's work, but without knowing exactly where she is at that moment, and this is because of her privacy. On the other hand, considering Limor's senior position, she herself can locate employees below her, and know what they are working on at that moment.
15:00: Digital assistants assist Limor in performing routine tasks
Limor will be the first to admit outright that she would not have been able to do her job effectively if she had not been constantly assisted by various digital aids - automated software that provides ongoing communication between her and the automated software that serves other people with whom she works and is in contact.
Limor is currently busy defining policies and rules for one of these programs, which will allow the automated software to schedule meetings for her independently, with some of her colleagues. Limor defines for the utility who the people should be present at the meeting, what time of the day she prefers to hold the meeting, and in addition - if the meeting should be held in a restaurant - what type of restaurant and food is preferable in her eyes. Limor also defines to the software the time frame in which the meeting should take place.
After completing these settings, her digital assistant will do all the work for her, coordinating Limor's diary with the diaries managed by the digital assistants of those with whom she needs to meet, negotiating with them regarding the preferred restaurant, and so on.
One of the areas in which the personal utility software really comes into its own in 2015 and makes everyday life easier, is when it comes to making decisions based on policy guidelines and definitions given to the software by its human owners. As part of her role, Limor has to hold occasional work meetings with journalists covering her organization. Such a briefing meeting, with a group of journalists from a certain field, is expected to take place in about an hour.
Before her meeting with the journalists, Limor uses the community function of her digital assistant, in order to communicate with the variety of social networks to which she subscribes, and to find social connections and data about these journalists. This trend of computerized social networks is already developing today, but by 2015 they will become a central element in everyday life, and people will spend a considerable amount of time creating and adjusting their social lists, while creating different levels of privacy for these lists, ranging from random business relationships to work relationships , to friends and close family.
Limor finds, through a quick search on social media, that two of the journalists with whom she is about to meet studied at the same university where she completed her master's degree, and that several other journalists like skiing vacations. Limor incorporates some comments on these issues into the opening remarks of her meeting with the journalists, and sees by the smiles that the journalists respond sympathetically to the information about their shared background with the senior vice president.
During a short break from her meeting with the journalists, while they are enjoying delicacies ordered for them from a luxury caterer, Limor rushes from the meeting room back to her office to make an urgent phone call. When she enters her room, the "smart room" system performs an emotional scan of Limor. The system remotely checks Limor's basic physical data, including her blood pressure and heart rate, and based on these data, the system plays a piece of music that will match Limor's mood, based on the settings that Limor defined for the system a long time ago. Of course, her car is also "smart" enough to perform the exact same function for her, when she asks it to play music for her.
18:00: One last meeting at the end of a long working day
Limor is back in her office, after a long and exhausting tour she conducted for journalists around the plant, and she decides to hold a conference call with the operations manager of one of the organization's plants, located in California. She puts the portable and tiny communication device she carries with her into the cradle on her desk, so that she can simultaneously activate other aids in her office.
Limor makes a conference call with her colleague, Frank, and decides that the two should make a decision together regarding some task. Limor turns on the display, which projects various data related to the task, onto an empty wall in the office. The advanced display includes various virtual buttons, through which Limor can perform various actions, by pointing at these buttons with her fingers. The two managers have a conversation on the data sheet projected on the wall, with every now and then one of them changes some data and shows something to the other side. At the end of the conversation, the two reach an agreement regarding the allocation of resources regarding the specific project they discussed.
The technological development in the coming decade
As we move from 2005 to Limor Berkowitz's world in 2015, technology and humans will become closer and more integrated, says Forrester Research, and technology will have a decisive impact on our daily lives. Here are some examples of this:
personal processing unit. Wearable computers will be built around a personal processor. IBM demonstrated a wearable computer back in 2002, which seemed to be very similar to the one described in the story. Already this year, a certain company announced a mobile processing unit the size of a matchbox, which includes a fast processor, 16 megabytes of memory and a 340 megabyte disk. Just imagine what computing power we can put into a matchbox in 10 years...
wearable computing. By 2015, all the computers and phones we know today will change beyond recognition. They will be divided into basic components, and will appear in a wide variety of forms. This is due to the effect of technological development on various technology accessories, familiar to us from everyday life.
Laptops, for example, are close to the limit of their development capability. It is impossible to produce laptops that will weigh less than 400-500 grams, and still include a monitor and keyboard, which we can use. To lighten the weight even more, the computing aids will be integrated into various articles of clothing, as explained in the story. Desktop computers will also look different from the ones we know today, and the workers will carry a personal processing unit with them, which they will move from one docking station to another.
Those who are used to working with their cell phones and their PDA devices, such as Palm, should know that these two are going to disappear within a few years. Both of these devices are reaching the end of their evolutionary lives, as their architecture is unable to meet the demands that mobile workers will need in a few years.
Virtual screens and keyboards. The idea behind virtual screens, such as those built into the glasses, is that workers will not be limited to the laptop screen. The basic technology already exists today, and is produced by several companies, including IBM and Olympus. IBM, for example, demonstrated wearable projection technology, which projects the content on the wall, and includes virtual buttons so that the user can press them and change the information. This type of technology is expected to continue to develop, and be used by all of us in our daily lives.
A virtual keyboard was introduced for the first time in 1998, and today there are several niche manufacturers that produce such keyboards, which differ from each other in their operation and function. Today it is still a rather expensive niche product, but the development of technology and the resulting price reduction, as always happens in the technological field, will lead to a decrease in the prices of these keyboards, and their transformation into a mass consumer product.
Voice commands become a reality. Limor Berkovich showed us in several cases, how she talks to the computer, and it responds to her commands. The technology already exists today, but it has two major problems, which will be solved in the coming years. The first problem is the response time of the computer to the voice command. Forrester predicts that this problem will be solved within two years, when companies such as Texas Instruments will introduce advanced DSP chips, with voice recognition capability built into the silicon, instead of using software. By 2015, most manufacturers will offer speech recognition capability built into the desktop computer's motherboard or personal processing unit.
The second problem is understanding the content of the commands. IBM demonstrated this year the ability to understand the meaning of words, in the context of the content and the sentence in which they are spoken, and the system was even sold for commercial use. Forrester predicts that this technology will become widespread by 2008. One of the factors accelerating speech recognition technology is the need for improved information security. Speech recognition is one of the ways to perform high-quality identification of the person, for access to various systems. Forrester predicts that by 2015, voice recognition will replace some of the passwords that exist today, for access to various resources.
Mental commands will become a reality by the year 2015. Apparently, the most fictional description in the story we brought is the one in which Limor Berkovich thinks about commands, and the computer reads her thoughts. It may sound like science fiction, but already in 1998 scientists were able to demonstrate how a paralyzed person "types" words into a computer using brain commands. In practice, the research in this field is much more advanced than many people know.
In 2002, scientists at Brown University demonstrated how monkeys with a chip implanted in their heads manage to move different levers using their thoughts; This technology has immediate applications, for example for patients paralyzed from the neck down. This year the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of brain implants, and this fact is evidence of the progress that exists in this field, as well as the fact that the FDA considers this a legitimate and promising technology for the future. Even Microsoft operates in this field, and registered a patent in this field this year.
This may seem strange to the adults among us, but today's young people, elementary and high school students, see their computers as a kind of part of their bodies, and it is difficult for them to say goodbye to the various electronic devices. This generation will be more open to trying brain devices, which can be activated by brain commands. Forrester believes that by 2010, young workers will be the first to try the brain implant technology, and that by 2015, even older workers will learn not to be afraid of the technology, and embrace it due to its convenience.
