Will smartphones be replaced? New technology may appear soon, Bill Gates once boldly predicted

Tech 2023-05-26 00:40:24 Source: Network

The commercialization of wireless communication.In 1994, 11 years later, IBM released a phone with a touch screen that could make calls and send faxes, equipped with the most primitive APP, indicating the beginning of the era of smartphones

The commercialization of wireless communication.

In 1994, 11 years later, IBM released a phone with a touch screen that could make calls and send faxes, equipped with the most primitive APP, indicating the beginning of the era of smartphones.

In the past decade, the smart terminal industry with smartphones as its core has developed rapidly, sparking a wave of mobile internet and changing people's production and lifestyle.

In recent years, with the common development of new generation information technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, new application terminals such as virtual reality and wearable devices have emerged. Can we not help but imagine that mobile phones will be replaced?

In 2022, Bill Gates predicted that the technology that can replace smart phones will appear soon. How far is the new smart terminal from us?

The Future of Intelligent Terminal Devices

Internet of Things - refers to the collection of various types of information through various information sensors, and the widespread connection between things and people through various possible network connections, achieving the effect of "Internet of Things".

In the development of the Internet of Things, various devices are needed, including data collection and terminal control.

In the Internet of Things, intelligent control terminals are an essential project, and the most commonly used types of smart terminals nowadays are almost all non wearable devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, etc.

Non wearable devices have strong limitations, the simplest of which is that they are easy to lose, and the interactive experience and convenience of life are not compatible (such as a small phone that can only be operated with fingers and eyes on a small screen, while those that need a good experience, such as computers and tablet TVs, have a larger volume).

Is there a device with a good and convenient experience to replace a phone?

In our current vision, wearable devices are the next step in our development, such as glasses and brain wearable devices.

In the science fiction film 'Iron Man 3', the protagonist Tony Tucker used a 'glasses' style wearable device.

Most wearable devices utilize AR (augmented reality) technology, such as products that do not require a display screen, but instead project information directly into the wearer's eyes, allowing the wearer to see through their eyes and produce the following effects.

In the early years, this feature was applied to displays in pilots' helmets to enhance their battlefield awareness.

In daily life, glasses like AR devices have been designed and sold, that is - Google Glasses.

This pair of sci-fi glasses, which was released ten years ago and priced at $1500, caused a sensation and was named Time Magazine's Best Invention in 2012.

This pair of glasses can be equipped with different apps and can be controlled using both action and voice:

In the end, this highly sci-fi eyewear failed and was not truly promoted.

The issue of power consumption and heat generation is that the storage capacity of miniaturized batteries is not directly proportional to the consumption required by their devices, and there is also a lack of cooling equipment. For example, Google Glasses consumes 80% of its electricity in just one hour, accompanied by severe heat generation.
The issue of hardware miniaturization is that there is very little hardware that can be loaded into glasses. Currently, most hardware cannot balance miniaturization and versatility. For example, Google Glasses has a very small memory of only 682MB, which can only be used as an auxiliary projector for mobile phones, and its weight is not low. Therefore, it is almost impossible to use more functions on top of this.
Display issue, Google Glasses needs to raise its eyes slightly to see the screen clearly, which greatly affects attention and also has very low clarity. Currently, the technology of directly projecting images onto the retina is very immature.

If the image is to be projected very clearly onto the retina, it is necessary to accurately draw the refractive diagram of the human eye at the micrometer level (each person's lens and vitreous structure are different, and the refractive ability of the eye varies in different situations), which existing technology cannot achieve.

Of course, in many technological scenarios, the ultimate application of wearable devices is to directly connect to the nervous system, also known as the "brain computer interface"

In the animated film "Sword God Domain: The Battle of Sequences", wearable AR devices can provide great convenience for people's lives.

AR devices such as Google Glasses have a problem where the information they send is converted into electrical signals by the human body's receiver (such as the eyes) and entered the brain for recognition.

This receiver is like a "middleman", where each person's raw information is secretly "taken" away by this middleman before being transmitted to the brain. Moreover, it is difficult for different middlemen to transmit both visual and olfactory signals at different locations.

Since everything needs to be accepted by the brain, can we just skip the "middlemen" of the eyes and nose and send signals to the brain?

Brain computer interface is a method of directly communicating data with the brain, converting visual, olfactory, and other signals into electrical signals, which are input into the brain without damage. It can also receive muscle and nerve signals from the body, avoiding the disadvantage of ordinary wearable devices requiring a large number of detectors to capture signals from different areas of the body.

Brain computer interfaces and ordinary wearable devices belong to completely different development paths, but so far, brain computer interfaces are still in the early stages.

In recent years, countries around the world have gradually attached importance to the research of brain science and have launched their own brain science and technology plans. However, the level of human research on the brain is similar to that of infants who have just learned to walk.

It is now impossible to transmit complex signals to the human brain, directly forming images, sounds, etc., because we cannot even understand what the encoding of images and sounds in the brain is like.

This encoding is like the "text" we use, which can only be conveyed by understanding the patterns of what "text" is used in the brain, but so far, we do not even have the means to understand.

epilogue

Wearable devices such as watches and VR (virtual reality technology) have significant drawbacks when used as mobile intelligent terminals, such as the inability of watches to interact with a large amount of information between people and can only be used as auxiliary devices for other purposes.

The characteristic of VR (virtual reality) technology is "immersion", which was originally designed to enhance the experience of specific scenes. When interacting with the outside world, the effect is poor and it is easy to "dominate".

In future technology, wearable AR devices will inevitably replace mobile phones, which will also pose significant ethical and security issues. For example, brain computer interfaces need to be connected to the brain, which means that we can avoid the first line of defense of our body, the "sensory organs", to forcibly obtain information in our minds, or to forcibly insert a piece of information that we do not like into the brain, or even directly damage a certain area.

The ultimate development path for IoT terminal devices that replace mobile phones must be 'connecting to the brain'. If technology really emerges, how dare everyone use it?

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