Experts' guesses for future technologies: Robots, mobile everything

In 1991, the word Internet appeared in all of two stories in The Inquirer - yes, that includes once after a Tennessee senator named Al Gore proposed spending $1 billion for an "information superhighway" to upgrade a system that then linked about 2,000 academic, government, and commercial networks.

In 2001, the word appeared in nearly 3,000 Inquirer stories. Such was the impact of the World Wide Web on a technology that had been born decades earlier as ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.

No one, not even Gore, knew for sure in '91 how the junction of science, technology, and commerce would help spur an explosion in innovation. But that bit of history also raises a question: What innovations near today's horizons hold the potential to change our lives in the years ahead as dramatically as the Internet has changed ours in the two decades since 1991?

Many of us use the Internet from the moment we wake till the time we go to bed - and that's not counting the websites that claim to teach you while you sleep. Will we be saying that about something else in 10 or 20 years?

And, as the past proves time and time again, the future is always chock-full of surprises. But with that caveat, here are five technologies that could be poised to change our everyday lives:

Mobile everything. I put the what's-on-the-horizon question to Dave Farber and quickly realized how far behind I am in seeing the future.

Farber, sometimes called "the grandfather of the Internet," is a distinguished career professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He has barely slowed down in his 70s - he returned my call during a break in a Washington meeting.

Farber's top guess for a technology that will change lives? Call it "mobile everything." He can already do an amazing amount on his Apple iPhone, and he sees no end to the mobile vector: "I think it's going to be the ubiquitous way we do everything, including pay for things."

Farber already banks via his smartphone - including sending in photos of checks to deposit, no teller visit, ATM, or envelope required. Like many others, he expects cell-phone payments to eventually displace credit cards.

But he sees a more dramatic change in a marriage of several innovations - the kind of convergence tech visionaries see before the rest of us.

Farber says an Italian company is already linking diagnostic scanning with mobile phones. His vision goes a step further: tying both to computerized health records. It could notice heart problems before you do, alerting you and sending a message to your doctor, who could decide whether to send you to an emergency room - which could have access to your medical history.

"If I get sick in Washington right now, my health records are still in Pittsburgh," he says. "If you show up at an emergency room, the last thing you want people to do is guess what's wrong."

Robots. These sci-fi staples have long been making real-world inroads, especially in factory settings where they do discrete tasks. But as developments in sensors, artificial intelligence and voice recognition converge, scientists such as Dan Barry see robots spreading into the one place sure to make them a factor in our everyday lives: the home.

Barry, a physician and a former astronaut with a Ph.D. in engineering and computer science, is founder of Denbar Robotics. One of his current projects: an "autonomous wheelchair" that can give a person with severe cerebral palsy a new kind of mobility.

Within five to seven years, Barry says, he expects household robots capable of cleaning a house overnight - or at least the nonbreakable stuff - that are way beyond today's Roomba. Within 15 years, he says, he expects robots "with an order of intelligence like brighter pets."

That will pose challenges for people, foreshadowing the days when robots come with humanlike intelligence, he says. (See a video of Barry at http://go.philly.com/danbarry; to see the video he describes of a pack-animal robot that can stay steady after being kicked, go to http://go.philly.com/bigdog.)

Biometric IDs. To some of us, the widespread use of iris scans and thumbprints seems a little big-brotherish, but they're already used by places like Disney theme parks and groceries. And if a biometric scan could get you through airport security faster, would you really object?

Voice recognition/translation. Speech-to-text programs and services are getting better each year. Farber says speech-to-translation is the next frontier - and not far off, thanks especially to Japanese investment.

"Five to 10 years from now, it will work," he predicts.

Virtual reality. A fast-moving field that has implications for work and play, virtual reality "has been on wish lists for a long time," Farber says. He says the key will be development of "eyeglassless 3-D technology" - something like holographic projections that will allow people to conduct virtual meetings without travel, or participate in virtual-reality entertainment.

Across all these technologies, convergence is a persistent theme.

Barry says robotics stands to benefit from a remarkable development in gaming: the sensor for the new Xbox 360 Kinect, which senses a person's movements and integrates them into a game. Thanks to Kinect, he says, robot developers will be able to replace laser range finders that cost $5,000 or more with components from a device that sells for about $150.

Barry and Farber warn of the folly in trying to foresee the future when technological innovations are unpredictable and intertwined.

"There's an application out there for robots that we just can't see," he says, "just like we couldn't see the Internet."