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Tech 2005: What's New and What's Next

The products you use are about to get smarter, faster, smaller, cheaper, and more colorful. Here's your guide to what's ahead in PCs, software, mobile gadgets, home electronics, and more.

Michael Desmond

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Tech Visionary: When Everything Computes

Photograph by Jason Grow.

Photograph: Jason Grow
Anant Agarwal, professor at MIT Research Labs, has been working on the Oxygen Project, in which "we are looking to create an environment with computation everywhere--in the walls of buildings, in your hands, everywhere," he says. "Computers can then attempt to assist people in a human-centric way."

Imagine a video wall installed in your family room that can act as a large television one instant, a videophone the next, and a Web browser after that. To make this kind of always-on, always-convenient future work, each object needs to be able to perform almost any computing task. The project's Raw Architecture Workstation (RAW) chip attempts to make such a capability a reality.

How soon will we be talking to walls, taking phone calls from refrigerators, and getting foreign-language translations from desk phones? Not yet, says Agarwal. Voice-operated kiosks with richer interfaces that go beyond today's machines "could be deployed in the next year or two. The longer-term ideas will take five to ten years," he says.

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