The Digital Future

Next Ultraportables: Small Is Beautiful

Two decades ago, Coleco's handheld football game was as high-tech as portables got. Today we have an epidemic growth of mobile computing devices and digital doodads--laptops, pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants, digital cameras, subnotebooks, mobile MP3 audio players, and handheld phasers with "stun" and "kill" settings.

Okay, maybe not that last one...yet. But at the current rate of development, we could soon be walking around resembling well-equipped cyborgs. In fact, Xybernaut, a Virginia-based company, already sells a full-featured wearable computer complete with a Xybercam video camera and a small, head-mounted color display that flips down in front of the user's eye (ideal for the utility worker hanging perilously from a telephone pole). It costs $5500.

So how will we keep these cool devices from weighing us down? Wireless systems, advanced display technologies, and all-in-one devices will help keep ultraportables, well, portable.

And no doubt about it, wireless connectivity for notebooks is developing rapidly. Apple's new iBook supports a wireless local area network system called AirPort that allows users to share an Internet connection within 150 feet of a hardwired access point. Similarly, Dell is making a wireless LAN card that'll be an option for its Latitude notebook line and plans to offer similar wireless options for all of its notebook and desktop PCs. You can bet other companies will quickly follow suit.

Besides wireless, another key buzzword for the future of mobile computing is convergence. Qualcomm's PdQ Smartphone is a good example of this: It's a full-featured digital wireless phone with a Palm III organizer built into the handset. It can autodial numbers that are stored in the Palm organizer, can display text messages as a pager would, and has all the standard apps of a Palm. Many similar wireless devices are currently in development (see "Next Microsoft" for details).

Wireless isn't just for far-flung communications, though. A new industry standard called Bluetooth is designed to let all of your mobile devices swap data via radio waves, provided they're less than 40 feet from one another. You could, for example, take notes at a conference on your Palm device, then wirelessly transfer them to your notebook when you return to your hotel. Look for Bluetooth-ready devices to appear midyear.

The displays on mobile devices will improve as well. Bob O'Donnell, research manager for PC displays with IDC, says advances in organic LEDs (displays that use naturally fluorescent compounds) promise brighter, crisper displays for mobile devices in about five years. These screens will need less power, O'Donnell says, because unlike traditional LCDs, they don't require a backlight.

Paging Dick Tracy

Look beyond the next five or ten years and you may see some prototypes of the sci-fi stuff currently being pondered in research rooms around the country. Robert Morris, director of IBM's Almaden Research Center, says his group is banking on the PC wristwatch becoming the ultimate wearable computer of the future.

Researchers could use advanced technologies such as quantum computing to produce superpowerful, watch-size machines that require little battery power. Working with voice command technology, wireless Internet access, and more hypothetical possibilities like holographic projection displays, designers could do away forever with monitors, keyboards, and other computing peripherals. Users would store data on the Web, which they would access through wireless networking and view using holographic projection. A superfast microprocessor would process the information instantaneously before uploading it from the watch back to the Web. Such machines would do everything that the Joneses' PC does now, but updated for the age of the Jetsons.

However, there's no word yet on that nifty phaser technology.

Lost in a Data Cloud

"The goal for networking in the next decade will be to provide individuals with a data cloud that follows them wherever they go. Whether I am attending a meeting in New York, sitting in my backyard in California, shopping in Tokyo, or meeting with a customer in Thailand, I should never be without any of my digital information. The network challenge [will be to make] this available whenever and wherever I am; the database challenge [will be] storing, organizing, and retrieving all of this heterogeneous material."