IBM has offered the latest installment of its “Next Five in Five” series, an annual end-of-year rite in which the computing giant looks ahead to what the coming half decade might bring in the IT sector.
This time, Big Blue is bullish on 3D display technology, suggesting that new interfaces that had been the stuff of movies will allow people to display themselves as holograms, reshaping remote social interaction in a dramatic way. Then, too, IBM envisions new battery technology and other novel energy sources, along with radical advancements in cooling technology that could recycle excess heat from a datacenter to provide homes or offices with hot water. Datamation takes a look at IBM’s Next Five in Five forecast.
Over the next five years, batteries will be much longer lasting and some devices will be battery-free, while user interfaces, including video chat, will be rendered in 3D, according to IBM’s fifth annual “Next Five in Five,” a list of technologies its experts think are likely to significantly impact people’s lives over the next five years.
“In the next five years, 3D interfaces — like those in the movies — will let you interact with 3D holograms of your friends in real time. Movies and TVs are already moving to 3D, and as 3D and holographic cameras get more sophisticated and miniaturized to fit into cell phones, you will be able to interact with photos, browse the Web and chat with your friends in entirely new ways,” IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) list said.
