IDF 2012: What will it feel like to be a human in 2020?

Against the backdrop of a week that will be marred by the madness and frenzy of an impending Apple device launch, Intel started its proceedings on Day 0 of IDF 2012 on a refreshingly different note.

Against the backdrop of a week that will be marred by the madness and frenzy of an impending Apple device launch, Intel started its proceedings on Day 0 of IDF 2012 on a refreshingly different note. Intel’s opening session, a day before the main proceedings begin on Tuesday, was more about the interesting and futuristic computing experiences we can all look forward to in the years to come and less about the hardware and processing power one-upmanship that we have all been so accustomed to in the past. This is a significant shift. And one that can only be fully appreciated when you see first-hand the projects that have been incubating in Intel's labs. Projects that have very little to do with the guts of computational and processing power and more to do with the experiences and the future of technology and computing. What will it feel like to be a human in the year 2020?  This is a question that Brian David Johnson, Intel Futurist, tackles head on. As a Futurist, it is his job to look out 5, 10, or 15 years ahead and develop plans that Intel engineers can use to create technology for. His job is a complicated mix of sociology and research, looking deeply into how people interact with computers and computation today to anticipate how it will evolve over time. The work that Brian’s team does trickles down into teams all over Intel and becomes blueprints and spec sheets for products that Intel would then work on in the Intel Labs. Brian David Johnson, Futurist, Intel Corporation Brian’s answer to that question is powerfully presented. He postulates that as we look out to 2020, something really remarkable happens: the size of meaningful computational power approaches zero. Simply put, as the chips become smaller and faster, the size of meaningful computational power approaches zero by volume. And because the chips by then will become so small and powerful that they’re invisible, they could become a part of everything. We could convert anything into a computer. We could turn a table into a computer, you could turn someone’s shirt into a computer, and sometimes even our bodies could become computers. And then the computing experiences will be solely limited by the power of our imagination. Science and technology have progressed to the point where what we build is only constrained by the limits of our own imaginations--Justin Rattner, Intel CTO With this power of imagination, Intel then demonstrated a whole bunch of really cool projects that its researchers are working on. These interactive and context-aware innovations further demonstrate how people’s relationships with technology are changing and will continue to evolve as we look into the future. Display without boundaries: Changing how and where we display and interact with our content Easily one of the most exciting demos at the session was the Display without Boundaries setup. It used unique algorithms to transform any surface in a home or work environment into an interactive display. Intel researchers showed how they’ve stitched together a seamless integration of images from multiple sources that can wrap around objects and corner surfaces in a typical home. If you look carefully, you'll see the researcher move digital pictures around in this bowl, tap on them as if they’re real objects and then take one out and slap it onto a wall. It all happens seamlessly!