IBM believes in holographic phones

IBM engineers truly amaze with their techno-optimism. Recently , the results of the annual survey of three thousand scientists and researchers from IBM, as they see the main technological breakthroughs for the next five years, were published .

Here are the directions chosen by scientists from IBM for 2011-2015 (in descending order of importance).

1. Holographic projection 3D mobile phones.
2. Batteries that are charged by air (IBM is experimenting with metals that change their properties under the influence of O ₂ ), as well as from kinetic energy (shaking, walking, etc.).
3. Computer systems predict traffic jams.
4. Collection of environmental information by sensors in mobile phones and cars.
5. Heating of cities with servers from computer data centers.

Someone will say that such technologies are just fantasies. But the financial capabilities of IBM quite allow to translate them into reality. Agree that every fantasy has a certain value in dollars. So, visionary scientists simply tell businessmen financiers where to invest.
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Last year, IBM invested $ 5.8 billion in research and development, which is 6.1% of the company's revenues. This is more than any nearest competitor. IBM continues to lead in the number of patents obtained and is considered one of the most innovative companies in the world. At IBM R & D centers, they take on projects that are unlikely to ever be able to fit IBM’s core business.

It is necessary to add that joint researches in holographic interfaces to mobile phones were announced by Intel and Nokia in August 2010. For some reason, they also consider this direction to be promising (they probably also like the movie “Star Wars”). In general, four of the five technologies selected by IBM this year are related to mobile technology.

And one more fact. Next year, the very first five-year forecast, which IBM scientists made in 2006, will come in time ( PDF ). Then they predicted that the recognition of continuous speech will become the norm for computer systems, and 3D-interfaces in the style of Second Life will be distributed on the Internet.