7 ms·

What Comes After Smartphones?

41 points by chemodax 6y ago

wintorez 6y ago
I still think smart-glasses has a chance to come back. If you think about it, combined with AR and hand-tracking, they can make everything that has a screen obsolete. Your smart-glass will replace your TV, Laptop, Console, Watch, Camera, and of course Phone.
- minot 6y ago
  I think the biggest blocker is battery life. What is the minimum display resolution I’d need in submerging like steam vr but wired power where I can do basic web development like with an ide open, a browser and it’s inspect window all open? Traditionally this is the 1080p monitors. What would be the equivalent in vr?
- fbelzile 6y ago
  Maybe not replace, but at least displace the phone, watch, camera. I think one of the major hurdles with smart-glasses isn't tech, it's the changing of social norms. Right now, if you walk down the street waving your hands in the air, you'll look like a crazy person. When people first started using cellphones, from the outside, it didn't look much different than looking down at a book or portable gaming device.
  - derekp7 6y ago
    But bluetooth earpieces made it look like people were talking to themselves. For me, if I'm not by myself, I'll often have my phone in my hand while talking on bluetooth.
  - RedNifre 6y ago
    That's incorrect, when people were first using mobile phones they did look like crazy people, because people were used to phones being stationary. Waving your hands in the air without a physical input device present would just be the same shift.
- visarga 6y ago
  > Your smart glass will replace your TV, Laptop, Console, Watch, Camera, and of course Phone. and ... yourself. By capturing all your input-output signals over your lifetime it can upload your personality so your digital self becomes immortal. Of course, smart glasses will be only part of your digital self logging.
cm277 6y ago
The article correctly goes through the history of personal computing but then just stops short of reaching the obvious conclusion: everyone pretty much has a 'personal computer' already (even feature phones count, kinda). There's no "next platform". PC technology spread is done. As with other technologies, the next waves will be about efficiency, price and (as TFA does say) changing the way we work and live around PCs/smartphones. Consider previous technologies: planes went from the Wright Flyer to the 747 in 50 years or so. But there's little "next gen" for airliners after the 747, other than well, fuel efficiency, operational efficiency, safety, etc. Which made riding in one a lot more approachable to anyone and eventually made low cost carriers possible and world tourism and Instagram influencers, etc... But a modern jet engine would be recognizable tech to an engineer from 50 years ago. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's no longer a gold rush, it will be an evolution-driven industry just like, well, everything else.
- badRNG 6y ago
  The comparison to airlines is really insightful. I wonder if we could have a comparable article written in the 1960s wondering what the next revolution in transportation technology would be. Trains, cars, planes, next is hover cars? Space craft? With this example we have the benefit of hindsight and understand there isn't a new "automobile" right over the horizon.
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    That is a dangerous way to look at it, because you risk missing the next big transportation device because it doesn't look like what you expect it to look like. What if the next thing you use to transport yourself to work is not a hovercar but Zoom (the online meeting app)?
  - mikestew 6y ago
    Your list went from most efficient to least efficient, and finally to "my g-d, could we possibly burn any more resources just to get where we're going?". Meaning it went the wrong way. Which, because it's the 60s in the hypothetical example, is fitting. The next revolution is the quantum of transportation: the electric scooter. I jest, but only a little. It gets me to work just fine, gets me there in only five minutes more than the car, and I don't have to pedal. And I can power it with the 400W of solar panels on the roof of our RV. Seeing how fast one can dump fuel into an engine in 2020 isn't what I'd call a "revolution".
klelatti 6y ago
Broadly agree but just to highlight one vital point which is not mentioned - each new platform has been enabled by the progression of Moore's law which has radically changed what is possible in a form factor / power budget / price budget. Implicitly, I think, Ben assumes that Moore's law is slowing or coming to a halt. That's probably the case but I think that the honest answer on the question that Ben asks is that we don't know until we know how Moore's law will pan out over the next 10 years or so.
- dilawar 6y ago
  Every iteration under Moore laws gets costlier (roughly by 1 order of magnitude costly than the previous iteration, iirc). So sooner of later, well run out of money evn if theoretical potential remains to be exploited. And current status of research in physics doesn't give me hope that some affordable breakthrough is coming soon.
1cvmask 6y ago
Next-generation platforms that are wireless like the smart glasses will be limited by battery life. However, wireless charging will solve that. It will displace some computing like the mobile phone etc... But that is a long way away and there will be many failed initiatives till it becomes mass market. Edward Thorp had built a wearable computer in the early 1960s to beat the dealer in casinos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp
torcete 6y ago
I guess the ring displayed in the movie Zardoz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EESnKyRIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EESnKyRIY
ilaksh 6y ago
I think optical waveguide is really interesting for AR (and maybe VR?) And actually there are some ways that could start to replace laptops and desktops as well as phones. Also wondering when there is going to be a real competitor for Neuralink. Or if it's just up to Elon to prove everything first. Another crazy idea might be something you wear on your head that has a microprojector. Or we just start wallpapering every room with OLED screens so your work follows you as you move around. I think AI has a ton of potential as far as realizing the dream of the personal assistant.
Mohitvermaji51 6y ago
Prognosticators predict that advances in technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and wearable electronics will spawn a new generation of devices that could change our everyday existence even more than the smartphone did.
- bredren 6y ago
  They are right. Because it has never been about the compute. It has been about the interface.
swiley 6y ago
I'd like to think that what's happening in the US will wake everyone up to how smartphones are abused to expose people to submarine PR. Maybe more free computing like the pinephone will be what's next.
haolez 6y ago
Maybe something like blockchain technology, if(!) it manages to eliminate intermediaries in some industries and make the previously computing model obsolete for some kinds of computation and industries.
tjansen 6y ago
I think the next step in evolution will be when we lose the notion of smart devices and local data, and just think in terms of screens and input devices. The closest thing we have right now is Google's Stadia: your games run in the cloud. You can use your TV (with the help of Chromecast) as a screen and you have a smart WiFi-controller that can also connect to Stadia, and together you have an experience. Or you use your smart phone and its touchscreen, and get the same content. I think this will be the model of the future experience. However, the screen content needs to adapt to the screen size and type, and to the input devices that are available. Stadia can't really do this yet. And it should even work with audio-only devices like Echos and Nest speakers. You will certainly still have a phone in your pocket, but you can treat it more like a portable screen with touchscreen for input. There will be no "apps on your phone" or "data on your phone", but your phone provides that for you, just like all devices give you access to them. The big question will be where the code runs. I wouldn't count on a complete cloud solution like Stadia, because you can't guarantee a permanent network connection on your phone. My guess would be that the data and code will be synced with the cloud, but code can still run on those devices that are powerful enough. For all others, it runs in the cloud. I also think that the app model will sooner or later cease to exist, because it limits what an AI can do. If you have separate apps for spreadsheets and music, the AI can't complete a seemingly trivial task like 'take the list of songs in that spreadsheet and play them'. There will be something more like recipe, to explain the AI how to read a spreadsheet and how to find and play a particular song on a music service, but all the logic that is now hidden in apps must be available to an AI to allow it to combine it.
- mackrevinack 6y ago
  or https://safenetwork.tech https://safenetwork.tech everything stored and running on the network (which will be made up of the unused storage and cpu cycles on peoples devices, and maybe some servers as well) so your devices will mainly just be a portal or a window to the network
sys_64738 6y ago
More smartphones. As tech matures the ability to move it to new phases gets harder. We'll always have computers we type on because people hate talking to machines. Smart phones are intercommunication devices to keep us connected. They're good enough so won't be moved by other kinds of tech. They are post avant garde period so they will be entrenched.
visarga 6y ago
Chat bots with emotion and personality, like the movie Her, acting as companions. I bet Xiaoice isn't as sophisticated as GPT-3 but in a short time it will be. > The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418366
antoniuschan99 6y ago
The model is simply “computing”. After smartphones we have smart watches (the continual minimization of mobile computing) and ar/vr (immersive computing). The main driver has always been mobility and minaturization. From mainframes, desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Also we had ethernet to wifi and cellular. Kevin Kelly had a great talk about screens being pervasive almost a decade ago. The leap from bulky crt to flatscreen resulted in an increasing number of displays to display all the data we’re receiving. Not only that, but because the displays have become bigger there is more data to be displayed. Ar/Vr seems like the next thing since the screen is (paradoxically) even larger! IoT is interesting because it is a new form of computing (let me know if you think otherwise) as it’s not necessarily meant directly for human-computer interaction, instead it’s machine-machine computing. Voice is another interesting aspect since this type of computing does not utilize the traditional screen. Apple’s upcoming smart glasses seem like the next logical step (minaturization of mobile computing with an expanding immersive display)
- hinkley 6y ago
  Personal area networking is certain to be a thing. Phones can’t get much bigger, but we want more real estate for interfacing. The glasses certainly have the most long term potential, but imagine the phone becoming more about wireless radio and less time in hand. The watch loses some functionality to become smaller and have longer battery life. Maybe you move heart rate or blood sugar monitoring to a separate device, like a ring, and people can cherry pick which ones they like. Or the phone merges into the watch and goes away entirely, some of it into the band. Apple had a patent on incorporating batteries into the watch band, but they never did anything with that. Pity.
- mackrevinack 6y ago
  if somebody could deliver some actual decent battery improvements instead of just making promises it would help most of what you mentioned. I've never really got into the iot thing (apart from two smart bulbs) because of how many batteries you would go through in a year if you had a house full of iot devices. its crazy to think of everyone going through the same amount of batteries each year, especially those coin cell ones that can't be recycled
Mohitvermaji51 6y ago
Prognosticators predict that advances in technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and wearable electronics will spawn a new generation of devices that could change our everyday existence even more than the smartphone did. https://mcdvoicesurvey.onl https://mcdvoicesurvey.onl https://mybk-experience.onl https://mybk-experience.onl https://www.mc-d.uno/mcdvoice/ https://www.mc-d.uno/mcdvoice/
Yhippa 6y ago
Cloud computing and brain-computer interfaces.
slowmovintarget 6y ago
Payments. Seriously. Banking by smartphone between other people with smartphones. += gigs += reputation += search (matching gigs to available workers)

41 points by chemodax 6y ago

I still think smart-glasses has a chance to come back. If you think about it, combined with AR and hand-tracking, they can make everything that has a screen obsolete. Your smart-glass will replace your TV, Laptop, Console, Watch, Camera, and of course Phone.

minot 6y ago
I think the biggest blocker is battery life. What is the minimum display resolution I’d need in submerging like steam vr but wired power where I can do basic web development like with an ide open, a browser and it’s inspect window all open? Traditionally this is the 1080p monitors. What would be the equivalent in vr?
fbelzile 6y ago
Maybe not replace, but at least displace the phone, watch, camera. I think one of the major hurdles with smart-glasses isn't tech, it's the changing of social norms. Right now, if you walk down the street waving your hands in the air, you'll look like a crazy person. When people first started using cellphones, from the outside, it didn't look much different than looking down at a book or portable gaming device.
- derekp7 6y ago
  But bluetooth earpieces made it look like people were talking to themselves. For me, if I'm not by myself, I'll often have my phone in my hand while talking on bluetooth.
- RedNifre 6y ago
  That's incorrect, when people were first using mobile phones they did look like crazy people, because people were used to phones being stationary. Waving your hands in the air without a physical input device present would just be the same shift.
visarga 6y ago
> Your smart glass will replace your TV, Laptop, Console, Watch, Camera, and of course Phone. and ... yourself. By capturing all your input-output signals over your lifetime it can upload your personality so your digital self becomes immortal. Of course, smart glasses will be only part of your digital self logging.

cm277 6y ago

The article correctly goes through the history of personal computing but then just stops short of reaching the obvious conclusion: everyone pretty much has a 'personal computer' already (even feature phones count, kinda). There's no "next platform". PC technology spread is done. As with other technologies, the next waves will be about efficiency, price and (as TFA does say) changing the way we work and live around PCs/smartphones. Consider previous technologies: planes went from the Wright Flyer to the 747 in 50 years or so. But there's little "next gen" for airliners after the 747, other than well, fuel efficiency, operational efficiency, safety, etc. Which made riding in one a lot more approachable to anyone and eventually made low cost carriers possible and world tourism and Instagram influencers, etc... But a modern jet engine would be recognizable tech to an engineer from 50 years ago. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's no longer a gold rush, it will be an evolution-driven industry just like, well, everything else.

badRNG 6y ago
The comparison to airlines is really insightful. I wonder if we could have a comparable article written in the 1960s wondering what the next revolution in transportation technology would be. Trains, cars, planes, next is hover cars? Space craft? With this example we have the benefit of hindsight and understand there isn't a new "automobile" right over the horizon.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  That is a dangerous way to look at it, because you risk missing the next big transportation device because it doesn't look like what you expect it to look like. What if the next thing you use to transport yourself to work is not a hovercar but Zoom (the online meeting app)?
- mikestew 6y ago
  Your list went from most efficient to least efficient, and finally to "my g-d, could we possibly burn any more resources just to get where we're going?". Meaning it went the wrong way. Which, because it's the 60s in the hypothetical example, is fitting. The next revolution is the quantum of transportation: the electric scooter. I jest, but only a little. It gets me to work just fine, gets me there in only five minutes more than the car, and I don't have to pedal. And I can power it with the 400W of solar panels on the roof of our RV. Seeing how fast one can dump fuel into an engine in 2020 isn't what I'd call a "revolution".

klelatti 6y ago

Broadly agree but just to highlight one vital point which is not mentioned - each new platform has been enabled by the progression of Moore's law which has radically changed what is possible in a form factor / power budget / price budget. Implicitly, I think, Ben assumes that Moore's law is slowing or coming to a halt. That's probably the case but I think that the honest answer on the question that Ben asks is that we don't know until we know how Moore's law will pan out over the next 10 years or so.

dilawar 6y ago
Every iteration under Moore laws gets costlier (roughly by 1 order of magnitude costly than the previous iteration, iirc). So sooner of later, well run out of money evn if theoretical potential remains to be exploited. And current status of research in physics doesn't give me hope that some affordable breakthrough is coming soon.

1cvmask 6y ago

Next-generation platforms that are wireless like the smart glasses will be limited by battery life. However, wireless charging will solve that. It will displace some computing like the mobile phone etc... But that is a long way away and there will be many failed initiatives till it becomes mass market. Edward Thorp had built a wearable computer in the early 1960s to beat the dealer in casinos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp

torcete 6y ago

I guess the ring displayed in the movie Zardoz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EESnKyRIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EESnKyRIY

ilaksh 6y ago

I think optical waveguide is really interesting for AR (and maybe VR?) And actually there are some ways that could start to replace laptops and desktops as well as phones. Also wondering when there is going to be a real competitor for Neuralink. Or if it's just up to Elon to prove everything first. Another crazy idea might be something you wear on your head that has a microprojector. Or we just start wallpapering every room with OLED screens so your work follows you as you move around. I think AI has a ton of potential as far as realizing the dream of the personal assistant.

Mohitvermaji51 6y ago

bredren 6y ago
They are right. Because it has never been about the compute. It has been about the interface.

swiley 6y ago

I'd like to think that what's happening in the US will wake everyone up to how smartphones are abused to expose people to submarine PR. Maybe more free computing like the pinephone will be what's next.

haolez 6y ago

Maybe something like blockchain technology, if(!) it manages to eliminate intermediaries in some industries and make the previously computing model obsolete for some kinds of computation and industries.

tjansen 6y ago

I think the next step in evolution will be when we lose the notion of smart devices and local data, and just think in terms of screens and input devices. The closest thing we have right now is Google's Stadia: your games run in the cloud. You can use your TV (with the help of Chromecast) as a screen and you have a smart WiFi-controller that can also connect to Stadia, and together you have an experience. Or you use your smart phone and its touchscreen, and get the same content. I think this will be the model of the future experience. However, the screen content needs to adapt to the screen size and type, and to the input devices that are available. Stadia can't really do this yet. And it should even work with audio-only devices like Echos and Nest speakers. You will certainly still have a phone in your pocket, but you can treat it more like a portable screen with touchscreen for input. There will be no "apps on your phone" or "data on your phone", but your phone provides that for you, just like all devices give you access to them. The big question will be where the code runs. I wouldn't count on a complete cloud solution like Stadia, because you can't guarantee a permanent network connection on your phone. My guess would be that the data and code will be synced with the cloud, but code can still run on those devices that are powerful enough. For all others, it runs in the cloud. I also think that the app model will sooner or later cease to exist, because it limits what an AI can do. If you have separate apps for spreadsheets and music, the AI can't complete a seemingly trivial task like 'take the list of songs in that spreadsheet and play them'. There will be something more like recipe, to explain the AI how to read a spreadsheet and how to find and play a particular song on a music service, but all the logic that is now hidden in apps must be available to an AI to allow it to combine it.

mackrevinack 6y ago
or https://safenetwork.tech https://safenetwork.tech everything stored and running on the network (which will be made up of the unused storage and cpu cycles on peoples devices, and maybe some servers as well) so your devices will mainly just be a portal or a window to the network

sys_64738 6y ago

More smartphones. As tech matures the ability to move it to new phases gets harder. We'll always have computers we type on because people hate talking to machines. Smart phones are intercommunication devices to keep us connected. They're good enough so won't be moved by other kinds of tech. They are post avant garde period so they will be entrenched.

visarga 6y ago

Chat bots with emotion and personality, like the movie Her, acting as companions. I bet Xiaoice isn't as sophisticated as GPT-3 but in a short time it will be. > The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25418366

antoniuschan99 6y ago

The model is simply “computing”. After smartphones we have smart watches (the continual minimization of mobile computing) and ar/vr (immersive computing). The main driver has always been mobility and minaturization. From mainframes, desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Also we had ethernet to wifi and cellular. Kevin Kelly had a great talk about screens being pervasive almost a decade ago. The leap from bulky crt to flatscreen resulted in an increasing number of displays to display all the data we’re receiving. Not only that, but because the displays have become bigger there is more data to be displayed. Ar/Vr seems like the next thing since the screen is (paradoxically) even larger! IoT is interesting because it is a new form of computing (let me know if you think otherwise) as it’s not necessarily meant directly for human-computer interaction, instead it’s machine-machine computing. Voice is another interesting aspect since this type of computing does not utilize the traditional screen. Apple’s upcoming smart glasses seem like the next logical step (minaturization of mobile computing with an expanding immersive display)

hinkley 6y ago
Personal area networking is certain to be a thing. Phones can’t get much bigger, but we want more real estate for interfacing. The glasses certainly have the most long term potential, but imagine the phone becoming more about wireless radio and less time in hand. The watch loses some functionality to become smaller and have longer battery life. Maybe you move heart rate or blood sugar monitoring to a separate device, like a ring, and people can cherry pick which ones they like. Or the phone merges into the watch and goes away entirely, some of it into the band. Apple had a patent on incorporating batteries into the watch band, but they never did anything with that. Pity.
mackrevinack 6y ago
if somebody could deliver some actual decent battery improvements instead of just making promises it would help most of what you mentioned. I've never really got into the iot thing (apart from two smart bulbs) because of how many batteries you would go through in a year if you had a house full of iot devices. its crazy to think of everyone going through the same amount of batteries each year, especially those coin cell ones that can't be recycled

Mohitvermaji51 6y ago

Prognosticators predict that advances in technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and wearable electronics will spawn a new generation of devices that could change our everyday existence even more than the smartphone did. https://mcdvoicesurvey.onl https://mcdvoicesurvey.onl https://mybk-experience.onl https://mybk-experience.onl https://www.mc-d.uno/mcdvoice/ https://www.mc-d.uno/mcdvoice/

Yhippa 6y ago

Cloud computing and brain-computer interfaces.

slowmovintarget 6y ago

Payments. Seriously. Banking by smartphone between other people with smartphones. += gigs += reputation += search (matching gigs to available workers)