2009: New ICT technologies that I am waiting for…

Come year end, all kinds of predictions are made for the next year and beyond. Of course, right now with economic challenges ahead, so-so priority technologies will be put on hold or disappear entirely from the radar screen. My personal list is also a wish list, as it would make my business life easier and I am sure yours, too:

Instant-on PCs
This one is very high on my wish list as it would reduce quite a lot of daily frustration. Being a power user I manage to crash Windows frequently so that I have to reboot which takes (seemingly) forever. Also, an instant-on PC would reduce electrical energy consumption as it would let people shut it off when not using it instead of leaving it in standby mode. In 2002, a Cornell University study calculated that the US could switch off seven power stations if TVs, videos and computers were not left on standby.
When to be expected?
This is clearly coming now. Phoenix Technologies (BIOS vendor) and Opera (web browsers) have announced a partnership that will lead to a first step into this direction. Their approach is to allow critical applications to start instantly while the OS is still booting. Of course what I would like to see is that the OS is instant-on as well. That might well require a new company. If Microsoft does not deliver it, then maybe an opportunity for an aggressive innovative startup?

12+ hours laptop battery run time
Everyone on the road would love to be able to work for a full day without having to hunt for one of the still rare power outlets at airports.
When to be expected?
This is a very tough one to call. Already years ago you could read press releases from major Japanese vendors announcing fuel cells for laptops providing a mind-blowing 40 hours of battery runtime. Of course, these systems were heavy and super expensive. And this is the challenge in battery technology: to find a technology than can be mass produced relatively inexpensively. Safety and recycling also plays a role, not to mention a supply chain needed if you were, for example, to use a refill mechanism such as methanol cartridges. Now Toshiba has announced they will bring such a battery to the market by the end of this year. But similar statements could already be read 3-5 years ago. So I’ll believe it when I can see and use it myself.

Wireless high-speed Internet access everywhere
Another annoyance factor would be removed if we could connect seamlessly to WiFi, UMTS, E-EDGE, or maybe WiMAX without having to look out for a signal and then go though a time-consuming logon procedure over and over again.
Vendors and operators claim that the technology and service is here today, but the reality looks entirely different. Instant connectivity would mean huge roaming charges so that people wouldn’t use it unless they really had to. I think that affordable data roaming would mean more business rather than less, but still all there is now is rip-offs that leave a rude shock with the next mobile phone bill. To give an example, I decided on my last China trip to put a SIM card from a Chinese mobile operator into one of my unlocked phones and use a Chinese phone number for country internal calls. I could use the phone for one week with an initial charge of 150 RMB which is 10EUR.
When to be expected?
This is probably a more political than technical issue, and therefore even more unpredictable. One forward-thinking innovative company needs to get the ball rolling. Unfortunately the Apple of the mobile operator space has to be invented first and might be a contradiction in terms - at least, right now. So maybe we won’t see this happening ever. Too bad.

Wireless electrical power transfer
This one sounds like science fiction maybe but is actually being worked on right now and first prototypes have already been demonstrated by MIT researchers. The trials were done over 2m powering a 60W light bulb. the system looked quite experimental still, though, and not too practical yet. Intel’s set up, as to be expected, looked more industrialized.
When to be expected?
No idea. I think RF radiation issues might lead to perception problems and a backlash that everyone would have to overcome still. This could be a show stopper still, I think, or at least delay it much longer. Also there are still quite a number of technical issues, as this Intel engineer admits in this video interview.

Instant personal identification
I nearly had a terrible experience just recently when I was travelling and lost my passport, not knowing if I would get it back before a China trip. It was then that I realized how important and indispensible this paper booklet actually is. To get a replacement takes tons of paper, such as birth certificates, police certification, sign-offs from your last city in your home country, and much more. In times when we are able to hop on a plane and get relatively inexpensively to any place in the world, our way of identifying ourselves is still from the Middle Ages, it seems. Simply incredible, and quite surprising to me that this has not been taken care of in an electronic way once and for all when biometric technologies should be plentiful enough to make it at least as safe as this paper passport and, most importantly, allow you to get a new one much faster if you lose it.
When to be expected?
Technology-wise today, but governments are in charge, and privacy organizations do not understand that it would actually be safer, so plenty of room for delay.

Paperless information exchange
With improvements in display technology such as e.g. OLEDs or plastic e-reader from Plasticlogic we might be headed in the right direction. Still, even most ICT companies, whose business is digital and online, often still think in paper for their own marketing and sales collateral. You find tons of printed brochures, newsletters etc. at their booths but not one single digital format, other than a pdf file maybe. No e-books, often not even USB flash cards - only CD-ROMs have found their way into the Marcom departments.
When to be expected?
As with all infrastructure-related ways of doing things, this will still take a long time. I think my kids might start adopting it, but only their kids will really enforce it to save trees and the environment.

Telecommuting
I remember well when my CEO in Silicon Valley about 10 years ago during the boom times, where office space was incredibly difficult to find, turned down my suggestion to start doing more telecommuting. His response was: at home people don’t work; they are constantly busy with other stuff such as their cat or whatever, so we cannot do telecommuting. Back then it was heavily discussed but then not really implemented. I think that this was and is a mistake, though. Today we have even better technology around, faster Internet access, web collaboration tools such as Webex or GotToMeeting of course, chat and free IP calls and, from what I have seen, also excellent and low-cost IP video telephony such as SightSpeed, which got acquired by Logitech in October. To me the excuse that someone would not be able to work from home because they would get distracted does not really hold true. A truly motivated and reliable employee will have enough self-motivation and discipline to organize his day in a way so the work gets done. If this is not the case, then it really does not matter if that person sits in your office building or at home. Of course, face-to-face meetings are helpful, and need to be held, but they can be minimized to what is needed in each phase of a project or business situation.
When to be expected?
I think that we will see its implementation more and more in the next 3 years and that, whenever it makes sense, companies will be more open for it than in the past. We will definitely see less business travel and the use of the Internet for web collaboration, including IP audio and video telecons.