[Tiresias]

Now that we have the MacBook Air, I'm wondering where laptop design is going. Soon it will be possible to make a laptop so thin, small and light that it will no longer be ergonomically feasible. What is the solution? Empty casing? What are laptops going to look like in 10 to 20 years? Would you want a laptop any smaller than your current machine? How do you get around the necessity for screen real estate and a keyboard?

I'm seeing something the size of a box of matches that projects a holographic keyboard and screen.

[amazing]

I'm thinking more of something along the line of the Dick Tracy wristwatch communicator and laptop, with voice recognition for all input. Let the comics rejoice!

[Visnaut]

Predicting the future is an exercise in futility, but I'll take a stab at it anyway:

In the short-term I see laptops, in their true sense, turning into roll-up or foldable units with one side being a combined screen and touch surface, with some form of tactile feedback.

Further out than that, I can imagine there being almost no physical representation of a "computer" or "cell phone" in our world. Just an electronic component that interacts with your brain that acts as a bridge between you and a ubiquitous internet connection. It projects a user interface directly into your visual cortex, and reads your thoughts as input. Don't pull out your tinfoil hat just yet; don't think of it as some hive mind bullshit, but more of a seamless "thin client" between your mind and "the cloud" if you will. The user will always be in control.

If that seems scary in any way, or impossible to fathom the population at large accepting such a technology, just think how much control we've relinquished of our lives to technology. It probably won't happen for many many years, maybe not even within our lifetime, but if you think about it, nobody 50 years ago could imagine the world we've wound up with today. I wonder what the next 50 will bring...

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Tiresias

Where is laptop design going?

To the pub.

[nonhuman]

I'm not sure it will actually be a problem that we could make a laptop so small it wouldn't make sense. All that really means is that we'll be able to fit far more into the same volume, so we'll see laptops that are much more fully featured. Certainly I think we'll start to see wider-ranging wireless network access as standard whether it be WiMax or some future technology. GPS will probably also become standard at some point, and who knows what else.

[mduell]

Hopefully bezel-less. The MacBook Air looks comical with a bezel thicker than the machine is.

[Tesselator]

Where I think it's going? Scroll out touch-sensitive screen in a VERY small form factor.
So, no keyboard (virtual overlay), no flip top, no I/O ports (all wireless), built in high-spec
video and still camera, integrated phone, etc..

When? Mmmm 8 to 10 years. Or did you mean more like what the next generation will
be like? If so then not much different... Longer battery life, smaller or lighter body, faster
CPU, more memory.

[ghporter]

I like Oisín's idea. The laptop of the future will be more portable (smaller and lighter), run for longer on a charge, and be more capable of handling both more complex tasks and lots of kinds of media.

I just saw "2010" this morning, and the thing that struck me most about the "futurist" input to the film was that Floyd was doing his homework on the beach with a laptop that was...pretty accurate for the current era. He was drinking beer out of what looked like foil pouches, which would probably make for more or less litter (depending on how the pouches were handled), but his computer looked a lot like a thin Pismo. I also thought that the vast number of CRT monitors in the movie was kind of interesting-in "2001" they used front projection to make some screens look like very flat panels, and used plain old rear projection (tons of 16mm projectors) to simulate console displays. Today, they'd have used a bunch of LCDs. This all illustrates how easy it is to goof big time when predicting the future. The only really accurate prediction is "it'll be very different and at the same time very much the same."

[Tiresias]

But do you think technology will eventually "max out"? Like, are there limits on how far it can go, just as, ultimately, there are physical constraints on how fast a man can run a mile? Or is technology infinitely improvable?

A lot depends on this question.

[gradient]

Originally Posted by Tiresias 

But do you think technology will eventually "max out"? Like, are there limits on how far it can go, just as, ultimately, there are physical constraints on how fast a man can run a mile? Or is technology infinitely improvable?

A lot depends on this question.

The boundaries of science and spirituality reach so far beyond what is currently known that it's virtually impossible to know what the limiting factor of technological growth will be.

If you believe that synthetic technology will ultimately be melded into organic life then, considering that living beings have such a vast amount of untapped brainpower, the possibilities are nearly infinite.