Technology giant IBM issued a list of predictions of future
technologies culled from a survey of 3,000 IBM scientists, Bloomberg reported,
pronouncing cities heated by servers, holographic cell phones and
advanced city traffic monitoring as among the prevalent technologies of
the next five years. Batteries that “breathe” air and the proliferation
of environmental sensors were also included on the list.
“All this demonstrates a real culture of innovation at IBM and
willingness to devote itself to solving some of the world’s biggest
problems,” Josephine Cheng, a vice president at IBM’s Almaden lab, told
the news service. The company predicted batteries would move beyond
lithium-ion construction to more energy-dense materials, greatly
increasing their power capacity and allowing them to recharge using the
air around them.
“These are all stretch goals, and that’s good. In an era when pessimism
is the new black, a little dose of technological optimism is not a bad
thing” Paul Saffo, managing director of foresight at investment firm
Discern, told Bloomberg. “The nice thing about the list is that it
provokes thought. If everything came true, they wouldn’t be doing their
job.”
Earlier this month, IBM took steps to bring a better future to the
island nation of Singapore, announcing a research collaboratory there
where researchers from IBM intend to collaborate with scientists and
engineers from public agencies in Singapore to improve the quality of
its urban services. The focus of the research effort will be to use
sensor networks to more effectively model, predict and manage the use
of natural and physical infrastructure resources – water, transport and
energy.
The collaboratory will focus on research in advanced analytics-based
solutions. The understanding of water, energy and transport systems
requires science-based models of resources (e.g. hydrology for water)
and behavior (e.g. economic models for demand response for electricity
and transport). These models need to assimilate data from sensor
networks at the right scale and resolution to capture the observed
events and the interaction between the different systems. Such models
may be used to understand the behavior and develop policies for the
management of these systems.
IBM said it would work with several agencies including the Economic
Development Board (EDB) and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to
develop decision support tools to help Singapore more effectively
manage its resources. As part of these efforts, IBM also intends to
drive research collaborations with an ecosystem of research institutes
and universities in Singapore. One of the first projects with the LTA
will focus on smarter transportation to mitigate traffic congestion.
The research will build upon the work already done by IBM Research to
provide traffic prediction and will aim to provide decision support
analytics for improved traffic management.
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