2050年个人通信技术的发展

高通公司最近深入回顾了手机的历史，它主要负责制造手机。这是一个个人的回忆，因为我的家族在20世纪60年代拥有一家电子公司，那是我在我父亲的研究生公司Avanti使用我的第一部手机的时候。

当时，我觉得能从车上打电话是最神奇的事情。有趣的是，手机有一个拨号盘和按钮，这些按钮几乎什么都不起作用，它的工作原理更像是船上或飞机上的收音机，而不是真正的电话。但很酷。

随着我们向前迈进50年，我们的智能手机比我们的PC做更多的事情，因为它们更便携，更容易随身携带，并且可以处理电话。

思科上周发布了台式机替代产品Webex桌面中心。虽然这款设备最初只是将你的台式机和智能手机合并在一起，但它可能会迅速发展，取代你的个人电脑。

既然我们快到2020年底了，让我们来猜测一下智能手机和个人电脑在未来30年内的发展趋势，并为2050年个人通信技术的发展奠定基础。

最后，我们将介绍我本周的产品Webex Desk Hub，它可以说是台式电话自发明以来最具进化性的创新。

“2525年”这首歌突然在我脑海里反复播放。

2030

十年后，我们将拥有自主汽车。数字助理最终将发挥其潜力，可再生能源应该是默认的，但我们仍将经历气候变化的结果。

我们仍然有有线网络（回想一下传真机在那里挂了多久），但新的发展应该是无线的。预期中的网络攻击已经使一些政府、运输系统和公司瘫痪，因此一个有重点、有资金的国际执法组织很可能追捕网络犯罪分子。

我们将深入研究机器人技术，并且应该有一些先进的人机界面，可能最初是在军事领域。然而，现在将技术植入假肢之外的平民体内以解决严重伤害问题还为时过早。

这种未来意味着，至少尖端和高端智能手机将是头戴式和可穿戴式的，而价格较低的解决方案将采用头戴式显示器。这些显示器将允许你即时视频会议和使用照片真实的化身，让你看起来像你在虚拟空间。根据那时我们还有多少流行病，我们所知道的办公室有可能变得过时，至少你的办公室可能会在你所在的地方。

这些头戴式手机不仅具有生物识别接口，允许第三方监测您的健康状况并及时提供帮助，而且可以确保您是您所说的自己，并为您的决策提供建议，以提供最成功的结果。

这些现在已经过时的设备的大部分功能都将在云端，而我们与它们的大部分接口方式将是使用语音。标准功能将包括即时翻译和警告可能生病或使您处于危险中的nereby人员。

2040

这十年即将到来，许多人认为我们将接近奇点，人类与科技的融合。我们会对那些积极拥护人与机器结合的人与那些相信与他们的宗教冲突的纯粹主义者产生冲突。

那些拥有嵌入式技术的人在身体和精神上都会有显著的优势，在身份和道德方面也会有很大的问题。随着执法部门和政府努力平衡创新、社会动荡和歧视，滥用这种能力的现象可能会很普遍。这是可行的，就像我们现在有基于种族的歧视，我们将有基于技术/人类融合的歧视。

我们应该拥有先进的个人机器人，先进的自主无人机，汽车，以及自主的军事和安全系统，这些系统可能会时不时地变得流氓——通常是因为受到黑客攻击。我们应该看到嵌入式通信系统的开始，最有可能出现在军事、情报和一些先进的执法单位。围绕这些技术的使用，我们可能会有很多复杂的法律要执行。

到了这个时候，PC机完全是虚拟的，语音通信与所有其他通信类型完全混合，人工智能过滤优化你的时间。你和别人之间的很多对话，都是通过人工智能来模仿别人，然后总结讨论的内容。这些人工智能将接受充分的培训，以模仿你是谁，可以做许多，如果不是大多数，你目前执行的重复任务。

2050

这十年将我们带到许多人认为奇点将首先发生的地方。我们仍将有生活在特定区域或地球外的纯人类与变化抗争。尽管如此，大多数人还是会通过外科手术连接到他们的计算资源，并在心理上调用这些服务来提高性能。

数字不朽变得越来越普遍了——尽管在这一点上富人已经有一段时间了——你的数字助理可以变身为朋友和家人（甚至是已故的家人），你可以在一生中与之交流。到那时，想要生活在虚拟世界的人可以，而且机器人和人工智能将完全能够采纳你的想法并将其转化为行动，对人类工人的需求将大大减少。

你的多任务处理能力将会大大提高。服务将主要调节你的身体，而你的精神态度将被远程调节。这一结果将在确定什么是人类和什么是机器人方面产生重大问题，因为这两个概念之间的融合深度将有很大的差异。你通常不会告诉或关心你是在和一个真实的人或是一个人工智能，你的大部分互动现在都会发生在数字人工智能代理上。

在这里，智能手机已经不复存在，因为通信与嵌入式技术解决方案是固有的。这一结果将大大扩大那些负担得起并接受这些技术变革的人和那些不接受这些技术变革的人之间的鸿沟。我预计在这十年里，将有许多冲突很难为纯人类解决。简言之，在2050年代，你将成为智能手机。

结束

虽然我提供了一个非常集中的展望，但我遗漏了一些事情：

-交通工具的过时：因为如果你可以去任何一个地方，感觉自己就在那里，你需要旅行吗？

-核心家庭的变化：因为我希望很多人会选择虚拟伴侣而不是人类，因为他们可以为你定制。你想养一个孩子，还是要一个永久的虚拟孩子，或者一个智能的虚拟或机器人宠物，这是你的完美匹配吗？

我预计到20世纪30年代的某个时候，个人电脑和手机将会合并，如果它们还没有合并的话。在20世纪40年代，随着人类和机器人技术发展成为两者的混合体，人类和个人技术将融合在一起。我们将有许多政治、社会和宗教障碍需要克服——其中一些可能在20世纪60年代之前导致国内和国与国之间的战争。

这个结果可能是一个乌托邦，也可能是人间地狱，这取决于我们如何管理这些变化，唯一可以确定的是，我们还没有准备好迎接这些变化。

Cisco Webex桌面中心

我开始在IBM的电话部门工作，最终转到了桌面硬件的竞争分析工作。上周，当思科展示其Webex桌面中心时，我很兴奋，因为它体现了我们在20世纪80年代开发的许多从未面世的东西：包括办公和个人智能手机、语音和视频通信的融合；以及短信、社交媒体的全面融合，以及更传统的通讯方式。这确实是一个面向未来的产品。

从物理上讲，它是一个无线充电接口，一个连接耳机的接口（思科也宣布了这一点），一个增强智能手机上的显示功能的显示器，以及连接新思科摄像头时的视频通信接口。

如果你的公司与大多数其他公司保持一致，它还可以自动配置你的工作区，并且消除了永久性的办公空间，而有利于共享酒店资源。你把你的智能手机对接起来，空间会根据办公室的智能程度自行配置。虽然我认为这会增加你离开办公室后留下手机的风险，但我希望将来能用一个配件或应用程序来解决这个问题。

因为思科Webex集线器是我们许多人几十年前预见到的未来的一大步，也是通向后COVID-19世界的桥梁，所以它是我本周的产品。

原文题：The Evolution of Personal Communications Technology Through 2050

原文：Qualcomm recently took an in-depth look back at the history of the mobile phone, which it was mostly responsible for creating. This turned out to be a personal retrospect because my family owned an electronics company in the 1960s, which was when I used my first mobile phone in my father's Studebaker Avanti.

At the time, I thought it was the most amazing thing to be able to make a call from a car. What was funny is that phone had a dial and buttons, which mostly didn't seem to do anything, and it worked more like a radio on a boat or plane than an actual phone. But it was cool.

As we advance 50 years to the present, our smartphones do more things than our PCs because they are more portable, more likely to be with us, and handle telephony.

Cisco last week released its desktop phone replacement, the Webex Desk Hub. While this device initially only merges your desktop phone and smartphone, it could quickly evolve to replace your PC as well.

Since we're approaching the end of 2020, let's speculate a bit about how the smartphone and the PC will likely evolve over the next three decades, and build up to what that means for personal communications technology in 2050.

We'll close with my product of the week, the aforementioned Webex Desk Hub, which is arguably the most evolutionary innovation to the desk phone since its invention.

The song "In the Year 2525" is suddenly playing over and over in my head.

2030

Ten years from now we should be at critical mass with autonomous cars. Digital assistants will finally be living up to their potential, and renewable energy should be the default, but we'll still be living through the results of climate change.

We'll still have wired networks (recall how long the fax machine hung in there), but the new development should be wireless. Anticipated cyberattacks will have already crippled several governments, transportation systems, and companies, so a focused and funded international law enforcement group chasing cybercriminals is likely.

We'll be well into robotics and should have some advanced man-machine interfaces, likely initially in the military. However, it is still too soon for technology to be embedded into civilians outside prosthetics to address severe injuries.

This future suggests that at least the cutting edge and high-end smartphones will be head-mounted and wearable, and less-expensive solutions will have connected head-mounted displays. These displays will allow you to instantly video conference and use photorealilstic avatars to look like you are in the virtual space. Depending on how many more pandemics we have by that time, offices as we knew them are at risk of becoming obsolete, making it at least likely that your office will be wherever you are.

These head-mounted phones will not only have biometric interfaces to allow third parties to monitor your health and provide timely help, but to assure you are who you say you are, and to advise you on decisions to provide the most successful outcomes.

Much of the power of these now-worn devices will be in the cloud, and most of how we interface with them will be using voice. Standard capabilities will include instant translation and alerting of people nereby who may be sick or put you at risk.

2040

This decade is getting close to when many think we'll be approaching singularity and the merger of humans and technology. We'll have issues with people who have aggressively embraced this merger of man and machine conflicting with purists who believe in a blend of conflict with their religion.

Those who have embedded technology will have significant advantages both physically and mentally and have significant problems with identity and ethics. Misuse of this capability will likely be common as law enforcement and governments struggle with balancing innovation and social unrest and discrimination. It is feasible that much like we have discrimination based on race now, we'll have discrimination based on technology/human blends then.

We should have advanced personal robotics, advanced autonomous drones, cars, and autonomous military and security systems which can be expected to go rogue from time to time -- often due to being hacked. We should see the beginning of an embedded communication system, most likely to appear in the military, intelligence, and some advanced law enforcement units. We probably will have a lot of complicated laws to enforce surrounding the use of these technologies.

By this time, PCs are entirely virtual, voice communications are thoroughly blended with all other communications types and AI filtered to optimize your time. Many of the conversations you have, and people have with you, will be with AIs emulating people and then summarizing what was discussed. These AIs will be fully trained to emulate who you are and can do many, if not most, of the repetitive tasks you currently perform.

2050

This decade takes us to where many of us believe the singularity will have primarily occurred. We'll still have pure humans that live in defined regions or off-planet fighting the change. Still, most people will be connected to their computing resources surgically and call on those services mentally to enhance performance.

Digital immortality becomes far more common -- though it has been available to the rich for some time at this point -- and your digital assistant can morph into friends and family (even deceased family) that you can interface with throughout your life. By this time, people who want to live in a virtual world can, and the need for human workers will be vastly reduced given that robots and AIs will be fully able to take your ideas and translate them into action.

Your ability to multitask will be massively enhanced. A service will primarily regulate your body, and your mental attitude will be remotely regulated. This outcome will create significant problems concerning the determination of what is human and what is a robot, given there will be a lot of variation in the depth of the blend between the two concepts. You generally won't tell or care if you are talking to a real person or an AI, and much of your interaction will now occur with digital AI proxies.

Here the smartphone no longer exists because communication is inherent with your embedded technology solution. This outcome will significantly broaden the divide between those that can afford and accept these technological changes and those that don't. I expect there will be many conflicts that will resolve poorly for the pure humans in this decade. In short, in the 2050s, you become the smartphone.

Wrapping Up

While I'm providing a very focused outlook, I am leaving out a few things:

- The obsolescence of transportation: because if you can go anyplace virtually and feel like you are there, do you need to travel?

- Changes to the nuclear family: because I expect many will choose a virtual mate over a human, given they can be custom-built for you. Will you want to raise a child or have a permanent virtual child -- or an intelligent virtual or robotic pet that is your perfect match?

I expect that sometime in the 2030s PCs and phones will merge, if they hadn't already. In the 2040s people and personal technology will merge as humans and robotics evolve into hybrids of both. We'll have many political, social, and religious hurdles to overcome -- some of which are likely to result in war both inside of and between countries before reaching the 2060s.

This outcome could be a utopia -- or hell on Earth -- depending on how well we manage these changes, and the only sure thing is we aren't anywhere near ready for them.

The Cisco Webex Desk Hub

I started working for IBM's telephony division and eventually made it over to competitive analysis working on desktop hardware. Last week, when Cisco showcased its Webex Desktop Hub, I got excited because it embodies many of the things we were working on back in the 1980s that never made it to market: embracing the blends of office and personal smartphones, voice and video communications; and the full blend of texting, social media, and more traditional communications methods. This indeed is a future-facing offering.

Physically it is a wireless charging dock, a dock for your connected headphones (which Cisco also announced), a display that enhances the one on your smartphone, and an interface for video communications when connected with the new Cisco camera.

It will also auto-configure your workspace if your company is consistent with most others -- and eliminates permanent office spaces in favor of shared hoteling resources. You dock your smartphone, and space will configure itself to you depending on how smart the office is. Though I think this will create an increased risk that you'll leave your phone behind when you leave your office, I expect it to be addressed with a future accessory or app.

Because the Cisco Webex Hub is a big step into the future that many of us foresaw a couple of decades ago, and a bridge to our post-COVID-19 world, it is my product of the week.

作者：Rob Enderle

原文网站：https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86949.html