Science lesson: Just because a technology idea is bizarre doesn't mean it's wrong I know a little something about crackpot technology. See, back in the 1980s, I worked at Omni, the now-defunct science/science fiction magazine that delighted in all manifestations of crackpottery. We wrote about cryptozoologists armed with blurry Bigfoot photos, "face on Mars" believers, alien abductees, cold fusion proselytes, and more. We also interviewed world-class scientists and Nobel prize-winners who had achieved startling breakthroughs in the course of their distinguished careers. And -- surprise! -- their ideas often sounded crazier than anything coming from the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy-theory crowd. The... more Comments (0) ...
Crackpot tech: Virtual worlds The likelihood of Second Life having a long-term impact on the enterprise may appear virtually nonexistent, but consider this: Education, collaboration, and networking -- three productivity mandates for today's enterprise -- are fast catching on in the virtual world. Before laughing and glancing sideways at your well-worn copy of Snow Crash, know that even old-guard institutions such as Harvard University have a Second Life presence, with virtual campuses where learning, discussion, and content creation occur. Dobbs Island, with tradeshow booths to the left and, in the distance, the amphitheatre where conferences are held. Training, for one, has real ROI potential... more Comments (2) ... | Post a comment
I am Executive Director of the Association of Virtual Worlds and CEO of VRWorkplace, a virtual worlds for the enterprise consultancy. There is no question in my mind that virtual worlds will repre ...more
Posted by: Dave Elchoness at February 19, 2008 08:21 AM
We already have various virtual worlds and varied applications for them. Yes, we all know that. A large number of seperate virtual worlds on different platforms, though, do not have the same appe ...more
Posted by: Theodore Wright at February 29, 2008 10:24 AM
Crackpot tech: Enterprise supercomputing A modern, global enterprise is incredibly complex. Balancing materials availability forecasts with predicted sales trends and seasonal marketing strategies can seem like pure wizardry. But what if you had some help, in the form of a massive electronic brain that could handle the number-crunching for you? Until recently, supercomputers were the exclusive domain of large universities and government research labs. Massive, arcane, and impossibly expensive, they required operational and maintenance skills far beyond the capabilities of your average enterprise IT department. But new developments in HPC (high-performance computing) technology are putting supercomputer-level performance within the enterprise's reach. The only question... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Direct brain interfaces Ready to think away that backlog of IT tasks to a more manageable stack? Or to get a handle on the hot new IT skill without lifting a finger? If scientists are successful, such power could be within IT’s grasp, as the computers of the future will plug directly into your brain. Technological telepathy has been the stuff of science fiction for years. In the 1957 film Forbidden Planet, for example, alien machines could bring any thought to life, while characters in the more recent Matrix trilogy bypassed years of tedious education via instant brain uploads. Although such tricks are... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: The $100 laptop The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program hasn't fared as well as its founders may have hoped. Not only did the group considerably overshoot its targeted $100 price tag; it's been plagued with manufacturing problems and commercial competition. That doesn't mean the dream of a sub-$100, low-power laptop is unachievable. In some ways, the OLPC's XO serves as an “alpha” model of where the PC market could head -- and not just in the developing world. In fact, the company's former CTO sees a future for low-cost, highly power-efficient machines in the commercial market. And the more you look at... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Wireless power Ever since Nikola Tesla lit bulbs on his grounds without wires, the promise of wireless power has stirred hope and interest, but little success. Today, with the wide array of electronic devices that require power, the promise of powering the enterprise through the air seems as crackpot as it is unlikely. Yet practical implementations of wireless power have emerged in the past few years, including the induction charging of an electric toothbrush and wireless extension cords ThinkGeek introduced in 2006 -- on April Fool's Day. In fact, a few companies are actively pursuing wireless power, including Splashpower and Powercast. Splashpower... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Pervasive computing How many times have you missed an important phone call because you were in a meeting? Or wasted 15 minutes searching the building for one of your co-workers? Or sent an important job to the printer, only find that it’s out of toner? Fear not; top technology minds are at work on these problems, and more. Imagine a meeting room that records the identities of everyone who enters it and updates an availability database, allowing urgent calls to be routed accordingly. Every office could do the same, making it possible to track down anyone, anywhere in the building. Meanwhile, your... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Optical computing For years, chipmakers have bumped against the ceiling of Moore’s Law. Current fabrication techniques can’t keep CPU speeds climbing at the meteoric rates of decades past. Because of this, today’s advances focus on multiple cores and power savings, rather than raw speed. But what if there was a new way to build chips -- one that would accelerate processing literally to the speed of light? Using light to turbocharge data transfer is not new. SANs have benefited from high-speed fiber-optic links for years, and U.S. telecommunications providers have begun using similar technology to offer customers Internet bandwidth comparable to that... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Nanotechnology No technology has the potential to revolutionized enterprise computing like nanotechology -- at least that's the impression given by the breadth and intensity of experiments in going small these days. Practical or not, nearly every corner of the enterprise stockyard is being injected with nanotech -- displays, computers, even light bulbs. In fact, today I took nanotech to the slopes, skiing on Sterling skis with a "nano-carbon" base from World Cup technology. But is there enough substance beneath the science to move nanotechnology beyond crackpot and into the enterprise? The answer, of course, depends where you look. Nanotech and quantum... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Quantum cryptography redux As Peter Wayner notes in the quantum cryptography segment of "12 crackpot tech ideas that could transform the enterprise," the main draw of the technology is that it gives the recipient of a message the ability to detect whether any eavesdropping has occurred en route. QKD (quantum key distribution), the technology behind quantum cryptography, employs lasers to encode each bit of an AES key with a single photon of light. Ensuring that a laser generates a single photon for each bit, however, is no trivial matter. And if a second photon is emitted, one could be decrypted without detection. Two... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Solid-state drives Solid-state storage devices — both RAM-based and NAND (Not And) flash-based — have held promise as worthwhile alternatives to conventional disk drives for some time despite the healthy dose of skepticism they inspire. By no means new, they will be integrated into IT only when the technologies fulfill their potential and go mainstream. Volatility and cost have been the Achilles' heel of external RAM-based devices for the past decade. Most come equipped with standard DIMMs, batteries, and possibly hard drives, all connected to a SCSI bus. And the more advanced models can run without power long enough to move data... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: DC power The warm, humming bricks that convert AC from the wall to the DC used by electronics are finally drawing some much deserved attention — from datacenter engineers hoping to save money by wasting less energy. The waste must often be paid for twice: first to power equipment, then to run the air conditioner to remove the heat produced. One solution is to create a central power supply that distributes pure DC current to rack-mounted computers. But will cutting out converters catch on, or is the buzz surrounding DC to the datacenter destined to fizzle? Researchers at the Department of Energy's... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Total information awareness When the DoD's Information Awareness Office rolled out its high-tech scheme to track down terrorists in 2002, the program had all the hallmarks of a government boondoggle, invoking imagined — and sometimes unimaginable — future technologies to solve an immediate problem. First, there was the hyperbolic, Orwellian name, Total Information Awareness (TIA); then there was the project leader, convicted Iran-Contra felon Rear Admiral John Poindexter. And finally there was the bloated goal: To aggregate, store, and analyze public and private data on an unimaginably massive scale, applying a predictive model that would correlate past activities to predict future acts. Minority... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Artificial intelligence Few terms carry as much emotional and technical baggage as AI (artificial intelligence). And while science-fiction authors probe AI's metaphysical boundaries, researchers are producing practical results. We may not have a robot for every task, but we do have cell phones that respond to our voice, data-mining tools that optimize vast industries, and thousands of other measurable ways AI-influenced computing enhances how the enterprise gets work done. That said, AI itself remains elusive, and the measure of AI's position on the enterprise crackpot scale depends wholly on where you set the goals. Restricted to applying templates and well-defined theorems to... more Comments (1) ... | Post a comment
Artificial intelligence is not a crackpot technology. The first feeble-minded AI programs are awakening and stirring throughout cyberspace. Franks AI Mind at http://aimind-i.com is one of them, bas ...more
Posted by: Mentifex at February 28, 2007 03:49 AM
Crackpot tech: Quantum computing and quantum cryptography The manipulation of subatomic particles at the quantum level has raised eyebrows in computer science research departments lately — so much so that several approaches to incorporating quantum mechanics into computing have been launched to varying degrees of success. The most advanced field of research is quantum cryptography, a bit of a misnomer given that it doesn't rely on anything resembling traditional codes or ciphers. Instead of locking up data in a mathematical safe, the technique encodes messages in the clear by tweaking the quantum properties of photons — a 1 may transform into a photon with "left" spin; a... more Comments (4) ... | Post a comment
A 1000 bit quantum computer is quite impressive. To the average user 1000 bits is not a lot. But because of the architecture of a quantum computer, each additional bit doubles the amount of compu ...more
Posted by: Eric Moyer at January 30, 2008 04:05 PM
A slight addendum on my previous post. I had forgotten about error correction. Thus the number of bits factorable by Shor's algorithm does not scale linearly, but polynomially. Wikipedia says th ...more
Posted by: Eric Moyer at January 31, 2008 06:41 AM
Crackpot tech: Desktop Web applications When asked whether a full-featured desktop app can be delivered via the Web, most people picture standard HTML forms, possibly with Java or JavaScript thrown in for aesthetics and minimal functionality, and laugh the idea off. But the full-scale apps being built for the browser using scripting languages and Adobe’s Flash and Shockwave development tools will soon prove them wrong. Flash apps started out as rudimentary games with lackluster input methods and a cartoonlike look and feel. More and more, however, they resemble native apps. Take Gliffy, for instance — a very attractive, stable Flash app that drives like Microsoft... more Comments (2) ... | Post a comment
I nominate myself the creator of Appxweb Meta (www.appxweb.com) which was released last week. I describe it as an operating system for the web. You can create desktop web applications for it tha ...more
Posted by: Ian Hart at February 20, 2007 11:14 PM
Google Spreadsheet is pretty damn slick... ...more
Posted by: Anonymous Coward at February 22, 2007 07:02 AM
Crackpot tech: Autonomic computing A datacenter with a mind of its own — or more accurately, a brain stem of its own that would regulate the datacenter equivalents of heart rate, body temperature, and so on. That's the wacky notion IBM proposed when it unveiled its autonomic computing initiative in 2001. Of the initiative's four pillars, which included self-configuration, self-optimization, and self-protection, it was self-healing — the idea that hardware or software could detect problems and fix itself — that created the most buzz. The idea was that IBM would sprinkle autonomic-computing fairy dust on a host of products, which would then work together... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Crackpot tech: Semantic Web Originally designed for document distribution, the Web has yet to realize its full potential for distributing data. XML has done its part. Yet every XML document requires an XML Schema — and relating them isn't easy. Until a viable means for surfacing and linking data is established and adopted, humans will remain the Web's core categorizing agents. Enter the Semantic Web, an effort spearheaded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1999 to extend the Web to enable machines to take this mantle. At the outset, the idea — to transform the Web into something machines can readily analyze — seemed hopelessly academic.... more Comments (1) ... | Post a comment
You can fool yourself into a a less than blissful ignorance to think that amfM HyperRadioProActivity is a harebrained Semantic Web dDevelopment whenever ITs Viral Signature is spreading as a Heavy ...more
Posted by: amanfromMars at February 20, 2007 12:15 AM
Crackpot tech: E-books Remember the paperless office? If so, you may recall a close cousin: the e-book, which promised access to entire libraries of documents in easily readable formats -- an obvious boon to the enterprise knowledge worker on the go. As did many ideas debuting midway through the dot-com boom, it failed spectacularly. And yet a visit to Sony’s Connect eBooks suggests that rumors of the e-book's demise have been exaggerated. For a cool $350, you can pick up the Sony Reader and start collecting from more than 11,000 titles. But what does a shelf's worth of Michael Crichton in your pocket... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Superconducting computing How about petaflops performance to keep that enterprise really humming? Superconducting circuits -- which are frictionless and therefore generate no heat -- would certainly free you from any thermal limits on clock frequencies. But who has the funds to cool these circuits with liquid helium as required? That is, of course, assuming someone comes up with the extremely complex schemes necessary to interface this circuitry with the room-temperature components of an operable computer. Of all the technologies proposed in the past 50 years, superconducting computing stands out as "psychoceramic." IBM’s program, started in the late 1960s, was cancelled by the... more Comments (0) ... | Post a comment
Holographic & phase-change storage What enterprise wouldn't benefit from a terabyte USB dongle on every key chain and every episode of Magnum, P.I. on a single disc? Thanks to phase-change memory and holographic storage, today's pipe dream is shaping up to be tomorrow's reality. Currently under development by IBM, Macronix, and Qimonda, phase-change storage is being touted as 500 times faster and a magnitude smaller than traditional "floating gate" flash technology. Whereas flash memory involves the trapping of electrons, phase-change memory achieves its speed by heating a chalcogenide alloy, altering its phase from crystalline to amorphous. This technology could prove critical in embedded computing... more Comments (1) ... | Post a comment
Scratch InfoWorld of the quality read list. Ditch the "crackpot" crap.
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Posted by: Sum Gi at April 20, 2007 08:20 AM
Project Blackbox A portable datacenter may seem like pie in the sky, but in fact, Sun Microsystems has already constructed it. Whether Project Blackbox, which Sun calls the first virtualized datacenter, catches on remains to be seen, but for some, the concept is compelling. Take a 20-foot shipping container; provide it with integrated cooling, networking, and power distribution; add external hookups for hot and cold water, 208-volt three-phase AC power, and Ethernet networking; integrate sensors, alarms, and GPS; fill its eight 19-inch shock-tolerant racks with servers -- either 120 Sun Fire T2000 servers or 250 Sun Fire T1000 systems -- and you've... more Comments (2) ... | Post a comment
Why is this such a crackpot idea? It's absolutely brilliant! I work for a banking institution that has computers scattered all over the planet, do I care any of them are in a shipping container?! N ...more
Posted by: Dio at February 20, 2007 06:49 PM
An amazingly good idea, what a money saver! ...more
Posted by: Mike at February 22, 2007 04:16 PM
Your turn: The next big thing?
From the far-fetched to the practical, we highlighted 12 technologies that have a history of riding the thin edge between harebrained and brilliant. Yet each has the potential to significantly shake up some aspect of the enterprise down the line.
So, bust out your crackpot meter and weigh in on whether these could-be pie-in-the-sky notions have a future by commenting on them on this blog.
If you don't see a past or present contender you'd like to nominate and want to predict the next big crackpot thing...
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From the far-fetched to the practical, we highlighted 12 technologies that have a history of riding the thin edge between harebrained and brilliant. Yet each has the potential to significantly shake up some aspect of the enterprise down the line.
