IT and communications as emerging technologies

4G cellular
communication - the *fourth generation* of mobile phone mobile
communication technology standards. It is a successor to
the third
generation (3G) standards.

Ambient intelligence - devices work in concert to support people in carrying out their everyday life activities, tasks and rituals in an easy, natural way using information and intelligence that is hidden in the network connecting these devices (*see**Internet of Things*). As these devices grow smaller, more connected and more integrated into our environment, the technology disappears into our surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users.

Artificial brain -  research that aims to develop software and hardware with cognitive abilities similar to those of the animal or human brain. One example of this is Blue Brain project, which is " an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level". A director of the project gave a (good!) TED presentation in 2009.

  Artificial intelligence - the goal is to create "the intelligence of a machine that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can". This is one of the most difficult tasks in a computer science. See "artificial brain" above for an approach to the problem. Ray Kurzweil gives an interesting presentation on exponential growth of technology at TED. Also, there is an interesting film of his, "Singularity is near".

 Cybermethodology - a newly emergent field that focuses on the creative development and use of computational and technological research methodologies for the analysis of next-generation data sources such as the Internet. Major components of cybermethodology include:

1.     Basic Cyber-Literacy, a core knowledge of information technology and Internet tools such as statistical and analytic software, electronic library resources, digital devices, and use of the Internet as a source of data.

2.     The Research Life Cycle, knowledge of the data lifecycle from acquisition and input to archiving and accessibility.

3.     Non-Linear Technologies, including hyperlinks, dynamics surveys, and technological methods such as neuroimaging.

4.     Programming Concepts, including the ability to create new interactive research tools.

5.     Analytical Methods and their relationship to different types of data: non-linear, qualitative, spatial, time-variant processes, and agent-based information such as rules of social interaction and agent mental representations.

6.     Modes of Interaction extending beyond person-to-person interviews, on-site fieldwork, and anonymous surveys to contemporary environments such as online and virtual communities and interaction through games and virtual environments.

7.     Research Presentation including the use of new media techniques,[4] issues raised by intended or unintended rapid dissemination of results by electronic means to untargeted audiences, and the dynamic potentially interactive nature of cyber-research.

8.     Meta-Literacy, the ability to critically evaluate the methods, tools, and results of cyber-research.

Fourth-generation optical discs -  have the potential to hold more than one terabyte (1 TB) of data

Speech recognition - the translation of spoken words into text. Among other applications, is in military: control of fighter aircraft, etc.

Machine translation - the use ofsoftware to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. An example would be "Google translate".

Machine vision -  imaging-based automatic inspection and analysis. This is related to "computer vision", which is "methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, *e.g.*, in the forms of decisions.[1][2][3] A theme in the development of this field has been to duplicate the abilities of human vision by electronically perceiving and understanding an image.[4] This image understanding can be seen as the disentangling of symbolic information from image data using models constructed with the aid of geometry, physics, statistics, and learning theory.[5] Computer vision has also been described as the enterprise of automating and integrating a wide range of processes and representations for vision perception." It is a part of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

 Mobile collaboration - same as videoconference, only using mobile devices. Most popular mode of the later is Skype. Curiously, Skype was developed in the former USSR, in Estonia, and later bought by Microsoft for billions of dollars. Skype is a "freemium", i.e. free for basic feature, and paid for advanced features.

Optical computing - uses photons produced by lasers or diodes for computation. Photons promise to allow a higher bandwidth than the electrons used in conventional computers.

Quantum computing - a computation device that makes direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from digital computers based on transistors. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), quantum computation uses quantum properties to represent data and perform operations on these data.

Three-dimensional integrated circuit - a chip in which two or more layers of active electronic components are integrated both vertically and horizontally into a single circuit.

Virtual Reality - a computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds.

Semantic Web - focuses on providing Web pages with a meaning which machines - computers - can understand ("semantics" is a study of meaning). Best article on this is Scientific American, 2001

Answer machine - systems that automatically answer questions posed by humans in a natural language. One example of this is Wolfram Computing, a presentation of Wolfram is available at TED.

Project "Halo" - a project that has run since October 2002, with the goal of creating a "digital Aristotle" that can correctly answer queries about scientific information, using artificial intelligence technology. Homepage of the project (now called "Project Aristo").

Digital scent technology - a technology to sense, transmit and receive scent-enabled digital media (such as web pages, video games, movies and music).

Immersive virtual reality - an artificial environment where the user feels just as immersed as they usually feel in consensus reality.

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