When I think about strong innovations in term of automation, robotics, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence, they are coming a lot from the Philippines and from India as well.
Here is what the world looked like in 2000... there were no plug and play solutions for ecommerce/warehouse management and customer service that could scale... which means that we had to employ 40+ engineers. Cloud computing did not exist, which means that we had to have a server farm and several IT people to insure that the site did not go down.
The most important application of quantum computing in the future is likely to be a computer simulation of quantum systems, because that's an application where we know for sure that quantum systems in general cannot be efficiently simulated on a classical computer.
In 20 or 30 years, you'll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world.
India for sure is a mobile-first country. But I don't think it will be a mobile-only country for all time. An emerging market will have more computing in their lives, not less computing, as there is more GDP and there is more need. As they grow, they will also want computers that grow from their phone.
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
Immersion was founded in 1993 with the mission of bringing the sense of touch to computing. Our technology, TouchSense, is embedded in computer peripheral devices and allows users to reach in and physically interact with content on their computer screens.
Cloud computing means you are doing your computing on somebody else's computer. Looking ahead a little, I firmly believe cloud - previously called grid computing - will become very widespread. It's much cheaper than buying your own computing infrastructure, or maybe you don't have the power to do what you want on your own computer.
More and more of the world's population is gaining access to the same kind of computing power and connectivity that has transformed daily life for developed nations.
One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.
In the post-Snowden world, you need to enable others to build their own cloud and have mobility of applications. That's both because of the physicality of computing - where the speed of light still matters - and because of geopolitics.
I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces.
It is easy to predict that some of the discoveries of research directed towards Grand Challenges - but only the most unexpected ones, and at the most unexpected times - will be the basis of revolutionary improvements in the way that we exploit the power of our future computing devices.
The accumulated knowledge of materials, computing, electromagnetism, product design, and all the rest that we've learned over the last several centuries converts a few ounces of raw materials worth mere pennies into a device with more computing power than the entire planet possessed fifty years ago.
There's been a big evolution since the days of personal computing. People had a concept of one computing device per family or maybe per person. We've clearly evolved to computing devices becoming more personal.
Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create.
We absolutely do some of the best science in the world in Canada, across a broad spectrum of disciplines: quantum computing in Waterloo, paleontology in Alberta, neuroscience at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health in Vancouver, and many more.
What amplifies the transformational power ahead is the confluence of two major technological currents today: the universal access to mobile computing and the pervasive use of social networks.
Millennials, and the generations that follow, are shaping technology. This generation has grown up with computing in the palm of their hands. They are more socially and globally connected through mobile Internet devices than any prior generation. And they don't question; they just learn.
The cloud computing model may be a wonderful system when it works, but it's a nightmare when it fails. And the more people who come to depend upon it, the bigger the nightmare.
Because people don't understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that 'Guitar Hero' is the same as a real guitar.
Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic.
The Internet creates as well as destroys. Social networks, search advertising, and cloud computing are multibillion dollar industries that didn't exist 10 years ago. They are products of the same force that has rendered the Postal Service's core business obsolete.
