A Slice of Technological Perspective

He's right. When I was a kid, a cell phone was twice the size of a 2TB hard drive. Today we have cell phones with more computing power than some computers...and we have 2 TERRABYTE hard drives.

The evolution from 8in floppies to the cloud has completely shifted the way data is used, transferred, and stored. The leap from vinyls to SD memory cards completely changed how music was stored on physical media, and the music transition to wireless did away with physical media entirely. It's simply amazing.

I try to keep my ears open for news from the holographic industry. With HD a commonplace occurrence, our transition to and through 3D tv is just an awkward step towards losing the need for a screen altogether.

One of the setbacks to holographic technology is that projections need a way to be seen. When do you see a rainbow? After it rains, when there's still enough water in the air to refract the light waves. If you've ever done laser experiments you know it's easy to see the point where a beam hits an object, but in order to see the beam you need the light to pass through a medium (namely smoke or fog). Normal screens don't have this problem; the image is projected onto the glass from behind and an image is visible. But, like with 3D tv without glasses, I'm sure this is a hurdle and not a show stopper.

When S1M0NE came out, I dismissed the idea of a computer generated holographic woman addressing an audience as something that's possible, but not probable. It could happen, but it wouldn't happen for a few decades.

But if you wanted to reduce those decades to eight years, where would you go?

Japan, of course.

I'll save you the witty wrap-up and encourage you to do your own research.