Remember when you had to plug in your home phone line (and no cell phone) to get online, listen to a screeching connection noise and then watch images slowly appear? Photos took forever to download or email and forget about video. Seems like a long time ago, right? Well it really wasn't all that long ago and technology has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time since then.
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| The new "ac" Netgear router. |
And remember way back when 32 megabytes was a lot of disk space? A few short years later and you can multiply that by 1000. 32 gigabyte storage cards are in cameras now all over - and those aren't considered huge by any standards. I'm using 128 gigabyte cards, two of them no less, in my camera.
My first computer's entire hard drive was 32 megabytes. That's smaller than EACH photo I take now.
On Wednesday an even faster Wi-Fi was announced, called "802.11ac" which offers speeds up to 1.3 Gigabytes per second. That's 1300 megabytes per second for those of you without a calculator. That's fast enough to stream an entire HD movie in under 4 minutes.
And things will just get faster. And bigger. And more accessible.
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| Google Glass |
Take for example Google Glass. They're glasses that have a tiny computer monitor the user can see. They can provide information, record, and stream content. At what point will data memory be so large (and inexpensive) and Wi-Fi speeds be so fast that you can virtually record your entire day? Week? Year? Life?
At what point will insurance companies require police, doctors, firemen, teachers to wear these to record everything that happens? Court testimony? Gone. You'll just replay the video. Memories? Memories will be a thing of the past too. You'll be able to watch ALL of last Christmas. And going even further, at what point will that video be able to be processed into a 3D holographic image? Forget watching last Christmas, you'll be able to be in last Christmas. Sounds like a time machine!
And if you think this is decades away, think again.
Just look at how far cell phones have come in a short time. I don't even think they're called cell phones anymore? And everyone has one. What did you do without it? I sure love mine!
And take for example pro cameras - my Nikon D4 can freeze action at 1/8000th of a second. I can shoot at ISO speeds of over 200,000. When I tell film guys this they freak out. For anyone who remembers film, you bought film in "speeds" of 100, 200, and 400 (if it was really dark). 200 iso. I'm shooting 200,000. Which means I'm shooting in near complete darkness (no flash). And in no time I'll have a camera that will have the ability to shoot in the dark and super fast. On 128 terabyte cards.
So what's next?
