NEXTGENS TECHNOLOGIES 2006

TOPICS INCLUDE:
• Quantum computing futures
• New visual interfaces
• Rocket-powered vehicles
• Identity analytics
• Pen-centric computing
• Physics-based graphics
• Body clock research
• Mesh networks
• Real-time sensing and control
• Nextgens computer graphics
• Hacking and prototyping

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
What are the hottest, still-on-the-drawing-board technologies, both hard and soft, that will affect IT, how we communicate, and how we run and manage our enterprises? The development and deployment of ubiquitous access is clearly visible. Enough attention is being paid to ambient intelligence that we can see it is well within our reach. Semantic technologies, the furthest down the technological highway, will continue to emerge, combine, and create significant disruptions and opportunities.

The future’s one “big thing” is small—very small: it’s the place where nano-devices rule. Electronics are moving to the nanometer scale, paving the way to another decade or more of usefulness for Moore’s Law. Major improvements in display technologies will allow for new types of screens. Users will be able to see and comprehend more information. Social search engines give groups wisdom to improve results. Machines will be able to sense our moods and emotions.

We’ve heard talk of convergence for years, at the device, network, application, and content levels, yet this seems tantalizingly just out of our reach. New applications will spring up as the combination of self-organizing networks, mobile users, content delivery to handheld devices, and RFID occurs. Are there new gizmos or gadgets that will render our portable and mobile devices technologically out of date? Should we be concerned with technological obsolescence as new devices and applications appear faster than we can adopt them? In the future, will we run our applications solely from the web?

At this conference, we’ll scour the research frontiers and seek out the most radical, the most futuristic, the most far-fetched, the most dazzling, and the most promising technologies with the potential to make our lives and our work environment more engaging, energizing, and productive.