Looking Ahead Five Years

A reader from our sister site at Yahoo! Answers writes: Which products, used by few today, will be essential in five years?

Interesting question! The area of technology which will undergo the most change over the next five years is almost certainly telephone communications. The U.S. is far behind Europe and eastern nations in developing infrastructure for high-speed wireless, but that is rapidly changing. America's 3G networks have been rolling out like mad, and more often than not you can find a high-speed signal no matter where you go. As coverage continues to improve and prices go down, more people will adopt 3G handsets to the point where they'll become ubiquitous. Your phone will be more than just a vehicle for chit-chat: You'll have high speed web access from anywhere in the country, and more and more phones will look like the Treo or the Motorola Q than current models. The picture to the right is what Microsoft thinks the future looks like, while Nokia sees a gaming smartphone, a descendant of its failed N-Gage.

Perhaps a bigger trend will impact traditional land lines: Voice Over IP telephony is certainly going to change the way we use our phones, and how we pay for service. Today, VOIP is still a novelty for most people. Even if they have a Skype account, few use it regularly. And while services like Vonage are growing in popularity, there are still troubling issues (namely how 911 calls are routed) that have kept it from replacing traditional lines for most users. I'm certain that VOIP is going to improve dramatically over the next few years, to the point where you'll be able to buy a VOIP phone, plug it into your network (instead of a phone jack), and have it "just work." Goodbye, expensive telephone bills, hello cheap international calling!

Some other trends will probably take root, though they're not as critical. High-definition DVD will probably find a market (though it may very well be small), flat-panel TVs will make the CRT vanish almost completely, and Windows Vista will be everywhere. (Although in five years we'll be seeing betas for the next version of Windows, I figure.)