TECHNOLOGY IN 2020

TECHNOLOGY IN 2020

Future technology devices, such as smartphones, will soon use virtual reality technology to float holographic 3D images in mid-air. According to the United Nations specialized agency ITU (International Telecommunication Union) mobile broadband over smartphones has become the fastest growing segment of the global information and communication technology market. Mobile broadband connections over 3G networks has an annual growth rate of 40 per cent. Almost 50% of everyone on the planet is covered by a 3G network, which refers to the 3rd generation mobile telecommunications technology used for mobile internet access. It's expected that smartphone usage will reach 2 billion by 2017 making it the most popular device for accessing the internet. Yet despite this amazing growth, there is a drawback - it is the limitations of using small-sized screens. But for inventor Hussein S. El-Ghoroury, future mobile devices will not have this limitation. Instead of looking at a couch on your small screen, you could project a full-sized three-dimensional hologram of it right in front of you. You could move it around, view it from any angle, and even interact with it. Projecting holograms is a complicated process especially if your trying to put it into something as small as a smartphone. photo of quantum photonic chipEl-Ghoroury has spent the last nine years developing virtual reality technology that miniaturizes a holographic projector into a tiny circuit chip. It is called the Quantum Photonic Imager and it can control the color, brightness and angles of light beams to display an image in the air with a resolution of 5,000 dots per inch. “The highest resolution images, of course, are holograms. And because we can pack so many pixels, it’s enough to create these kinds of images,” says El-Ghoroury, whose California company Ostendo Technologies has deep-pocketed financial backers like DARPA and PayPal founder Peter Thiel. El-Ghoroury expects his holographic imaging chips to be available in smartphones and other devices by 2016. Sources: ostendo.com; online.wsj.com; creative commons.org