The modern financial advisor is heavily armed with technology tools that were often years — sometimes decades — in the making. Even flashier gadgets are on the way, but we’ll have to wait until they are perfected and affordably mass-produced.

The famous 1939 New York World’s Fair offers an excellent example of the often long process it takes for a brilliant idea to become a new wonder product. Some inventions displayed to the public for the very first time at the fair were the computer, the television set, the photocopier, the jet engine, microwave technology, fluorescent lighting, nylon, Plexiglas, and coloured camera and home-movie film. Much of the technology, however, was not in common use until the late 1950s — and some not until the early 1970s.

Here is a glimpse at some of the cutting-edge technology that will be working its way from the design boards to your office and home in the near future:



Total recall

Have you noticed that your memory has been getting a bit fuzzy as the years go by? It’s probably a combination of age and information overload. A recent article in Popular Science magazine (www.popsci.com) makes two fascinating points.

First, in high-tech terms, a human brain can remember about two “bits” of information each second, which works out to a few hundred megabytes over an entire lifetime. In contrast, a typical DVD movie holds up to 17 gigabytes of data. In English, that means one DVD technically can hold the entire memories of you and about 80 friends and relatives — and still have room for a few cartoons.

Second, inventors are working on ways to link the human memory with technology. Gordon Bell, a senior researcher at Microsoft Corp., says that within about 15 years, technology will exist that will let you carry a single portable device that can automatically record everything you see and hear, every day. The info would be fed into your personal communications system, giving you a complete electronic record or memory of your day-to-day life.

If you ran into an former colleague or client, for instance, your device could tell you every time you met the person previously, and even replay past conversations. The biggest snag to overcome, says Bell, is a means to cross-index all the videos and voices and make them easy to search.



Origami gadgets

Your cellphone, laptop computer, pager and various personal digital assistants are getting smaller, which is fortunate because there seems to be more of them each year. What’s next? How about being able to fold each one of them up? Sony Corp. filed a U.S. patent in May for new technology that allows parts of a gadget’s surface to easily transform between being bendable and completely solid. Picture a solid plastic clipboard that could instantly be folded like a piece of paper and then become hard again at the push of a button. Your laptop could be folded like a road map, along with all your other PDAs. New Scientist Tech says the patent involves a breakthrough material that becomes solid or soft after it receives a small electrical charge.



Nanotechnology

Some technology breakthroughs coming in the immediate future rest very comfortably on the head of a pin. The U.S. National Science Foundation (www.nano.gov) estimates the global market value for the emerging field of nanotechnology will reach US$1 trillion by 2011.

This applied science involves the study of ways to control matter that is roughly one to 100 nanometres in size. How small are we talking? One nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. A standard sheet of printer paper, for instance, is 100,000 nanometres thick. The diameter of human DNA is 2.5 nanometres.

Here’s how it works: breakthroughs in science over the years have made it easier for scientists to study and work with the very heart of the molecular structure of matter. They have found that all materials actually have different chemical, biological and physical properties at this miniscule level, and that the properties can be manipulated to advantage.

Products expected on the market within two to five years include: miniature solar cells that will fit into roofing tiles and siding to provide electricity for homes; implantable devices that automatically administer drugs to patients; and automobile tires that are more skid-resistant and last much longer.

@page_break@In the next 10 to 20 years, the foundation foresees incredibly smaller computer systems and high-tech gadgets with larger data-storage abilities and faster data processing. Computer technology will become so inexpensive that it can even be placed into common materials. Fabrics, for example, will be able to hold invisible smoke detectors.



Moore’s Law

www.intel.com/technology/silicon/mooreslaw/

Only 25 years after the New York World’s Fair had ended, Gordon Moore made the startling prediction that computer technology would advance so quickly that the number of transistors on a computer chip — a fairly new invention itself in 1965 — would be able to double about every two years.

Moore, the co-founder of Intel Corp., was right. A computer chip that could hold 2,000 transistors in 1970 held 90,000 by 1980, and one million by 1990. The latest generation of Intel processors holds almost one billion transistors.

The huge leap in know-how explains why computers are faster and cheaper every year. A single transistor cost $1 in 1968. Today, $1 will buy you 50 million transistors.

New videos, interviews and articles by Moore can be found on Intel’s Web site. IE



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