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Twenty-five years can seem like both a long time and a short time.
In the last twenty-five years, some things have changed dramatically,
yet others are much the same. Often, when we look back at history,
the progress of events gives the appearance of the predetermined
and obvious. I can still remember a time when I was a young student
in school thinking how wonderful it must be that all great leaders
seemed to know, from the day they were born, that they would become
successful and influential people. It was my conclusion at the time
that there could not possibly be any such persons among my classmates
because none of us had such wonderful insight. It was not until
many years later that I learned the future is much more uncertain
than the past.
If we look back to 25 years ago, and what the display community
was like at that time, it takes a bit of effort to reconstruct a
world with no desktop or laptop computers, no personal printers
or copiers, no home fax machines, no CDs or VCRs, no cell phones,
no e-mail, and no Internet. Thank goodness, at least we had color
television, conventional telephones, mainframe computers with up
to 64K of dynamic memory, and electric typewriters. CRTs were of
course the dominant display technology. And even though mainframe
computers typically used one or more display terminals, they were
monochrome and small. LCDs were only available for watches and calculators,
LEDs were just beginning to recover from being eliminated from the
wristwatch business. Color displays were only used for television
and there were numerous studies showing that color would never be
needed for avionics, instrumentation, or computer data-terminal
applications. Plasma panels were a beautiful orange color. EL displays
were being explored.
Yet, while so much has changed, the foundations for most of today's
display technologies already existed at the materials level. CRTs,
LCs, plasma panels, EL, LEDs, and projection displays all had their
beginnings more than 25 years ago. Even tip-array field- emission
technology was already several years into its development.
So should we be so bold as to look ahead 25 years and try to imagine
the display world we may have? The world-wide display business is
currently at about $40 billion dollars and growing at roughly 10
percent per year. The CRT segment is about one half of that and
still growing at about 5 percent per year. This is balanced by the
flat-panel segment which is growing at about 20 percent per year.
If even the 10 percent overall growth rate is sustained for 25 years
then the annual display revenues will be $500 billion dollars and
maybe more. Is that possible? Is it likely?
As compute power continues to double every 18 to 24 months and
as communications bandwidth increases at a similar rate, the visual
channel — displays -- becomes ever more important as the link
between the human brain and machine intelligence. For this reason,
I believe that display technology will play an increasingly important
role in the Information Age.
What kind of world might we have in 2026 and what will its displays
look like? Let's consider a few possibilities.
Perhaps the biggest change in our lives will be that normal speech
interaction with machine intelligence will become common. We will
be able to talk to our computers using standard vocabulary and common
sentence structure. Most appliances will respond to spoken commands
through home networks. Real-time language translation will be readily
available from portable devices and, therefore, there will no longer
be a language obstacle at technical conferences. (This will, naturally,
lead to a dramatic increase in SID membership!)
The current method of loading software into ubiquitous microprocessors
will have been replaced by more robust methods such as hardware-based
operating systems. New capabilities will be available through something
that, for now, we will call "knowledge cubes." The home
server will be a similarly designed machine that can be easily reconfigured
with user-friendly buttons, knobs, and interconnects. The server
will be able to help the user through normal speech interaction.
These robust, hardware-based systems will have made systems crashes
and software viruses a thing of the past.
Homes, automobiles, airplanes, and trains will appear much the
same as they are today. The automobile may undergo the biggest change
with hybrid propulsion systems combining fossil fuels and electricity,
or fuel cells, becoming more common. There will be a larger electronic
content in all of these conveyances but it is quite possible that
the cars of 2026 will still have traditional electro-mechanical
gauges for the basic dashboard functions.
By 2026, the Internet will have about the same importance in our
lives as the telephone did a decade ago. In fact, by then we may
find that voice interaction with computers has had an even larger
impact.
Traditional stores will continue to thrive and personalized customer
service will be even more important than today. Compute power and
the Internet will aid and facilitate that customer service, but
by then we will have learned that automated order entry cannot replace
it. However, we can expect wide acceptance of convenience devices
such as pen-sized bar code scanners that will be used by all of
us to identify, retrieve, and expand on information about products
and anything else of interest to us. We can also expect more specialized
services such as clothing custom-made to fit each of our specific
sizes and shapes.
Computer intelligence and robotics will be implemented in varied
and innovative ways. We can expect intelligent toys that have unique
personalities and can interact with children to teach and entertain.
We can expect our televisions and movies to be increasingly populated
with computer-generated personas. These personas will be created
to represent certain ideals that will go beyond what real people
can ever hope to achieve. They may even be adjustable for each viewer
at each viewer's discretion. Does this mean that we will finally
have figured out how to get HDTV into general use? Maybe.
It is my conviction that the many new devices to come will not
only have increasing capability but also emphasize robustness and
ease of use. We cannot continue to live in a world of increasing
complexity that demands that we each become experts in recovering
our computers from software crashes and ever-more sophisticated
viruses, or a world where we are subjected to fraud or theft when
we use the Internet for transactions.
The displays that will fit into this new world of 2026 will have
to be equally capable because they will be the primary bearers of
the information content flowing between machine intelligence and
the human user. This new era will require improved performance,
but even more importantly, a tremendous range of products. Versatility
and variety will provide many opportunities for implementing existing
and new technologies. Large displays will be needed for advertising,
for television, for theaters and stadiums, and for the visual desktop
to organize computer files. Medium-sized displays will be used for
portable devices and for the many dedicated, interconnected functions
in offices and homes. This new market for specialized electronic
appliances will grow tremendously over the coming decades. Small
displays will be needed for portable and wearable devices. Sunlight-readable
displays will be needed to span all of these applications. Displaying
3D for single-viewer CAD and game applications (simulated reality)
will find increasing acceptance as improvements are made in small-display
image quality and in head/eye motion detection. On the other hand,
fully realistic multi-viewer 3D will not be available. That will
take at least another 50 years to accomplish -- or about the same
time it will take for nuclear fusion power plants become practical.
The display technologies that we will be implementing in 2026 will
have their foundations in the displays and materials we are developing
today. I believe that we will continue to manufacture some versions
of yet further improved CRTs. LCDs will be everywhere. How big will
they be? I think we can realistically think about LCD-based hang-on-the-wall
televisions in sizes about as big as we wish to make them. We can
expect to see a lively competition between LCD and plasma panels
over these coming years. Both will have interesting features to
offer. These flat-panel technologies will encourage the further
development of projection displays and combinations of projection
with emissive surfaces. It may seem paradoxical, but I believe that
one product can lead the way for others to enter the market. Imitation
is after all a sincere form of flattery.
LED and OLED technologies will grow at an accelerating pace. LEDs
will begin to develop a market in not only displays but in lighting
applications where efficiency is important. It is possible that
in 2026 we will all be buying long-life light-bulbs that have an
LED in them and that the newer offices will be lit with LED technology
as well. MEMs based displays for projection and viewer applications
will grow and proliferate.
Several new technologies can be expected to break into product status.
I think we will finally see field-emission technology take its place
with some interesting new products. EL could make a revival with
the introduction of some new phosphors and materials capability.
Will there be something completely new and unexpected? Have I left
something out? I'm sure that the answer is yes to both of these
questions. However, I think the surprises will be few. Most of what
we know today will serve as the foundation for what we do over the
next 25 years. What we technologists unfortunately cannot predict
is how people and countries will behave over these same years. It
is absolutely clear that, on an international level, we must all
work together. Today, and in the future, there is only one economy
and it is a global economy. The Internet facilitates instant communication
across political and geographic boundaries. If these processes are
allowed to work unimpeded, then we will accomplish many of these
things -- and perhaps more.
I look forward to working with all of you to help initiate the
successes that will carry us over these next 25 years. This column
should provide you with many opportunities to offer your own thoughts
on our future. I would enjoy hearing them. Please contact me by
e-mail at president@sid.org, or
Email,
by telephone at 425-557-8850, by fax at 425-557-8983, or by the
conventional mail, which we will still have and appreciate in 25
years, at 22513 SE 47th Place, Sammamish, WA 98075.
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Aris Silzars is President of SID and lives on a hilltop overlooking
Issaquah, WA.
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