"In 5 years we shall only laugh at what we call television today. In the coming years the television will experience substantial changes and, as a result, our personal computers and TVs will be finally merged"- we’ve already left far behind this assumption of Bill Gates, expressed 7 years ago at Davos economic forum. Passive users of information now spin in the centre of mass information whirl on YouTube, blogs, Facebook or Twitter and already getting near to Google Glass, TV shows, movies and advertising that demand ever deeper immersing in ourselves. In 2020, in 7 years, 2D screens and monitors will stay behind like dinosaurs of engineering, as it has once happened to black-white TVs, and holographic display videos will step into our reality with 3d scenes of a virtual theatre...

Holography is a mix of art, science and technology. Years later, when we go out of home, we’ll be able to leave a message directly in the air and our friends will see it, as they open the door. We’ll have TV-movies like in stereo cinemas and types of entertainment that we’ll be able to watch without special glasses and walking around in a 360° angle.

Technologies change our lives, love, games, thoughts, feelings and work.  “It was just a tiny cup of coffee, but still the most amazing thing I had ever seen” – that’s how professor Steven Benton described the discovery moment of a hologram, generated by means of laser   beam reflections.  As an 11 years old boy he was watching a horror movie House of Wax, wearing 3D gasses; in that moment, shocked and exited at the same time by what they saw, the boy decided to find out what was going on. And again, childhood impressions inspired a MITMedia Lab student Jinha Lee to invent a transparent display, presented a few days ago: "Ivan Sutherland’s computer is called a "mirror of mathematical wonders", and I always dreamed to manually touch the miracles, contact with abstract creatures" and using sensory properties of a human hand she created a "Space Top" i.e., virtual desktop.

She managed to penetrate into the depths, where a user can, for example, turn the pages of unreal documents over with one hand and point at a strophe with another – just like in the reality.  A little earlier Lee had invented a pen for painting geometric figures – it “penetrates” the screen, and a “soaring joystick” – Zero N that can freely move in the digital space, where a computer and its operator move simultaneously.

Currently the designer is relieved of her military duties and assigned to the MIT laboratory team, where she works on inventing interfaces for Samsung TVs.

“Everyone wishes to have success, but I want to be considered the greatest innovator, a person of high morality, who deserves to be trusted and who has introduced the greatest improvements to this world” – says the co-founder of Google Sergey Brin.  He already owns over 20 billion and, according to Fortune Digest’s inquires, together with Larry Page, tops the list of the world’s under-40 billionaire businessmen and already owns the most high-priced internet company, as the market giant’s price reached 300 billion by the end of July.

The picture shows Brin with a Google Glass, mass users of which we are going to become very soon.   They say that we’ll enter a new cyber-era as soon as in 2013 wearing these glasses. Their accessory, a computer – follows their commands and one day, when we’ll be surfing in the endless world like paparazzi, equipped with a video-eye, maybe the technology could make us, human beings, feel lonelier and mere unprotected. And again we’ll have no choice but to adapt, in order not to “hit the tree”...

At present, Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab and NASA Space Research Center undertake a joint improvement of computers, designed to create artificial intelligence; using extraordinary characteristics of quantum physics, these computers will be able to carry out calculations thousand times faster, than any of today’s super-computers.

Emotive and NeuroSky companies of California started releasing a joint product Bluetooth that is capable to control human brain and use it as a joystick for various games. A couple of months ago engineers discovered a program code for Google that is going to activate the ways unknown before. People will be able to communicate with portable computers without saying a word. For example, they’ll be able to send a mail over a Smartphone by only using their minds, so that they’ll no longer need even to take the device out of their pocket.

Last year doctor Donohue, acting within the BrainGate project frames, connected for the first time two completely paralyzed persons to a robot-manipulator that was responsible for their brain activities. The lady, who had not used her arms for 15 years, was able to serve herself. She took a cup of coffee and put it back on the table, using the robot arms that she had activated through her imagination. 

One more company, Emotiv, started to produce a device, capable to read the brain waves, associated with human minds, feelings and emotions. A review of the world’s №1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported about one more amazing device that is going to be used for Tetris-like games. It will be able to shoot pictures by a signal, sent from the brain, think like a human, have emotions, feel happiness and even get excited...  

3D technologies have revolutionized the medical visualisation as well. Medical students of our generation study the human constitution by means of multilayer computer tomography atlases.                    

Showing hyper-realistic images is made possible by combining the latest methods of image processing and lighting effects. The digital information, recorded by means of coronarography, tomography, angiography, densitometer and other technologies of the latest generation is also effectively used in Georgian clinics in order to detect various pathologies. Modern technologies provide an unlimited “arsenal” for planning surgical operations or other medical manipulations, and additionally calculating the outcome options.

7 years ago we would have problems imagining merging of a personal computer and TV. However, in the next years we should expect a synthesis of human brain and quantum computers, which would completely erase a line between the real and virtual worlds. Machines will be able to calculate 1000 times faster, than super-computers today. Despite its strangeness, holography is the technology that provides creation of the most realistic shapes. A half of century has passed since its discovery, but its commercial success, along with a “bouquet” of new technological discoveries, is expected to occur in the next years.

Toshiba company starts to import auto-stereoscopic (i. e. allowing to perceive stereo images without 3D-glasses) TV-sets. Yet is no high demand on the market, but it is anticipated to increase. Though, against the background of all these fantastic achievements, human brain is still to be considered the mightiest, most flexible and mysterious “computer”. Years ago, “tiny electricians” (or neurons) in the brains of the previous generation surgeons used to work indefatigably, shooting out bioelectricity in order to lay the first “wires” in the direction of mastering laparoscopic technologies (a surgeon sees on a monitor the object, registered by a laparoscopic equipment cam, and tries to coordinate movements of his hand and eyes by use of this abstract image). And during the future surgical operations the information, sorted and specified by holographic images, will be sent over cables to our “central dispatcher” in order to activate the surgeons’ hands in the operation space, so that they perform completely new type tasks they receive from the brain. Thus, probably, also in medicine will the technologies make the line between digital and real disappear.

It’s already hard to imagine that about 20 years ago we lived without mobile phones, notebooks or Smartphones. Time will pass and the magic Google Glass and holographic monitors will seem to be just regular household appliances. There were no planes, spaceships, books or radio, not even a smoothing-iron had existed once upon a time, but the inexhaustible human fantasy has invented them all and introduced to the world in order to make it richer.

„The one, who created the universe with his mighty strength... who gave the world to us, humans, and now we have it - the world, decorated with uncountable colours” (Sh. Rustaveli, The Knight in Panther’s Skin) - which means that even our colourful world is “invented” by God and, since then, the “sculptured” human weaves his wonders – this time by his own “imaginations and visions” and “thread of dreams”. He tries to solve the “eternal mystery” using the god-given unlimited capabilities and fantasy, as that’s how we were conceived by the Creator and so this amazing “thinking reed” (former clay) has to carry out eternally the great “program” installed in him, just like the robots that he has created...    

Third year student of Medical Faculty of Tbilisi State Medical University Qeti Vibliani.