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IBM Thinks Minds Will Control Machines Within 5 Years (ZT)
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.
Controlling a device with your mind. Powering your home with the energy of your own activities. These are two of the developments that experts at IBM think will become reality within the next five years.
The technology company has released its latest "5 in 5" report. The experts think people will soon be able to control many electronic devices simply by using their minds. Scientists at IBM and other companies are researching ways to do this in a field of science known as bioinformatics.
They say people will soon have a way to just think about calling or e-mailing someone in order to make it happen. Bernie Meyerson is IBM's vice president of innovation.
BERNIE MEYERSON: "[It's a] simple ability to command a system to do something for you without actually doing or saying anything, literally thinking and having something happen as a result that's accurate. Something with really deep capability so that a person, for instance, a quadriplegic, a paraplegic can actually utilize brainwaves to make things happen and basically run their own lives independently."
Another prediction is a way for people to power their homes and offices using energy from activities like walking or running. Bernie Meyerson says this is known as micro-electronic generation.
BERNIE MEYERSON: "For instance, you can have somebody in the third world who has access to a phone or a smartphone but doesn't have access to the power grid, which is a very common thing, and literally in a shoe has something that recovers energy from walking and can charge the battery to enable that person to actually become connected with the rest of the world."
Another prediction: passwords could soon become a thing of the past. IBM says developments in biometric technology could soon make passwords unnecessary. Some of the most common biometrics used to identify people are fingerprints, face and voice recognition, and iris scans. The iris is the colored part of the eye.
Bernie Meyerson says this technology will soon be more widely used by money machines and other devices.
BERNIE MEYERSON: "Imagine that things recognize you. You walk up to an ATM [automated teller machine]. [It] takes one look, says, Yep, you're you."
Another prediction from the experts at International Business Machines: better technology to prevent unwanted e-mail.
BERNIE MEYERSON: "The device, as you act upon it, as you eliminate mail, you don't read it, you just look at it and kill it, after a while it learns your habits and works for you as as your assistant by eliminating stuff you never wanted anyway."
The fifth prediction on IBM's 5 in 5 list is an end to the "digital divide" between those who have technology and those who do not.
BERNIE MEYERSON: "Think about the digital divide today: the haves and the have-nots, people who are and are not connected. We anticipate within five years, better than eighty percent coverage of the world’s populations by cellular to smartphones. At that point, imagine having, for instance, the ability to speak openly with anybody anywhere, anytime and any language -- real time translation. Literally, the old 'Star Trek' idea of the universal translator coming to be, and how the world would change if there were that kind of communication and openness."
And that’s the VOA Special English Technology Report. What are your predictions for the next five years? Share them at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.
P.S. 科技體育:sOccket--a ball of energy（音頻文字）ZT
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.
Have you ever heard the expression "a ball of energy"? People often use the term to describe very active children. But today we tell about an invention called the sOccket, that is a real ball of energy. Julia Silverman explains.
JULIA SILVERMAN: "The sOccket is a cutting-edge portable generator in the form of a soccer ball."
Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews developed the sOccket as part of a group project for an engineering class at Harvard University.
To better understand what a sOccket is, you first need to understand how it works.
JULIA SILVERMAN: "When you play with the ball, there is all this energy being transferred to the ball -- even any normal soccer ball. Basically, what we're trying to do is instead of letting that energy dissipate into the environment or just be lost, we're harnessing it inside using these mechanisms, this technology that essentially tries to capture everything with the movement. Everything that is harnessed is then stored in a battery of sorts."The sOccket collects and stores this energy with every kick, hit or throw of the ball.
JULIA SILVERMAN: "Then the user can plug any accessory directly into the ball, like a lamp to study, or a cell phone charger. We're developing a water purifier and hopefully some other things that might be beneficial."
For every fifteen minutes of game play, the sOccket can provide enough electricity to power an LED lamp for up to three hours. The ball can store up to twenty-four hours' worth of power.
The International Energy Association reported last year that nearly one and a half billion people did not have access to electricity. Most of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and in India and other countries in Asia.
Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews both had experience in developing countries before they began the project. They knew that power shortages are a serious problem in many areas.
JULIA SILVERMAN: "There's an energy crisis in the world. One out of every five people in the global population don't have any electricity whatsoever. And beyond that, there are a lot of health issues because what people use instead of the electricity are harmful alternatives like kerosene lamps, which produce a lot of smoke."
Ms. Silverman says the sOccket is one small solution to a big problem.
JULIA SILVERMAN: "And so we knew that just a little bit of light would make a huge difference. And we also knew that soccer was the most popular sport, most loved sport in the whole world."
Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman have started a nonprofit organization called Uncharted Play. They hope their sOccket ball will shine more light on the problem of power shortages. It offers people a chance to put their energy into the world's most popular sport and get some energy in return.
And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. Go to voaspecialenglish.com for transcripts, MP3s and now PDF files of our stories. And follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iTunes at VOA Learning English. I'm June Simms.
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