A day made of Glass

Technology

One of my favorite glimpses into the future is called “A Day Made of Glass”.

http://www.corning.com/news_center/features/A_Day_Made_of_Glass.aspx

Corning has a very interesting vision that will bring realistic changes and conveniences to the near future. For example, imagine your home or business controlled by a computer and you access the computer through portable personal hand held device that looks like a smart phone but is made of glass. The glass can be a surface on kitchen refrigerators, 3D TV, or floor to ceiling windows. It can be any size, small enough to put in your pocket and large enough to make a presentation in a conference room. This special glass can be a table or counter in your home, or at work in the boardroom. Your hand held device is your personal computer, once laid on the surface of the special glass will display anything from a presentation you are pitching to a client, your favorite pictures or a video phone call from your mother. Images on the surface can be controlled by your touch, making it the size and orientation of your choice.

The computer can wake you up, displayed like a picture in your room. It would tell the windows to change from opaque to clear. The glass can be a mirror in your bathroom that lets you receive text messages, and displays your calendar, gives you the weather and traffic report and shows the local news.

The glass can be in your automobile, as the dashboard, navigator and a clear or opaque sunroof. High definition freeway signs would change from being normal to notifying the drivers of road hazards, which would communicate with the driver’s navigation system to determine a better route.

Public transportation could be displayed, showing where the bus or train currently was and the route it is on. You would be able to download the information by touching the display with your personal device.

When you go shopping, there would be kiosks of this glass that would show you where to go and map how to get there. You could use it like a catalog, to find clothes, the model for the cloths would be yourself and you would get a 360 degree view of how it looked on you. All this before you step foot into the dressing room, if you needed to.

The glass does not have to be a hard rigid surface. It could be as thin and flexible as plastic, which could be rolled up like a blueprint. It could be ultra thin and light in which you could hold in your hand and read it like a book.

The video link explains it all, and makes you want the future to be now.