In an interview with TechnologyReview, Sandy Pentland, professor for media arts and sciences at MIT deliberated on the kind of revolutionary applications that could be ushered in with mobile computing, social networking and ubiquitous connectivity.
Professor Pentland goes on to deliberate on how electronic gadgets could make use of the immense information available via social networking sites to essentially bring the reality of virtual relations to the user’s immediate proximity.
Termed as ‘reality mining‘ , the field marries user information from several repositories online with the mobile gadgets such as mobile phones and portable music players that are part of everyday life.
What the Professor may have been hinting towards could be the next revolution that is bound to hit the technology world with mobile computing really poised to take-off. And no other firm is betting more on it than the Web giant Google. With its Android initiative, the firm is planning its next series of innovations resulting from the talent of developers up-taking the Android Mobile SDK.
This will also be one frontier where Google will be directly threatening Microsoft. Microsoft has been highly successful in the mobile industry with a mobile variant of its Windows OS. Google’s entry in the mobile space will be closely watched.
Gadgets getting smarter does seem like the next big step in technology innovation.