It's getting much more efficient all the time though.
I don't know if this is going to take off big time or not, but I wouldn't dismiss it as quickly as some here seem to be. The technology is still in its early days but the potential really is huge for some applications...
I remember people slagging off wireless networks for similar reasons - computers don't move, what use would that be, it's slow, it's inefficient... and look where it is today
good point!!
personally, I agree I don't see the buzz for wireless energy right now...
what's the point of having the TV without wires if you just have to put the base station that radiated the energy behind the TV that you want to connect without wires anyway!!
where I could perhaps see a lift for this technology is if houses are built with this technology in mind.
and by that I mean with a massive induction loop built into the floors, so all you have to do is lay your devices induction loop down and it'll magically charge!
you've got a massive induction loop in the floor, so all you have to do it put your phone on the table to charge it.
you can put your TV on any table because there is an induction loop in the base that will convert the required energy for the device...
same for radios and laptops, all you have to do is put your laptop on the table and it'll start charging.
-the most massive hurdle to this technology (I believe) won't actually be the efficiency of the technology, it would be the specifications.
especially in this new smaller world where people travel a lot,
in America you'll have 120V induction loops, and a corresponding amount of loops in your phone to create a 5v charge,
in Britain we'll have 240v loops and our devices will get a 5v charge.
so come over here and your devices will get a 10v charge, we go there and we don't get enough charge...
continental Europe have a 220v system. to further muddy the waters.
Also, when you start talking about powering devices wireless using induction loops you'll also find that every RFID tag that you have about your person will also become active.
(and there are a couple in my wallet now to allow door entry to offices), these will be constantly transmitting, making it easier for people to gather clones for these devices.
Anyway... my predictions for the next ten years...
Firstly, I predict that the current war in Afghanistan will last at least the next half of the decade.
so I'm predicting that military tech will continue to move along at a significant rate -war is very good at pushing technological boundaries.
thus I suspect that we will see...
invisibility/obfuscation camouflage. -intelligent camo, there are already some people that have developed light bending materials to hide things, I predict that these will start to be deployed for the purpose of hiding military vehicles.
Wireless electricity, we're seeing it emerging now, I can envisage that towards the end of the decade this tech will be in every home, I suspect however that this may only be in the form of charging pads/table tops where you put your phone/mp3 player down and it charges via induction rather than needing to be plugged in.
electric vehicles, there are a couple now, but I suspect that electric vehicles will be a lot more widespread by the end of the decade.
Green politics...
Firstly, I think that there will be a lot of miss-representations cleared up.
certainly there are a lot of people now who say a few different things,
1, peak oil crisis, certainly it is true that if we use fossil fuels at a rate faster than they are created, we will without doubt run out of them. -but nobody knows how fast they are created. also we don't know how many pockets of usable carbon based fossil fuels exist.
2, CO2 global warming, there is still very little proof that the world is warming up as a result of human activity, certainly scientist have also said that other planets are also warming up, even though there are no civilisations [that we know of] creating co2 there.
I guess the debate will rage on, and we'll get policy based on it... which I predict will be as such...
renewable energies:
I'm a big believer in micro generation being the answer to this problem -if the problem even exists, indeed I believe that 60 million small 2kw wind turbines given to every man woman and child in the UK
then that's one hundred and twenty thousand mega watts of electricity generated.
(three hundred million for American population) is going to do a lot more than a handful of wind turbine farms scattered across the country.
combine this too with solar heaters, and I think that it'll be very possible to reduce the energy needs and you might not even need this amount of wind turbines at all!
solar power,
Solar power will take off, but I don't think that it will be in the form of solar panels, rather power will be generated in existing heat furnaces, just with the fuel source being the sun, rather than coal/gas etc...
In this respect I think that equatorial countries (that have the advantage of very little seasonal change regarding day light hours and an abundance of very hot sunshine) can become new world energy powers. for a lot of these countries it's about the only thing that they have, (abundance of free energy).
community heating.
sounds very socialist, but I believe that where there are power stations and computer data centres that currently waste the heat produced in such facilities to the elements with cooling towers/air conditioning radiators. then this 'waste' energy will start to be used more productively, so rather than a cooling tower, you'll have a cooling loop providing heating to homes within the vicinity of a power station.
green computers,
I also think that there will be a bigger shift to low power computing rather than faster computing over the coming decade. the average home computer doesn't need 4 cores of of massive computing power when all the average home user is doing is surfing the internet and emailing their family.
so I think that the next big shift made in earnest will be towards lower powered computing rather than faster computing. (the fact that there may be kick backs associated with this will help!).
I also predict, (due to 64bit tech) the unix 32bit epoc time roll over date 'bug' will come and go without incident.
further to this 21st December 2012 will come and go without incident, after all the Mayan calendar reverting to 13.0.0.0.0 is actually just a rollover bug in a counting system.
