Today we have smartphones. In future, says Intel, we’ll have psychic phones.
Well, not “psychic” so much as “context-aware”, according to Intel VP and CTO Justin Rattner, who says context awareness is the next big step for mobile devices.
The idea, Rattner explained at the Intel Developers Forum in September, is to create a cognitive framework based on a context engine that corrals info from a variety of sources - extensible analyzers, inference algorithms, data stores, and sensors - then distributes them to the appropriate applications, according to PC Magazine.
So, for example, if the phone knows whether you’re inside, outside, at home, in the office, jogging, etc, as well as your availability and the app you’re using at the time, it can make recommendations about what you might want to do next
Of course, Intel might also be planning to take that a step further - its Human Brain Project (in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh) uses technologies like EEG and fMRI to decipher a person’s thoughts based on their neural activity pattern.
Combine that with context awareness, and psychic phones may well be a reality in the next decade or so. Or not.