Playboy Guide: Future Tech

The Trouble with predicting the future is that the present keeps changing. Just look at old Buck Rogers (the space traveler, not the baseball manager). He sure seemed futuristic at the time. His equipment and adventures were based on technology and ideas already in existence. They fulfilled expectations of what the world could be. Today, what seemed futuristic in the Fifties looks like so much tin foil. Now we are aware of many possibilities undreamed of then, and many of the technologies we take for granted surpass anything available to poor Buck.

There is a lesson to be learned here about crystal balls and humility. Technology is advancing at such a furious pace that tomorrow practically materializes before our eyes. Here, we take a peek into the electronic future, starting with the sure bets, then plunging forward into less certain territory, up to--and a little beyond--the turn of the century. If your ray gun is loaded, we'll start the voyage. (continued on page 208)Future Tech(continued from page 198) Compact discs have already brought a major change in the way we listen to music. Less than half the size of their black-vinyl predecessors, these digitally encoded doughnuts provide longer play and superior sound, durability and convenience. They have spread from the home to the car, and you can have complete portability with battery-powered micro-players such as the Sony D-5 and the Technics SL-XP7. The secret of these laser-read discs is their incredible storage density, which is just beginning to be exploited. Record companies are starting to introduce CDs with graphics to accompany the music.

Meanwhile, computer manufacturers are exploring the possibilities of CD-ROM. That means whatever is stored on the disc at the time it is made can be retrieved, but nothing new can be added. For those who need enormous amounts of fast read/write storage, a number of companies--including Sony, Matsushita (parent of Technics and Panasonic) and Nakamichi--are working on erasable CDs. The first fruits of their labor may be available very soon to computer users, and within a few years, we may see blank, erasable CDs that can be used over and over on combination recorder/players.

Digital technology is also making its mark in television. The first digital sets--from Panasonic and Toshiba--are already available, and more are on the way. They use a set of ITT chips to convert the incoming TV signal into a series of digital codes, which are then manipulated to perform the signal processing required to retrieve the picture and the sound. But the fact that the signals are in digital form permits additional processing to achieve special effects and improve picture quality. Current models do just one trick, called picture in picture. You can monitor a second channel on a small subscreen set into a corner of the picture. But far more is possible. Mitsubishi is working on a model that can display up to nine separate pictures. And within the next few years, we will see units that can freeze the frame, zoom in on a small portion of it (to settle those close calls), eliminate most ghosts and enhance detail. Eventually, almost all television receivers will be digital.

Also in video, we're beginning to see the first serious push for 8mm video-cassette decks and camcorders. These machines use tape that's about half the width of VHS and Beta, and the cassettes are much smaller. That makes possible very light-weight, compact units, such as Sony's Mini-8. Some manufactures (including Kodak, Pioneer and Sony) have gone a step further and added stereo digital sound tracks for ultrahigh-fidelity sound. A bonus feature of these decks is an audio-only mode that enables each to record as much as 24 hours of music on one cassette.

While the video-recording technique used in 8mm VCRs is essentially the same as that used in Beta and VHS units, new methods are being tested. Perpendicular recording, which can pack much more information per square inch of tape surface, is one possibility. This might even be combined with digital encoding of the video signal, which could provide a VCR picture of broadcast quality. Look for developments by the end of the decade.

So much for the near future. There are even more exciting horizons a little further off: flat-screen TV, for example. Imagine a screen the size of those that come with present-day projection television units but flat, very thin and self-contained.(It might be necessary to plug it into an external tuner, but that would be much smaller than a projection console.) A number of companies (RCA, most prominently) are working on such systems, but the technical obstacles are formidable. Obtaining adequate brightness, resolution and color accuracy in a reasonably priced system is going to be tough. Nonetheless, the problems should be solved by the middle Nineties, in time for you to watch the ball drop at the turn of the millennium.

By then, video will have another new world to conquer as serious development of commercial high-definition television (HDTV) begins. This, too, entails great technical and practical difficulties. All of the HDTV systems developed so far would require the equivalent of several standard television channels to broadcast just one signal. But research into human visual acuity could help pare them down by telling us what information could be omitted without lowering picture quality. Another avenue is data compression, which could squeeze the necessary information into a smaller signal-band width. Or will there be an end run around the issue, using direct broadcast from satellite (DBS) to carry HDTV broadcasts? This would require the installation of small dish antennas on the rooftops of receiving homes. And then there's the matter of trying to maintain some compatibility with existing television sets for a graceful period of transition. Nonetheless, some sort of HDTV should be available by the year 2000 or so, bringing with it life-size images as sharp as those of 35mm slides. And well before that, there will be fully compatible enhancements that will yield better picture quality in both broadcast and reception of conventional television signals.

You've probably noticed that cars, cameras and appliances are beginning to talk to you. Unfortunately, they don't listen when you reply, but that's about to change. Voice-recognition technology is becoming good enough and cheap enough to be used in consumer products. By the early Nineties, remote control will mean (at least in part) the ability to tell your TV set to change channels and your stereo system to turn on and play the CD of your choice--just as the Jetsons did.

At the same time, great strides are being made in the fabrication of integrated circuits--the tiny chips that are at the heart of all of today's advanced electronics. More circuitry is being squeezed into smaller packages. By the end of the century, this will lead to personal supercomputers--desktop units so fast and powerful that they will be able to solve problems that now require the world's largest and most expensive mainframes. The same technology, combined with voice recognition, artificial-intelligence software and electronic sensing systems, will make personal robots a reality within a decade. These will be far superior to the primitive models developed in recent years. They will be able to hear and respond to spoken commands, to learn from experience or from watching a task being performed and to do most simple household chores. By early in the next century, you should be able to buy a gentleman's gentlebot that can clean house, wash dishes and mix you a drink--all without ever asking why you didn't come home last night.

Sometime in the first quarter of the next century, even the compact disc will be displaced by solid-state modules that are smaller, completely nonmechanical and reusable. These, similar to the crystallike memory units that taught Superman in the movie, probably will displace tape as well. Together with high-density integrated circuits, they will make it possible to put an entire home-entertainment system (except for the video screen) into a small box that can be voice- or handset-controlled from anywhere in your home. Or there may be a second, larger box that contains all your music and video recordings, which you obtain not from a record store but from the satellite dish or fiber-optic cable feeding TV, radio and other services into your home. When you want to take your music with you, you plug your personal stereo into your home system and fill it with whatever you want to hear; a plug-in cartridge serves the same function for your car.

All of this will come to pass. The luckiest of us will be around to enjoy it. Buck Rogers can only drool.

"Imagine a screen the size of present-day projection units but flat, very thin and self-contained."