In this era of information
explosion, information and communication technology (ICT) are becoming more important.
Almost every time people use technology, it is because people can dominate and
control almost everything in the fingertips. Country that does not prioritize
in ICT will be the mainstream of development. ICT progress has brought many
benefits to individuals, communities and nations. Now, the technology has
emerges to its fullest potential. The advancement has revolutionized to
innovation in various field of modern technology. These are some list of
emerging technologies:
1) Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology can be described as
big things from a tiny world. A basic definition: Nanotechnology is the engineering
of functional systems at the molecular scale. This covers both current work and
concepts that are more advanced (CRN,2008). Nanotechnology has started since
the year of 1980’s, by K.Eric Dexler. At that time, he was talking about
building machines on the scale of molecule, a few nanometers wide—motors, robot
arms, and even whole computers, far smaller than a cell. Before we go further,
lets first understand how small nanometer is; A nanometer (nm) is one-billionth
of a meter, smaller than the wavelength of visible light and a
hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair [source: Berkeley Lab]. As small
as a nanometer is, it is still large compared to the atomic scale. Nobel Prize
Winner Dr. Horst Stormer has claimed that nanoscale is more interesting than
the atomic scale because the nanoscale is the first point where we can assemble
something – it is not until we start putting atoms together that we can make
anything useful. Nanotechnology is so new; no one is really sure what will come
of it. Even so, predictions range from the ability to reproduce things like
diamonds and food to the world being devoured by self-replicating nanorobots. If
you want to have more news and information about nanotechnology, please go to http://www.nano.gov/ /please
2) Grid Computing
Have you ever heard about grid
computing? Let’s see how it is function and benefits the world! At its most
basic level, grid computing is a computer network in which each computer's
resources are shared with every other computer in the system. How is Grid
different from other technologies such as Clusters/P2P/ASP? The key distinction
between clusters and grids is mainly lie in the way resources are managed. In
case of clusters, the resource allocation is performed by a centralized
resource manager and all nodes cooperatively work together as a single unified
resource. In case of Grids, each node has its own resource manager and don't
aim for providing a single system view. The grid computing concept isn't a new
one. It's a special kind of distributed computing. In distributed computing,
different computers within the same network share one or more resources. To
make this understanding more fun, grid computing could be illustrated by this
simple story:
“You
and couple of friends is going to sit for examination, all of you decided to
form a study group in order to share the resources, you are master in
mathematics and you going to share the knowledge with the others. The other
friends offer to share some programming knowledge. During the group study, the
three of you share your knowledge and skills to make the study more efficient.
If you had made the study on your own, you would need more time to assemble the
resources you would need and you probably would have had to work a lot harder”.
/nobigdeal
3) Quantum Computing
The definition of quantum computing
is complicated as its name. Heard people talking about quantum computing, but
not really sure you understand what they mean? Here I have some basic
information what is quantum computing about. The question here will we ever
have the amount of computing power we need or want? One day it will not be
enough for us, if we look through the large amounts of data generated by scientific
research, the proliferation of personal computers or the emergence of the
Internet, which have only fueled our need for more, more and more computing
power. If, as Moore's Law states, the number of transistors on a microprocessor
continues to double every 18 months, the year 2020 or 2030 will find the
circuits on a microprocessor measured on an atomic scale. And the logical next
step will be to create quantum computers, which will harness the power of atoms
and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks (Bonsor, K. &
Strickland, J. 2013).
A wise man once said that investigators
are eagerly describing what the more sophisticated machines will be like if
they can ever be constructed is quantum computation. Perhaps the most surprising
thing about quantum computing is that it was so slow to get started. Physicists
have known since the 1920s that the world of subatomic particles is a realm
apart, but it took computer scientists another half-century to begin wondering
whether quantum effects might be harnessed for computation. The answer was far
from obvious (Grover L.K, 1999). Honestly I open 5-6 tabs to find quantum
computing information, most of them delivered they information in a very
complicated way, but finally I found one article that help me to understand it,
so for more details please click on this link, to go to the article.
4) Semantic Web
Now, let’s turn
our attention to the next emerging technology called Semantic Web. According to
semanticweb.org the semantic web is the extension of the World Wide Web that
enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and
websites. The Semantic Web proposes to help computers "read" and use
the Web. The big idea is pretty simple -- metadata added to Web pages can make
the existing World Wide Web machine readable. This won't bestow artificial
intelligence or make computers self-aware, but it will give machines tools to
find, exchange and, to a limited extent, interpret information.
/bye
References:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/grid-computing1.htm
http://www.gridcomputing.com/
http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page
