2003 Emerging Technologies Watch List

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2003 Emerging TechnologiesWatch List

• Facilitated by
• Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA, CITP
• AICPA Top Technologies Task Force

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Watch List Agenda

• Overview of Process
• Review of Candidate Technologies
• YOUR Modifications and Additions
• Voting

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Overview of Process

• Program appx. 1991-2001
• Program cut in 2001
• Resurrected in 2002 by members
• Limited funding provided
• Lab-based to web-based
• Expansion of participants
• Emerging tech watch list flopped

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Overview of Process

• Creation of Emerging Tech Watch List
• Task Force created preliminary Candidate list
• Asked ITA to submit additional items
• Review Candidates and definitions
• Append/modify list
• Vote on five

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Watch List Agenda

• Overview of Process
• Review of Candidate Technologies
• YOUR Modifications and Additions
• Voting

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Nanotechnology The science of building devices
  at the molecular and atomic level. For example, a
  bit might be represented by only one atom some
  time in the future. Nanotechnology could be used
  to build anything, not just computers and
  communications devices

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• 3G Wireless 3G is designed for high-speed
  multimedia data and voice. Its goals include
  high-quality audio and video and advanced global
  roaming, which means being able to go anywhere
  and automatically be handed off to whatever
  wireless system is available (inhouse phone
  system, cellular, satellite, etc.).

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Voice Recognition Technologies The conversion of
  spoken words into computer text. Speech is first
  digitized and then matched against a dictionary
  of coded waveforms. The matches are converted
  into text as if the words were typed on the
  keyboard.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Optical Computing A computer in which all
  internal circuits use light instead of
  electricity. Long predicted, an all-optical
  computer is not expected for some time as there
  are enormous hurdles to overcome. However, there
  are definite advantages to optical circuits over
  electrical ones. Light beams are neither affected
  by external radiation, nor by themselves. In
  fact, light beams can cross each other, allowing
  for simpler travel paths between inputs and
  outputs.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Portals A Web "supersite" that provides a
  variety of services including Web searching,
  news, white and yellow pages directories, free
  e-mail, discussion groups, online shopping and
  links to other sites. Web portals are the Web
  equivalent of the original online services such
  as CompuServe and AOL. Although the term was
  initially used to refer to general purpose sites,
  it is increasingly being used to refer to
  vertical market sites that offer the same
  services, but only to a particular industry such
  as banking, insurance or computers.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• M-Commerce (Mobile-COMMERCE) Using smart phones
  and handheld computers with wireless connections
  to place orders and transact business over the
  Web

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• GPS/Telemetry (Global Positioning System) A
  satellite-based radio navigation system run by
  the U.S. Department of Defense. Using 24 MEO
  satellites for identifying earth locations, the
  first GPS satellite was launched in early 1978.
  By triangulation of signals from three of the
  satellites, a receiving unit can pinpoint its
  current location anywhere on earth to within 20
  meters horizontally.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• ID/Authentication Verifying the identity of a
  user who is logging onto a computer system or
  verifying the integrity of a transmitted message.
  See password, digital signature, IP spoofing and
  biometrics, possibly Hitachis new Mu chip.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Peer to Peer Computing Sharing the CPU resources
  across a network so that all machines function as
  one large supercomputer. It allows unused CPU
  capacity in any of the machines to be allocated
  to the total processing job required. In a large
  enterprise, hundreds of desktop machines are
  often sitting idle at any given time, which could
  be put to use on large computational problems.
  Likewise, all the millions of users accessing the
  Internet offer trillions of wasted machine cycles
  every minute that could be put to other use (see
  SETI). Peer-to-peer computing is also called
  "grid computing" and "distributed computing," the
  latter being a term resurrected from the 1970s
  with no relationship to this concept. (Include
  Grid Computing)

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• BlueTooth A wireless personal area network (PAN)
  technology from the Bluetooth Special Interest
  Group (www.bluetooth.com) founded in 1998 by
  Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba.
  Bluetooth is an open standard for short-range
  transmission of digital voice and data between
  mobile devices (laptops, PDAs, phones) and
  desktop devices. It supports point-to-point and
  multipoint applications. Bluetooth provides up
  to 720 Kbps data transfer within a range of 10
  meters and up to 100 meters with a power boost.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) A
  message-based protocol based on XML for accessing
  services on the Web. Initiated by Microsoft, IBM
  and others, it employs XML syntax to send text
  commands across the Internet using HTTP. Similar
  in purpose to the DCOM and CORBA distributed
  object systems, but lighter weight and less
  programming intensive (at least initially), SOAP
  is expected to become widely used to invoke
  services throughout the Web. Because of its
  simple exchange mechanism, SOAP can also be used
  to implement a messaging system. SOAP is
  supported in COM, DCOM, Internet Explorer and
  Microsoft's Java implementation.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Gallium Nitride "Gallium nitride can take
  wireless communication to the next
  level--downloading, video for instance, at
  blazing speed. With gallium nitride transistors
  will come a whole new set of functions." Gallium
  nitride transistors will, according to Mishra,
  look pretty much like transistors made of other
  semiconductors, but perform much better. "That is
  always appealing for adoption of the technology
  because you don't have to reeducate people on how
  to use it. In effect, the box will look the same,
  and the human interface with the box will be the
  same, but what is inside will perform much
  better." Mishra predicts that gallium nitride
  will do for wireless transmission what it has
  done for optoelectronics bring about a
  revolution.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Self-Healing Computers Now IBM is showing
  software called Enterprise Workload Manager that
  governs not just single servers but groups,
  monitoring the machines and shifting work among
  them. IBM is aggressively researching ways to get
  groups of servers to work together without human
  intervention, but it isn't the only one. Sun
  Microsystems in February uncloaked "N1," which
  treats groups of computers like a single pool of
  processing and storage power. And Hewlett-Packard
  plans a "utility data center" to simplify
  management of data centers crammed with computing
  equipment.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• ePeriodicals ePeriodicals technology will allow
  developers to create complex documents, like
  eMagazines, that can be read on a variety of
  devices, including the Tablet PC. The technology
  will manage the full publishing processfrom the
  layout and creation of the documents to their
  full editing life cycle to their delivery via a
  push-type online subscription mechanism

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Composable High-Assurance Trustworthy Systems
  (CHATS). The emphasis in the CHATS program is on
  trustworthy open-source operating systems.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• X-Internet "executable Internet," or X Internet,
  for short. When you go to a site in the future,
  the server will send you a program that will load
  onto your PC (or Palm, or cell phone). Now you've
  got brains at both ends of the wire, resulting in
  a high-IQ, interactive, valuable conversation.
  Work is performed at both places, greatly
  increasing the richness of experience, the
  relevancy of content, and the amount that can get
  done. X Internet offers several important
  advantages over the Web 1) It rides Moore's Law
  -- the wide availability of cheap, powerful, low
  real-estate processing 2) it leverages ever dear
  bandwidth -- once the connection is made, a small
  number of bits will be exchanged, unlike the Web
  where lots of pages are shuttled out to the
  client and 3) X Internet will be far more
  peer-to-peer -- unlike the server-centric Web.
  Calling today's Internet "dumb, boring and
  isolated," Forrester Research (Nasdaq FORR) is
  playing a funeral dirge for the Net as we know
  it, predicting that the World Wide Web will soon
  be replaced by a richer, interactive "X
  Internet." The X Internet will not be a new
  invention, but rather the evolution of today's
  Internet of static Web pages and cumbersome
  e-commerce mechanisms into a Net that relies on
  executable software code to deliver more
  interactive experiences. One of the biggest
  barriers to executable applications is security.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Organic/carbon based semi conductors Imagine a
  display that can be rolled up in a tube, cheap
  circuitry literally linked onto just about any
  surface, an circuts so tiny that their working
  hinges on the action of a single molecule.

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Review of Candidate Technologies

• Web thumbnails - additional web search
  technologies Download a small image so you can
  see what is being selected. You can then click on
  this thumbnail to get access.

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Watch List Agenda

• Overview of Process
• Review of Candidate Technologies
• YOUR Modifications and Additions
• Voting

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YOUR Modifications and Additions

• Tablet PC
• Smart Phone
• One Device (Combo Phone PDA/network (Jeff)
• Personal Authentication (ID/Authentication)
• Cashless Society/Digital Money (m-Commerce)
• Business Intelligence (IRV M)

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Watch List Agenda

• Overview of Process
• Review of Candidate Technologies
• YOUR Modifications and Additions
• Voting

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Voting

• Each person should select FIVE items which they
  feel could have a significant impact on business
  in the 24-36 month time frame.
• Include name at the top
  to be eligible for the 100
  Gift Certificate!

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Thank You!

• The members of the AICPA Top Technologies Task
  Force would like to sincerely thank you for your
  input and participation into the 2003 Emerging
  Technologies Watch List.

-Susan Bradley -David Cieslak -Tim Stull -Roman
Kepczyk