I would say one of the biggest issues was Covid. It disrupted the chip market significantly, with roadblocks at every juncture. Just look at the GPU disaster. Things still are disrupted at points, and it will take some time to recover from all that. Plus Ray seems to be a bit optimistic on his predictions.

I'm a bit skeptical about chips in clothing etc. I mean there has to have a good purpose, and apart from specialty items, I see no logical reason for chips to be in clothing and some of these other predictions.

Chips are in your Oven, Toaster, Blender, Lamps, Shower head, Power tools, Speakers, ironing iron, vacuum cleaner ... sometimes even in your Curtains.

I would say, we are pretty close to Kurzweil's prediction.

>I'm a bit skeptical about chips in clothing etc. I mean there has to have a good purpose, and apart from specialty items, I see no logical reason for chips to be in clothing and some of these other predictions.

I think the promise was that things like "smart clothes" would provide health and other valuable data. I don't specifically remember the claims for why the walls would be smart, but I think the idea was that you could just pull computational resources from around you as needed. Today, you'd pull any extra computation from a cloud data center.

This prediction became partly true in a mundane, boring way. The Internet of Things has been a commercial reality for years.

I don't disagree, but we're definitely not yet at the point where it's all just passively there without humans noticing. Note that other than curtains, you mentioned all recognizable devices. And for several other of these things, they don't really do much more than they did without ICs - it's just cheaper these days to throw a chip in than discrete components. Yet others are "could" have chips; my shower head definitely doesn't.

I see. I still would question why you would want to spend the money for every outfit and size being retrofitted instead of a universal bracelet, but there are probably some exceptions somewhere.

It was well said, you have chips everywhere just not in things it will be useless. Almost every device can be Smart and if its Smart then it have chip in it. Chips in clothing on the other said brings almost no value.

What they really should do in hospitals is when they give you the ID band on your wrist, it should be smart, and output vitals on the patient. All the medical records.

Yes. That's why I'm asking the question. Did they get it wrong, or are we just early? In the books I mention, specifically Kaku, they talk about computation melting away, so that you don't notice or think about it too much. Your shirt getting data from your sweat is less obtrusive than a smart watch doing the same thing, but maybe having these capabilities concentrated in an actual device is better.

I think for average people who aren’t super tech savvy, most don’t know there is chips in these things

I usually think "that would be cool" when I hear about ideas for the future, but never on the chips everywhere thing. I always thought "why" on that and solving a problem that isn't there. Our phones can take on a hell of a lot of tasks.

In fact this whole Metaverse thing...

uhhhhhhhhhh I think you just arent paying enough attention to your surroundings. My desk has a chip in it lol.

Maybe, as another commenter mentioned, I'm actually too tech savvy for it to fade away. If IoT really were mundane, I wouldn't be aware of devices "being smart," they'd just "be." Or maybe it's an age thing. I'm only in my 30s, but I'm old enough to remember very few things being remotely smart. Maybe, for people who grew up with smart things, they just "are."

What does it do? Qi charger?

FWIW, neither my desk at work, nor my desk at home have chips in them. I don't believe that this is super common, yet. But I'll chalk that up as a vote for "futurists were early by a few years."

yep, contactless charger is one of them. its got a bunch of moving parts and locks and gizmos my dumb company paid for

i mean there's chips inside my cats!

I just read a post about troubleshooting a smoke detector and it included info about their router. I think we are there

I mean if you want it and look for it, you can buy a radicicolous amount of objects with an additional microchip in it. Heated insole: chip. Camera in glasses: Chip. T-shirt that measures heartbeat: Chip. Ring that measures temperature and movement: chip. Implant for paying: Chip. Light up Shoes: Chip. Jacket with speakers: chip.

I mean many packagings have an microchip in the small security sticker, than many people never notice.

From what I read, I took the intent to be not just that everything would have an RFID chip, but that computation would be "everywhere" as opposed to centralized in devices. I assume that Kurzweil and others thought this was a trend due to experiencing the decentralization of computing in their lifetimes from mainframes, to time sharing, to PCs, to the internet. Today, the ability to compute anywhere remains due to the rise of wireless internet access, but the actual computation is actually happening in recognizable devices, if not a very centralized data center somewhere.

The Internet of Things does, of course, exist, but I don't think it's yet at the point envisioned by these futurists 20 years ago. My question is did they miss the mark (i.e. we'll keep computation centralized), or are we early (e.g. applications haven't yet caught up to our ability to infuse reality with chips)?

Edit (catching up with your edit): You do note a number of devices that "could" be smart today. In practice, they aren't, yet. I don't know anyone, personally, with a glucose monitoring t-shirt, kinetic energy harvesting sneakers, or palm-embedded NFC chip. The tech exists, but hasn't spread on the timeframe written about in the books I reference.

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I think this video is indicative of that prediction. I remember my computer being too slow to play doom and being soo frustrated with it. Now random electronic devices have enough compute power to play it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5NTJSfUWDE

Cant speak to the other things, but as for clothes I believe Kurzweil acknowledged he got that wrong for 2 reasons. One, everything that would have been added to clothes was just added to our phones instead. Two, fashion: he is unable to predict what will be socially acceptable. Most people don't want electronics in clothes and while we can make cool shirts or hats that change looks with an app, nobody wants to wear that. All the rest of the biometric stuff is usually in a smartwatch or bracelet.

Reminds me of how a lot of people don't want AR/VR until it is the size of a regular pair of sunglasses. Everybody will just make fun of you for wearing a toaster on your face : ( not that I mind, vr is cool 😎 lol

You're definitely underselling it. There are clothes that have chips. Fridges, ranges, lights, trashcans, washer, dryer, sink faucets, thermostat, AC unit. TV, door lock, all dogs, most cats, any zoo animal, space heaters, automatic fireplaces, electronically controlled couches/ any furniture. Most toys. Etc.

Cool, yeah with decades of material in between, it's a little hard to keep up with with updates on every little prediction. Thanks for knowing about this!

I think it's getting there, but we're maybe a decade past when some of the predictions of reality basically being infused with computational power. You note some things that I miss, such as door locks. Though the "really smart" versions of those things that are available aren't all that common, yet. For example, I don't know anyone with a wifi door lock, and experienced my first sofa with a USB port outside of a furniture showroom last month. For other things, maybe they technically have a chip, but is an RFID chip in your pet adding any computational power to the environment?

**puts on morpheus glasses**
what if I told you,
"smart dust"is outdated technology

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9216078
https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.2196
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29331738/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627316303440
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165027014002842
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7749532
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/169986
examples you won't see listed as features on your smart-fridge^
people are reactionary, so just show them a picture of a tic-tac and say it's "micro".

I agree, the toaster is cool but still a bit unwieldy. I have trouble wearing my toaster for more than a couple of hours at most. I can’t wait until it’s sunglasses size.

Ok I see where you're coming from now, and I think it's a bit of both, computation is more centralised than they expected (let's be honest, computation will always be cheaper in a massive data center) and also they were early as a result of that. We are constantly seeing new streams of data in areas we didn't realize we wanted data from, therefore I believe this trend of increased computation will continue, but the majority of our computation will always be done in massive data centers.

I do feel you are splitting hairs a little here, sure kurzweil and kakus prediction of 2022 isn't exactly how they thought it would be, but the level of computation and smart devices we have compared to 30 years ago is mind boggling.

It’s totally there, it’s just not fully realized yet; as in commercially.

There are clothes that have chips in there, there are toasters too, but they aren’t cheap yet.

We just made new chips that use plastic instead of metal, and it will make it so ANYTHING/EVERYTHING can now have a chip.

The real problem is that there are so many nay sayers or people that are afraid of tech, so the need isn’t as high.

The Singularity will never arrive

We are the Singularity.

It already has arrived

Started when we became aware

We can never perceive it

Because we are it.

Those timeline predictions, like almost all of Kurzweil’s and Kaku’s time predictions, were wrong. They both have a very poor track record regarding timeline predictions on almost anything, so poor that we should probably pay them no mind any longer.

However, both Kurzweil and Kaku (and others) have still made many plausible predictions about what might occur with probability - it’s just (all evidence suggests) that they have no more idea when those things will occur than you do.

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I don't know whether this counts, but clothing with chips do exist and are slowly being implemented (beyond conscious fashion choices). I've begun noticing couple weeks ago that food delivery on electric scooters have electronic ads at the back of the driver's vests and their food delivery bags/cargo. I was a bit taken aback when I saw it, it was at night and it was just like the cyberpunk jacket. It felt a bit dehumanising to me as well, seeing the driver walk around with an ad displayed on their back.

We are the human chips, metaphorically speaking. We’re constantly plugging ourselves in one way or form.

There are novelty clothes that can be changed from app. Problem is battery life.

Every light in your house (if it’s LED) will have a chip.

Yet again,

I might be mistaken on that…

Biggest VR hurdles are motion sickness and low pixel density IMO.

Motion sickness means the vast majority wouldn't be able to play a fast paced game where you move your virtual body.

That hamstrings most game genres outright.

Pixel density with Quest 2 and it's competition is like 20 PPD (Pixel per degree). With 4k monitors it's typically 120 PPD. For 1080p monitors it's 60PPD.

If you translate PPD to vision acuity you wouldn't pass a driving test with vision acuity below 40 PPD lol

I am a VR enthusiast and have been buying VR stuff since 2014. But I end up always coming back to monitor games. If I could play AC Odyssey in VR headset - would I? No I wouldn't because of motion sickness and low PPD.

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