After reading 
What I found out, fascinated me in two ways; firstly, it was nice to find out that the Sharp J-SHO4 was the first truly integrated phone and camera. Samsung apparently brought one out before this; however it was a separate camera, housed in the body of a phone, and it seems to be widely agreed that Sharp got there first.
However what I found most fascinating, whilst reading this article (right click and open in new tab), I found a link to an old BBC article which had some reactionary comments of people in the UK.
What is interesting about these comments is that they seem like they are already from a bygone era, yet they were made this century, in 2001.
Some of the comments seem like they are from the 1950s as people wonder why the hell you would ever want a camera on a phone. Admittedly some people got it, and quite accurately predicted what the devices would eventually be used for, but even those comments seem strangely antiquated.
Being the kind of community this is; most of you have heard of Moore's law and understand what it is. For the rest of us, I shall briefly explain.
Moore's Law states that every 18 months (adjusted down from the original figure of 2 years), transistors that go to make up computer circuit boards, will halve in size. Which means that you can put twice the amount on a board, meaning the computer will double in power.
So what? I hear you ask; well that was first postulated by the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore in 1965. Yup, that's a not typo, 1965, over half a century ago, and the law is still going strong.
I remember about a decade ago, it was widely accepted that Moore's law would finally breakdown as the size of transistors reached the micron level. However technology moved on sufficiently to not make this a problem. Now the next big barrier is when transistors get down to the nano scale; thought to be happening some time around 2022-27.
When this happens, you will be able to line up around 27 lithium atoms between the positive and negative plates of a transistor. At that scale it is thought the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics comes into play and thus Moore's law will break down, as the dawn of quantum computing begins.
I'm not so sure; it seems like the law fuels itself; and when we finally get down to the nanoscopic level, technology would have moved on sufficiently to allow us to keep halving and doubling every 18 months or so.
However it is a rabbit hole, and rather like Lewis Carroll's Alice; we are discovering the rabbit hole goes way deeper than we first imagined.
Predicting the future, or at least trying to, is a kind of evolutionary backwash, brought about by our frontal lobe thinking, which enables us to make future predictions everyday.
Looks like rain today. I will be hungry afterwards. Team A will beat Team B. These are typical everyday mini predictions that we make without much thought. So it is only logical that we try and extend our prescience further and beyond.
This is quite difficult to do, because our usual predictions are based on data that we're receiving now, we know it may rain because of the clouds we see in the sky. We know we will be hungry later, because we are going to do a task, and we haven't had time for breakfast. We feel that one sports team will beat another because of their current forms.
Beyond that, it's tough; which is why nobody predicted the internet, because it had no forerunners that could have given it credence.
Flying cars has been a prediction we've made since the inventions of the aeroplane and motor car, which gives us a clue to how our minds work. See two practical and useful things; and meld them together, however as we've seen with flying cars, that's not always the best and most practical way to move forward.
I am interested in what will be our video phone moment; what's the tech that will pop up, that we'll comment on, that we can all laugh at those comments a decade or so later?
With Moore's law stomping on at a steady pace, processing power is getting more and more impressive and capable of things it simply wasn't just half a decade ago. The average laptop has around 2 billion transistors in it.
Think about that for a second... 2 billion... how long do you think it would take you to count to 2 billion, assuming you could count at one number per second?
Over 63 years... in other words, if you had started counting from the moment you were born, you wouldn't hit 2 billion till you were 63 years old... wow!
We are utilising this processing power in so many ways; from military, to entertainment, to the very frontiers of medical technology, and that is where I see the next big things happening, arguably, they already have happened.
I read recently about the colour blind artist; Neil Harbisson, who had a chip inserted in his head, which along with a strange device attached to him, allowed him to "see" colour again. Which not only allowed him to see the range of colours that you and I can, he can also see into the infrared and ultraviolet.
Harbisson has started a company, and as far as I'm aware, it is the only such commercial organisation on the planet. His company will insert a small device into the palm of your hand, that will vibrate every time you are facing magnetic North.
The idea is, that you are building in a similar sense that a homing pigeon, or any other creature that can navigate over vast distances with no landmarks to guide them.
My guess is, that the comments surrounding such tech, will be very similar to the comments about Sharp's first camera phone. With even less people understanding why anyone would ever want such a thing implanted in them.
However this is the future; augmentation, and genetic manipulation are surely the tech of the future; we want to live longer, louder and better, so it is clear that our destiny is down this path.
One of the cool things about the blockchain, is that there is an indisputable record for things like; who got there first. Therefore it would be nice if my fellow Steemians, would comment below and give predictions as to where you think the next big thing will be; has it already happened and nobody has taken notice?
As ever, let me know below!!
Yours in future trust.
Cryptogee
