The 10 Most Important Technologies You Never Think About

April 29, 2008

The late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke said that famous any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Undoubtedly, live in a magical world. We are surrounded by technology, however, rarely stop to consider the incredible progress that we have come to rely on every day. If we are surfing the Web, making a call to our mobile phones, or watching a DVD movie on our big screen television, we take our modern conveniences for granted.

Here, then, is a look inside the magician’s hat to the ten technologies that are key to our digital age. Without realizing it, probably you have used at least one of them today - if not all. But if you’re aware of them or not, without these technologies our world would be a very different place.
Unicode

We use computers for all kinds of communication, instant messaging to e-mail to write the Great American Novel. The problem is that computers do not speak our language. They are all digital; before they can store or process text, each letter, symbol and punctuation mark must first be translated into numbers.

So the numbers do we use? The first personal computers was based on a code known as ASCII, which took care of most of the characters used in the languages of Western Europe. But that’s not enough in the era of World Wide Web. What about Cyrillic, hindi, or Thai?

Enter Unicode, the Rosetta Stone of information technology. The Unicode standard defines a unique number for each letter, symbol or glyph in over 30 written languages, and is still rising. In almost 1500 pages and counting, is incredibly complex, but ido is gaining traction since Microsoft adopted it as internal coding of the family of Windows NT operating systems.

Most of us never have to know that the map of Unicode characters that numbers, but modern computing could hardly do anything without Unicode. In fact, is what enables you to read this article in the Web browser, at this time.

Digital Signal Processing

Digital music, digital photos, digital videos: It’s easy to forget that we live in a world predominantly analog. The computers can cope with everything you see and hear only through the implementation of very complex mathematics, a field known as digital signal processing (DSP).

When you find digital media, DSP is at work, facilitated by a specialized subcategory of chips and circuits. DSP algorithms to correct errors, while its optical drive reads the music from a CD. They are back at work as you compress audio into an MP3 file, and again when you play again through your surround sound speakers.

DSP is digital media such as gears and springs are a pocket watch. He works his magic beneath the surface: invisible, but absolutely essential. It’s safe to say that without it, virtually none of the digital technologies that we take for granted today - DVD to mobile phones, inkjet printers for DSL banda ancha - it would be possible.

Managed Code

The programming is much more complicated than it used to be. Operating systems are like modern onion, with layers on layers of interconnection and management subsystems. Worse, errors and security flaws unnoticed, even those that may have once seemed trivial, can be serious threats on the network was connected.

For an increasing number of developers, the solution is to use the platforms to reduce the burden. Programs written for this type of managed code environments like Java and Microsoft. NET is not contrary to the minimum hardware traditional way of making programmes. By contrast, a virtual machine acts as an intermediary between the software and system. It’s like a robot nanny of computer programs, taking care to silence the memory management and other household monotony without losing out to potential security violations before they occur.

For an end user, a code-managed program can not seem different from the traditional, but the software that runs on a virtual machine allows a more reliable, stable and secure experience. And with.NET fast becoming the preferred platform for the development of Windows, managed code will soon be the norm, not the exception.

Transistors

2 million transistors. Moore’s Law says that the number of transistors that can be put into integrated circuits will double approximately every two years. That’s a lot of transistors - but what is it that all we do?

In a nutshell, the transistor may well be the greatest invention of the 20 century. It’s really nothing more than a voltage-controlled, but that hides humble description incredible power. United with one another in various ways, transistors can form circuits that are the basis for all kinds of digital logic, until CPUs power our modern PCs and servers.

What makes chips today so powerful is the ability of the component industry to cram ever closer. The transistors in the processor in your PC may be only about 100 atoms wide, and improvements in manufacturing technology will keep them reduced - at least for the time being.

Someday, chips quantum optics or may even replace the current processors and chip designs to overcome them many times. For now, we will have to be content with continuing to improve a company often ignores that technology has served us for 50 years and counting.

XML

Office 2007. As a result, you may have actually XML documents sitting on his desk right now, without realizing it.

Nonvolatile RAM

first hard drives that use the disks were 2 feet wide. It’s hard to believe that today’s micro units essentially use the same technology. Incremental Progress, as the discovery of giant magnetoresistance and the invention of the heads of perpendicular recording, have produced amazing results. Between 1990 and 2005, the magnetic disks increased its storage capacity of a thousandfold, putting even Moore’s Law to shame.

But even with these improvements surprising, hard disks hit a wall when it comes to portable devices. They were still too big and too fragile for many gadgets. Enter solid state-based units nonvolatile RAM. The technology has been used for storage since the 1970’s, but remains phenomenally expensive manufacturing processes to meet demand. Now it’s everywhere: in MP3 players as the newest ZEN, and digital cameras, mobile phones, and even some laptops.

Manufacturers are not quiet; frontier technologies such as “racing memory” could lead to solid state storage that is smaller, faster and more reliable than ever.

The lithium ion battery

most important features. As essential as mobility has become the way we use technology simply would not be possible if our decisions are still limited to the D, C and AA.

The invention of the lithium-ion batteries is the key. The first rechargeable took the lead - hardly a prescription for portability. But because lithium is the lightest metal, lithium-based batteries can store more energy in a given weight than any other variety. Lighter batteries mean smaller, lighter devices; from the 1990’s, can really put a phone in your pocket.

Timing remains a challenge, but investigators have no shortage of solutions. In addition to improving the lithium ion batteries that use nanotechnology, a number of alternatives battery gradually coming to market, including ultracapacitors and fuel cells. In fact, pardon me for saying that battery technology is ready for its next big bang - personnel and technology is certain to advance because of it.

Voice over IP (VoIP)

You’ve made some calls to Skype and you’ve looked at a digital telephone service provider banda ancha, but that is what has come closer than a VoIP (Voice over IP) technology. Or what they think. Indeed, VoIP is revolutionizing the telecommunications industry, blurring the lines between voice calls and digital networks.

These prepaid phone cards that offer the rock of international fund? VoIP makes them possible. Similarly, a growing number of companies use VoIP between racks to eliminate the long distance between branches.

The routing calls over the Internet sidesteps traditional telephone company charges, and fewer fees and taxes mean lower prices. Calling digital are easier to manage and administer, making them attractive even for traditional telephone companies. Do not be surprised if soon the landline that has always lived with was replaced by an alternative digital - although it’s likely that none wise.

Accelerated Graphics

chips for the labour market.

Increasingly, your PC’s performance does not depend on the speed of a single chip. As AMD and Intel come into the game, waiting for the future of desktop CPUs to incorporate the CPU and the GPU capabilities in a single package multicore, bringing the best of both worlds for players and nongamers alike.

High-Speed Net Access

Where we would be without fast Internet access? It’s easy to forget that only 10 years ago, most of us still using regular modems. The revolution marked the beginning banda ancha streaming video, MP3 downloads, Internet, telephone calls, and multiplayer online games. And we owe it all to TV.

In the 1980’s, cable companies were promising 500 channels of programming at all times. Cable is poised to become the largest cable at home, but telephone companies had an ace on his sleeve. A new technology could push high-frequency signals over ordinary telephone lines, which had previously only been good for the width of banda low voice calls. The telephone companies saw this as an opportunity to deliver video on demand and to compete with cable companies at their own game.

Or so it thought. The telecom plans for video on demand dried up in the mid-1990, but the technology remains. Now called DSL, has morphed into a high-speed rail in homes-ramp to the Internet. The cable companies followed suit with a comparable technology, and the race speed banda ancha - for both DSL and cable - began in earnest.

Both cable and DSL still use traditional frequency signal on copper wires, but new developments are ready to go major. From fiber to the premises (FTTP) promises a glimmer of fast network speeds and WiMax boost banda ancha in territories that cables can not reach today. As for what applications banda ancha this next revolution will bring - well, we have only begun to imagine.

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