Toshiba showed off a PC that you operate with hand gestures. Hitachi Metals had a product in their booth called "Magic Waters." You wave a wand and point it at a fountain and the waters jump, sort of like the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

Sharp has a screen that will let phone manufacturers put on an iPhone-like interface. Citizen Watch showed off a glove that lets you control certain things. And Pioneer has a car navigation prototype that relies on finger gestures. Flick a 3D hologram-like image of a gas station pump and the car navigation system points out all of the gas stations in the vicinity.

A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

The new product is aimed directly at hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues and should be commercially available towards the end of the year.

It's an interesting product in that it's completely out of left field. Microsoft gives examples of ordering a beverage during a meal with just the tap of a finger and quickly browsing through music and dragging favorite songs onto a personal playlist by moving a finger across the screen. Build this into a bar and you'd get one-touch beer service although I'm not sure if they've found a way to work out when your beer glass is empty so replenishment becomes automatic, maybe in a later version.

Comcast Corp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience Tuesday, showing off for the first time in public new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.

The cost of modems that would support the technology, called "channel bonding," is "not that dissimilar to modems today," he told The Associated Press after a demonstration at The Cable Show. It could be available "within less than a couple years," he said.

The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Relevant Products/Services Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network is already capable of providing 100 Mbps and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.

The technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by the cable industry's research arm, Cable Television Laboratories. It bonds together four cable lines but is capable of allowing much more capacity. The laboratory said last month it expected manufacturers to begin submitting modems for certification under the standard by the end of the year.

Imagine being in two places at the same time. Impossible? Well, maybe, but with the advances currently being made in videoconferencing technology you might well believe you can be in two places at once.

It's called telepresence and it is so life-like it's been installed in restaurants in the US so that diners can eat together even if they are in different parts of the country.

"It means that if you're on the East Coast you can be eating dinner while someone on the West Coast is having lunch," explains Aaron McCormack, CEO of BT Conferencing. "It's just like having a meal together except you're thousands of miles apart. The only thing you can't do is pass the salt."

This might sound like something out of a 1950s sci-fi novel but it really is happening. Telepresence isn't just a camera, microphone and a TV screen. Those taking part see life-size images of people who can be on the other side of the world. The image and sound quality is so good, it's as if you're with them in the same room.

Media-Saturn group - Europe's biggest retailer of consumer electronics, with operations in 14 countries - has recently agreed to adopt BT's telepresence service called BT Unified Communications Video. It enables people from different countries to hold virtual meetings of unprecedented technological quality, with those taking part seeing life-size images of one another. The images are so realistic that people believe they really are sitting at the same table.

One person who's already used the service described it as being "virtually indistinguishable from a face-to-face meeting". It's clear that telepresence solutions are going to revolutionise the videoconferencing industry and have a real impact on the way people communicate in the future.

The era of desktop manufacturing is upon us, thanks to advances in 3-D printing technology. Just as laser printers in the 1980s moved from service bureaus into homes, sparking the desktop publishing revolution, 3-D printers — which render computer files in three-dimensional plaster — are poised to reshape how many products are designed and made.

"I definitely think we're really near that tipping point," says Dina Braun, VP at Alchemy Models, a company that makes architectural models. "Machine prices are going down and output quality is going up."

Alchemy Models specializes in architectural rapid prototyping, converting computer models of buildings into physical ones.

"For architects, their whole world is visualization," says Braun. "If they show a blueprint drawing, the client looks at them like a deer in headlights. When they can give the client something to hold in their hands, turn around, see how everything is placed, then the client finally gets it."

Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team's system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays.

Typically, systems that use electromagnetic radiation, such as radio antennas, are not suitable for the efficient transfer of energy because they scatter energy in all directions, wasting large amounts of it into free space.

To overcome this problem, the team investigated a special class of "non-radiative" objects with so-called "long-lived resonances".

When energy is applied to these objects it remains bound to them, rather than escaping to space. "Tails" of energy, which can be many metres long, flicker over the surface.

"If you bring another resonant object with the same frequency close enough to these tails then it turns out that the energy can tunnel from one object to another," said Professor Soljacic.

There is, however, something going on that has the potential to change that, and quickly. Not coincidentally, a team of core developers from Netscape's early days is now developing the equivalent of a virtual world browser for MMOs. Called Multiverse, the company includes the same portentous entrepreneur noted above: Bill Turpin. His team includes Netscape veterans known throughout Silicon Valley, if not the world at large: Rafhael Cedeno and Robin McCollum, who built critical Netscape server technology still in use today, and co-creators of RSS; Jeff Weinstein, who coded the world-changing SSL; and Corey Bridges, Navigator product manager who then went on to launch companies like Netflix and Zone Labs. On the entertainment side, ex-physics major and film director/producer James Cameron, of Terminator and Titanic fame, has thrown his lot in with Multiverse, joining its board of advisors.

Their plan is to provide virtual world creators the client, server, and development tools to create an MMO world. The entire technology platform is free for non-commercial use, so academics are paying nothing to create economic, architectural, sociological and other simulations. For-profit enterprises would pay royalties, but only when their games or other applications collect money from consumers, not before.

This is significant because, until now, creating a complex virtual world required tens of millions of dollars in initial development costs alone. The Multiverse technology, currently in beta-testing, claims to lower the cost of virtual world production to a fraction of its current stratospheric level. For many purposes, such as personal online spaces, there would be no cost at all.

The Pew report on the future internet surveyed 742 experts in the fields of computing, politics and business.

More than half of respondents had a positive vision of the net's future but 46% had serious reservations.

Almost 60% said that a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence.

The Pew Internet and American Life report canvassed opinions from the experts on seven broad scenarios about the future internet, based on developments in the technology in recent years.

By 2020 an increasing number of people will be living and working within "virtual worlds" being more productive online than offline, the majority of the respondents said.

Ben Detenber, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, responded: "Virtual reality (VR) will only increase productivity for some people. For most, it will make no difference in productivity (i.e., how much output); VR will only change what type of work people do and how it is done."

So when will we be able to swap out the ink cartridges in our home printers and print out our own robot? How close are we to being able to print out a robot on a flat sheet of paper, fold along the dotted lines and have it move under its own power?

"Such a capability is somewhat years away and it is difficult to predict how soon. Someone is going to be the first to make such robots and I am not sure if it is not already being investigated," Dr. Bar-Cohen said.

If under development, it is certainly being done behind closed doors and under a tight veil of secrecy to gain an edge on the competition.

And when printable robots do become available there will likely be an open source community to help you design and program your origami robot. Creating the design for the robot requires not only some knowledge of paper folding techniques but also the ability to engineer paper forms capable of locomotion once the power, control and drive elements are printed onto it. If the creation just lies on its back and moves its legs in the air, it is not much of a robot.

For example, 33% of teens predicted that gasoline-powered cars will go the way of the horse and buggy by 2015. Just 16% of adults agreed.

Meanwhile, 22% of teenagers predicted desktop computers will become obsolete a decade from now, while only 10% of adults agreed.

Adults, on the other hand, were far more certain about the demise of the landline telephone by 2015 (45% made that prediction) than teenagers (17 percent).

The teens queried also said new inventions - over any time frame, not necessarily by 2015 - can solve such global problems as unclean water (91 percent), hunger (89 percent), disease (88 percent) and pollution (84 percent). Adults were less optimistic about hunger, with 77% saying technology will play an important role.

And they add that there is no need to stop at simply imitating the functions of human skin.

"It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks," the researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Future artificial skins could incorporate sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain or sound, they add.

Mr Pait thinks that although many people are already living an accumulative terabyte lifestyle, in about five years PCs will have five terabytes of storage on board.

One terabyte is the equivalent of 1,024GB, enough to hold more than 240,000 songs at the standard encoding rate for digital music files.

This will only be possible because of perpendicular recording methods, which Seagate, Hitachi, and others, have to exploit.

Rapid prototyping machines work by building a succession of layers, either bonded by a laser or held together by alternating layers of glue.

The key feature of the RepRap is its ability to print electrical circuits by squirting a metal alloy with a low-melting point from a heated nozzle.

The machine could build items ranging in size from a few millimeters to around 30 centimeters, such as plates, dishes, combs and musical instruments.

Larger or more complicated items could be assembled from smaller parts, and by adding extra parts such as screws and microchips.

Dr Bowyer said all that would be needed for a machine owner would be to buy the plastic and low-temperature alloy for a few pounds, and items could then be created in a few minutes or a few hours depending on their size. Designs for items could be bought – or downloaded free – from the web. Alternatively, people could create them for themselves on their own PCs.

He said that he would publish the 3D designs and computer code for the machine to replicate itself on the web over the next four years as they are developed, until the entire machine could be copied.

He said that he has not taken out a patent and will not charge for creating the design for the machine. "The most interesting part of this is that we're going to give it away," he said.

"At the moment an industrial company consists of hundreds of people building and making things. If these machines take off, it will give individual people the chance to do this themselves, and we are talking about making a lot of our consumer goods – the effect this has on industry and society could be dramatic."

The machines would be about the size of a refrigerator, and would self-reproduce by making a copy of themselves, part by part. These parts would then have to be assembled manually by their owners.

We can already use DNA, for example, to make electronic circuits so it's possible to think of a smart yoghurt some time after 2020 or 2025, where the yoghurt has got a whole stack of electronics in every single bacterium. You could have a conversation with your strawberry yogurt before you eat it.

First of all, Google has been noted to be purchasing large quantities of 'dark' fibre-optic capacity, on the cheap (much excess capacity was laid during those heady days of irrational exuberance) to increase its proprietary network bandwidth. To what end? Some of the most far-out rumours say that Google is developing a Skype-esque software that will allow high-quality voice communications over the Internet, costing virtually nothing to the consumer. If Google is making a play into the telecom arena, it would be a relatively late-comer in an arena that is widely populated.

Not unlike its e-mail and mapping software, which are entirely Web-based, Google will release an operating system that will be completely networked and centralized on its servers. You will literally no longer need any software running on your local computer (except the Google Web-browser of course, and a network connection). The computing experience will involve booting your computer, logging into the net, and having access to all your programs (and most of your data) which will reside happily in the ether — all protected and secure, we will be assured, by the good god Google.

A knitted bag holds a weakened heart, helping it pump blood. Electricity flows through the threads of a battery-powered fleece jacket, keeping the wearer warm. Carbon fibers are braided into structures that look like mushrooms, but are actually prototypes of automotive engine valves. Other fibers are shaped into bicycle frames and sculling oars. Textiles are no longer just the stuff of clothing, carpets and furniture covering. Made of high-tech threads, they can also be found in lifesaving medical devices and the bodies of racing cars. One architect is proposing building a skyscraper out of carbon fibers.

"This will change our lives well beyond entertainment," says Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. For example, when speeds allow quick sending of detailed images. such as X-rays, he says, "You'll do the majority of your health care straight from the home." Others envision a host of other applications. For example, businesses could easily arrange video conferences with high-definition TV. Consumers could download an entire HD movie in about five minutes vs. today's 22 minutes. And, "There will be a need for higher speeds as games become more graphics-intensive," says Adelphia Chief Technical Officer Marwan Fawaz.