Is the term 'online' obsolete?

We continue to use the terms 'online' and 'offline' on a daily basis, but perhaps the time has come to consider that such terms may be antiquated. Asking whether you have spent much time online today makes about as much sense as asking whether you have used much electricity today. We are immersed and entrenched in the web from the minute we wake until the minute we go to sleep. Few of us today remain offline for any significant length of time. Even switching off our Smartphones for any length of time is becoming unbearable for many people. We don't really 'logon' any more. We are practically logged on all day long. Whether you realize it or not, a significant amount of information about you is now available online, including your credit score. This is unsettling to many people, but that's just how it is. As we continue to embrace the Internet of Things, we may need to redefine some of our digital terminology. We are always connected, always on. In the year 2016, the term 'online' is meaningless for most of us.

Bionic limbs

Within AI, one of the most exciting and promising fields right now is bionics. With millions of amputees worldwide, the prospect of creating bionic limbs would revolutionize contemporary medicine. For years, many people were deeply skeptical about the prospect of such a thing actually happening. Now it seems, this may actually become a reality. Of course, considerable research and testing still needs to be done before this can become mainstream. But extraordinary steps are being made right now in bionics research that could radically change the lives of millions of people for the better. The video below about a bionic fingertip gives an inkling of what we can expect to witness in the future.

Quantum computing

Lately there has been huge media interest in the dispute between Apple and the FBI in regard to encryption technology. If the FBI or NSA could break strong encryption, then they would do so, copy the data and run it through a cloud of government computers to read the files. But they cannot do this because encryption works. In spite of this increasing tension between Apple and the authorities in regard to encryption, technology marches on. What is utterly indisputable is that technology will one day break today's approach to data encryption. A new field of technology is emerging from the lab called quantum computing. Quantum computing is completely different from today's digital computers but it is still in its incipient stages. Instead of using 1s and 0s like digital technology does, quantum computing uses something called a qubit, which can represent many values simultaneously. Quantum computing today is roughly as advanced as digital computing was in 1971 when Intel created the first microprocessor. But technology evolves much faster in 2016 than it did back in 1971. Quantum technology will be expensive to begin with but will get progressively cheaper and simpler, just like all technology. On top of quantum computing, quantum cryptography will revolutionize encryption as we understand it. We have a lot of ground to cover before this becomes mainstream but we are getting closer every single day. THe video by theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss below gives a brief but informative explanation of what quantum computing is. Technology marches on.