Military forces are increasingly interested in fielding smartphones. The old methods of procuring bespoke devices are time-consuming and expensive, while consumer smartphones have leapt way ahead of the technology in Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) built purely for defence organisations. Of course there are added complications for military devices, which have to be more rugged and have better security support than their consumer-grade cousins. Accreditation of Android and iOS devices is ongoing.

I like to think about where Smartphone technology is going next, because this can have an impact on the kind of applications that these devices will find in the defence world. It’s fun, as well as instructive, to look back at predictions from the past to see where they got things right, and where they got things wrong.

One of my favourite predictions is not really a prediction at all. It’s a short story written by science fiction author Gordon Dickson back in 1979 for the Hewlett-Packard magazine and product catalog Digest. Though I had a well-thumbed copy at the time (which I lost some time during the 1980s), it is now possible to read all the old HP publications on the hp41.org site. (And I do recommend it if you are interested in the history of HP calculators. There’s so much fascinating material on there.)

Dickson’s story Thank You, Beep…! is set in 2025, with Walter Jensen, a middle-management executive, on his way to an important conference in London. An unscheduled stopover in Jakarta leaves Jensen needing assistance to book taxis and a hotel for the night before he can pick up his next flight in the morning.

Jensen is not alone, however. He has an “auto-secretary” in his pocket, described as looking like a “slim, handheld calculator”. This device is (unsurprisingly!) made by Hewlett-Packard, and designated an XX-2050, though Jensen has given it the nickname “Beep” (hence the title of the story). You can read the whole story on the site linked above, but some of the features of the XX-2050 are worth describing.

When Jensen is walking through the airport, the XX-2050 guides him by presenting an image on the screen of the actual view, while superimposing an arrow on the picture to indicate the direction toward the destination. Anyone who has used an Augmented Reality application on an iOS or Android device will recognise this functionality immediately. The ability to update a real video image live opens a huge number of possibilities. The first time I tried the Word Lens translator app, it seemed like magic.

The XX-2050 can book a hotel room based on stored information on Jensen’s tastes. While we’re not quite there yet, smartphone apps can provide assistance to the user to do this, although it is still rather a manual process. A nice touch is that when Jensen arrives at the hotel he has a clam chowder sandwich waiting for him, made to his precise taste from details stored in the autosecretary.

With 1GB of memory, the XX-2050 seems woefully inadequate by modern standards, though it felt like an immense amount of storage back in 1979 (when my most powerful calculator, the TI-58, had just 480 ‘steps’ of memory). The device has multiple means of connecting to “computer nets”, including radio communications on a variety of frequencies. That’s not so different from the availability of cellular and WLAN connectivity on a modern phone.

Jensen has a number of microscopic sensors embedded in his body which talk to the XX-2050. These sensors react to any adverse changes, so Jensen can be alerted if (for example) an allergic reaction is occurring. A number of military applications of such a system are imaginable, such as detecting an influx of chemical or biological agents, or even just maintaining a check on the user’s overall health during a trek. (Or perhaps ensuring the user stays awake during a long, boring watch duty.)

The XX-2050 supports a voice interface, understanding queries and producing vocal replies phrased in natural language. That’s a bit ahead of current capabilities, but progress is being made, particularly where the subject matter is restricted to specific topics. The introduction of Siri into the iPhone 4S brings us some of this functionality, and the US military already uses translator apps to aid troops who are dealing with local people who don’t speak English.

When I first read the story in 1979 I thought it brought up some fascinating ideas about how PDAs would develop (though I still thought of them as fancy calculators then). Re-reading the story 32 years later, I’m amazed that it has held up so well. Given that we still have another 14 years to go before the 2025 setting of the story, there’s still time for some of the more advanced XX-2050 functionality to become available!

How well will modern predictions hold up in 2043?

Tags: Android, ar, augmented reality, ios, pda, smartphone

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 at 9:37 am by Pat Galea and is filed under Aerospace & Defence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.