2008年度十大科技突破

导语：据《连线》杂志报道，尽管全球经济陷入低迷，但创新的脚步并未停止，且重大创新屡见不鲜。今年，许多科技产品得到了重大改进。苹果iPhone手机数据传输速度更快，笔记本变成上网本(netbook)，袖珍相机从录制标准清晰度录像走向录制高清晰度录像。

　　同时，世界各地的企业和学术研发实验室在2008年正忙于为未来的科技发展奠定基础。他们提出 了可食用硅芯片、电子电路学第四种基本元件等先进概念。工程技术的发展同样可圈可点，比如Speedo LZR泳衣，这种高科技泳衣帮助美国“飞鱼”迈克尔·菲尔普斯(Michael Phelps)在北京奥运会上8次走上最高领奖台。以下是《连线》杂志评选出的2008年度十大科技成就，并展望了这些科技成就对我们未来生活的影响。

　　1.苹果应用程序商店

　　在2008年以前，移动应用产品开发者一直无法通过有效途径将他们开发的软件发布到消费者手中，如果想要做到这一点，别无选择，只能通过和运营 商合作。但今年，苹果应用程序商店的出现改变了这一切。它可以让面向手机用户的移动应用程序的开发和发布变得非常简单——不但推动了移动应用程序开发市 场，还引来了像Android Market这样的克隆版本，甚至迫使移动运营商RIM公司提供BlackBerry Application Storefront。对于数以千计的程序开发人员来说，苹果应用程序商店让手机变成了新的个人电脑。

　　展望：苹果应用程序商店彻底改变了我们使用手机的方式，使手机变成拥有各种便利工具的个性化产品。

　　2.Android平台

　　我们不喜欢T-Mobile HTC G1手机的理由可能有许多，如颜色、电池续航能力、触摸屏等。销售数字也反映了这一点，从2008年10月推出以来，HTC G1手机的销量只有150万部左右，相比之下，苹果iPhones手机初次亮相时销量达到300万部。

　　不过，G1手机的优势在于采用了谷歌的Android操作系统。Android是一套免费的移动操作系统，是多年以来推出的首款操作系统，相信 在G1手机之后，还会有许多手机采用这种操作平台。鉴于Android系统的开放性，不断有新的开发团队和手机厂商承诺使用这套系统，Android系统 可能重写整个无线工业的历史。

　　展望：在2009年，多家手机制造商可能会推出基于Android平台的手机，这将给其它智能手机操作系统带来很大压力。即便如此，到2009年底，iPhone仍有可能是全年最畅销的智能手机。

　　3.USB 3.0标准

　　数据传输通道注定将会变成高速公路。通用串行总线(USB)是给你的个人电脑传输文件或给你的iPhone手机充电的标准，8年来首次进行重大 修改。按照今年制定的规范，USB3.0标准将比现行USB2.0标准传输速度快10倍，且会增强通过USB线提供电流的能力。在新标准下，上传和下载大 容量高清视频所需时间将大大减少，准确点说，用户的数据传输速度更快，达到每秒4.8千兆。

　　数码相机和微型高清录像机会生成大量数据，这些数据必须快速地传输给电脑，以便将它们上传至YouTube，增加只有少数人欣赏的网络视频容 量。由于消费者现在随身携带的电子器件更多，通过USB线给它们充电相比携带几个充电器当然更轻松。随着USB3.0规范在今年的出台，功率输出一下子从 100毫安增至900毫安，从而让设备可以更为快速的充电。

　　展望：我们估计第一款USB3.0产品有望在2009年中问世。

　　4.具备摄像功能的单反相机

　　多年来，高端单反相机(SLR)一直不能像100美元的普通数码相机那样进行视频摄像，这皆因单反相机使用的芯片技术问题。今年，相机行业克服 了这一障碍。尼康D90和佳能5D Mark II这两种相机不仅能捕捉高质量的数码照片，还可以让用户录制高清视频。单反相机的用户不必再像以前那样，在朋友们用廉价数码相机摄像时，他们在一旁干着 急，还要忍受朋友的冷嘲热讽。

　　展望：相比专业录像设备，使用单反相机拍摄高清视频的投入更低，同时可以让用户使用各种各样的镜头。我们估计，在2009年，这会带来专业静物摄影师拍摄高清视频的热潮。

　　5.忆阻器(Memristor)

　　重大科技突破往往并不具有改变我们计算方式的潜力。大约37年前，科学家在一系列数学方程式中首次描述了电子电路学的第四种基本元件 (fundamental element)。今年，惠普实验室的研究人员证实了这种元件的存在。该元件被叫做忆阻器，或记忆电阻器，它加入到另外三个已知元件——电阻器、电容器和 电感器——的行列中。

　　这项发现可能为开发电脑关闭时可以记住保存在存储器中数据的系统铺平了道路。这意味着我们不必启动电脑，而系统远比现在节省能量。研究人员还希 望，忆阻器能帮助他们开发出新一代电脑存储器，可以补充甚至最终取代动态随机存储器(RAM)。动态随机存储器是用于个人电脑上的存储器。

　　展望：目前，忆阻器尚处在实验阶段，别指望在未来5年内看到基于这种系统开发的商业产品。

6.全球定位系统(GPS)

　　全球定位系统(GPS)比我们大家想象的更为“古老”，早在1978年就投入使用，但直到1993年才得到商业应用。多年来，全球定位系统的使 用仅限于昂贵的个人导航装置和豪华轿车的仪表盘。但今年，全球定位系统可谓“遍地开花”，从苹果iPhone 3G手机到T-Mobile的G1，再从G1到富士通LifeBook系列这样的笔记本电脑，这种技术得到广泛应用。相信，在全球定位系统的帮助下，我们 走到天涯海角都不用担心同亲人失去联系。

　　展望：随着配有全球定位系统的设备在全世界的普及，Loopt、雅虎Firebird等基于地理数据的服务将会得到很大的发展空间。

　　7.闪存

　　苹果在将闪存“赐予”iPod的同时，也赋予了一种长期以来充当硬盘陪衬的产品新生。现如今，闪存(Flash Memory)已在消费电子产品领域得到大范围应用，如超薄笔记本电脑、数码相机和媒体播放器等。更为重要的是，EMC、Sun Microsystems、英特尔和日立等科技界知名公司都针对商务用户推出了闪存产品。闪存具有诸多优点，它不仅存储速度快于硬盘，且功耗低。闪存过去 发展的一个瓶颈是，价格几乎是硬盘的8倍。不过，随着闪存的“明星魅力”骤减，今年的闪存价格开始大幅下降。

　　展望：2009年，可能会有更多的数据中心采用闪存，这可能会致使闪存价格进一步下降。如果这一趋势持续下去，相信不久的将来，可以完全和硬盘说再见。

　　8.Speedo LZR泳衣

　　在2008年北京奥运会， 当今泳坛最出色的全能型游泳选手、“飞鱼”迈克尔·菲尔普斯(Michael Phelps)一举创造历史，在一届奥运会夺得8枚金牌，成为奥运第一人。菲尔普斯和其他游泳选手之所以游得更快，皆因Speedo LZR泳衣的帮助。Speedo LZR泳衣采用了新型面料，使用美国宇航局航空科技技术制造，进一步提升了优秀选手的成绩。在影响选手成绩的总减速力上，粘滞曳力(Viscous drag)就占到25%。

　　Speedo LZR泳衣采用超声缝制技术，主体采用超轻超薄的特殊面料，通过高强度挤压来减少肌肉振动和皮肤颤动，并可使运动员的身体趋于流线型，达到减少粘滞曳力的 效果。难道菲尔普斯在北京奥运会上创造的历史全拜LZR泳衣所赐？并不见得，因为参加这次奥运会的游泳选手几乎每个都穿着Speedo泳衣。

　　展望：我们希望LZR泳衣上的一些技术能走入大众，让普通人亦能体验劈波斩浪的快感。

　　9.可食用芯片

　　老太太们长年不离手的药丸同样开始走向高科技。微型可食用芯片将取代某些医疗设备的作用，跟踪患者何时服药，监督这些药物的疗效。今年，位于加 州雷德伍德城的一家美国公司Proteus使用硅粒制造出可以食用的芯片。病人服用后，芯片会在腹中激活，将诸如心率、体温、失眠状态等重要医学参数，通 过电子信号发送给体外接收装置。

　　接着，数据会被发送到一个在线数据库，或医生和患者的手机上通，令其了解病情进展等情况。据Proteus介绍，可食用芯片可以随时随地跟踪患 者对药物的反应。这可能仅是个开始，可食用芯片还会改善药物输送方式，甚至可以将其他类型的病情监控装置插入人体。现在，医生也许可以更好地解答患者的抱 怨，因为他们会对患者的感受一清二楚。

　　展望：如果可食用芯片通过医用临床验证，那么医生就可以用一种全新方式去观测药物的作用。

　　10.柔性显示屏

　　多年来，科学家一直在致力于研究可弯曲、像纸一样薄的显示屏，能折叠卷起来或缝进袖筒。柔性显示屏可能会改变我们同信息社会相互影响的方式，创 造出新型手机、便携式电脑、电子报纸和电子书等高科技产品。今年，这方面的研究获得重大突破，“电子纸”开始从科幻走向现实。在美国陆军的帮助下，亚利桑 那州立大学柔性显示屏研究中心制造出一款可供士兵使用的柔性显示屏原型，希望在未来3年内能得到广泛应用。

　　Plastic Logic和E-Ink等初创企业也在开发类似技术。与此同时，惠普宣布在“电子纸”制造方面取得突破，可以在柔性塑料材料上布置薄膜晶体管阵列，这为生 产商在类似新闻纸的卷轴上“打印”显示器提供了可能。此外，三星还展示了一款具有柔性显示屏的手机原型，柔性显示屏可以如书本一样折叠起来。

　　展望：在汤姆·克鲁斯主演的科幻大片《少数派报告》中，数字报纸可以卷起来放入口袋，而这一幕最早有望在2010年左右成为现实。援引科幻小说大师威廉姆·吉布森(William Gibson)的一句话说：“未来就在这里，只是分布不太广。”

《福布斯》网络版评选出了2008年美国十大科技业新闻 (Biggest Tech Stories Of The Year)

　　1、微软-雅虎收购交易夭折

　　2、乔布斯“死而复生”

　　3、3G版iPhone大获成功

　　4、谷歌涉足无线领域

　　5、EA收购Take-Two流产

　　6、Vista折戟沉沙

　　7、蓝光打败HD-DVD

　　8、Sun复苏无望

　　9、《孢子》出师不利

　　10、上网本和智能手机火爆

　

Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008

The economy may be tanking, but innovation is alive and well.

When it came to products, incremental improvements were the name of the game this year. Phones got faster (iPhone 3G anyone?), notebooks turned into netbooks and pocket cameras went from recording standard-definition video to HD.

But the world's corporate and academic R&D labs were busy laying the foundations of some amazing future technologies in 2008. They produced concepts such as silicon chips you can swallow for personalized medicine from the inside out and a fourth fundamental element in electronic circuitry. And engineers cranked out a few less groundbreaking — but no less important — inventions, like a space-age swimsuit to help Michael Phelps slice through the water faster than a river otter on a jet ski.

Here's our countdown of what rocked our world in 2008 — and what will change yours in 2009 and beyond.

10. Flexible Displays

<!-- CAPTION HERE --> Flexible displays are likely to be a reality by 2010 or 2011.
Courtesy Phillip Spears

A sliver of the future can soon be tucked into your back pocket. For years, researchers have worked on thin, paperlike displays that can be folded, rolled or sewn into the sleeve of your hoodie. Flexible displays could change the way we interact with the info-universe, creating new kinds of cellphones, portable computers, e-newspapers and electronic books.

This year, the research moved from the realm of science fiction to plausible reality. With help from the U.S. Army, Arizona State University's Flexible Display Center has created a prototype for soldiers, and hopes to have the devices in field trials in the next three years. Startups like Plastic Logic and E-Ink have been developing similar technologies.

Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard announced a manufacturing breakthrough that allows the thin-film transistor arrays to be fabricated on flexible plastic materials, enabling manufacturers to "print" displays on big, newsprintlike rolls. Samsung showed off a mobile phone prototype with a flexible display that folds like a book.

Outlook: A Minority Report-style digital newspaper that you can roll up in your pocket isn't happening before 2010 at the earliest. But to quote science fiction novelist William Gibson: "The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet."

9. Edible Chips

Grandma's pillbox with the days of the week neatly marked is set to go high tech. Tiny edible chips will replace the organizer, tracking when patients take their pills (or don't) and monitoring the effects of the drugs they're taking. Proteus, a Redwood City, California, company, has created tiny chips out of silicon grains that, once swallowed, activate in the stomach. The chips send a signal to an external patch that monitors vital parameters such as heart rate, temperature, state of wakefulness or body angle.

The data is then sent to an online repository or a cellphone for the physician and the patient to track. Proteus says its chips can keep score of how patients are responding to the medication. That may be just the beginning, as the chips could improve drug delivery and even insert other kinds of health monitors inside the body. Now doctors may have a better answer to a common patient complaint — they will know exactly how it feels.

Outlook: If proven in clinical trials, edible chips could let physicians look into a patient's system in a way that could change how medicine is prescribed and how we take the drugs.

8. Speedo LZR

Michael Phelps. 2008 Olympics. Enough said. Phelps and others were able to log faster times because of Speedo's LZR swimsuit. It blends new materials and a dose of NASA rocket science to boost the speeds of elite swimmers — legally.

Viscous drag on a swimmer can be as much as 25 percent of the total retarding force. But Speedo's suit, with its ultrasonically bonded seams instead of stitches, low-drag panels and a mix of polyurethane layers, can cut resistance and help swimmers move through the water faster. It also has a rigid, girdle-style structure that helps position the swimmer's body in an optimal position. Did it have anything to do with Michael Phelps' amazing eight Olympic gold medals? Probably not, as nearly every swimmer at the Games was wearing a Speedo suit.

Outlook: We're hoping at least some of the technologies in the LZR will trickle down to the consumer level so we can slice through the water at the Y.

7. Flash Memory

When Apple blessed the iPod with flash memory, it gave new life to a technology that had long played second fiddle to hard disk drives. Now flash memory is a mainstay of most consumer electronics products, from ultralight notebooks to digital cameras and media players.

Next, the who's who of the tech industry — EMC, Sun Microsystems, Intel and Hitachi — are championing flash drives for larger business users.

The advantage? Solid-state flash drives offer faster response times than hard disk drives and they require much less power. The hitch is that they are almost eight times more expensive than hard disk drives. But with the star power behind flash storage, the prices have nowhere to go but down.

Outlook: More data centers are likely to move to flash storage in 2009, which is likely to drive prices down further. If this trend takes off, say goodbye to the hard disk drives in your house. It will be time to flash your drive.

6. GPS

The Global Positioning System is old, old, older than you think. The system has been operational since 1978 and available for commercial use since 1993, but for years its use was relegated to expensive personal navigation devices and the dashboards of high-end cars.

This year, suddenly GPS popped up everywhere else, from the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1 to notebooks such as Fujitsu's LifeBook series.

And devices that couldn't or didn't include true GPS made do with cell-tower triangulation or geolocation based on Wi-Fi hotspots. Now getting lost is no longer an option.

Outlook: With widespread GPS capabilities throughout the gadget world, services that make use of geographic data, like Loopt and Yahoo's Firebird, will be able to build critical mass.

5. The Memristor

It's not often that a fundamental tech breakthrough has the potential to change how we compute. Nearly 37 years after it was first described in a series of mathematical equations, researchers at HP Labs proved that the fourth fundamental element of electronic circuitry is for real. The "memristor," or memory transistor, now joins the three other widely known elements: the capacitor, the resistor and the inductor.

The discovery will make it possible to develop computer systems that remember what's stored in memory when they are turned off. That means computers that don't need to be booted up and systems that are far more energy efficient than the current crop. Researchers also hope the memristor can help develop a new kind of computer memory that can supplement or ultimately replace dynamic random access memory, or DRAM — the type of memory used in personal computers.

Outlook: Memristors are still primarily confined to the lab, so don't expect commercial products based on this kind of circuitry for at least five years.

4. Video-Capable SLRs

<!-- CAPTION HERE --> Video-capable SLRs will meld high-def moving and still images.
Courtesy of Nikon

For years, high-end single-lens reflex cameras have been unable to do what even $100 pocket cams can do: Shoot video. That's because of the type of imaging chip used by SLRs.

This year, the camera industry overcame that limitation. Two new cameras, the Nikon D90 and the Canon 5D Mark II capture top-notch still images, but let the photographer to shoot high-definition video. No longer do SLR users have to stand by, while friends mock them for their expensive camera's inability to shoot video.

Outlook: Shooting high-def videos with an SLR is cheap compared to using professional video equipment — and it gives photographers access to a wide range of lenses. In 2009, we predict this will lead to an explosion in arty, high-def videos shot by professional still photographers.

3. USB 3.0

Fasten your seatbelts. The data-transfer freeway is set to turn into an autobahn. The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, a popular standard for transferring files to your PC or charging your iPhone, got its first major update in eight years. USB 3.0 will be 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0 standard, and will increase the amount of electrical current that can be delivered through a USB cable.

Users need the increased speed — 4.8 gigabits per second, to be precise. Digital cameras and pocket-size HD video recorders generate a torrent of bits, all of which need to be transferred quickly to computers, so they can be uploaded to YouTube, adding to the internet video that only a handful of people will ever watch.

And as consumers carry around more devices, charging them off a PC using a USB cable will be much easier than carrying multiple chargers. With the USB 3.0 specifications nailed down this year, the standard will bump up the power output to 900 milliamps from 100 milliamps, allowing more devices to be charged faster.

Outlook: We expect the earliest USB 3.0 products in mid-2009.

2. Android

<!-- CAPTION HERE --> Handset makers from Motorola to Sony Ericsson are rushing to add Android to their lineup.
Jon Snyder/Wired.com

There were many reasons to dislike the T-Mobile HTC G1 phone: its color, poor battery life and a touchscreen that isn't super-responsive. And the numbers reflect that. Only about 1.5 million units of the G1 have been sold since its October 2008 launch. Compare that to the 3 million iPhones that sold when it debuted.

But the G1 scores with its operating system. It runs Android, the free mobile operating system from Google. It's the first mobile OS to make its debut in years and the G1 is just the first of what will be many phones that use it. With its open source base, growing developer community and dozens of cellphone manufacturers pledging to make Android phones, Android has the potential to reshape the wireless industry in significant ways.

Outlook: At least half a dozen manufacturers are likely to release Android phones in 2009, increasing the pressure on other smartphone operating systems. The iPhone is likely to remain the top-selling smartphone through the end of the year, however.

1. Apple's App Store

Until this year, mobile app developers lacked an easy way to get their software into the hands of consumers, forcing them to make deals with finicky and power-hungry carriers if they wanted to get any distribution at all. Apple's App Store changed all that. It made creating and distributing mobile applications for cellphone users easy — jumpstarting the mobile-app development market and creating clones such as the Android Market. It even forced Research in Motion to offer a BlackBerry Application Storefront. For thousands of programmers, the cellphone is the new PC.

Outlook: App stores have changed forever the way we use our phones, turning them into personalized devices filled with utilities, handy tools and copies of Tap Tap Revenge.