Information systems innovation

Posts Tagged ‘new technology’

This post refers to an article I read on PCMAG.com(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370439,00.asp) about the Vlingo mobile application that we can download onto smart phones. Overall Vlingo provides an application that allows you to navigate various phone functions through voice command. Vlingo also provides a talk/text application allowing the user to dictate your responses to text messages  instead of having you text while driving.

Google, Yahoo and many other search engines usually refer you to random websites when doing an online search or entering a question. Another highlight of the Vlingo app is the ability to ask the application questions and have it find real answers. The purpose of the technology is to keep the cell phone user focused on driving instead of texting or doing mobile searches. I believe this is a New Market disruption aimed at Undershot consumers because of the convenience and relative inexpensiveness of the app. Most of the features I discussed above are available for free.

Charged just by being in the room

Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who went on to father many of the inventions that define the modern electronic era, was the first to let electrons off their leash, in 1890.

Tesla based his wireless electricity idea on a concept known as electromagnetic induction,holds that electric current flowing through one wire can induce current to flow in another wire, nearby. The product of the 21^st century is an inductive device, much like the one Tesla envisioned, but a lot smaller. It looks like a mouse pad and can send power through the air, over a distance a few inches.

Michigan-based Fulton Innovation unveiled its first set of wirelessly charged consumer products at the Consumer Electronics Show early this year.

Their product can be viewed here: http://www.powermat.com/

I don’t have a new innovation to post but instead had a hypothetical situation I thought would be interesting to discuss.

I was reading an article about the Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever.  He stated that in science the basic laws of nature are known and that there is essentially nothing left to discover.  He stated that many of the research being done today is simply expanding or improving upon existing truths.

Do you think the same rational can be applied to technology?  Will we ever reach a point where there are no more truly new innovative technologies that create entirely new markets?  Will there ever come a point where producers have to focus entirely on over and undershot consumers because all they can do is simply improve on older technology?

I think the idea has some validity.  It made me think just how many undershot and overshot technologies were mentioned as examples of new innovations in this class.  There are so many technologies like mobile phones for example that simply build upon older technology and there seems to be a technology that already exists for almost every task we have to do on a daily basis.