Smart phones that react to your moods and televisions that can tell it’s you who’s watching are in your future as Intel Corporation’s top technology expert sets his sights on context-aware computing.
Chief technology officer Justin Rattner showed how personal devices will one day offer advice. “How can we change the relationship so we think of these devices not as devices but as assistants or even companions?” he asked.
Handheld devices could combine already common geographic location technology with data from microphones, cameras, heart and body monitors and even brain scans to offer their owners advice that today only a friend or relative could give.
“Imagine a device that uses a variety of sensors to determine what you are doing at an instant, from being asleep in your bed to being out for a run with a friend, ” Rattner said, “Future devices will constantly learn about who you are, how you live, work and play.’’
Rattner also demonstrated a television remote control that figures out who is holding it based on how it is held, and then learns the viewer’s entertainment preferences.
As the world leader for decades in microchips for servers and desktop computers, Intel is hurrying to catch up in the profitable market for smart phones like Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry.
Telephones with e-mail, global positioning and media players are pointing the way to a future where ever more functions are packed into ever smaller mobile devices.
The smart phone industry, including technology giants like LG and Samsung, is likely to sell 270 million phones this year and grow 25 percent in 2011, according to market research company IDC.
“I think you can expect to see features that support context-aware computing starting to appear in Intel products in the near future,” Rattner said.
But analysts say Intel faces an uphill battle getting its microchips into new phones as Nvidia, Marvell and Qualcomm have already made headway with cheap, lower-power processors based on designs by ARM Holdings.
Rattner recognized that questions about privacy and people’s willingness to be intimate with their computers will have to be settled before the future generation of smart phones he described takes off.
“If you think identity threat is a problem today, imagine when your whole context is readily available on the Net.”, he said.
小题1:The future smart phones can do all of the following except _______.
A．giving responses to the moods of the owners
B．giving proposals like assistants or companions
C．offering advice to their owners’ friends or relatives
D．telling the phone holders or carriers where they are小题2:Which of the following are smart phones according to the passage?
A．iPhone and Blackberry
B．LG and Samsung
C．Marvell and Qualcomm
D．Nvidia and ARM Holdings小题3:From the passage we can infer that _______.
A．Intel Corporation has become the world leader in the smar tphone market
B．Intel Corporation has fallen behind in the profitable market for smart phones
C．more functions packed into mobile phones will make mobile devices larger
D．the smart phone industry is likely to grow 25 percent in the year of 2011小题4:The best title for the passage is likely to be _______.
A．Smart phones and Televisions
B．Context-aware Computing
C．Personalized Televisions
D．Personalized Smart phones
