Technology is changing our lives all the time. But what trends are defining which way the technology is going? PC Magazine names the ten technology trends that are defining the future in the magazine's June 22 cover story (on newsstands now). These trends point out technology from research labs, big companies, and little startups that will change the way we communicate, live, and work in the years ahead. A special four-page pullout section explores the computers you might be using -- or even wearing -- in the not-so-distant future. The magazine also introduced a unique feature with PC Magazine Online's TryItNow capability, enabling you to try some of these future technologies today at http://www.pcmag.com/TryIt/Now.

PC Magazine's Top Ten Future Technology trends:

1. Computers Will be More Human: using natural-language processing, or the ability to respond to a question that is phrased the way you would phrase it to another person. The best example is the chatterbot, a virtual character that you can ask questions of and get answers from on a particular subject. Software with real voice recognition (not having to speak "comma" and "period") and emotional response by sensors attached to your body are under development.

2. Networks Will Be Ubiquitous: the two areas of networking technology under going the greatest change right now, fast access and home LANs, will be stable by the end of the year 2000; the real news is fixed- point wireless which uses microwaves to carry high-speed data above the ground connections of fiber and cable television.

3. The Web Will Be Smart: The Web, which was built on HTML, is being rebuilt on XML, which is not a presentation language for the layout of text and graphics on a page, but a common way of describing data, making a search more precise and letting businesses share data more efficiently.

4. Little Devices Will Think: Embedded processors are multiplying at a blistering pace: though sales of PC chips are measured in the millions, sales of embedded processors are counted in the billions. One of the latest prototypes to come out of IBM is the cyberphone, a combination of cellular phone and computer with wireless Web access and a tiny built in virtual display on which tiny images appear as large as they would on a desk-top monitor.

5. Software Will Get Smarter: Natural language interfaces are only one sign that software is getting smarter.

6. The Internet Economy Will Take Over: The Internet is proving so successful at copying and improving on the ways people shop and the ways businesses work that sooner than any expert predicted the Internet economy will be the single biggest part of the global economy's infrastructure. Buyers and sellers have opened up lines of communication that are cutting out layers of middlemen and cutting down costly inventories, resulting in lower prices all around and more customization of the things you buy, from PCs to pajamas.

7. You'll Look at Computers In A Whole New Way: Researchers have created a display of eight hinged, full-color polymer LCD panels that can fold up and fit in your pocket. Unfold it once and it's a writing pad, twice and it's a book or Web browser. Unfold it completely and it's large enough to display maps or work as a PC screen.

8. Entertainment Will Be Virtual: As digital characters are becoming more lifelike, digital representations of actors playing an increasingly larger role in Hollywood films. And online chat may have started as a text-driven experience, where your moniker was your most distinguishing characteristic and emotions were expressed in emoticons, but today more and more people are turning to 2-D and 3-D worlds where they choose and "avatar" (character) and walk up to other people to talk.

9. Your Identity Will Be Digital: Privacy in the digital age means the ability, through legal and technical means, to control information about ourselves.

10. Moore's Law Will Continue to Drive Computing: You'll have a billion transistors on a chip by the year 2011 and your computing devices will be more powerful than you can imagine.

PC Magazine editors also provided a list of honorable mention trends, five interesting ideas that are in the works including: robotics come home, you'll be there virtually, you may wear your computer (or it may wear you), graphical user interfaces get competition, and computing is distributed. You can explore several of these future technology trends today by going to PC Magazine Online at http://www.pcmag.com/TryItNow or read about it in the magazine's June 22, 1999 issue.

SOURCE PC Magazine